"Most wiccans don't believe in the devil. And, no, we don't have orgies," Campana said.
[Link]
All the sadder for them.

Today I went for my orientation at Ramstein AFB's Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility(CASF). Everyone was really nice but I met so many people that it was kind of a blur. CASF's mission is to transport incoming wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan and get them to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center or send them on to the US. Capt. Eller met my mother and I at the door, started our brief tour while waiting for TSgt. Bell to get out of a meeting. Capt. Eller is here on Temporary Duty assignment, meaning he is attached to CASF for 120 days before he gets rotated out. The rotating group is what "contingency" refers to; there is always a Aeromedical Staging Facility at Ramstein, consisting of only thirty individuals who are on permanent assignment. During peacetime, military personnel stationed across Europe still require medical evacuation which the ASF takes care of. Contingent on Global War on Terror, the ASF was expanded to include the rotating group of sixty more airmen.

After learning the basics about CASF, we were introduced to its commander, Maj. Paul Langevin, and TSgt. Mike Bell, who would present the rest of the orientation. The Major checked me out to make sure I could handle carrying stretchers and asked me if I get queasy. Thinking about doing surgery and brain removals on mice, I said no. The Major and Tech-Sargent both admitted they got queasy, giving me second thoughts; I was reassured that if I had any problems, I could still help by carrying bags for the wounded. Maj. Langevin approved my shoes and told me not to wear any loose clothing on the airstrip; I will be his shadow tomorrow morning.

TSgt. Bell gave us a tour of the facilities, starting with the in-processing area, complete with its own bag scanner. Since the wounded are often coming straight from the field, they sometimes are still packing grenades, shells and knives. TSgt. Bell said most of the time its just accidental but everyone once in a while you'll get a .50 caliber shell taped to a can of shaving cream and the like.

Then came the staging area and patient rooms (one for males and one for females) which hold up to twenty people each. The command and control area was pretty impressive. They have real time tracking for every evacuation request coming in from Iraq and Afghanistan that automatically assigns flights out and keeps the patients tracked until discharge. It was there I got to see information about the outgoing flight I will be working on. We have thirteen wounded on stretchers and five ambulatories.

A couple of ambulatories were in the USO Recreation Room when we dropped by there (here is an article with pictures). It has a door opening onto a nice barbecue area facing the woods. TSgt. Bell told us that you really appreciate being able to see greenery after being in the desert for a long time. The ambulatories aren't supposed to drink, but a long time in a dry country (alcohol is illegal in both Iraq and Afghanistan) results in the rules being loosely followed. Especially since the base Chili's is just down the street (yes, the base has a Chili's).

Have to get to bed early tonight to be there bright and chipper by 10.

into authoritarian hellhole.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2240479,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

John Crow asks what blogs do you read and why:

We all read blogs and we hope others read our blog too. Why not list the blogs you read and why. It might open others to finding new and interesting blogs. It also gives you the ability to tell others why you read their blog. No particular format is necessary, just list the blogs you really like and why. Make this a meme, copy this introduction and pass the idea along.

First are my personal friends:

• Post Katrina 2008 - My friend Johanna moved down to New Orleans about a year ago and has been heavily active in public service there ever since. Her blog chronicles her experiences with the reconstruction and I find it to be quite moving on a regular basis. Her journal of the first year can be found at Post Katrina 2007.


• Foodent - Sarah G. is an apprenticing chef in Boston. She hasn't been posting much as of late, but when she does it's always full of food science goodness.

The rest are individuals I have never met, though I plan to sooner or later:

• The Treasure House of Pearls - John Crow's personal blog. John created the excellent podcast Thelema Coast to Coast. Always insightful and piercing beyond the surface, I find great support for my own Work in Mr. Crow's productions.


• Violet Blue and Techyum - Violet Blue's two blogs, one covering herself and the other cool geeky things she finds online. Ms. Blue's media project - blogs, vlogs, and books - is truly an inspiration; she shows just what can be achieved with a bit of spunk and tons of love.


• Until - Joe Perez is an author and blogger committed to the growing Integral movement (however you choose to define it). An esoteric Christian, I rarely agree with his politics but dialog with him always forces me to look into my own positions much more mindfully.

Thanks to John for pointing out many more blogs for me to check out.

As social networking sites vie for dominance, Facebook applications took community engagement to a new level. Building a modular interface for users to determine the function of their communication allows Facebook to facilitate community for an incredibly diverse population. I happened (via Violet Blue) upon this article by Leah Culver. In the article, Ms. Culver critiques mashups, including Facebook applications, from the perspective of a professional programmer. She makes several valid points within that context, but I feel that much of her analysis depends on a distinction which is rapidly disappearing. Instead of heading towards a developmental dead-end, I proprose user programming represents a crossing point in human media as predicted by Douglas Rushkoff.

