Cut From the Budget - Pennsylvania's Award-Winning Science in Motion

STEM makes headlines every day--a definite education priority from the highest levels of government on down. The goal: invigorate the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and math in our middle and high schools and raise America's academic standing in the world.

Like many others, President Obama has been quite vocal about the shortcomings of STEM teaching and our students' lackluster testing performance, hence the government's push for improvement. To that end, he has...

o Initiated an annual White House science fair.
o Launched his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, a nationwide effort to move America's students up from the middle of the pack in math and science.
o Challenged scientists, engineers, educators, the private sector, and governors to join him in a national campaign to engage students in STEM fields.
o Given a competitive edge to states that commit to improving STEM education in his Race to the Top grant contest.
o Recently honored about 100 outstanding middle and high school math and science teachers from around the country at the White House.
o Applauded the grassroots National Lab Day initiative intended to revitalize science and math education and lead to increased American competitiveness.

And as he has said, "Passionate educators with deep content expertise can make all the difference, enabling hands-on learning that truly engages students-including girls and underrepresented minorities-and preparing them to tackle the 'grand challenges' of the 21st century, such as increasing energy independence, improving people's health, protecting the environment, and strengthening national security."

Despite such good intentions, however, there's been no apparent trickledown effect when it comes to the award-winning Science in Motion program.

In 1987, a group of Pennsylvania teachers teamed up with Juniata College and the National Science Foundation to find a way to help high schools access the modern high-tech equipment they needed to prepare their students for STEM careers but could not afford.

Ever since, thanks to their efforts and a partnership of twelve Pennsylvania colleges and universities, Science in Motion (SIM) has been providing the equipment, scientific personnel, and hands-on modern science and technology training our students need and should expect.

For instance, in Montgomery County, that service is provided by Ursinus College's SIM program. Students in such districts as Norristown, North Penn, Owen J. Roberts, Perkiomen Valley, Souderton, and Spring-Ford have all benefited. Just last week, seventh graders at Spring-Ford Middle School were trained on digital microscopes.

All this at no extra cost to the individual school districts.

Says Ursinus's SIM Mobile Biology Educator, Ron Faust, "Science in Motion is simply a great way to improve science education in an incredibly cost-effective way. It gives teachers the tools and instruction they need to effectively teach their subjects... I have taught for 41 years in this area and have never found any program that was more effective in bringing students the joy and excitement that science offers."

Sounds grand, doesn't it? And yet...

Despite all the political talk about the need for exceptional science, technology, engineering, and math instruction, the axe has fallen on this unique-to-Pennsylvania, Governors Award for Innovation-winning program. After Saturday, February 6th, it all ends. Governor Ed Rendell saw to that when he cut all funding for Science in Motion--$1.9 billion-from the state's budget and immeasurably set back STEM education throughout Pennsylvania.

Methods to Screen Political Candidates

How to better achieve the age old goal of having political candidates that are right for the job? The job of course being to visibly and tangibly advance social welfare and involves:

a- decreasing price (in caloric energy spent) while increasing quality/quantity of food, electrical output, transport, shelter, education

b- decreasing necessity for backbreaking work and subsistence living

c- increasing safety from violence and coercion and advancing interethnic harmony

d- preserving and even expanding human autonomy during the process of all of the above

Yes, very difficult and definitely not the type of job that morons, pandering charismatic narcissists, rich man's stooges, and quick fix/gimmick driven individuals should engage in. Unfortunately, very often these days these 4 types are blended into one toxic package. To know what we want from candidates is to conceptualize a way to screen them. The public desires 3 basic simultaneous things from a person seeking power:

1) sufficiently competent to run and evolve technologically complex and very populous (over 10 million people) social units

2) sufficiently independent of oligarchic corporate influence

3) sufficiently legitimate in eyes of the public without it minimizing 1) and 2) (successfully approved by some sort of democratic input)

It is becoming very clear that neither public or private financing of candidates is achieving these. Rather than engaging in a futile task of tweaking an easily abused system (more public financing, ban on ads, regulating funds, etc), it is possible to cut off degradation and corruption of the candidate pool at the root. What needs to be made structurally obsolete is a need for money in politics in the first place. This in turn eliminates the need for advanced election marketing propaganda, fund raising pandering, and for extremely self absorbed individuals that possess a solid acting/lying/showmanship ability.

Screening method 1: Technical Exam

As I have previously written, since economics is an engineering challenge, it is imperative to dramatically increase the quantity of candidates with scientific, civil engineering, and technical backgrounds. This calls for a comprehensive examination that candidates have to pass. Unlike the 1920s progressive era desire to screen voters via literacy tests and such, screening of ambitious power hungry candidates will find a lot more support. Relatively unbiased apolitical technical exams can rapidly be formulated and mandated for those who are to appear on the ballot the same way signature collection is.

The difficulty of the examination process can depend on the level of responsibility the candidate will possess. Perhaps the highest offices in the land may mandate taking a general exam, then secondary more closely watched exam for top 10% of scorers, and finally a final filtering test for 10% top scorers of surviving group. The last individuals left standing (say 10 people) can then be put under rigorous investigation of their personal and psychological backgrounds and be made to engage in debates before the public finally votes for who they want.

