Learning and Discovering

Accelerated Learning - Better School Grades - An Artists Approach
Learning and discovery go hand in hand. Most of us want to discover things and some of us have unearthed ways to do that. The first thing an artist does, and there are many brilliant artists, is assign priorities in the right order. The highest priority goes to you, the learner, the young artist, the one who wants to learn. You need to get to grips with yourself as a person before you can really begin the process of accelerating your learning.
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Why it is important to make mistakes and get lost
I often get lost wandering through the many hedged lanes of Devon and Somerset. These tiny lanes are only wide enough for a small car to travel one way. The walking is not easy because the lanes go up and down hills, often very steep hills, and you can find yourself huffing and puffing. My longest walks occur when I get thoroughly lost. The sign posting is not very helpful sometimes because it directs you around in circles until you finally realize your destination is somewhere in the middle of a circle. By that time you are so tuckered out that you collapse by the side of the lane, put your feet up and fall asleep. Then, you dream while you listen to nature humming around you.
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Knowledge Creation Using the Internet
The Internet is not just a means for disseminating information, it is also a vehicle of knowledge creation. In our highly scientific world, we need verification of results of studies and experiments before we consider them to be valid.
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Merging Reality with Unreality to Produce Novelty
It seems unfair that people have much shorter lives that trees, especially the yew tree. What does man do about that?Man's reality is his mortality. Man's unreality is his having a life at all. Man's desire is to make life fair and even. Man's actions are to destroy that which reminds him of his own mortality.
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A Vision of Continuously Improving Science and Religion
In the Wuh Lax world that I envisage, the control of errors is accomplished by continuously improving on the methods of solving and coping with challenges. We sometimes forget that our world is constantly changing, that all existence whether physical, ethereal, spiritual or formal, is subject to change because everything is as an aspect of process.
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The Universe May be Like the Earliest Video Games
This is a difficult one to get your head around philosophically and conceptually, but not impossible. What if you were living in a round room and it had four doors? Two of the doors are left handed and the other two are right handed.
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The Automated Computer Virus is a New Threat
The world of safe computing is getting increasingly more difficult as malware producers paid by organized crime syndicates are stealing your information through automated Trojan horse and virus creation. That is the frightening message of an article by Brian Krebs in today's Washington Post on line.
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Researching on the Internet for News and Information
The Internet is revolutionizing the way we see and gather information about our world. It is a very effective research tool. What follows is just a sampling of the better sites that you can use to find information:
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What is Not Coincidence - Internet Use Monitoring
Probably, what you do not realize is how fast the Internet operates on light and how quickly everything that you communicate via the Internet can be stored onto tape.
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Life Sciences and Philosophy

Life Consequences of Misunderstood or Only Partially Understood Laws
We might ask who was ultimately responsible for the events of 911 in New York, and if we do we are presenting the question from the space-time world of classical physics. The tendency is to think that something was done to America, rather than to think that America attracted a negative force. The events of 911 were America's wake up call.
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Think Positively in All That you Do - A Gitomer World
One of the most positive individuals to hit the book stands in recent years, deposing Norman Vincent Peale, is an author going by the name of Jeffery Gitomer.
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The Problem with Paradoxes and Coincidences
The problem is that they occur and sometimes coincide. Such was my day. I had been thinking about the pentagon discovered in our universe that some scientists think represents the shape of the forces acting on the microwave background. It would appear that if you leave our universe in a cosmic sense, that you may enter it at the same time. The shape of things is five side and can be conceived in three dimensions, but that is only the start. The dimensions bend themselves around and come back at you in a strange way.
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What is Coincidence?
I am prompted to write about coincidence because of three events that have happened to me during the past twenty-four hours. The first is a coincidence of a 'word,' and the second is a coincidence of an event in time. The two coincidences together contrive to create an event in my mind that tells me something meaningful.
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Figuring it all out, Coincidence, Fate, Luck, God, or the Source of Being
What is the true nature of our world, or is it even a world. Who or what governs it. I am never really sure whether my friends think that it is a rightful preooccupation for anyone to try to figure it all out. That has been the bane of serious speculation through the ages. "Who are you to speculate about such unknowable matters?" "What is your authority?" Even worse, people who did come up with new ideas were called heretics. They were stoned, burned at the stake, poisoned, clubbed to death, shot, to name but a few of the awful outcomes.
