The Tough One: Population 9 comments

2 Feb 2008 @ 12:59, by Richard Carlson "This series of maps shows how much the landscape of the eastern United States changed between 1650 and 1992. The maps depict canopy height, the height of the tallest continuous layer of vegetation. In 1650, before colonization, most of the eastern United States was covered in tall forest, shown in dark blue-green. During the next 200 years, the forest disappeared, particularly in New England, the mid-Atlantic, and parts of the Midwest. By 1920, the tall forest was entirely gone, replaced by cities and farms. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the forest began to regrow, but the overall canopy remained much shorter than it had been before 1650. The images are based on a reconstruction of land cover made from records ranging from 1850 census data to modern satellite measurements." [link] If one could understand a flower as it has its being in God---this would be a higher thing than the whole world! ---Meister Eckhart A root is a flower that disdains fame. ---Kahlil Gibran The sound of water says what I think. ---Chuang-Tzu Are there too many of us? If the world's population of humans has doubled within just a portion of my lifetime, is it cause for alarm? Will God provide? Will Nature take its toll? If great masses die---and continue to die...and are predicted to die, do I shrug in hiding or subconsciously with the thought "There are too many anyway"? Do rich men plot war, famine and drought to eliminate dangerous overpopulation? Who dies? Who lives? Who decides? Does money decide? Surely I'm not alone in finding discussion of every major problem we face in this country and in this world eventually boils to how many of us there are. George Monbiot wondered in The Guardian on Tuesday why we don't talk about this, and a great flurry of comments has followed. "I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief. So why, like most environmentalists, won't I mention the p-word? According to its most vociferous proponents (Paul and Anne Ehrlich), population is 'our number one environmental problem'. But most greens will not discuss it." [link] In my opinion, we're silent because it's a moral question. And there's been silence for 50 years...except for occasional explosions about abortion and birth control. Laws are passed and opposed with vigor, but no resolution in the mind of the world. Take it from me, who works in public schools, a great war has been waged in the US over what to teach kids about sex and how. Without much opposition the people who teach sex in the classrooms, and during Bush with federal threats of funding cuts to enforce the morality, have frightened students with huge slides of sexually transmitted diseases. They've referred to a few fertilized cells in a woman's body as a "baby," and they refer to that woman as Mother. They've shown figures from textbooks on an overhead projector that could grow into anything from a stringbean to a gorilla, and they've said, "I know it doesn't look like a person, but that's a baby just like you and me." Young American adults in their 20s were taught since grade school that if you're pregnant but not ready to parent for the rest of your life, you have it anyway and put it up for adoption. No mention has been made of terminating the pregnancy...and under Bush, again, with threats about funding. My daughter, who is 16, was taught "sex education," and one year in middle school in 3 different classes in a single semester, and not once was she told about birth control...except wait until you're married. How many movies came out this year, and very good ones, about pregnancy and having the baby anyway? And that's in the United States. What do young people learn in Kenya, in Iran? I say it's morality...and it's clearest expression is Catholic. It goes like this: God creates all life and that makes creation and life Sacred. No argument there. If a person seeks to prevent that gesture, that gift, it is tantamount to rebelling against the Will of God. That is sin. To put some "protective" tissue, like a condom or a diaphragm, between the Will of God and a female womb is a sin. A pill or some other technique to prevent God's Will from having its way is also a sin. As long as that teaching persists from any Great Religion, population control itself is a sin. But it gets worse. Once God's will has penetrated an ovary, the argument starts about when Life begins. Now we're proceeding from morality into regulation and law. Does life begin with penetration or with a beating heart? To stop a beating heart by surgery or some other means is aborting birth but is it murder? Does a fetus have rights? Are abortionists murderers? Should they be arrested, tried, executed? For me all of this thinking is absurd. Many of us males remain quiet however because we've been told only women truly can understand these questions. Having funded an abortion in the autumn of 1962, in Massachusetts where the procedure was illegal, I claim a bit of understanding. My friend, a girl not pregnant by me, needed the money to go to another state and couldn't tell her parents, who were Catholic. Her boyfriend could afford some of the money, but I provided the rest. This was a down-the-narrow-street, up-a-flight-of-stairs, onto-a-table abortion. There was a bed for some brief recovery afterwards. There was anguish. Her relationship with the guy collapsed. This is a situation where some might say she got what she deserved. Knowing that sweet friend and knowing what a wonderful woman she is today...with a great family and, good heavens, some 40 years of marriage, I would never agree with that kind of judgment about her. Instead, I always have rejoiced over the legalization of choice for a woman and a couple who are pregnant before they're ready. And to make that choice with dignity. But back to the Will of God. People want to argue about when Life begins. Why presume it begins only after penetration? Why doesn't it begin when I see an alluring woman and I desire her? I'm the mighty man and that version of the Will of God seems pretty male to me. Why isn't the Will of God at work in a guy as soon as he desires a woman? Maybe it's God Who's at work in my loins. If that's the case, a woman who rejects my advances is a sinner too. A murderess preventing access to God's seed! It must be God's inspiration that brings me to write this essay. God's fingers are doing the typing. Gadzooks, I'm a prophet! We need to tackle these ethical questions and be ready to go toe-to-toe with religions and denominations...and assemblies or whatever else the Evangelicals call themselves...and debate these propositions. We need political candidates ready to voice such problems out loud...and prepared to deal successfully with the consequences, which even may border on the violent. We have let this issue drag on, without addressing it, for a dangerously long time. Coincidentally also on Tuesday, Truthout's environmental editor, Kelpie Lewis, wrote a brilliant, well argued, and quite different defense of abortion. I urge you to read it. [link] I know any number of people who voted for Bush...not because they were voting FOR Bush, but because they were voting against abortion. And that meant voting AGAINST Gore. It was the single issue. They agreed with Gore about the environment 8 years ago, but they had to vote against abortion. And they aren't Catholic. I wonder if any has changed her mind. We're moving towards another election. It COULD happen again!