"But who controls the process! Who makes the exams! Wouldn't rich people just have super specialized prep schools to create super engineers that always pass! We're back to where we started!"

Sigh. The rich ivy leaguers are nowhere near as advantaged under the examination system since they would not get the automatic social networking and money raising boost. The materials to pass would be much more diffused and available in society (unlike the ivy social networking advantage many politicians have that prevents average people from even trying to run for office). This means that more people can try their luck at higher office. Additionally, due to the color blind nature of the meritocratic candidate selection process, the chances are a lot better for a highly qualified individual to make it into the final candidate pool (who would otherwise not get there due to voter bias against race, gender, ethnic group, age, class, etc).

We must keep in mind that the goals of candidate competence and independence from corporate control determine the means of candidate selection. If for example, one looks at a hypothetical proposal where some sort of social networking-video presentation candidate selection method is implemented, it becomes clear that once again the visually presentable and narcissistic are at an advantage. Visual selection of candidates via videos of speeches filters out the potentially far more competent individuals who may be camera shy, not be sufficiently attractive, not possess superb verbal eloquence, and so on. As of today, politics is dominated by extroverted semi psychopathic backstabbing individuals who are very eloquent and presentable. This corporate type led our society to disastrous consequences on a planetary scale. Reducing reliance on video presentation and increasing other ways of evaluation is key.

The exam itself would consist of sections such as systems thinking, civil engineering, organizational architecture, basic materials science, energy science, history, systems analysis, organizational psychology, infrastructure design, etc. If children of rich people do have some advantage of specialized prep schools, so be it, they'll be better occupied than snorting coke and becoming lawyers.

Screening method 2: Psychiatric Exam

This would test candidates for psychopathy using cutting edge medical and psychological means. This is a very serious if not the most critical issue for leadership filtering in terms of preventing damage to society. There has been a substantial volume of literature written in recent years concerning the societal justification for separating psychopathic individuals from vital public organs. Foot in the door towards mass scale screening can start with public school educators. It will be socially doable.

A hypothetical argument against this can be made from certain possibility that as the ability to pass the technical exam increases, the ability to pass the psychiatric one decreases. This may be true to a degree considering schizoidia leaning introverted individuals with low empathy may excel more at engineering and systems analysis the colder their temperaments are. What has to be kept in mind is that a degree of physiologically determined empathy and emotional intelligence is not in conflict with competence but is a significant characteristic of it (especially for a political leader). Even emotionality can be taken into consideration when determining policy in a group context (or even formulating a candidate exam).

The reader can be assured that humanity can overcome the problem of balancing the need to screen out genuine psychopaths (who are not likely to be synonymous with advanced technical/analytic ability to begin with according to Lobaczewski) from the candidate pool while allowing very cold but harmless people to participate in evolution of social policy.

Final thoughts:

It is worth noting that technical and psychological exams can be applied to all levels of public recruitment even if the leadership is still selected completely democratically. A council of engineers instead of council of economists by the side of the mayor, governor, or president would go a long way. Some countries have already engaged in trying to screen out psychopaths during hiring of new police officers. This can be expanded easily to entry level positions within all public hierarchies. If we are to have proper reindustrialization of the Western world, the public cadres must be up to the level of the task.

Religion and Political Correctness Killing Science

Many in academia say that religion is ruining science and preventing research and development dollars from the government from going into things like stem cell research and biotech. This may be in fact true however we also need to look at the flip side of things.

For instance political correctness is forcing billions of dollars of research and development monies to go into alternative energy projects, prototypes and products at an astounding rate and this fact is causing fewer dollars to go to other things. Political correctness also slows down and complicates research and eliminates free thinkers.

So one could say that both the religious right and the Democrat liberals are both killing science. In fact, we need some middle ground here and we need to increase the research spending and the monitor the efficiency of the money we have spent to make sure we're getting the biggest bang for our buck in the research we do.

I believe that if you spend money in research and development today you'll get back ten times the benefit in future periods. In fact if we spend money to develop new markets for industry our government and civilization will be rewarded with more jobs and more taxable income so we can spend even more on research and development while maintaining the flows of our civilization with increased tax revenues. We should not let political correctness or religion kill science or slow down the forward progression of mankind especially the United States of America. Please consider this in 2006.

Politics in Public Education: The Legislative Agenda

Public education in America has encountered many challenges, particularly in the last three decades. Declining test scores, declining graduation rates, poor results for high school graduates once entering college unprepared, and the clear lack of life-long learning skills are just symptoms of the underlying problems and issues with K-12 education.

The decline of direct parental involvement, poor university education school preparation for teachers, misdirected and inconsistent standardized testing efforts, and the lack of any teacher testing and annual monitoring of teacher progress have all contributed to the problems in public education, and alarming lack of results and preparation of our children. However, underlying the symptoms and the causes that I have cited is the compromising of the true mission and goals we all expect to be unwavering. That is to say, those given the sacred responsibility of educating our students have compromised the very mission of education, and the achievement of the goals and objectives that we have counted upon to be the foundation of our future and our children's future. This is not an accusation, a supposition, or an opinion. This is a fact. I have seen it and documented it first hand in my own state, and have verified similar encounters and compromises by the educational elite, administrators, and most directly the two largest teacher unions in the United States. It is at a minimum, appalling, and potentially criminal.

