Friday, November 21, 2003

Humanology Alfred Korzybski speaking in 1923: In this lecture I propose to analyze the principles on which the foundation of the Science and Art of Human Engineering must rest, if we are ever to have such a Science and Art. As my aim is merely to offer a somewhat rude outline, I shall, as much as possible, avoid the use of such technical terms as would be essential to the precision demanded by a detailed presentation. By Human Engineering I mean the Science and Art of directing the energies and capacities of Human Beings to the advancement of Human Weal. All human achievements are cumulative; no one of us can claim any achievement exclusively as his own; we all must use consciously or unconsciously the achievements of others, some or them living but most of them dead. ... A definition of man is, of course, the first concern of human engineering. How shall we define our object, man? We are told by the naturalists that an organism must be treated as a whole—that sounds impressive—but they have not told us how to do it. It seems that the traditional subject-predicate logic leads automatically toward elementalism, and that this organism-as-a-whole theory will forever remain pia desideria as long as we use the old logic. Yet this concept of the "organism-as-a-whole" is extremely important for us, particularly in the dealing with man (see Manhood of Humanity), and all experimental evidence seems to prove that it is correct. ... Observing living beings, we find that the plants bind solar energy into chemical energy, and so we may define plants as the energy or chemistry-binding class of life. The animals have an added mobility in space—they are the space-binding class of life. Humans differ from animals in that each generation does not begin where their respective ancestors began; they have the faculty to begin where their ancestors left off; they benefit by and accumulate the experiences of all the past, add to it and transmit it to the future. Man and man alone is active in a peculiar way in what we call time—so we must define man as a time-binding class of life. (11/21/03) Homogenizing America Craig Russell writes: Think for a moment about how American children spend those infinitely precious and irreplaceable twenty-fours they’re granted every single day.  If we assume they sleep for eight hours, they then have 16 remaining.  Six of those they spend in school under the direct supervision of a State-certified employee learning State-certified things.  That leaves them with ten.  They have to spend some time with basic personal maintenance like washing up, getting dressed, and later getting undressed.  And they have to spend some time eating.  Let’s conservatively allot a total of four hours to that.  This leaves them with six hours.  What do they then do with that remaining time?  Maybe they’ll talk some with their parents or their siblings or their friends.  Maybe they’ll take a walk or play a game.  But chances are that they’ll spend the majority of that time watching television.  Wes Moore claims the average American spends four hours watching television every day.  Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in their Scientific American article called Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor, claimed that “The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On average, individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a day to the pursuit--fully half of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep.”  Even if we accept the more conservative claim of Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, who talk about “the industrialized world” rather than just America, then that time has dwindled to just three hours. And what does television do to them and to anyone who watches it?  According to both Moore and the team of Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, watching television acts exactly like a drug on the human body, producing endorphins, which are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives.  Also, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it also shuts down the questioning and critical left hemisphere of the brain, which controls our language and our logic, while emphasizing the accepting and non-critical right hemisphere. And what do people see on that insidious device?  Thousands upon thousands of commercials for one thing.  According to Moore , watching television “brainwashes consumers to throw money at the gaping void of their meaningless, terror-filled lives.” ... It’s easy for people to read about the effects of school and of television and simply to deny them because they just don’t want to believe them.  Such beliefs can quickly become inconvenient.  But we can’t just reject things out of hand.  We must think about the facts and the logic behind them.  If we can show that the facts are wrong, or that the logic is flawed, then we can indeed reject those arguments.  But if we can’t disprove the facts, if we can’t find holes in the logic, then we find ourselves faced, if we’re honest with ourselves, with a very discomforting situation.  Can we deny that we have become a nation which “sits down each evening to commercial entertainment, hears the same processed news, wears the same clothing, takes direction from the same green road signs, thinks the same pre-framed thoughts, and relegates its children and old people to the same scientific care of strangers in ‘nursing’ homes and schools” (Gatto 224) Can we honestly deny that our children spend most of their waking hours with school and television, just as we did when we were young? And can we deny that school and television have helped create the minds and the thinking that have put us into this situation? (11/21/03) Global Food Crisis? Terra Daily -- US environmentalist Lester Brown warned Wednesday that sudden food price hikes in China could be the sign of a coming world food crisis brought on by global warming and increasingly scarce water supplies among major grain producers. "I view the price rises as an indication, as the warning tremors before the earthquake," Brown, director of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, told