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Category: Articles 

2 Feb 2008 @ 18:17 by vaxen : Then...
you must study the Delphi Technique and how it is deployed to sear your mind fields. Hey, good thoughts, jazzolog. And good for you for having an alien thought in your head.

Please, though, don't keep blaming Bush. He is there to take the heat (Take your eyes off 'them.') for the real perps of these dogmas (He, of course, can be included with them for he is of them but not the 'cause or source.). The collective is at work and surely you can see 'their' designs everywhere?

A More Alien-like Model of Mind

As should be obvious by now, humans are beginning to get a basic idea about how aliens think. But what about aliens, themselves? How do aliens think about their own minds? During large-scale telepathic interactions, how do they all get along and see past their differences?

To begin with, aliens are too smart to let themselves be reduced to a Cartesian point upon a graph, a single moment in time, which is a mistake that some humans make daily. To reduce the physics of mind to fixed co-ordinate points on a graph would be considered arbitrary, a dangerous over-simplification. Aliens argue that flatland physics of the sort is wholly inadequate. When reduced to an anonymous, point singular nothing-of-sorts, a mind can be manipulated in child-like terms to suit the needs of whatever corrupt regime is in power, at the moment. It can be painted with convenient lies one day, and then repainted differently, the next, which can be dangerous.

What we need, instead, is a topological model of mind that brings us up to speed with the “new” physics of the 21st century, which are more like those of alien societies.

A topological model of mind is better than a linear version because it models mind in terms of volume in time (extra-dimensions sewn together with ± light speed physics), instead of the old notion of “infinitely small” points connected by lines. If Cartesian coordinate points were actually “infinitely” small, as they’re supposed to be, they would verge on a black hole’s singular density, which, according to aliens and “negative energy” dynamics, would cause them to fluctuate invisibly and cycle far across the universe in extra-dimensional ways. In short, like the minds of the various intelligent aliens we’re coming to know, our minds probably don’t linger long in a Cartesian flatland.

In a topological version, we model the mind-in-time. The mind-in-time models the complexity and ordered-coursing of a mind over time. For example, if a mind were viewed from aside, it would begin each day by connecting or ordering its knowledge and information, and then, through greater refinement of observation, would both deepen and expand that connectedness with time. So, over time, it occupies greater mindspace (or dimension) through a finer, ordered integration of thought.

Easy, isn’t it?

===

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. The topology of mind-in-time is formed by thoughts over an entire lifetime.
Ideally, the fineness and sensitivities of earlier years are continued into adulthood. They have definite, measurable parameters. An extinction of emotional sensitivities can cause one to disconnect from a mind's earlier dimensions of childhood affection, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness. Extinction of such sensitivities can cut a mind off from the more complex considerations of its past and cause what, in effect, is a loss of mindspace, a reduction of the capacity within such sensitivities. Of course, both human and alien adults tend to set such sensitivities aside when they develop specialized thought connections (which require a kind of durability), yet most humans go full circle and end up yearning for the smoother, more delicate kind of openness that children are capable of. Such feelings are gently rekindled when we couple and may be part of what motivates us to have children, in the first place.

In our topological model of mind, the largest volume or dimension of mindspace integrates a full lifetime's considerations. In one sense, intelligence would be a measure of the perspective and ordered awareness of a mind, yet it is also a measure of the sustained emotional sensitivity of a mind through time, the sensitivity to others that allows our minds to grow in later years. Ironically, emotional crises and seeming failures of concept can sometimes facilitate greater understandings over time because of the fact that a topological model of mind is neither mechanistic, nor whole number valued. Instead it is fractionally, or alternatively valued (i.e. with multiple maths).

This relates to the larger continuities and helpful alien hints from which the model was derived.

So, how does all of this relate to alien thought? If we can model the nature of mind better, we can derive its more advanced possibilities. We should then be able to predict some of the basic snap considerations in any given alien’s thinking.

