15/8
What is endosymbiosis? Dr Lynn Margulis cooperates with our interest:
Microbiological Collaboration of the Gaia Hypothesis.
"All life on earth is a unified spatiotemporal system with no clear-cut boundaries." |
As Rachael Carson did a whole Model of Reality ago, David Pimentel and friends provide a dire warning; this time of impending biocaust.
Ecology of Increasing Disease: Population growth and environmental degradation
| "The crowding of people into urban areas; the
movement of populations into new environments; the increased use of chemicals
that pollute soils, water, and air; the misuse of antibiotics, leading to resistance in
disease microbes; and growing malnutrition all contribute to the worldwide
increase of human diseases." |
Everything Forever, Learning to See and Model the Infinite Universe
| "This website describes the land of forever. It journeys beyond our present place in time to study the shape of the motionless timeless world that existed before our time began and will be after our time ends. It discovers the world of moments from which we borrow
each moment of now." |
To help fully appreciate the amazing field through which I am, the Rational Enquirer provides Twenty Science Attitudes.
| "Empathy for the human condition. Contrary to popular belief, there is a value system in science, and it is based on humans being the only organisms that can "imagine" things that are not triggered by stimuli present at the immediate time in their environment; we are, therefore, the only creatures to "look" back on our past and plan our future." |
14/8
It escapes me which weblog pointed me to everything2.com, but damn you and all who point like you. I've been sucked into the vortex of an informational white hole in which the ante is written in neuronal blood, the gamble consummated by 'peer review' (vampires...), the payout realized in cool. I now have an insatiable desire to play; and bite.
evacuate & flush may be a bit over-positive in praise of wrestling a bear encased in an Ursus Mark VI(!), but I deeply appreciate Kenny's attention to the capitalist metameme.
| "Whichever camp the reader is in, (s)he will surely have
problems with my concepts and models being either too rigorous and reductionistic, or
too sloppy and inexact." |
Unamerican Activities
| "I have defined my goal with Unamerican as the creation of an intentional revolutionary community online. To me, that's the most efficient way to overthrow the current order - for the People to rise up and demand an upgrade!" |
E-terview with Alexander Chislenko C!
| "I can't resist the temptation to criticize the
terms "digital" and "electronic" here. These are just
surface observations of current technologies. Our DNA
is more quantized than our software, and electrons
play a more direct and crucial role in keeping our
bodies or physical tools together than they play in
transmitting information in the fiber-optic networks.
The real direction of development in the last 15
billion years has been the liberation of functions
from their physical carriers." |
13/8
Soon it will be aurora borealis time again here in the Yukon - I was disappointed that during the solar storm earlier this summer we were immersed in our almost endless daylight, which would have been fine except that we're experiencing an unusually grey and cool season - Auroral Sounds primes the ionospheric fire.
| Electric silk. Soft, rippling, crackly |
A metaphysical enquiry of the highest, deepest order is contained within the 60k words of Quantum Physics and Enlightenment; an ode to resolution by James Higgo.
| "Quantum Physics and Enlightenment takes the reader from no knowledge of physics or Buddhism to an understanding of how the two are equivalent, and the enormity of this fact." |
A. Michael Froomkin asks the critical question The Death of Privacy? in this essential examination.
Cognitive Tools, Techniques, Training, & Technology shines a light on many facets, including The Fundamental Reality of Text and Participatory and Interactive Cywebs.
| "Crews of highly developed cognitive beings, augmented in their collaboration by well designed technological systems are, by far, the most powerful force for change in the known universe." |
Singularity Shuttle a la Vernor Vinge
| "The measure of the Shuttle's progress will be the magnitude of the numbered points outside your window." |
12/8
Murray Bookchin is able to put the present into historical context while exhibiting a remarkable prescience, that is nicely viewed in hindsight in this interview conducted by Kick It Over magazine in 1985. Radicalizing Democracy
| "What
we find today is a totally immoral economy and society which has managed to
unearth the secrets of matter and the secrets of life at the most fundamental level.