What I am attempting to describe are the political compromises made by the teacher unions, with complicity by some administrators and ratification by local school boards, reducing the quality of education and the integrity of the teaching experience, solely for the benefit of power and money. The recipients of the increased power, funding, and funds into their own coffers to be utilized for purposes other than education, are the national teacher unions, their respective state affiliates, and their colleagues.

When union domination, and the marginalization of parents occur, our children are the losers. They are no longer the priority. They are no longer the most important participants in the educational experience as they should be, and must be, if we're to achieve those lofty goals, and make our children the best prepared in the world. No matter what changes we make to public education, no matter how we improve standardized testing, measuring results, educating and preparing our teachers, and funding education, if we don't take the politics out of education, and the implementation of good education policy in our government, we are doomed to fail. Yes, unions have a right to exist, and yes our teachers should be treated well, and be paid well. However, with regard to public education, we're not talking about a typical working environment. The priority must be the students, or the proposition of public education on its' very face, is false. Why do many private schools, parochial schools, and most "home-schoolers" often do significantly better than their public school counterparts, with much less funding? Their encouragement of parental involvement in education policy, and their children's day-to-day education experience, as well as the absence of political pressure being exacted by the teacher unions, is a major factor.

Having direct, first hand knowledge of the referenced compromises and tactics by the education elite and teacher unions, I have seen how the entire political agenda has permeated the legislative process at the state and national levels. As Education Policy Chairman in my State's Legislature, I have had to deal with these political pressures, and have seen how the masterful agenda on the part of the education elite and the unions have affected my colleagues, and their ability to resist the enormous pressure brought to bear on them, and their respective school districts. The compromise of our children's future has permeated the legislative process through lobbying efforts, the recruitment of pro-union candidates, and sheer intimidation. My assessment is that it will continue until it can't be fixed. Then a collapse of public education, as we know it, will occur, and something will have to take its' place. Meanwhile, our children have lost their future, and our nation may never regain its position as a superpower, and the leader of the free world.

Yes, this is serious business. I firmly believe that if we wait until the alarming collapse that I have cited, America will have lost its' future. This is a time for a loud call to common sense, our founding values, and the premise that the self-serving educational elite cannot be permitted to compromise our children's education and their very future anymore. It must stop. As the new "Tea Party" movement has awakened the silent majority from their political and policy indifference of the past, a new movement must rise up out of the ashes of our disastrous math and science test scores, falling graduation rates, and politically-correct social transformational education experience. The basics underpinning our traditional education system including academic excellence, parental involvement and support, discipline, and clear consistent standardized testing and evaluation, must be restored.

Public education must clearly adapt to a global environment, and the teaching methodology must adapt to the times and current technologies. However, we must turn out a new type of teacher that can teach to ALL students. The actual pedagogy deployed must be based on the premise that students learn at different rates, have different backgrounds, and actually think differently. However, to be consistent with the goals and objectives that I noted earlier, the sacred mission-to-educate, we must find a way to deliver a quality education to every single student and to discard the premise that some students can learn, and some cannot. We owe it to ourselves, to them, and most importantly, we owe it to future generations of Americans, and to assure that America continues as the leader of the free world.

Can Scientists Manage Science?

A very comprehensive and exhaustive discussion was provided by Douglas Hague in his article bearing the same title as this one. I admit I was quite absorbed by his brilliant presentation of how scientists can manage science under certain stringent conditions, i.e., "if they themselves acquire a practical understanding of the social sciences, not least, of economics and of management; or if they work in inter-disciplinary teams which include and value those who do have such knowledge."

I for one will not argue the points Hague presented. In fact, I'm personally inclined to also answer the question positively at the outset. But on a closer look at the faces of today's science and scientists, I'm afraid I am more drawn toward the sobering reality that many if not most of them can't actually do it.

In medical jurisprudence parlance, we have a concept called res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself"). It refers to an overwhelming circumstantial evidence actually present, proving a certain act of malpractice or negligence as in the case of a pair of forceps left in the abdominal cavity of a patient after a surgical procedure has already been completed and closed.

While most of today's scientists and technology experts may flaunt the merits of their achievements and their subsequent contributions to society, still, an array of disturbing evidences point to their inadequacies in covering the necessary bases associated with their discipline. Even starting with the most basic element of a study - its purpose - many a scientist would not really want to ascertain whether his pet project would yield an environmentally, economically, socio-culturally, politically and morally beneficial output.

The adrenaline surge of being acclaimed as the discoverer, inventor or creator of something new, cutting edge or innovative what not seemed to eclipse the sense of purpose that is supposed to undergird any worthwhile scientific pursuit. And especially watch out when the budget preference, the publicity or organizational support is given to the other guy's project. What happens next? We even have movies depicting scientists who cannot manage their own ego and emotions in the face of rejection and end up becoming vindictive monsters capable of harming mankind with the very same science they claim to be beneficial to the world. Another sickening side effect when science and technology simply go out of check are the alarming trends happening nowadays with our environment as well as our socio-political, cultural and moral climates.