[link]

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May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How are you are from home

Mornie utulie (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantie (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

May it be shadows call
Will fly away
May it be your journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun

Mornie utulie (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantie (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

A promise lives within you now

- Enya -


[link]  

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. The topology of mind-in-time is formed by thoughts over an entire lifetime.

Ideally, the fineness and sensitivities of earlier years are continued into adulthood. They have definite, measurable parameters. An extinction of emotional sensitivities can cause one to disconnect from a mind's earlier dimensions of childhood affection, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness.

Extinction of such sensitivities can cut a mind off from the more complex considerations of its past and cause what, in effect, is a loss of mindspace, a reduction of the capacity within such sensitivities.

Of course, both human and alien adults tend to set such sensitivities aside when they develop specialized thought connections (which require a kind of durability), yet most humans go full circle and end up yearning for the smoother, more delicate kind of openness that children are capable of.

Such feelings are gently rekindled when we couple and may be part of what motivates us to have children, in the first place.

[link]

"For many years I have lived
with a secret, in a secrecy
imposed on all specialists and
astronauts. I can now reveal
that every day, in the USA, our
radar instruments capture
objects of form and
composition unknown to us."
—Astronaut Gordon Cooper

And here comes 'Super Sunday!' They couldn't protect the Pentagon and the WTC, and the rest of the baloney that fell on that 'day!' Yet they can scramble for a god damned football game? Don't you see anything at all wrong with this picture jazzolog? And you still think you vote for a 'candied ape' of your own choosing? Diebold wins the day and we know who calls those shots, don't we? How's your black budget today? Here's the "The Knights OF The Golden Circle!" Ah, wasn't 'Buck Rogers' a football player too? Can you dance the Apo Kalypso?

North American Aerospace Defense Command
250 Vandenberg St.
Suite B-016
Peterson Air Force Base CO
80914-3808
719-554-6889
DSN 692-6889
[link]  

Significance of Contextual Background

In the study of philosophy, some believe the understanding of text is dependent on the context in which the reader exists. As the text is read, it is interpreted based on the social context and bias of the interpreter. Additionally, text has its own “horizon of meaning” which is influenced by the contextual background of the writer, the time of writing, and the originating context. Philosophical hermeneutics examines the relationship between a reader and text, both of which must be understood within the context of their experience and creation respectively. 11


In the creation and distribution of unclassified intelligence, hermeneutic fusion is problematic; the original process of creation is often based on classified intelligence, which may not be fused to an unclassified document. As the author/producer of unclassified intelligence is prohibited from the fusion of classified hermeneutic material, open source contextual background chosen by authors/producers must be used to replace the original, classified material that influenced the hermeneutic of the writer at the time of creation. In this article, contextual background is defined as unclassified material that best represents the hermeneutic of the producer at the time of creation.

Technology Acceptance

The theory of reasoned actions (TRA) serves as a theoretical base for examining technology acceptance. 28 TRA posits that an individual’s beliefs influence his or her attitudes that, when combined with societal norms, drive behavioral intentions, leading to actual behavior. Based on TRA, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is an established method of predicting user acceptance. In this model, perceived “ease of use” and perceived “usefulness” explain why individuals accept or do not accept technology. 29 A review of previous studies shows that TAM, with strong empirical support, has become a dominant model for predicting technology adoption. 30 TAM is one method to predict user acceptance before large scale investment or commitment to a technology in mission critical systems.

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Technology Acceptance

The theory of reasoned actions (TRA) serves as a theoretical base for examining technology acceptance. 28 TRA posits that an individual’s beliefs influence his or her attitudes that, when combined with societal norms, drive behavioral intentions, leading to actual behavior. Based on TRA, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is an established method of predicting user acceptance. In this model, perceived “ease of use” and perceived “usefulness” explain why individuals accept or do not accept technology. 29 A review of previous studies shows that TAM, with strong empirical support, has become a dominant model for predicting technology adoption. 30 TAM is one method to predict user acceptance before large scale investment or commitment to a technology in mission critical systems.

Of the two constructs, it appears that usefulness is critical; “no amount of ease of use can compensate for a system that does not perform a useful function.” 31 The use of technology in knowledge management systems has been studied using TAM to determine factors that impact loyal use; both perceived usefulness and ease of use were found to be factors positively related to loyal use. 32


Figure 1: Context (From the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2002)

Understandably, military applications of context in decision making center on pragmatic application. Training material utilized by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reflects that practical application of context in decision making: “…knowledge is produced when information is correlated with a model of the world and the current context.” 19

In describing the power of context in terrorism decision making, Professor Fathali Moghaddam contends that “terrorism is explained by the power of context” 20 Regardless of whether context and decision making are evaluated through the lens of the academic or the war fighter, literature documents that context involved in the decision-making process has a significant impact on the nature, quality, and effectiveness of the decision.

[link]

Dear jazzolog...you ARE a Decision Maker! ;)  

I try and I do. Sorry for not replying directly to these fascinating messages. I've been kept entirely busy answering emails and comments left elsewhere on the actual material presented in this essay. The theological tracts I'm having to consider are quite exhausting.

 

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