Ms. Culver begins by dismissing the majority of widgets as novelty. It appears that she considers the frivolous nature of these creatures a defect. Instead, I think the novelty carries a quality of freshness indicative of healthy growth. I can only speak to that with which I am familiar with, the expanse of Facebook applications. Although many clone function or do nothing in particular, the sheer volume of Facebook applications implies that people are playing with the capabilities available to them. I contend that the vast amount of waste can only be a good thing long run, which I will return to shortly.

I completely agree with her analysis of the profit potential of widgets. Commercially, only the service provider will see substantial gains. You're not going to get rich handing out expansions on someone else's back-end. I think that she does not take into direct consideration the business social networking sites actually pursue. These sites work to facilitate user exchange of self-generated content. The more they allow users to share what they want to share in the manner users prefer, the better the service provided. As this theme progresses, the line between user and developer becomes very blurry. As Bill Gates emphasized recently, technological literacy is one of the most important skills in the contemporary marketplace. Just as reading and writing spread to the masses, the skillful manipulation of information will spread to the masses.

Ms. Culver distills the thrust of her article when noting: "Maybe some developers really only have widget-sized ambitions. Maybe I’m just not one of them." The statement brings to me a picture of Sumerian priests saying, "These merchants are only interested in using alphabet for accounting." I look forward to the day where we all are amateur developers. As to the professionals, I suggest developing an open-standard for interaction with content management systems. Facebook even provides extensive documentation, allowing for an open source library to reproduce its functionality for the interim.

The current immaturity of Facebook applications may encourage people unfamiliar with programming to make their own. As the tools for developing widgets simplifies to the level that children can make them, perhaps in Scratch, I am sure that the equivalent of "Hello, World!" will be born. I simply understand the current mushup categorization as a baby step in our advancement to a world-wide ubiquitous network. While for the short term I sympathize with Ms. Culver's post, I think an expansive view provides a clearer understanding of the present. Using a developmental framework increases the agency of users and can help us appreciate the changes now going on. By understanding the process occurring, individuals can work to minimize the accumulation of vestigial structures which potentially slow further transformation.

We went to see The Golden Compass last night and it was pretty epic. I couldn't believe how explicit the esoteric themes were; individuals who think the story doesn't come through obviously missed the point. The basic world-view is pretty comprehensive.

About five minutes into the movie, it seemed clear that Dust is LSD or the psychedelic experience. The scene where Azrael shows the College footage from the North of Dust connecting the man (microcosm) to the multiverse (macrocosm) through his daemon made the reference about obvious.

The story line shows a broad familiarity with esoteric thought. Dr. Timothy Leary's work acts as a wonderful lens to clarify the outline of the story. Lyra (an alternative transliteration to "laylah," Arabic for "night"; see The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley) has been living in an educational institute her whole life. To put it in terms of the Leary-Wilson 8-circuit model of consciousness, her world-view is composed only of survival instincts, territoriality (ref. the scene where she claims the gate is cursed) and symbolic-manipulations (the "metaphysics" of the College).

During a visit by her uncle, he asks if her daemon (the external manifestation of her animus) has stopped shape-shifting; this generally occurs at her age. In the Leary-Wilson model, the nervous system imprints its sociosexual orientation around the time of the first orgasm and further development of the individual halts barring physical, mental or chemical yogas. The individual's character tends to remain static for the rest of their life unless they encounter some form of crisis.

The work of Wilhelm Reich offers a complementary view. As the natural spontaneity of children receives punishment from adults, the musculature builds up chronic blocks in the flow of libido (or orgone, in Reich's terminology). This character armoring severely limits the avenues of feeling and acting for an individual. The person then acts from stereotyped routine, symbolized visually by all the servants having dogs as their daemons shortly after the conversation between Lyra and Azrael. In an almost direct reference to Reich, the northern troops walk in a very rigid and upright manner while having vicious dogs as daemons (compare to the illustrations in Listen Little Man, one of Reich's last mass market texts). A common misconception of Reich's model is that "orgasmically potent" individuals (the goal of Reichian therapy) do not have any character armoring; more correct is to say they have dynamic character armor which responds functionally to the environment. Reich makes it clear repeatedly in his writing that the only time the armor dissolves completely is during the release of whole-body orgasm.

Lyra is at the cusp between third-circuit symbolic reality and fourth-circuit sociosexual reality. Her entry into the world of the fourth-circuit is symbolized by the appearance of Ms. Coulter. The director or author works this very elegantly to show the transcending embrace of hierarchical development by having Ms. Coulter quite at home in the third-circuit world of the College while the professors are quite uncomfortable with her presence, which easily dominates and manipulates them.

