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 29 Jul 2004 @ 18:25, by centrifuge. Ideas, Creativity
Dualistic perspectives of the non-dualistic whole
Have been plaguing my mind with doubt
The truth I’ve sought has been delivered
Yet my mind can’t work it out
Why do I live in conflicting views
Allowing my alter ego to have so much say?
How can this confusion be harnessed and dismantled
Where is the trail of breadcrumbs through this maze?
To be in disagreement with one’s self
Can be healthy to a point
But when it becomes feuding…
It must be time for change.
To be in harmony with one’s self
Seems to be the point
This is the state from which you can see
The way out of the cage
Now is the time of grand transformation
Both for the individual and the whole
Now is the eternal moment of surrendering
To the universe as it unfolds
Do I have the wisdom
To find my place in the story?
Do I have the courage
To join this divine glory?
The future is a reflection of this moment
Where the illusion of past is in-laced
The steady beating of God’s heart
Is bringing the cosmos to age.
More >
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 28 Jul 2004 @ 21:40, by ming. Philosophy
Yahoo Dictionary:Paradigm: A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. An important word to know. The Paradigm Web:The word "paradigm" was originally one of those obscure academic terms that has undergone many changes of meaning over the centuries. The classical Greeks used it to refer to an original archetype or ideal. Later it came to refer to a grammatical term. In the early 1960s Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) wrote a ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he showed that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation - a paradigm - which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm established. Thus the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe) overthrew the Ptolemaic (the earth at the center) one, and Newtonian physics was replaced by Relativity and Quantum Physics. Science thus consists of periods of conservatism ("Normal" Science) punctuated by periods of "Revolutionary" Science. Even more important is finding out how to get these things changed, preferably faster than waiting around for the people with the old views to die. From the same source:Paradigm Shift: When anomalies or inconsistencies arise within a given paradigm and present problems that we are unable to solve within a given paradigm, our view of reality must change, as must the way we perceive, think, and value the world. We must take on new assumptions and expectations that will transform our theories, traditions, rules, and standards of practice. We must create a new paradigm in which we are able to solve the insolvable problems of the old paradigm. More good info at Wikipedia. Anyway, so, get that. A paradigm is on its way out when it no longer solves the problems it is meant to solve. Or, rather, it should be on its way out, and a better paradigm should replace it, which better solves the present problems. For various reasons, that might not happen readily. There are people with a vested interest in the old paradigm, who have based their careers on it. And we all have habits that might be difficult to change, including habits of thinking. And we might not really know what the new, better paradigm should be. Even if we bump into it.
 Paradigms usually don't start working well right away. And they don't suddenly just stop working either. One way of looking at the life cycle of a paradigm is with a diagram like this. There's a starting period, A, when the paradigm is still being developed, and one hasn't quite figured out the best way of using it yet, so it isn't all that impressive how well it solves problems. Then there's a phase B, where it all has been streamlined, and the paradigm accepted, and it solves lots of problems. Finally, phase C, it slows down, or might eventually drop. Maybe the problems get harder, or they change fundamentally. That's probably when somebody might start looking for better paradigms. Would be better if they did it in phase B, so that there would be time to develop the new approach. But most people wouldn't be looking at that time.
Joel Barker explained all of that really well, in a (very expensive) video and a (cheap) book. Several books, actually.
It is worthwhile to learn to see paradigms. So one can realize which ones one is stuck in, and so one can recognize the alternatives when one sees them. Both are hard. The well-worn paths of the human mind makes it difficult to see where else one could go.
Imagine that changed. That we evolved a bit and we always had a consciousness of what paradigms we were living in, and the myriad of other possibilities. Meta-humans. More >
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28 Jul 2004 @ 14:59, by ov. Internet
SAGE stands for Simulation and Advanced Gaming Environments (SAGE) for Learning. This is a recently launched collaborative research initiative by Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada. Most of the initial work is for the purpose of collecting a foundation of information for using the latest computer technology and applying it towards the creation of learning environments. The expectations are that this will create a new industry in which Canada will be able to play a leading role.
SAGE is a wisdom project. We have evolved beyond facts, beyond knowledge, and now we seek wisdom on a mass basis. Wisdom to know what to do, and why and how. Wisdom which can be learned but not taught, earned but not bought, elusive but essential. Perhaps in virtual environments we can try things on for size and see how they fit before we commit. This is an option we really haven't had before.
SAGE is more than an academic exercise, it involves the academics but also the students and the general public as well. There is a theory side, a participatory side, and the observation of both. This initiative has the support of the universites, the government and industry. There are a lot of qualified people that are being paid to work on this project, it is not just a good idea being held afloat by a handful of volunteers, although I suspect there will be lots of volunteers involved, as well as by those that want experience for future monetary gain. There should be high interest in this project since the content involves health care which is probably the most popular political issue for Canadians.