This is a society that, in no sense, is capable of utilizing this knowledge in any way
that will produce a social good." |
11/8
By way of ghost rocket I have been introduced to Nanodot - News and Discussion of Coming Technologies, which brought me to Zyvex...assembling tomorrow which led back to the Foresight Institute and a dense yet important essay (warning?) Some Limits to Global Ecophagy
by Biovorous Nanoreplicators,
with Public Policy Recommendations.
| "Perhaps the earliest-recognized and best-known danger of molecular nanotechnology is the risk that
self-replicating nanorobots capable of functioning autonomously in the natural environment could
quickly convert that natural environment (e.g., "biomass") into replicas of themselves (e.g.,
"nanomass") on a global basis, a scenario usually referred to as the "gray goo problem" but perhaps
more properly termed "global ecophagy." " |
Where else could I go from there but to Self Replicating Systems and Molecular Manufacturing by Ralph C. Merkle. Almost antique in this field - originally published in 1992 - it remains a seminal work.
| "This should let us create a low cost manufacturing technology able to build almost any product that is (a) specified with atomic precision and (b) is consistent with the laws of chemistry and physics." |
Back to the relative macrosphere with a definitive disquisition On Cognitive Liberty, by Richard Glen Boire, Esq.
| "If freedom is to mean anything, it must mean that each
person has an inviolable right to think for him or herself. It must
mean, at a minimum, that each person is free to direct one's own
consciousness; one's own underlying mental processes, and one's
beliefs, opinions, and worldview. This is self-evident and axiomatic." |
One can be no more free of the actual than by embodying the virtual, and this actual virtuality could be our transpersonal future. Max More provides a foundation in A Transhumanist Declaration, version 3.0, The Extropian Principles.
| "We see humanity as a transitory stage in the evolutionary development of intelligence." |
10/8
Erick Sharagge shines from the Canadian Dimension on Why we can support Guaranteed Annual Income. And the years go by and the disparities in income grow ever wider and the flimflam diddle hustle dance of malignant neoplasmic usury leads toward revolution. Vote for your GAI rights!
| "The principle of an adequate
income as a basic right has to be pushed." |
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Final Words of Advice
| "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most
effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely
discussed measure: the guaranteed income." |
The Yin and Yang of HIV
| "Perhaps a disinterested observer could be forgiven for concluding that, although we are approaching the eighteenth year of the AIDS era, and have spent many billions of dollars
on treatments and research, the words of Duesberg continue to taunt us: "By any measure,
the war on AIDS has been a colossal failure...our leading scientists and policymakers
cannot demonstrate that their efforts have saved a single life" |
The Paradox of the Rational Patient and the Ethical Physician by Michael F. Quinn M.D. puts a nice wrap on a day that began at the Dr.'s for a routine digital insertion and ended with a rationalization that cheesecake is a nutritious staple.
| "Physicians cannot achieve optimal diagnostic performance without
violating medical ethics, and an ethical physician is inherently unpredictable." |
9/8
Cybernetics and Ego Death is a very comprehensive compendium of personal commentary and connections; with a decidedly informed psychedelic bent.
| "This is the Cybernetic Revelation, the revealing of the hidden dynamics and logical loops of self-steering." |
Diamond drill firmly in chelate, David Deutsch refines Desmond Morris's The Human
Animal by means of mud; entitled Man, the Mobile Mineral.
| "Whenever possible we should sit in orderly rows." |
Seriously now, David Deutsch's Many Worlds
| "Without quantum interference, electrons would spiral into atomic nuclei, destroying every atom literally in a flash. Solid matter would be unstable, and the phenomena of biological evolution and human thought would be impossible. And as I shall explain, it is quantum interference that provides our evidence for the existence of the multiverse." |
This is a great little article/interview from the Los Angeles Times: Sasha Shulgin, Psychedelic Chemist.
| "A lot of the materials in Schedule I are my invention,"
Shulgin says. "I'm not sure if it's a point of pride or a point of
shame." |
8/8
T.A.Z.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is a play to define extraordinary, a work of effortless depth, an awakening to color from a greyshade mediocrity. Assaulting nonsense and immeasurably raising our sensibility, this is a book to download, then disconnect, indulge in a favorite NCA and discover...genesis.
| "No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you,
sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your
body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented
words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you
with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its
usurious emotions." |
The Fourth Wave: A Normative Forecast for the Future of "SpaceShip Earth" is so clear even a Bush could grok it. And if we do not heed it's implications, the Gore will be beyond measure.
"When one species attains a position of dominance over all the other species in the
ecology of its planet, if it is both egocentrically greedy, and has a powerful set of
technologies through which to amplify the expression of that greed, then unless that
dominant species can find a way to limit or to transform itself and its greed-based
systems into something more wholesome, it will foul its planetary nest as surely as the
night follows the day ... perhaps even to its own extinction."
a statement synthesized from the writings of ecologist Gregory Bateson and visionary
science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon |
Sometimes anthropological work is best done with anecdotical style and an empathogenic substance. Immersed in a sympathetic set, Gyrus describes the setting On Prehistoric Rock Art
& Psychedelic Experiences.
| "Even mild trance states can make the life of a rock plainly visible." |
A Vote for Bart is a Vote for Anarchy?
A view from across the pond of our Simpsonian Institution.