Isn't it interesting to note that planet Earth has increasingly been more hostile toward its inhabitants and Homo sapiens have also been increasingly hostile toward each other especially at the height of these scientific and technological revolutions? Spurious correlations maybe, but nonetheless significant. And expectedly, the blame can also be passed around to many other potential culprits. But as far as science is concerned, nobody can be held more responsible than the scientists themselves. And this gets all the more complicated especially in the absence of what Hague called "the missing attribute which scientists most needed" - HUMILITY.

And such attribute may in fact be invaluably employed at first in the sober acknowledgment that scientists cannot properly and effectively manage science all by themselves. This is why they need to collaborate with other relevant disciplines in order to make this at all possible.

Psycho-Spiritual Psychotherapy, Science And Religion, Cultism, The Unique Individual And The Ego

The Buddha spoke of suffering. Is this a good way in to explaining the "spiritual" in psycho-spiritual? Why, for example, should an atheist or a person without any practicing faith come to see a psycho-spiritual therapist? Is it necessary to be on a spiritual quest of some kind or might the client might be moved to practice spiritually as a result of therapy?

Everyone who is living and breathing has some experience, some sense, of something that is dear to them, which they prize and honor, something they revere or respect, someone they love and perhaps a person or a cause they would give their life for. Therefore everyone has some idea of the spiritual, that which is beyond the common sense of self as a self-serving entity engaged in survival and personal pleasure. The psychologist Jung went a step further and claimed from examining a huge number of dreams from different times, cultures and moralities and value systems, that humankind share a collective unconscious that is inherited and expressed in commonly recurring symbols and archetypes.

Everyone has a spiritual side, although they may call it by a variety of names; everyone values something or someone above themselves, even if it's science, philosophy, the state of the world or ecology. But today we may well ask, "Isn't science the new religion?"

The usurping of religion by science is the result of a pointless desperate conflict, in which human beings try to discover the "right" answer without any regard for the variety and the multi-layering of reality and their composite experience. For example, science cannot say very much about what is intuitive and instinctive, let alone what is numinous and in a completely different realm to the kinds of phenomena that science seeks to observe and measure. The spiritual, the transcendent and the divine are beyond words and experience. It is pointless to try to convince someone who is scientifically minded of the truth of spiritual, numinous events, just as it is futile to try to convince a spiritually-minded person of the absolute truth of science.

What happens when a scientist comes to you for therapy? Do they see another side to life? The pursuit of the inner realms, the experience of inner processes and the understanding of inner objects and their significance may be interpreted in any number of ways that are personal to the experiencer, to the client. Many a numinous experience has been minimalized and reduced to an emotional or instinctive, neurological event by the scientifically minded client. But we are all different, which is one of the wonders of being human; the differences, the variety, the uniqueness and the individual contribution each person makes to the whole.

Spiritually everyone one of us has an individual, unique contribution to make to the whole. But alongside this assertion is the idea that the end of spiritual attainment is to share in a common essence, which is sometimes called unity consciousness. One characteristic of religious cults is that everyone starts dressing, behaving and even thinking the same. So where are the individual's unique human qualities in that?

Religious or spiritual cults have led to a sheep mentality. As in all walks of life and all pursuits, you have a very few people who remain questioning and non-conformist enough -- free of the schizoid tendencies to feel insecure about belonging and fitting in -- to withstand the collective power of the status quo, even when it is intensely weird, inhumane and corrupt. But everything that takes place in the name of spirituality is not necessarily any more spiritual than a political rally, a football supporters' meeting, or even a drunken night out. All these pursuits invite and insist on a certain relinquishing of one's individuality and embracing the ethos of the collective.

But in psycho-spiritual therapy work resolving childhood needs and desires are a primary concern. We work first with the unfinished business of personality, because only when the ego is fully formed and healthy do you have anything to surrender to the spiritual fire. The fulfillment of the ego is found in the ego's surrender or relinquishing, because you are much more than the ego allows you to be. So this is a radical transformation that is achieved by locating yourself in your true center.

A person is more than their ego. This is apparent in quite ordinary acts of loving and sacrifice, even pleasure. But transcending the ego is a tall order for most people. In the pursuit of spirituality in the modern world it is important to remember that the early and deeply profound teachings of ancient spirituality did not have to deal with the central issue we have today and that is individualism. The modern world (and I don't think we have to say western, as if it's different from eastern; western and eastern dichotomies have always been confusing because the divide is more cultural and political than geographical) has progressively centralized the individual, so we have an attack of the ego forces nonpareil. No time in the past has ever had to face this issue and certainly not 3000 years ago in the Indus valley for example when your caste and station in life was very set and, unless you were aristocratic or of the priest class, you were involved in subsistence, in survival.

Today we have leisure, recreation, choice -- even spirituality has become a tourist industry!

So we have to look at what the individual means in terms of spirituality. The spiritual path in the modern world is individual in nature and approach. First, this is obvious because you notice that people pic'n'mix their spiritual philosophy and methodology. This has its own difficulties; you follow Buddhism until you come across something you don't like, then you bail out into Sufism or Taoism, until you find something you don't like there and throw in a little mystical Christianity and some Course in Miracles. The obvious difficulty is that you cannot dictate your spiritual practice based on your personal preferences, for the simple reason that spiritual practice should challenge your personality at every turn, so if your personality is in the driving seat you are really not going to get anywhere.