Vancouver already has an established industry in electronic gaming. There is also a large number of people working in the film industry and the nickname of Hollywood North is well earned. Vancouver itself, along with the high concentration of creative people that have moved here, is probably the biggest asset for this project.
We already have some experience in new education forms such as high school classes where every student was provided with a laptop, which had wifi connection, and classroom projects were collaborative efforts; parents, teachers and students were so impressed with the results that there are plans to introduce this method into more Vancouver schools.
The SAGE project is hyper multi-media. It not only includes all aspects of online communication but a large off line component as well. It also involves that overlapping area where the mass population engages in collective dialogue. For example I heard about this project last week on CBC Radio where David Kaufman the project leader was being interviewed and was also taking telephone calls from the audience. The project brochure (at SAGE link) lists a multitude of well defined objectives, and seeing as how it is in that most disagreeable online format of pdf Adobe Acrobat it will most probably be printed out, and find its way into coffee shops around town, along with newspaper articles, and through word of mouth. Hyper multi-media is not restricted to a communication medium but is diffused throughout the culture.
Vancouver is engaged with experimenting in numerous forms of participatory democracy, and all of this comes together in a culture of creativity and creation.
It wasn't that long ago that I would get very discouraged by the fact that online worlds like Everquest and Ultima would have millions of users paying a monthly fee to engage in escapism, and yet it was damn hard to find more than a handful that would cooperate in an intellectual discussion in a web conference. It will be interesting to see if this latest Vancouver experiment will provide more than mere stimulation. If it can happen anywhere it will be here. More >
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 24 Jul 2004 @ 17:07, by ming. Counseling, Psychology
Tom Munnecke, in commenting on Mass Listening, says: Listening is also part of the "Yes-And" Improv dialog form I am now researching. Improv actors have to listen to their partners... what a concept. They also learn that accepting a partners' offer is different than agreeing with it. And that "yes,but" creates a zero sum conversation, while 'yes, and' opens up a much more richer dialog. Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me. I've done Improv too. You know, improv is when one creates a reality together on the spot, which hopefully becomes interesting and maybe funny. One of the ground rules is to accept whatever anybody else brings into it, and build on it, rather than reject it if it doesn't suit you. If I come into a scene, and I had in mind that I was going to be Doctor Shtrumpfswanz, head of the psychiatric department, and somebody else beats me to it and greets me with: "Oh, the plumber, I'm glad you finally came!" - then I'm the plumber from then on. No use protesting and rejecting it, it would just ruin the scene. If somebody establishes that there's a table in the middle of the room, then there's a table in the middle of the room, no matter what clever alternative ideas I might have had. The answer is "YES, AND..". I must build on whatever everybody else have brought into the scene. For that matter, good improv comedy arises exactly when the participants are willing to accept what is there, and some rather surprising elements might have been brought together. And you find yourself playing tennis in a submarine, or something else you might not easily have found logical.
I frequently go back to find wisdom in the things I learned in improv. There's really a lot there that applies to life in general.
Improv works great when one is totally in the moment. One accepts everything that is there, and addresses it as real, and at the same time one channels something that might take it in just about any direction, and one has to track continuously with several other people who do the same. The moment you get stuck in your own head, getting bright ideas about what is supposed to happen, and not noticing what is really happening, it stops working. It is sort of an odd thing, like starting sentences without having any clue how they'll end. And finding that things often are better that way. Certainly more funny.
Anyway, I think Tom's point was how that kind of thing applies to regular conversation, and relating to others. The Yes-And principle. Hmm, I actually hadn't considered completely doing that in regular life.
What if I just accepted everything anybody brought into the scene? Hm, that's actually a hard one.
I was once waiting for a while in the reception of an insane asylum, as that also happened to be where one kept people who were on drug rehab. And some of the, eh, residents came up and chatted with me. Which was delightful. You know people who see spiders on the wall, or tell about their life as tabloid journalists or secret agents. None of which really was happening, but I didn't mind at all jumping into their reality and accepting what they were experiencing. Now, the psychatrist on the other hand was somebody it was no fun to speak with, but that's another matter.
But in the real world? What if I accept somebody else's reality, and just build on it, and see where it goes, rather than introducing any kind of "Yes, but ...[you're wrong]" kind of thing. I suppose that would really make for good listening. You allow them to reveal more of their reality, and see where it goes.
For that matter, that has also been a key ingredient in my work as a counselor. I'm not going to argue with the client. Whichever way they experience the world is what we'll start with. OK, my job is to help them transform it into something that is more useful to them. But I don't do it by negating what they believe. I do it by a kind of conversational judo. I use the force of their own worldview, and the way they structure themselves, to lead them towards transforming themselves. Works very well, if you manage to stay neutral, and you know something about how these things work.