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The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 1. The Self
The processes of discovery require a sense of personal awareness that we might not realize. We discover things in many ways at many times. Often, we don't realize that we have made a discovery. Then, suddenly our brain kicks in and says, "Wake Up! You have discovered something new. Be aware! Be conscious of what it is that you are perceiving!"
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The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 2. The Group
Groups, like people, engage in processes of self discovery. One of the less attractive aspects to this is that groups can be leaderless. When an individual is leaderless, we say the individual is insane. When a group is leaderless, we need to say that the group is also insane. Insanity occrus when the individual or the group despite self awareness has no leadership to limit behaviour. It is like a ship on a vast sea without a captain. The ship may or may not try to find shore. Those on the ship squabble interminably about what direction the ship should take or what allegiance it should have to what nation or people.
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'What the Bl...p Do We Know' As a Mantra
Its become sort of common place these days to denigrate established ideas with the notion that there is something within easy reach that will replace them. That this is not the case comes as a surprise to those who were not aware of the traditional views in the first place. This usually means young people.
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Do Random Events Happen?
One way to consider random events is by seeing them as events arising where there is no intervention. In the world of mathematical statistics, we have the possibility of a mathematical equation or system of equations that seemingly creates a series or wave forms that one could consider random. People even patent such generators. In the real world, and especially if the cosmos could be considered as a ginormous calculator, we have 'something or somethings' that seemingly generate what appear to be random events. Such random distributions are even said to be normal.
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Economies in Crisis

What Some People are Saying About the Credit Crisi...
History repeats itself. The story of economics is that new generations don't seem to have the capacity to learn from previous generations. Everyone seems to get wrapped up in a frenzy of greed and fear. Few people around the world will remain unaffected by what is happening in America. It is unfortunate because of the numbers of older vulnerable people on fixed incomes that will be impacted severely. They worked to reap their rewards of retirement only to find the government had not drawn up the rules of play for the banking systems carefully enough and much of their futures were under threat from inaction and complacency.
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A Review of Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nichola...
If you are a stock market investor, this is the book you should be reading if you have not done so already. It would have been easier for you had you absorbed what Taleb has to say many years ago, but now you have had a taste of the negative, you can turn your efforts into the positive. I remember attending the lectures of John Kenneth Galbraith who spoke often of stock market crashes. His ideas were based on a thorough reading and analysis of the 1929 crash. Investing in the stock market is gambling, but it may be the only way that the 'small' investor has to get a portion of the capitalist economic pie. The rewards of investing in stocks and shares can be considerable, but the small investor has always to be aware of the sharks and black holes.
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Weathering the Financial Storms Yet to Come
There are storms of many kinds: snow storms such as covered the Eastern portions of North America and financial storms that cover the globe. You might ask why the US economy when it is producing so much in the way of armaments has such a slow growth relative to other countries. The means that armaments could be taking a largish share of the productive capacity. Is military spending government spending, and who pays for it? When? And, obviously, who dies for it?
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The Roller Coaster of Speculation
The world has a lot of liquidity despite the credit crunch in America which started the process of adjustment towards a sustainable balance of opinions. What governs the economy these days is not so much anything that is solid, but which portfolio mix will satisfy your risk preferences. For better or worse, we live in a world of speculation and the roads that we normally follow are weakening and blowing away like the sands of a desert in a storm.
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Energy, Inflation, Growth, Interest Rates, Exchange ....
After a very long period when inflation seemed to be very much under control in the United States and the UK, we had better than average bursts of trading-up in the stock and property markets. The US dollar lost ground to the Euro, the Canadian dollar and the Pound. United States, the UK and Canada were economies to watch despite their seeming success at restraining inflation. All three were involved in fighting foreign wars which still are costly, and which seem to have no end.
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Is the Profit Motive for New Therapeutic Chemical ...
Who said that the profit motive works? If the profit motive worked, we would have saved billions of lives of people in developing countries who have died of disease. As it is, the children have died and we are responsible for not pushing our governments in Western economise to act more decisively and more effectively. I can think of no better solution to many economic problems that an over expansion of the therapeutic research at government expense ... forget the private sector. It has failed to deliver the goods to the third world. Why should we help the third world fight disease?