7/8
Given that we would like to survive our ethical morass to co-pilot earthship on myour cosmic journey, these kind of studies may well be vital.
Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities Through Psychedelic Training by Willis W. Harman and James Fadiman.
| "Assuming that these findings are eventually substantiated by additional research, they find their most obvious application to problem solving in industry, professional practice,
and research." |
Willis W. Harman embarked for dimensions unknown in 1997. In his memory, David C. Korten elucidates The Responsibility of Business to the Whole.
| "To replace the power of the state with the power of the global corporation is tantamount to an act of collective suicide. We are experiencing the consequences in the form of six current tendencies of the global system..." |
1.Destruction of the natural environment.
2.Destruction of community.
3.Transfer of wealth upward.
4.Marginalization of persons, communities, and cultures.
5.Erosion and denial of the sense of the spiritual or sacred.
6.Creation of learned incapacity and helplessness. |
Salman Rushdie is a great writer who can amaze the enraptured reader, or precipitate an intefadanational incident, but here we have The world explained in 10 seconds (or less).
| "You see, sometimes people just have to be
bigger than what holds them back. We, they,
just have to find it in ourselves to transcend." |
This, by means of an aggravated attentive disorder, brought me to one of those essays that impel me to look; Was Robert Mapplethorpe the Devil?
| "...the older, traditionalist, culture based on
prohibition and the new culture of transgression that Mapplethorpe
championed are both forms of unfreedom. The battle between them
is based on an illusion." |
6/8
W. Gordon Lawrence describes the life and breeding habits of Totalitarian States of Mind in Institutions.
| "Clearly, I am pointing to a trend, based on a 'worst case' approach, but it is one that is increasing, inevitably swamping innovative thinking about the organisation of institutions and so diminishing the potential creativity of human beings." |
| "I am beginning to think that when all the meaning of existence is reduced to economics we can have the working hypothesis that the preoccupation with making and saving money is both an institutional and a 'global' social system of defence against entertaining the consequences of acknowledging the tragic." |
To truly grok the human mien for group insanity in the face of individual integrity, Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue is handily summarized.
| "Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative. That is the paradox this book has tried to understand." |
Making a contrasting journey , The Origin of Social Dysfunction: The Pathology of Cultural Delusion by Everett E. Allie details our mass delusional state; and in the final analysis recognizes that J. Krishnamurti's statement, I am the world, is the acknowledgment we all need to make.
| "This is a book about fantasies. Not the fantasies of a child at play, happily immersed in imaginary adventures, but adult fantasies where the game of 'Cops and Robbers' is played with real bullets and where trillions of dollars are spent pretending we are doing something about our multiplying problems." |
| "Humanity is at a cusp where the species will be required to make real corrections in areas where it has failed to do so throughout the whole course of its history." |
Idle Theory
Life Does the Least
| "But maybe life is not different from
inert matter. Perhaps life, just like inert matter, does
the minimum - and we would gain a deeper
understanding of life if we saw it not as trying to
busy itself, but seeking to be idle." |
5/8
The Abolition of Work by Bob Black is an epiphany. Offering us a manifest, oh so divine; not only does he manage to drive the nails firmly into the coffin of capitalism, but he then proceeds to trance-end the greys of repercieved slavery and color our earthship with the reflected spectrum of potentiated Cosmanity.
| "It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves
useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of activities. To abolish work
requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand,
on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being
done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On
the other hand - and I think this the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new
departure - we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing
variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable
pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that shouldn't
make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and
property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all
stop being afraid of each other." |
4/8
Andrew Hicks: Movie Critic at LARGE has spilled an (in)ordinate number of bytes dismembering the carcasses of the worst films ever made. These members of his Hall of Shame are given a quality treatment far beyond their worth, and are a worthy read.
| "Forbidden Planet should be forbidden on this planet." |
Deaf Ears presents the moderate view of ECHALON's ability to monitor global communications traffic. Directional pointer thanks to metalingo.
| "The Internet might be all Echelon, all the time, but in the real world, the NSA can barely track all the
foreign leaders, diplomats, governments, military units, terrorists, international drug dealers and
criminals it is directed to snoop on. " |
A prime player in expanding com-spy abilities is Synectics (the second largest defense contractor in the world, so quoth 'they'), in league with the Air Force performing research on Multi-Intelligence and Information Exploitation.
| "Support focuses on identifying and
developing technology to support global awareness, data
fusion, dynamic planning, data warehouse functions, and
force execution." |
Of course listening passively is only half the orange, the other juicy slices sliding sweetly into our meme salad within a
Culture of Deception: Simulation Confusion.