But I must admit that I don't necessarily do that in a normal conversation. Oh, I'm open to many views, and I can leave many of them alone, but there will always tend to be some kind of tendency towards bringing you over to my view.
Can I give that up in all circumstances? Maybe. I do notice that it almost never works to negate what other people really believe in. It rarely works to try to WIN an argument by methodically destroying the 'opponents' statements. And yet that's what most of us do half the time.
It is the 'shoulds' that get in the way most of the time. How somebody else 'should' think, and how things 'should' be. But the fact of the matter is usually that they actually aren't like that. The 'shoulds' are a mental hallucination we superimpose on reality. Really, the best way of changing anything is to accept what is already there, and then look for available paths of maybe helping it change into something else. And if there are no available paths, you might just allow things to remain the way they are.
Interestingly the more in balance we ourselves are, the less we feel a need for correcting everybody else's worldviews. The more enlightened you yourself are, the less you are obsessed with making everybody else be like you. Ironically, as we could say you had all the more reason to do so, if you've found some kind of nirvana that most others haven't.
But maybe the bigger truth is that the world really would work better if we could accept different world views, and simply allow them to evolve naturally. And maybe life would be more interesting and entertaining if we dropped the mistaken idea that we all live in exactly the same world, and we're supposed to live by the same rules. More >
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23 Jul 2004 @ 22:37, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
By Fate's Decree
Whispered ardor in my dreams…
Fiery notes are played for me.
What depths shall I in the vortex fall?
Am I lost by fate's decree?
While your love, like errant sunbeams
Burst forth, enthrall. More >
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 23 Jul 2004 @ 14:52, by quinty. Politics
We all know that politicians always talk about doing the “courageous” thing, perhaps because they so rarely do so. And that boasting of being “courageous” is merely another method of pandering. They know, or believe, this is what voters may want to hear. More >
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23 Jul 2004 @ 11:47, by gsosbee. Activism
On July 15, 2004, I reported evidence of possible 911 Commission deceit and cover-up of fbi crimes (including the concealment from the world of fbi/cia terrorists' sources and methodologies). More recently, the 911 Commission reveals the incompetence/failures of its staff of high level Inquisitors by refusing to recommend an overhaul of the fbi/cia's operations. Specifically, the 911 Commission makes no
effort to examine the total corruption of the army of assassins in the fbi and thereby grants the fbi a continuing license (with the imprimature of the Commission) to carry on the programs of blackmail, extortion , torture and murder of key persons worldwide by the use of street thugs, police, etc.,and high tech weaponry. The 911 Commission therefore performs a treasonous disservice to the American people and
leaves the U.S. more vulnerable than ever to attacks on the homeland. The heart of the problem that the 911 Commission is afraid to address is associated with the fbi/cia inhumane terrorist tactics and assaults worldwide as I have outlined in my site. Until the United States addresses these issues and comes clean with the world's population regarding fbi/cia crimes against Humanity, the holocaust may continue.This update is dedicated to : celmakie "petit rappel".geral sosbee
See:
[link]
________________________________________________________
See article dated 9-14-05, "fbi/cia incompetence and corruption threaten the United States".
See also:
[link]
See:
[link] More >
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23 Jul 2004 @ 11:22, by sevenlamb. Activism
There are some terms whose function belies their appearance as ‘regular concepts’. Consider the term and concept ‘separation’. Without this concept — there are no terms, or concepts.
For human beings, one of the most deadly terms ever invented is ‘normal’. Without this term, we would not be able to endlessly invent utterly fictitious reasons to attack each other and our world. What could such a term possibly mean? More >
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 21 Jul 2004 @ 23:48, by skookum. Liberty, Sovereignty
Chapter 1: Ford Theater and me.
In the late summer of 1999 I was fortunate to have an opportunity to go to Washington D.C. I had gone to be at the poetry convention. That was just an excuse to see the Smithsonian. I would like to recount an odd experience I had there in our grand Capitol. More >
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 21 Jul 2004 @ 06:45, by ming. Technology
So, over the years I've written all these software modules for an assortment of online purposes. Like: - Weblogs
- Bulletin Boards
- Chat Rooms
- Calendars
- File Sharing
- Membership Sites
- Online Directories
- Work Groups
- Personal Information Management
- Shopping Carts
- Online Website Generation
- Forms and Database Generation
- Mailing List Management
- DNS Administration
- Server Monitoring
- Content Management
- News Feed Aggregation
- Image Manipulation
- ... and Wikis
And probably some I'm forgetting right now. All of it is in use in one place or another. And some of it isn't half bad. For that matter, some of it was a bit ahead of its time. And the users of some of these things seem exeedingly happy with what they do.
But there's a considerable problem with spreading oneself that thin as a programmer. Most succesful programmers will do one or two great things, or they'll have a team to work with.