Today we are saturated with spiritual wisdom and guidance, so comparing paths is unavoidable. Even the great Thomas Merton [controversial monk and Catholic mystic] was considering defecting to Zen in the last years before he died. But as Joseph Campbell remarked when he was asked if you have to let go of your religion to attain spiritual goals; no, you have to go the whole way to where the religion at its source represents the truth of the spiritual journey to awakening and liberation.

Individuality cannot be sidestepped. We must have a spiritual practice and methodology that embraces the individual and works with that, not by ignoring but by seeing how it can assist the venture of enlightenment. The ego is not just a fiction to be discarded, as if a few years of meditation will put paid to it. The ego must be understood and first put into service to the higher faculties of human existence.

Sexuality, Entropic Warfare and Unbalanced 20th Century Science

In 1957 the New York University Library of Scientific Thought published a book entitled, Theories of the Universe: From Babylonian Myth to Modern Science. The book explained how, over thousands of years, non-technical writings about cosmology were associated with mythological mathematics and political power. Priests using cosmological mathematics to calculate an eclipse could become politically influential. Greek scholars built political structures from how the ancient gods dealt with humans at Olympus, and Babylonian kings designed ancient forms of governmental policies of conquest, based upon the councils of the god Marduk.

The New York Scientific Library book mentions how, during the 20th Century, the mathematician, Albert Einstein, extended Babylonian mathematical mythology in deriving his 1917 theory of relativity and its observer participancy theory of creation. Independent of the book's philosophical world-view, we know for certain that Lord Bertrand Russell had a very deep involvement with Babylonian mythological-mathematics. He used this to advocate the worship of what Einstein defined as the 'Premier Law of all of the Sciences'. Russell's most famous essay, entitled 'A Freeman's Worship', was about how we must live in despair about there being any substance within any of our most ennobling hopes for the future. According to Russell and Einstein, this is because these higher aspirations will eventually be totally destroyed within a universe in thermodynamic ruin, in accordance with the functioning of the universal law of chaos energy.

This particular article refers to ancient Egyptian mythological mathematics associated with the worship of the ancient Egyptian Goddess, Maat. This Goddess was held to prevent the universe from reverting to a state of chaos, which is about a science in complete defiance of Einstein's world-view. Although Einstein was correct about the physical functioning of the cosmos he dismissed the energies associated with the evolution of emotion. Nanotechnology has provided photographic evidence that within the molecule of emotion, Einstein's energies of quantum mechanical chaos actually entangle with the energies of quantum biology, demonstrating that his great genius was unbalanced for dismissing the existence of biological information energy. The point to be made is that the logic of nanotech complex dynamical energy systems as well as the Egyptian mathematics of life, both extended a fractal logic to infinity, instead of the extinction that Einstein's world-view insists must occur. This more inspiring energy scenario is compatible to the workings of the infinite holographic universe of Einstein's close colleague, David Bohm.

Harvard University's Novartis Professor, Amy Edmondson, in her biography of the engineer Buckminster Fuller, wrote that Fuller derived his balanced synergistic universe from the mathematics of the philosopher Plato, who in turn had developed it from the ancient Egyptian theories belonging to the worship of Maat. Plato warned that developing cosmology by assuming that the eye was responsible for creative knowledge would only lead to the emergence of the destructive evil of unformed matter within the atom. Einstein's E=Mc squared is the mathematical equation basic to thermonuclear destruction and Einstein's insistence that the eye is the key to creative participation within the universe, equates to a worship of the ancient Egyptian and Greek gods of Chaos. The religious ethos of the Church is based upon Platonic love. But the Church has no comprehension of Plato's mathematical atomistic explanation of it. St Augustine banished the atomistic mathematical functioning of Platonic love as the work of the Devil, because he thought, incorrectly, that it belonged to the worship of the Babylonian Goddess of prostitution and war, Ishtar.

After a period of two hundred years of the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy fusing ethics into Anaxagoras's theory of creation, its mathematical structure became altered to become a fractal dynamical expression linking the function of Plato's atoms of the soul, to infinity. This was the act of observer participancy that Einstein could not grasp because he thought, like Leonardo da Vinci, Rene Descartes and Sir Francis Bacon before him, that all knowledge had to come from visual perception, such as looking down a powerful microscope to look at subatomic particles.

The Church has such a sexually orientated confusion about the role of Platonic love during the sexual act, that in order to derive the technology belonging to creative thought to replace Einstein's trip to extinction, we need to develop an accepted medical human survival science on the subject. This can be considered impossible when we consider the confusing angels and demons war on the subject associated with the long time brawling between the Church and the worship of Jesus Christ by the Knights Templar. Buckminster Fuller predicted the solution by alluding to a future supercomputer to provide the answer. This is a similar concept to creating a supercomputer that can win chess games against the great chess champions or even more complicated games by the supercomputer Watson, winning games of Jeopardy. Buckminster's published World Game Theory was to solve problems well beyond the ability of any form of present government. In Fuller's own words "Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone" (Fuller had received many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him on February 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan).