The headmaster of the College gives Lyra the golden compass and warns her about Ms. Coulter before she leaves the university. The compass acts to tell Lyra the truth about any situation. In this way it acts comparably to the two stones in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. A key to understanding the role of the compass in my interpretation can be found in the headmaster's instructions for using it; Lyra is to gently hold the question in her mind and allow the compass to reveal the answer. The compass acts as a prop, much like a tarot spread or rune stones, which allow the intuition to work without interference from the conscious mind. My experience, supported by anecdote, is that the more one relaxes self-constriction the more effective divination becomes.

Ms. Coulter's role as an embodiment of Culture in the human-primate domestication process is given quite a bit of of attention beyond the homophonic nature of her name. She takes Lyra to the beautician, numerous parties and then there is the argument over Lyra's "ugly bag." She acts as a carrier of what Reich called the "emotional plague,"a epidemiological description wherein neurotic individuals and societies treat others (particularly children) in a manner which spreads and reinforces psychosomatic pathology.

The fight scene over the compass pouch reinforces the Reichian interpretation. Ms. Coulter's coldness, lack of affect and extreme paleness (which implies a block in the flow of vitality) reacts to the child's expression of autonomy with emotional violence. This violence appears in the psychodrama as Ms. Coulter's daemon choking and constricting Lyra's daemon. The author goes so far as to link Lyra's daemon with the universal life force (orgone, libido or Eros) by constantly referring to him as Pan, who is Panphage, Pangenitor, god of Panic and all wild, inhuman things.

The division of self into persona and shadow (whose outbursts and need for violence Reich referred to as secondary drives) appears poignantly when Ms. Coulter is in route to the North and she lashes out at her own daemon (thereby hurting herself) before soothing the beast and telling it she would never harm it. Elaborating on this theme, in the scene where Ms. Coulter claims to be Lyra's mother, she tells Lyra that identification with the daemon is no problem for children but when becoming adults (the turning on of genital sexuality), the daemons lead people to do filthy, nasty things. If Ms. Coulter is actually Lyra's mother, it again indicts the manner of socialization enforced by the Magistarium, perverting the natural love and tenderness of a mother for her child.

The second half of the movie seemed to lose a lot of steam in my opinion. I'm guessing it was more compressed than the first half. The amount of references made without any follow-up left me with nothing but hanging impressions. I think a lot of narrative sacrifices were made for the general movie audience.

It seemed like the director intended to make a clear connection to Hamlet, with Iorek and his sidestory, especially by making the Ice Bear cave interior look like the pride cave in The Lion King after Scar had deposed Mustapha; the false king's behavior also resembles that of Scar when he is confronted by the females of the pride. Beyond the drugging and exile, the term "panserbjorn" means "armored bear" in Danish.

I keep intuiting a connection with Lyra and the Sumerian goddess Inanna, or the princess in Crowley's The Wake World. The connection with Inanna comes from when Lyra crosses the abyss (*nudge nudge*) but is forced to leave all of her allies behind her. Of course, Lyra is the princess in The Wake World but we'll get back to that in a moment.

The last group of allusions sticking out in my mind refer to Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. Thematically and visually, the northern compound aligns exactly with the reform institution Jack Frost is sent to in Say You Want a Revolution. Whether Mr. Pullman was aware of The Invisibles while writing Northern Lights or the themes just happened to be in the UK zeitgeist at the time (Say You Want a Revolution was serialized in '94, Northern Lights was published in '95) is irrelevant. The reform institution in The Invisibles indoctrinates troubled youth into binary Yes/No and Good/Bad thinking designed to produce neutral affect and later in the process the boys undergo surgery to remove the naughty bits (it's a little unclear to me whether said bits are neurological or testicular) after which the youths are good little boys. Compare this with The Golden Compass facility where the children are told to write letters which lie to their parents (false dichotomies?) and have "just a little snip" done which separates them forever from their animal vitality. The director nods in The Invisibles' direction by giving the head of the compound an insect daemon and later, when Lyra escapes she quashes the bug which she had released on Ms. Coulter. King Mob frees Jack Frost from the compound in Say You Want a Revolution and kills the headmaster's body but allows the soul to escape into an insect which gets squashed underfoot at the end of the issue.

To recap: we have an introduction to the individuation process. Socialization of the soul/nervous system (Lyra's introduction to Culture... excuse me, Coulter). Rejection of the inhuman dogmatic control systems which work through verbal indoctrination (aka, the Magistarium). By following intuition (golden compass), Lyra integrates persona and shadow (symbolized by her riding the ice bear), attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel or, as Kenny Wilber would put it, Centaur awareness. The attainment of this awareness occurs when the persona/false self (played by Hamlet's uncle) is defeated by the integrated body-mind (Iorek). Looking back to Reich, as the self is freed from the secondary drives, the primary drives of Eros are given free expression; note that Iorek can remove his armoring and performs better without it ("we can go faster..."). Lyra then assumes responsibility for the liberation of all sentient beings (or, at least, the other children).