| "The growing role of deceptive simulations is particularly evident in
fields that use props and disguises as part of larger strategies to outwit
opponents, including the military, crime, security and police work." |
3/8
Michael Lockwood talks to Stephen Jones at Tucson II is a recommended introduction for the main course linked below.
| "I think that the moral of all that is, yes, conscious states are material states,
they are identical with neurophysiological states, but what the existence of consciousness
shows is that there's more to matter than meets the physicist's eye." |
On Quantum Physics and Ordinary Consciousness is the lovingly prepared and exquisitely served entree by Stephen Jones.
| "It might be suggested that
these two aspects of the world (its physical emodiment and our experience of it) have a
kind of complementary relationship, which others (possibly even Bohr) seem to argue is a
relationship analogous to wave/particle complementarity." |
And so, in a plain vanilla wrapping, we have the inimitable Samuel Langhorne Clemens approach. What Is Man?
| "Personally you did not create even the
smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is
made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of putting the
borrowed materials together. That was done automatically - by your mental
machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery's construction.
And you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have not even
any command over it." |
Scooting all the way to 1959, Sir Peter Medawar makes a push towards The Future of Man.
| "People who brandish naturalistic
principles at us are usually up to mischief." |
Where do we find ourself but interfacing with a Metaphase Typewriter. I think I'd rather be tending my herb garden, sheesh....grandma??
| "The "metaphase typewriter" was part of a project carried out by members of the
Consciousness Theory Group to build machines to communicate with disembodied spirits, including
spirits of the dead, beings from other dimensions or dissociated fragments of living personalities." |
2/8
Sheik yer bootie and get yer yah yahs out, neither left nor right, just stayin' home tonight (oh, Leonard...could you bring my groceries in?), Introducing Big Medicine, A Broad Spectrum Antidote to Corporate Pathology. Now the madness of deciding which candidate for U.S. head member has the largest proverbial penis has begun, I suggest Kubiak for Precedent.
| "In other words, I run for thy
Bully Pulpit not as a
professional politician, but as a
messenger and agent of long
delayed change - a change
toward the small, the erotic, the
truly democratic." |
Canadian Court Says Lack of Provision for
Medical Marijuana Violates Fundamental Rights; Gives
Parliament 12 Months to Fix Marijuana Prohibition -- Or There
Will Be No Marijuana Laws in Canada.
Roberto Assagioli, M. D. enlightens us with Smiling Wisdom, reviewing the manifest ways in which transdichotomous release (ha!) frees the soul.
| "There are, above all, three things which modern man must learn in order to become a sane and complete being: the art of resting, the art of contemplation, the art of laughing and smiling. Here we shall briefly consider the latter, and primarily its superior and spiritual aspects." |
Who, or what industrial process, is producing SF5CF3 (trifluoromethylsulphur pentafluoride)? New, Mean Greenhouse Gas Appears
| "U.S. and European researchers have discovered a greenhouse gas with frightful
characteristics -- it is 18,000 to 22,200 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and it has
an atmospheric life estimated at 3,500 years." |
01/08/00
Anders Sandberg asks How is the Memetic Health of Transhumanism? (1994)
| "Religoid memes have shown
themselves to be extremely successful. But they also often promote irrationality and mindless
acceptance of the meme. And transhumanism runs the risk of being subjected to convergent
evolution, to end up a religion." |
Time warp to our current age-de-choix and I realize that I missed, by financial and attentive incompetence, TransVision MM, which covered the gamut: cryonics, sustainable mood enhancement, life extension & food supplements, nanotechnology, AI, mind uploading, the (technological) Singularity, genetic engineering, 'transhuman' music and art, smart drugs, wearable computers etc. -- and Anders Sandberg with The neuroscience of uploading; and Nick Bostrom with The ethics of machine intelligence; and sooo much more.
Curious about my prospects for neural replication, I went to the Bulletin on the Status of Mind Uploading. Forward, faster, always!, as quoted at the bottom of the page, not only has a logical flaw but an ethical one too. Here is the Mind Uploading Home Page.
| "In the third millennium, the twenty-first century and even this decade, the human
species and its intellect, Earth and all that it holds, will transform, mature and evolve.
Mind uploading, an important part of that process, is now a specific project that many
of us and numerous others are dedicated to." |
This transcript from the BBC series Horizon brings a rather dis-jointed view to Psychedelic Science with revealing commentary from diverse, even strange, bedfellows. Picture Dr. Curtis Wright (Director of Addictive Drugs, FDA, USA) and Stan Grof having tea with Tim Leary; ah, the magic of video edited micro-attention.
"I think psychedelics help you in general go beyond the normal way of doing
things and to really open up your mind to more possibilities that maybe seem
obvious in retrospect but you'd never think of if you were going along in the
regular way of doing things."
Bob Wallis |
|