In Australia at present there are moves in Parliament to create a Royal Commission about child molestation practices within the Christian Church. The Church is responsible for Sir Isaac Newton's unpublished papers, discovered last century, being classified as Newton's Heresy Papers. Within them was Newtons conviction that a more profound natural philosophy existed to balance the mechanical description of the universe and that its basic physics principles were the same as the lost Greek atomistic science of universal love, taught at Oxford University by the scientist Giordano Bruno, before the Church tortured him and then burnt him alive for teaching it. It seems that the Church has some deeply based sexual problems that is preventing the development of a human survival super-technology in favour of preserving the extinction ethos of modern religiously contaminated science.

During the 20th Century Lord Bertrand Russell was Britain's leading advocate of free sex, which he had linked to the metaphysical sexual ethos of Babylonian mythological mathematics. Together, he and Albert Einstein insisted upon employing only the mathematical logic that applied to the construction of atomic matter after light was created, as is mentioned in the Old Testament. Plato's axiom that 'All is Geometry' however, applied before the creation of light and this human survival mathematics was developed by Buckminster Fuller.

The ancient mythical Egyptian god of creation, Atum, masturbasted into the cosmic egg declaring 'Let there be light' and Anaxagoras' more sophisticated theory of creation was about the universal urge to cast sperm into the cosmic egg being linked to a whirling force acting upon primordial particles in space to create the worlds. This depiction of the force of gravity went on to provide spin to the created worlds to transfer knowledge of the creation to Plato's atoms of the soul. Pythagoras introduced light into that description of humans being made in the image of the cosmic creation and this concept caused the great 18th and 19th Century discoverers of the forces of electromagnetic realit, to go looking for God's electromagnetic ethic for perpetual peace on earth. Today the electromagnetic motor driving the tail of the sperm toward the ovum is known to be morphed by the female field into the cellular centriole. This in turn energises the first bone developed in the embryo, the sphenoid bone, to carry the divine message of creation to the electromagnetic functioning of creative consciousness, not Einstein's eye of observer participation. As the eye does not even exist at the moment of conception there is no natural continuity belonging to the Einsteinian world-view in which the eye is held responsible to evolve the universe.

The bizarre concept of public ceremonies in which Pharaohs were required to masturbate into the River Nile in order to honour the creator god Atum, will no doubt be one day explained in the cerebral sub atomic physics belonging to Fuller's envisioned medical super computer. However, so also will be the more bizarre and horrific results of St Augustine's translation of the Platonic evil of unformed matter within the atom as being the evil of female sexuality. That frightful ethos was fundamental to the world-view of St Thomas Aquinas, becoming the logic base for three hundred years of sadistic perverted sexual rites belonging to the ritualistic torture and burning alive of countless women and children as witches. The present social repugnance toward public displays of any primitive masturbation ceremony becomes a trivial issue compared to that prolonged nightmare of ritualised sexual perversion.

Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein were dedicated scientists with genuine artistic inclinations and may their work be honoured by immortalising it beyond the limitations of the 20th Century's obsession with an unbalanced understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. May this spirit of moderation concerning cosmological mythic mathematics extend to the ability of the Prophet Mohammed to be able to describe the functioning of the cosmos in terms now being given credence by recent discoveries made by the Hubble telescope. May Al Haitham's corrections to the spiritual engineering optics of Plato, made during the Golden Age of Islamic Science, be once again shared in debate by Christains, Jews and Muslims, as it once was for two hundred year at the Translator School in Toledo, Spain. May Buckminister Fuller's envisioned supercomputer be constructed to ensure that the 21st Century Renaissance comes into existence so that World War III can be averted in the name of Platonic love. That same wish to advance Plato's Theology into an atomistic technology was also Marcilio Ficino's message upholding what is known as the 15th Century Renaissance.

© Professor Robert Pope,
Advisor to the President Oceania and Australasia of the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Advanced Mathematics (IFM) Einstein-Galilei

Practical Spirituality On Reclaiming Real Science

There seems to be a gap between what leaders want and what the people want that is supported by false religion and pseudoscience (another form of religion that uses scientific jargon). This gap has existed for a long time, but has been growing since the Age of Enlightenment. During that time, and throughout history, religions began as counter cultural agents in the society created to better the life of the individual by getting him or her to realize they were more than a small group of people struggling to survive.

Religion supplied a bigger picture of humanity and what humanity could be. It recognized that we were all one people. Some of the original concepts in religions even said that loving each other was equal to loving God. They had a great deal of power to shape the memes (social genes) of society to make it more fair and just. Since this was the case, many of them were co-opted to support the culture they stood in opposition to and used by those in power to maintain their positions or gain position for their own small group.

Today we find ourselves inundated with religions that support the status-quo and promote things that their founders just wouldn't have tolerated. In order to bypass these anti-equality, anti-sex, anti-love, and anti-life religions that support the few chosen and curse everyone else, many people today have chosen the path of the mystic; even if that isn't something they realize. Seeking spirituality through Yoga, Tai-Chi, Meditation and other forms goes directly to the spiritual, bypassing the religious and the institutional. This is the path of the mystic.

The problem with this, however, is that many people taking this path are carrying the beliefs rooted in the latest philosophy/religion that has been co-opted to support hierarchy and empire-scientism. They can't even accept that mysticism and enlightenment are possible because they are outside of the narrow scope of modern science and have been demonized throughout history through said institution. This has not always been the case. The original form of science has been around for thousands of years all over the world. Great discoveries have been made throughout human history through science. At the time, however, there was no separation between science and religion. Scientific experiments were carried out and the findings passed on in mythic and religious terms.