So that is what I got from one viewing of the movie without having read the book. I look forward to Lyra assuming her role as the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, and initiating the Apocalypse. I mean, she is the Night of Pan (remember that transliteration?) who is Sophia, Understanding, and no one comes to the Father except through her.

I reached a new peak in my t'ai chi chuan practice this morning. As a little background, I took two semesters of Yang Short form with a teacher from the School of T'ai Chi Chuan started by Patrick Watson. Then my university closed its physical education department, which the T'ai Chi class was a part of. Each semester taught a third of the form. I only had access two semesters, meaning my group only got the first two thirds. This made me a little distraught, as the second third ends with your foot in the air; I was literally left hanging.

I'm now taking classes with the Long River T'ai Chi Circle, taught by Wolfe Lowenthal. It is so nice to do t'ai chi with a group of people again; I do not have adequate words but the quality of the chi flow is so different when done with others. Parenthetically, I solidly believe that the presence of Masters impact the consciousness of those around them in a manner not explained by placebo or trance induction; working with Dan (my first t'ai chi instructor) and Wolfe primarily developed this belief for me (without them ever mentioning it).

Now, to the peak! A foundation of t'ai chi chuan is the separation of activity, the ideal distribution of weight for postures is always either 100% in one leg or a 70-30 distribution between the two legs. My old teacher, Dan, used to ask us regularly, "if the weight is one-hundred percent in that leg, how do you initiate the next movement?" This may sound confusing to those not familiar with the form; the essence is that if all your weight is already in one leg, it cannot push to move you into another posture because its capacity is already completely in use.

Dan never answered the question for us; I guess he meant it to act as a sort of koan to aid our practice. Previously it seem I had the answer, that the center of gravity (tan t'ien) creates the movement by shifting itself; today I realized that, while correct in its own manner, it begs the question, "how does the tan t'ien initiate the movement?"

[Drum Roll]

The tan t'ien creates the movement by pouring the chi from one leg into the other; the same as any movement in t'ai chi, when done ideally (but how often have I done the form ideally? never). This is really a momentous occasion for my personal practice, as I had always avoided committing to a belief in the actual presence of the energy body; previously I felt that the effects of the energy body could just as well be explained as psychosomatic, similar to blisters forming when hypnotized individuals are told that they have been burned. Obviously, this experience does not establish, for myself or others, that an objective, measurable energy body exists; I would now put the possibility at around 95% though, contrasted with my previous agnostic position. (For more on objective measurements of *a* measurable energy body, see the work of Wilhelm Reich; I have an intuition that multiple energy bodies exist and the one Reich describes is pre-personal while others are trans-personal.)

And now that I have had a peak in my practice, I can expect the trough to quickly follow, and then a new plateau. The funny thing is, I'm actually looking forward to this process now. Something has changed this year, as I developed my own ITP, that I can appreciate each stage of Mastery in itself and even love the troughs. I still get more excited by the peaks though.

Last night I was reading the Integral Options Cafe Bill linked to YourMorals.Org. YourMorals.Org was set up by five social psychologists studying morality and politics. They have several surveys you can fill out for their studies which automatically pop up your scores and give you the comparison means for "Liberals" and "Conservatives." The whole idea sounds rather interesting, but after taking several of the surveys I came away with the impression that they had not really done too much in their literature search before designing the surveys. The psychologists who run the site look primarily at five categories of moral reasoning (harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity) and claim that the main difference between "Liberals" and "Conservatives" is which categories they emphasize in morality.

this difference seems to explain many of the most contentious issues in the culture war. For example, liberals support legalizing gay marriage (to be fair and compassionate), whereas many conservatives are reluctant to change the nature of marriage and the family, basic building blocks of society. Conservatives are more likely to favor practices that increase order and respect (e.g., spanking, mandatory pledge of allegiance), whereas liberals often oppose these practices as being violent

I do not disagree with the generalizations, I just think that all of the mainstream hierarchical theories of moral development (Clare Graves, Lawrence Kohlberg or Abraham Maslow) possess much more explanatory power and elegance. In fact, the hierarchical models describe the structures which create the differences which YourMorals.Org outline.

Topping it all off, the surveys seemed ham-fisted and I felt frustrated throughout the entire experience. The researchers provide three axes (Social policy, Economic policy and Foreign policy) for which you can choose a range from "Very Conservative" to "Very Liberal." I am not even sure what "liberal" or "conservative" foreign policy means. Even using these terms in reference to economic policy confuses me; at no point do they explain if they mean liberal as in free markets or liberal as in heavy government regulation.

As the researchers lacked a developmental perspective, many of the attitude statements had an infuriating naivete to them. Examples of problem items:

• How would you rate the overall state of moral values in this country today?