an audience of Chinese environmental non-governmental organizations. World grain harvests have fallen for four consecutive years and world grain stocks are at the lowest level in 30 years. If farmers can't raise production by (late next year) we may see soaring grain and food prices worldwide." In the past few months, wheat prices in northeast China have shot up 32 percent, maize prices have doubled and rice prices are up by as much as 13 percent, official reports show. China faces a 40 million ton grain shortfall this year following five years of smaller harvests. Brown said that the world will be facing a 96 million ton shortfall in grain this year following poor harvests in the United States and India in 2002, and a poor harvest in Europe due to scorching temperatures this year. Shortfalls worldwide have been made up through dwindling grain reserves. Brown, described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers," was in China to unveil the translation of his new book Plan B, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress. While grain producers revel in rising prices, Brown said the trends are unsustainable, especially as the world population approaches eight billion by mid-century and as the main grain producers -- China, India and the United States -- face increasing water shortages. As China's population grows and its people demand a more meat-based diet with rising living standards, China will increasingly have to look to world markets to satisfy grain needs for both food and feed for livestock, he said. "When China turns to the world market for grain, it will need 30, 40, 50 million tons, more than anyone else in the world imports," Brown said. "They will first come to US markets, which is going to make a fascinating geo-political situation." With a 100 billion dollar trade surplus with the United States in 2002, China has "enormous purchasing power" to buy US grain, which "could drive up prices by two times." (11/21/03) Death from Above BBC Science -- Scientists have found new evidence that the greatest extinction in the Earth's history was triggered by an asteroid. About 250 million years ago, something unknown wiped out most of the life on the planet. It was far more devastating than the impact that ended the rule of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. New geological evidence suggests that the "great dying" was caused by a space rock slamming into the Earth. Dozens of rare mineral grains found in ancient rocks in Antarctica could be the "smoking gun", according to scientists in the US. The tiny bits of chondritic (stony) meteorite bear all the hallmarks of coming from outer space. Asish Basu, a geochemist at the University of Rochester, New York, believes the fragments date back to the Permian-Triassic period, 251 million years ago, when about 90% of marine life and 70% of land species vanished. If this is the case, it would be the second time an asteroid or comet has wiped out life on Earth. "It appears to us that the two largest mass extinctions in Earth history ...were both caused by catastrophic collisions with chondritic meteroids," Basu, and four colleagues from other US universities, write in the journal Science. This is the latest piece of evidence in support of the theory that a celestial body hit the Earth at the time of the "great dying". In 2001, US researchers discovered tiny capsules of cosmic gas trapped inside rocks from the Permian-Triassic. Isotopes of helium and argon gases commonly found in space were found within a cage of carbon atoms. These unusual ball-shaped molecules, known as buckyballs or fullerenes, are thought to have been deposited by a space rock colliding with the planet. (11/21/03) OpenCourseWare--WOW!  The OpenCourseWare program is a remarkable story of an institution rallying around an ideal, and then delivering on the promise of that ideal. In 1999, MIT Provost Robert A. Brown asked the MIT Council on Education Technology to provide strategic guidance on how MIT should position itself in the distance/e-learning environment. The resulting recommendation - the idea of MIT OCW - is in line with MIT's mission (to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century) and is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. MIT OCW makes the course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all MIT's undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. This initiative continues the tradition at MIT, and in American higher education, of open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought, and will help lead to fundamental changes in the way colleges and universities utilize the Web as a vehicle for education. Many people contributed to the successful publication of 500 courses this fall, including the MIT OCW staff, our faculty and external advisory boards, and our many partners - those here on MIT's campus and consultants off campus. But most importantly, MIT OCW could not have published these courses, and will not succeed long-term, without the support of MIT's world-class faculty. Their remarkable dedication to education and MIT's mission is what will sustain MIT OCW long-term. ... MIT President Charles M. Vest's charge to the graduates at 136th Commencement, June 7, 2002: "And let us also resolve that our new technologies—the Internet and the World Wide Web—will be used as tools of empowerment and democratization on a global scale. Next fall, the MIT Faculty will launch its MIT OpenCourseWare initiative—a program that will make the basic educational materials for 2,000 of our subjects available on the Web—available to anyone anywhere free of charge. "Why would we do this? Because we see it as part of our mission: to help to raise the quality of higher education in every corner of the globe. "This program is based on the twin values of opportunity and openness. These are values that have made our universities and our nation strong. They are values that will keep our world safe and strong. And they are values that you should treasure and protect as you make your way in the world." (11/21/03) 8:06:12 AM

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