Nonetheless, people were still doing science. It was only in the 16th Century, when there was a battle for power between the elite in the church and the elite in academia that science got separated from religion and art. The institution of science was created around that time. As time passed science slowly began to ascend and take the place of religion, and the basis of reality in most western countries became science instead of the will of God as reported by the clergy. The mystics of today, not surprisingly-in the US anyway, are not free of this underlying materialistic fundamentalism because it has been socialized into all of us. The truth is that science cannot explain everything and it was never meant to. We cannot get a full understanding of the universe or life just through science. We need more.

There is a deep misunderstanding about science, in the general population, that is not shared by most real scientists, that results in leaps of faith where people are blindly following the latest scientific understandings, jumping from one to the next and reducing science into a religion. Now there are even a few fundamentalist scientists who won't accept the existence of anything they can't measure. This is both frightening and a shame, mainly because it reduces science to the a belief system similar to the religious system from which it freed itself. I call this new belief scientism.

In order to live fuller lives and understand truth, however, it is necessary to reclaim real science. It is necessary to recombine science, the arts, and religion, because science, in actuality, is for everyone. Everyone doesn't know all of the scientific methodology or jargon. Everyone does not know all of the specifics, but everyone knows how to observe objects in the world, understand them, compare one thing to the other, and notice how changing one element in a person's life can change the person's life completely. If that element is changed in other people's lives and the other people's lives change completely in the same way one knows according to logic and observation, that it is most likely that the change in the element is bringing about a change in the person's life. That, my friends, is science. We don't need a double blind test to learn by doing and observing.

This is not what we have been told, however. Our new religion is pseudoscience. We are told that we cannot reason. We cannot understand the universe until we can find a scientist that agrees with us. In most cases that is not good enough. We have to have research done that only the ultra rich can afford to pay for that will prove the truth. Science has become the religion of the day. In order to break free from of it we must adopt spirituality and mysticism with our understanding of the experience coming from within and from people who have had the experiences before.

Science cannot do this; scientists cannot do this because the philosophy itself stops one from fully entering into the experience. Sometimes it is necessary to leave the scientific reason for things home and learn through experience so one can awaken the larger Self who is well beyond the understanding of science. In other words we must come to the point where we say, "Don't tell me how meditation works, just show me how to do it." When we reach this point those who use false science and religion to push forward political agendas will lose their power over us and we will be free until the next thing is co-opted.

How Is Politics Like A Dysfunctional Family?

Lessons From Healthy Family Dynamics

As a Marriage and family Therapist for over 35 years, I have worked to help families find healthier and more productive ways to deal with stressful times. To that end I have studied the growing body of science on effective relationships and organizational systems, and as I view societal dynamics I find myself wondering why politics has become so dysfunctional. I believe we can do better. In these trying times of unemployment, economic downturn and international tensions, we can choose to be better or choose to be bitter.

In the scramble for political advantage, it seems that keeping score about others has become more important than the welfare of our country. This is a hallmark of a dysfunctional family - finger pointing becomes more important than solving problems. In a dysfunctional family, right - wrong games rule and there is a dearth of the respectful exchange of ideas. Family members resist flexibility, and are unwilling to try and reach synergistic solutions together. Too much of the family's energy is tied up with thoughts and actions in the "Attack Mode".

This kind of mudslinging has a long history in America. "Vituperative language and over-the-top criticism of opponents are not new to our politics, nor is the idea that one side or the other is not patriotic," according to John Boardman of Washington and Lee University. At the beginning of our life as a nation, in the 1790's, the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians hurled insults and accused one another of being unconstitutional. More than two centuries later, the question is: Why have we not learned better strategies for conducting our political life?

As times become more stressful in America we are returning to name-calling and fear mongering. This is a shame. We now have a science of healthy relationships, as well as of effective leadership and communication, and we are not availing ourselves to their benefits. It has been demonstrated that many of the same strategies found in healthy families also apply to organizations. So what are some major differences between healthy and dysfunctional families?

A review of characteristics of healthy and dysfunctional families reveals better strategies for us as a nation. Compare these dysfunctional and healthy approaches to four important societal dynamics: taking responsibility, dealing with conflict, problem solving and dealing with stress. The dysfunctional approach to the dynamic of taking responsibility focuses on shame and blame rather than expressing ideas and feelings about larger issues, while the healthy approach is for individual family members accept responsibility for their part of the problem and figure out how to best correct the problem. When dealing with conflict, a dysfunctional family does so by using criticism, contempt and defensiveness, putting up walls and looking for scapegoats. Conversely, healthy families deal with conflict by facing the issues and fighting fairly, which involves learning from mistakes and developing more effective problem solving strategies. When problem solving, dysfunctional families are disrespectful of others and use the language of putdowns, while healthy families work together to solve problems and provide mutual respect, even when they do not agree on ideas. Finally, when dealing with stress, high anxiety leads to dysfunctional families turning on one another, while healthy families help one another.

Now take a moment and consider these dynamics along with the dysfunctional and healthy approaches and apply them to our political system today. Is the political discourse in America the behavior of a dysfunctional family or a healthy family?