• Which statement comes closest to your views:(Government should do more to promote traditional values, Government should not favor one set of values over another, Don't Know)


• Here are a few problems that people identify regarding society's moral standards. How concerned, if at all, are you about the following:(... More permissive sexual attitudes ...)

Personally, I feel that the state of moral values in this country is very poor (rampant usury, out-of-control consumerism, financial and military domination of poorer countries, drug war, etc.) but in context these were not the types of moral values they were talking about. I believe the government should favor one set of values over others, primarily those upon which the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States of America find their basis. The government should promote the traditional values of the Anglo-French Enlightenment (those of ever expanding liberty and equality in the eyes of the law) while fighting those of parochialism and hatred. I'm very concerned about more permissive sexual attitudes in that we are incredibly puritanical compared to Europe, that the American populace still denies the sexuality of children, and media continues to present sexuality as something embarrassing while at the same time fetishizing and commodifying it.

Sociologists and Social Psychologists seem, on the whole, unaware that words do not have objective meaning, that you can create a statistically valid survey which does not measure a valid concept or that self-reporting (from the general population, at least) does not strong research make. I consider the inclusion of these fields as "Science" buffoonery at best. They contribute to the "hard sciences" looking down upon firmly empirical psychology. A travesty continues.

Mr. Dierkes pointed me to an Op-Ed piece by the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford Jr. Mr. Ford sets Andrew Jackson's goal of "equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none" as the target to shoot for. Not many would argue against that statement, at least not in public; yet the implications of many of his planks run quite counter to the expression, if looked at critically. He takes aim at six issues in particular: "keeping America safe; giving Americans the tools to compete; holding government accountable for results; creating a hybrid economy;promoting family and values; and ending poverty for all who work." Here some immediate questions present themselves: "can a government give its people the tools to compete," "should a government promote a specific technology," "should a government promote specific values and if so, exactly whose values?"

I think all of these questions deserve answers before we even start talking about specifics. The answers to these questions will depend on what theory of government one subscribes to, when taken in general; applied to the federal government of the United States, the answers lay within a much smaller range of possibilities. For no matter what anyone would like the federal government to do, its powers remain constrained (in theory, at least) to those enumerated in the Constitution. Of course, we all know that the federal government has not restrained itself to the powers enumerated and with each branch equally culpable. The Left and the Right each scream bloody murder when the other takes its turn, pot and kettle. Yet if we object to the power grabs that President Bush has made during his tenure, just as surely must we object to a national health care system, subsidies to family farms and federal funding of education. If the country decides that any of those issues belongs to the federal government, we have a process for expanding the government's powers through amending the Constitution. By dishonestly sidestepping that tribulation, the United States has opened itself to the constant threat of tyranny.

Even if we ignore the Constitutional issues and use Mr. Ford's own standard of measurement, Andrew Jackson's quote from earlier, we must reject the proposals. As the other questions require details for examination, whether a government should promote a specific technology falters right away. If the government subsidies a means it creates a special privileged class, effectively a monopoly enforced by the government. Methods that carry no inherent privilege while achieving the same end and also falling within the Constitutionally enumerated powers include raising emission standards while removing current loopholes and increasing the hydrocarbon tax. Even better, in my mind, Congress could end all subsidies to oil and coal producers. The worst part of Mr. Ford's hybrdization plank gets hidden at the end. Remove subsidies from wealthy farmers, no problem there, while creating "a new system of energy subsidies that reward small farmers."(emphasis added) While once again creating special privilege, if taking Mr. Ford at his word, subsidizing small farmers runs counter to the larger goal; small farmers need subsidies to survive because they have gross inefficiencies compared to large scale farming.

Mr. Ford lists universal health care as one of the tools necessary for Americans to compete in the world economy. We've already addressed the Constitutional issues with this plan. In passing I will note that all evidence indicates otherwise as the U.S. economy trumps that of every country which does have universal health care. America's two major competitors that Mr. Ford specifically mentions,India and China, have given up on universal health care. So, does universal health care meet the "special privilege for none" standard? Well, people who smoke, overeat, drink too much, choose not to exercise all pay the same as those who do not engage in those high risk behaviours. If the plan include tiered levels based on income, a higher percentage of individuals who engage in those behaviours will pay less as a strong negative correlation between the behaviours and income exists (meaning the less you make the better the chances you engage in one or more of the activities). According to Mr. Ken Ken Dychtwald, "of all the human who have ever lived over 65, two-thirds are now alive now.” By 2010, sixty percent of the U.S. population will have reached retirement age. A study by the Dutch Department of Public Health analysed the amount spent on health care by age group finding that, "costs rose slowly throughout adult life and increased exponentially from age 50 onwards till the oldest age group." This results in the two groups contributing the least (families and the elderly) benefiting the most in an inequitable system that lacks any means for sustainability.