Anyway, since I don't really, the result is that all of my modules are somewhat unfinished. Or, rather, they work well in the particular setting they were made for. As long as I manage the server, and fix things that go wrong, and tweak them for new purposes. But it doesn't mean they're easy to export.
I've been paid well for making some of these things, and some of them I made because I needed them myself, or to make nice places to hang out online. But generally I've never figured out how to make the jump to making a business out of any of them. And neither have I made the jump to package them as open source packages that people can just take and use, and others can contribute to.
And, well, Internet time moves quickly. So, while I can still enjoy that my weblog program does some things better than any other weblog program I've tried, other pieces are at the risk of slipping into obscurity, by being somewhat outdated and mediocre in how they look and what they can do. And across the board I've missed a lot of opportunities for doing something with these things at a higher level.
I can't count the number of times I've shown a selection of these programs to some business-wise person, who's told me that I could take any one of these and turn it into a thriving business. Usually accompanied by stories of people who've made it big with some fairly mediocre piece of software or other product, that they just managed to position well, and work hard on it, until it became a viable enterprise.
But which one should I pick? I'd be leaning towards most all of them. That is, a membership site where the users can easily set up an assortment of different resources, by picking from a menu and doing a bit of configuation. OK, so you want a website, and it should have a weblog and newsfeeds and a shopping cart and an event calendar, and you want an intranet for your employees with spaces for different teams and wikis, etc. Shouldn't be any great reason you shouldn't be able to have that up and running in a day or so, without needing to download any software or having to know any HTML.
I call that OrgSpace. That's a registered trademark. There's a corporation ready in England with that name. I've talked a good deal with Julie about launching something of that nature, starting back when we had a company in L.A. called Synchronicity. I've discussed pieces of it to great length with quite a few people.
But it doesn't work if I'm the sole programmer. And I'm sofar not as much of an entrepreneur as I'd like to be. So, it is stranding a bit both on the level of finishing the software, and on the level of doing the normal stuff one does to start and run and grow a business.
It could take all sorts of formats and directions. Like, a particular software piece might be a separate product in itself. Doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. It depends on what other people are inspired to be part of.
But I need programmers to collaborate with. We're talking about PHP. People who aren't as inclined to start from scratch as I am, but who'd feel inspired to do great things with pieces that already are 70% there, and to work as part of a team. This is in no way beginner's stuff, so some hardcore coding ability is needed.
A graphical design and layout person would be very helpful too. Most of my sites look like they were made in 1995, mostly because they actually were.
Some business help would be a good thing. I'm not ignorant of the basics, so it is maybe more a matter of coaching. Well, of course if one of you just wanted to finance the whole thing, that would certainly make everything easier.
But, barring that, we're talking about people who're interested in freely collaborating for the purpose of future business, or for making useful open source software, and useful online services. Or in making online communities and networks that work better. Whatever inspires you, and whatever format that is structured in. I can easily think of a variety of avenues for business or rewarding non-profit activities. I just need to get beyond wearing the programmer hat all the time. And I'm not going to give away just all the secrets here.
My own problem is that I'm a perfectionist, so I'm not the right person to do everything myself. It doesn't mean I'm necessarily hard to work with, but it means that I'm usually not sufficiently happy with what I do to get it out the door. You know there's the wise rule of 80/20 that says that you go for making 80% of what needs doing, and you get it out the door. And in the next iteration you do 80% of what is left. The hard lesson for a perfectionist to learn is that other people than yourself usually are quite happy with the 80% solution, as long as you actually put it into their hands.
A few little anecdotes:
I gave my shopping cart code to somebody once, when I considered it just half-way done, even though it basically worked. Somebody who was a much more novice programmer than myself. He worked hard for a month and set up a flashy online shopping mall site, where quickly hundreds of customers had paid for having their own online stores.
I wasn't very satisfied with my online website design tool, even though it actually did much more than anything else available at the time. Unbeknownst to me at first, a big Beverly Hills newspaper used the beta test demo version to put their whole paper online every week, with all previous issues archived. I would have said it was impossible, as it wasn't really a content management system suited for that purpose, but they found ways of working it so that it did what they needed, and were quite happy with it.
I made this opt-in mailing list management system. It handled mailing lists with several million subscribers and daily mailings. One of the companies using it wanted a faster mailing engine. I knew very well what to do, but I needed a C programmer to do a fairly minor piece for me, but instead I insisted on trying to do it myself, and procrastinated it. So instead they spent 1/2 million dollars or so on somebody else's system, which was inferior on various other counts, but it mailed really quickly, and it was supported around the clock by a team of people, where I was just myself.
You catch the drift, I'm sure.
So, if you're the right kind of person, and any of this is of the slightest interest, let me know. More >
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