Regardless of your answer to the previous question, what strikes me is how many hard-working Americans are concerned about all of the vitriol and scapegoating - because we know better. We know that healthy families search for facts together and respectfully consider multi-causality instead of jumping to conclusions and scapegoating. As a nation it is important to be aware that when times are more stressful and resources limited there is a human tendency to attempt to cope by using dysfunctional behavior like scapegoating, name calling, playing right-wrong games, mudslinging and turning against one another. These are stressful and high stakes times for our nation, and yet even during times of such turmoil there are lessons to be learned and choices to be made. As Americans, we are now faced with a choice of our own - to be bitter or to be better. What choice will you make?

Dr. Linda Miles

What is Science?

Students often ask; "What exactly is science?" Professors explain by discussing theories, proofs, laws of physics, observations, duplication of results, etc.. Professors often pull rank on students when they argue a point with the professor on extending the professors definition of science. When this occurs the professor indicates to the student; "You obviously do not know what science is" they quickly tell the student.

Having had this scenario play over and over again, it would appear that those professors want to keep science for themselves. If they cannot answer a question or do not know the answer they will simply say; "that is not science" or "that is pseudo science" thus alleviating them the responsibility of answering the question. This is interesting indeed.

I have often thought; "science does not know what science is!" Science is not condemning another who caries a different perspective, science is not character assonating another in a primate political way to put forth their ideas or concepts over another. Since is not attacking someone's concept because it does not match with what another was taught, science is not publish or perish over real breakthroughs. Science is not who publishes first or whose name is attached. Science is not engineering. Science is not denying a theory until you can prove it is not possible. Science is not rhetoric, that is politics.

Although in observing all the above discussion about what science is not and it appears that in the "real" world of science one observing these behaviors might perceive it to be just that. But such social interaction which actually occurs in science is not science at all, unless you call it "social science" but most scientists claim that is not a real science and if so why don't they practice what they preach and dump the rhetoric? What all these scientists and professor's are doing is not science, it is disgusting.

I think I enjoy the comments on this subject by Bill Bryson, Matt Ridley, Stephen Wolfram and recently Michael Crieghton in his book "Fear." In any case all you scientists out there need to dump the BS and get busy propelling the human race and forwarding the progression of the species, you are not fooling me and many are simply getting quite tired of games. Think on that why don't you?

Isn't the Political Direction of Our National Dialogue Obvious - Mass Media Brainwashing

If you are someone who actually thinks still then you are a rare individual, and if you are I'm sure you've noticed something that happens on television quite a lot, especially on the major cable networks with regards to our national discussion and political direction. Have you ever noticed that they completely frame the argument, bringing up points of contention that they wish us to think about, but that you often come up with points of contention yourself and notice they never addressed them? Then, you might be reading the newspaper perhaps within a few days or week, and you notice that someone else is writing an editorial piece with exactly the comment you wanted to make.

Still, the media is very slow to pick up a new argument because they are so busy driving their agenda, and generally it is cascading in from two different points of view without regard for a third, or even addressing the common sense behind the entire issue. Now then, wouldn't you say that since this happens so much that the direction of our political and national dialogue is obviously more about mass media brainwashing than it is about getting to the best possible solution to any given problem?

In the Journal Psychoanalytic Review there was a very interesting paper published way back in 1958 titled; "Brainwashing and Menticide: Some Implications of Conscious and Unconscious Thought Control," by Joost A. M. Merloo, which stated in its abstract:

"During the last 30-years several political agencies have tried to misuse psychological and psychiatric experience to further their private aims. Active psychological warfare and political mental torture are now accepted concepts in totalitarian countries. A prime result of the political pressure, both overt and unobtrusive, has been a cynical re-evaluation of human values. A new profession of specialists has emerged whose task it is not to cure, but to aggravate and manipulate the weaknesses."

All of this affects individuals and our society overall in very problematic ways, in fact, sometimes it is quite insidious. It's interesting that people get so caught up in the chaos and controversy, and the sound and fury that they can't see past their own questions in their own minds. After a while they just start viewing and stop asking questions, and they're just reciting what they are supposed to believe, and somehow through mass repetition the powers that be, and those running the media, and those behind the political agenda move the ball down the field. This is nothing new; it's been going on for all of recorded history.

If you doubt any of this there is a book I think you should read by W. Phillips Shively "The Craft of Political Research," and the reason I recommend this book is it takes it down to the point of absurdity, they really treat it like rocket science, they know how to push your buttons, get you to think a certain way, and in fact change your opinion, life view, and even your own family values. Almost to the point you have to ask yourself if what you believe to be so, actually came from your own thoughts and observations and not from someone else's agenda to control you.

Over the years, this has disturbed me to see it happening in real time, and yet now I just laugh at all because it truly is "amazing what you get people to believe," and that remains the biggest challenge, and perhaps that's why we aren't teaching kids to think in our schools, we'd rather teach them rote memorization, and to make sure they answer the questions exactly as we wish them to and then to reinforce that with stars, happy faces, high grades, diplomas, and little letters after their names. Life is funny isn't it? You humans are real kick to study.

Cite: 1958; Psychoanalytic Review, 45A:83-99.