Giving special privileges to families and the elderly (two groups who happen to vote the most)? That doesn't seem in line with Mr. Ford's credo. He means to achieve just that though. Three months paid leave for every parent, and a guaranteed job waiting for you within five years after leaving the workplace. Should we guarantee paid leave for people to take care of their elderly parents, or their ill significant others? Not only does this conception violate the contractual rights of individuals, where to draw the line becomes completely arbitrary and will grant special privilege to some no matter what. A guaranteed job after a five year absence, spent parenting and out of the loop in your field, seems a bit daft.

Finally, "we should make service universal by asking every young American to perform three months of civilian service by the age of 25." Now, in context, it looks to me like when he says "asking" young Americans to perform civilian service, he might actually mean "telling." Otherwise, it looks like that was taken care of a long time ago. Opportunities for community service abound and get good advertising. If he does mean to make civilian service mandatory, beyond the Constitutional problems, again it would privilege society outside of those who were force to serve. As already mentioned, the elderly form the largest growing constituent of society. Moreover, as Mr. Dychtwald revealed in a superb talk for the Long Now Foundation(video,MP3), "the old do the least volunteering of any age group, and for every 11 cents that children get from government, the old demand and get a dollar. The concept of giving back is still foreign to them." Society provides the least benefit of all to the young, and demanding service from the group who can least afford it seems highly offensive and indefensible.

Mr. Dierkes described Mr. Ford as "the most visionary of American politicians." It appears to me that almost all of Mr. Ford's concrete suggestions express Green values (I prefer to use traditional Spiral Dynamics designations), focusing on communal responsibility and care, though his emphasis on the importance of American values reveals a second-tier understanding. Negating fundamental rights of the individual, an expression of healthy Orange, in the service of Green values will not result in more Green; as Mr. Wilber says, "when Green attacks Orange, Blue comes off as the winner." For a sustained Integral, democratic development the changes work through entirely legitimate means because the first-tier has much more support behind it and loopholes work both ways. In the United States, this means not extending federal powers before amending the Constitution. I know that early Green hates Orange, as it goes through the process of disidentification; an Integral leadership cannot give in to the pressure to weaken the Orange social institutions (L-R quadrant) that lay the foundations for Green development. I do not oppose abolishing the institutions which reflect transitory structures only appropriate to an Orange level society as long as their dissolution comes through the framework provided. Orange government, the first of its kind, provides for a peaceful restructuring and Integral politics should utilize those provisions. By actively supporting the Constitutional framework, and protesting every violation of it no matter what the intention, any attempt at usurpation by Blue or lower will not succeed and Integral politics can win the allegiance of those at Orange-blue and higher. As the Integral politician addresses both Interior (L) and Exterior (R), and values the healthy aspects of each stage of development, the transition from Orange-blue values to Orange for individuals can go much easier.

In a mean Green town, I constantly meet people who wish to completely do away with Orange stage structures without having any concrete idea of what to replace them with. I think a large part of it results from not having much exposure to people acting from Blue values or below but it scares me very much, sometimes. I guess that when you haven't lived in the South or the Midwest its easy to believe that all the people who want women in veils and not leaving the home cannot vote in U.S. elections. The people who brought us Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols have not left the country.

So, baryonicmatter and I went to see The Fountain a few evenings ago. I guess I can see how the movie did not do so well in the box office numbers, if the majority of Americans have trouble following plot lines. Peter Rainer's review particularly kept in mind. I almost cannot believe that we watched the same movie.
I personally felt so moved by the movie that I hesitate putting up anything that lacks a clear structure for analysing it. The thematic point I have currently taken up relates to the spear Tommy uses to tattoo himself with in the movie. In the shift from "now" to "future," the point of the spear broke in half. Does this reflect the lance that caused the Fisher King's wound in the Grail mythos? Traditionally the wound bleeds from the genitals or the thigh (the older the version, the more explicit the connection between the Fisher King's virility and the fecundity of his realm). With the tree on the verge of death and Tommy in virtual stasis, his life completely sterile, I see the motif pretty strongly.
At this point, I think The Fountain (the novel that Izzi writes, framed within the context of the film) describes both Izzi's battle with cancer and Tommy's revolt against life itself. That all three contexts mutually intermingle and depend upon each other brings more depth to both the film and the integral realism that I think it expresses. I notice a strong trend towards a multi-dimensional approach, where narratives drive and manipulate existence in a manner that almost affronts the reductionist approach; that narratives only manifest through an individuals response to their environment.
Any thoughts, baryonicmatter?

"The difference being, anybody can write 'And then he shot himself' and then shoot himself, if he is prepared to do this. I'm talking about someone who writes 'And then he was shot' and is himself shot by someone else. That's the trick."

So I finished this book a couple of days ago, it brought up plenty of food for thought. The book begins with the hypothesis that subjectivity developed recently in mankind; consciousness as we understand it arose at a particular point in human history. To illustrate this, the author (Julian Jaynes) takes texts including The Iliad and the Babylonian epics. He acts as a hermeneutic archaeologist demonstrating that no words describing introspection appear in the earliest parts of the texts. For example, characters in The Iliad only speak to themselves twice throughout the poem and each time "both heroes exclaim precisely the same astonished words, 'But wherefore does my life say this to me?'"

After providing a thorough, multicultural demonstration that no self-reflective awareness gets expressed before a certain period in literary history, the author tries to paint what form the human mind took during this period. This part explains the "bicameral mind" portion of the ever so comprehensive title. Using the familiar left/right brain theory (sequential/simultaneous, logical/intuitive, asks why/knows why, analytical/synthetic, etc...) he claims that instead of literary devices, the gods appearing and commanding individuals throughout the ancient world described an experiential reality for the people of those times. He compiles a vast amount of circumstantial evidence supporting this view, making up the meat of the book.

After setting up this evidence, which runs from architecture and history of divination to neurophysiology, the author turns to phenomena current today that he considers descendent of the bicameral mind: hypnosis, schizophrenia, (rhythmic) poetry, and possession. The connections he makes here I found fascinating. As individuals from the bicameral could not question the commands of the gods, Jaynes postulates that the social structures of these civilizations based their control systems on the hallucinatory gods. He then compares these to the influence a hypnotist has over individuals in deep trance, claiming the hypnotist essentially uses the neural pathways activated by the commanding bicameral hallucinations. He places particular emphasis on the similarities between the gods of the bicameral period and the hallucinations of schizophrenics; pointing out that during the decline of the bicameral era, the voices appeared to fragment to the point where the individual and social structures could not sustain themselves, much like in schizophrenia.

This book elaborates many themes that find themselves in the works of William S. Burroughs. Burroughs mentions the book in several interviews, and emphasizes some of the ideas in The Job. His description of the Mayan control system as defined by the priests control of calendars that directed the ritual cycles (the only form of media available to those outside the power structure) seems just an elaboration of the evidence outlined in this book. The concept of Word as a virus, though postulated in his earlier works, definitely interwove with the work of Prof. Jaynes.

A very quick read, full of a head-trip. The themes in this book lead to a great many of experiments that could further develop the concepts or show them as mere literary curiosity; highly suggested.

Mes joyeuses soufrent sur la selle de bicyclette.

Just reading The Frontal Cortex and noticed this tidbit combining food science and neuroscience.

My turkey solution came in McGee's section on seared steaks. Most people assume that we sear steaks in order to "seal in the juices". This is completely false. Technically speaking, a steak cooked at high temperatures contains less of its own juice, as that alluring sizzling noise is actually the sound of the meat's own liquid evaporating into thin air. (For maximum retention of natural juices, cook the steak slow and steady, and don't salt until the end). Nevertheless, our intuitions aren't compelety crazy: even if a well-seared steak is literally drier, it still tastes juicier. The disquieting explanation of this culinary illusion is that a well-seared steak - its Maillard crust crisp and crackling, its interior plush and bloody - makes us drool in anticipation. As a result, when we eat the more appetizing - yet less juicy - steak, the meat seems to be juicier. However, what we are actually sensing is our own saliva, which the brain induced our salivary glands to release. Our personal decision to drool warps our sensory experience of the steak.

Of course, turkey isn't a red meat, and it's a relatively lean bird. But another, and perhaps more important, reason turkey is so dry is that it doesn't stimulate our salivary glands. It's like an unseared steak. I believe there are two reasons for this.

Firstly, turkey is too much meat chasing not enough skin. What makes us drool isn't that intimidating mound of mealy breast meat: it's the crisp skin, fat in crackling form. So next thanksgiving, be sure to seduce the eyes of your guests with lots of skin. If they drool before they eat, the meat will be juicier.

The second reason turkey is dry is because it is almost never salty enough. Unless you brined your turkey in a bucket for days in advance, then there is no way to permeate the inner meat with salt. And if there isn't enough salt, then there won't be enough saliva, for salt stimulates our salivary glands.

One step further towards our dream of an industry where all our friends can work together doing what they love and making money at it!

"University of Florida researchers have discovered a link between morbid obesity in toddlers and lower IQ scores, cognitive delays and brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's disease patients, a new study shows."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060901164136.htm

Played mad scientist in the lab today. School starts tomorrow. Will I have a packed lunch?

Jeb held the job for only 20 months, Jeb came into office with what he likes to in fees, ostensibly to attempt leaving in 1988 to work on the Florida end. Helping to fund new programs IMC never did make the move after President Bush the First was elected, and expand old ones, even as taxes were cut, in 1987 regulators shut it down. He named Martinez his new "drug czar"; has $3 billion in new money - pension in Medicaid funds was to state Republicans wary of Jeb's political uses, funds from the gigantic multi-state.

Recary was indicted for conspirations assumed to be a quid pro quo. With the tobacco industry, the obstruction of justice, illegal in the short time that Jeb established the connections of the Clinton economy. Jeb started. He fled the country that made him a millionaire in the September debacle over "One Florida," and is still listed as a fugitive.

Richard Lawless, a former Recary in 1998, said Jeb is a CIA agent. Similarily, in 1990, Jeb awarded a $160,000 state contract. Jeb has his defenses: some black leader's administration helped to promote Florida in the Far East. Later, Jeb's commerce now had approved the plan, at least until the Orlando Bosch, and after Jeb had quit. Lawless paid him a total heat too great; something had to be done.

Widely suspected of blowing $528,000 for various real-estate services to Ward Connerly, the black conservative jetliner in 1976. 73 passages rendered and donated $35,000 to the Republican who'd put anti-affirmative-action. "He is one of us."

From his pit stop in Tallahassee, Florida, Jeb has appointed women and was a political comer. Then Jeb formed Bush-El, which, along with Eller's minorities in unprecedented numbers was family tradition; to make one's other company M&W Pump, manufactured on this issue. He's probably way ahead of his running for office, and as he built water pumps in Nigeria and sold them there. He was looking in the early 1980's and abroad. The sales were backed by a third way to improve race relations, "leveraged up my ying yang." In a $74 million loan to the Nigerians, Ward Connely or the NAACP persuaded him to pass up a federally financed Export-Import Bank in a new way, which people could. It turned out to be a Washington. Jeb insisted he had nothing to be judged on but experience and character, least financially. The following to do with the loan; the $648,250, and he acted. Black politicians unfortunately are not the newly elected Republican's made at Bush-El - after having invested, not ready for that.

By the early 1990's, Jeb had amassed a new direction. Jeb is said to have worshiped the speaker of Florida; his older, funnier brother. Jeb laughingly says that he and George W. were caught; merely delayed, finger painting with a body part other than that which V. Date has written in his finger. nearly seven years divided, obviously trading on them and once George went away, Thrasher now lips Academy, the venerable prep school. A lobbyist in Florida where Poppy Bush Bradshaw's husband runs had also gone, their time together grew even more firm and her sister just more limited. In 1967, Jeb went to Andover for a job at the State Dept. as well, repeating ninth grade there. He did not distinguish himself academically and like people who spend a lot of time with his older brother, steered clear of politics, no mean feat in the Vietnam era. He seemed an operative, Smith assures me. I, like a thoughtful person, totally unpretentious and had a good question. "Good natured," says one classmate, the hard time picturing artist Peter Halley, "I wouldn't associate himself to anyone."

Ideas with Jeb: he was laid-back, a little bit gift-wrapped, with a reason for us to. I asked Crosby, Stills, Nash and Goofy... He didn't really give the impression to Smith how he could have turned so dramatically, like Sly and the Family Stone... being someone from great wealth against the man he had endorsed only passed. Jeb became, "a budding and power." Three years earlier, the version, according to another classmate, Andover in the 1960's was the remainder. Something Jeb himself has said, "Jocks, nerds, freaks and zeroes." The Republican Party bends to its will. The right account, classmates H. Bush, captain of the tennis team. "W. wants to be controlled," Smith says. Jeb, now the executive vice president, but generally the gap between the Bush he allows himself to be. "He's different," Goto.com theorizes, for his groups. He had several black friends, "because he knows better."

His wild past, an achievement at a time when the Republican convention and august fellows are warm enough to demand their own clubhouse. Jeb arrived late and lay low. When most knew him at Andover, "there were even some guys who were right of Dubya." Jeb says he was a "bully," even then. Asked once whether his brother was spoiled about him, Jeb himself said, "I was never that sufficiently involved in his campaign, I'm the minority crew. He was always a fellow you didn't wisecrack around." Well, that's distancing himself from elite preppies.

Jeb was not a straight arrow; at least once to a loaded question, he said, "Are you suggesting a cynical little turd got caught drinking?" He was placed on, "maybe my brohter is, uh... on school probation, rather than kicked out. I don't think there's anyone in Florida who wants classmates, their first sign of connections to carry Florida and win the presidency."

His life changed dramatically when a few of his buddies organized a little table discussion with the senior political clandestine liquor business. Jeb was at least in the state where there was some concern. The central son, "I am running because I am George," he admitted to Richard Berke of the New York Times, also saying that he'd been, "almost reclusive."

Among reporters, Jeb's low profile was due to Mexican daughters. It was the year of the Gingrich revolution, no mystery: he was afriad of showing up.