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Maximizing Value or Efficiency But Not Both
Economists can't have it both ways. On the one hand, they know that competition is imperfect, but, on the other hand, they talk about maximizing value and the need for competition. My point is that the two are incompatible most of the time because people generally do not know what is best for their environment.
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Economists Search For Equilibrium
A constant theme in economic thought has been that of equilibrium. But, the search for equilibrium was always elusive. Even Karl Marx in his Das Kapital was under the illusion that an economic system would at some time reach an equilibrium. Others knew better, and it was Joseph Schumpeter, a Harvard professor and economic historian, who was studying business cycles, concluded that the capitalist economic system, and for that matter any economic system did not linger in an equilibrium. He even felt that there was no dynamic equilibrium, and pointed to new commodities as the reason. Economies are constantly subject to innovation he wrote.
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How much will the US Fed Lower Interest Rates?
I can remember a time when the SDR value of the US dollar was above 1.00! What we have is desperate measures for desperate times. But, don't despair. What the Fed may do is responding to an opportunity provided by the Bank of Canada which lowered interest rates so as to slow down the rise in the Canadian dollar. Its one thing to have your currency appreciate by almost 30 percent, but think what that does to your competitiveness.
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Read About it - Your country is a member of the IM...
Reading about economics and economy is both interesting and may be critical to your comfort and survival. Get the Economist magazine (for an expert view), the Christian Science Monitor (for a balanced view), or the Wall Street Journal and read about what is going on in the messy economic environment that our world leaders have under the Bush administration managed to drag up.
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Investing Wisely as Exchange Rates Move Using the ...
You might have guessed that we have entered a period of financial and economic adjustment. Central banks have lowered interest rates and will lower them further as they seek to minimize the impact of unwise investments by the public and by banks. These unwise investments are imploding in value as people react suddenly to bad news.
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The Seeds of War
It used to be a joke in Montreal that the cement companies, who were controlled by certain Italian interests that had migrated from Chicago required a good project every five or so years. The price of cement was pushed up to $15 from a cost of $5, and a cement tower is added to cream more profit. Thus, we had the St. Lawrence Seaway project, EXPO 67, the Jacques Cartier bridge repair, Mirabelle Airport, Man and His World, the highways to Ottawa and Ontario, the great Hydro projects of northern Quebec, the Liberation of Quebec from Canada, the Unifying of Quebec with Canada.
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The Grand Assise
I was once a junior civil servant given the task of doing whatever I was told. It seems strange now to look back on it, but the issue of world debt has been an issue with me for much of my career in government and private industry.
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Debt as a Cause of Wars
Over the past year, I have been engaged in taking the first steps towards making a film of the Wuh Lax stories and "The Cosmic Lantern." This is an enormous challenge and theoretically beyond the budget of the most determined independent film producers. I suppose the mistake of a film producer would be to underestimate the vision that The Cosmic Lantern contains. This is not just a story but a series of stories with enormous potential. It hits at the heart of western civilization with its emphasis on performance above all else. It challenges the audience with the economics of debt which provide an explanation of why otherwise peaceful communities are drawn into war.
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America's Economic Prospects for the Longer Term
No one wants to hear the bad news. Everyone puts their head in the sands and waits for the stampede to pass. This time it won't be like that. The process of adjustment for America will be slow and arduous as it has been for countries in the Far East. We once called these countries the economic tigers of Asia. Suddenly, they became devalued and we saw goods appearing on our shelves some 25 to 50 percent lower in cost than before. America went crazy with imports and the goods from Asia flowed in like a dam burst of the ice age. Now, its America's turn. Few would recall that the Asian crisis was a result of firms in Asia locking on to the dollar and borrowing until the cows came home.
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America's Failed Economic and Political Policies
Economic policies of the United States over the years of the Bush administration threaten to push the world economy into severe recession and damage prospects for solution to many of the world's energy problems. Why be optimistic about the prospects for solving the world environmental crises when the United States, which should be leading the world forward, has made such a wonderous mess of things? Most disasterous of all is the way the unfair distribution of incomes has hit intelligent and willing people who are in need of resources to participate more effectively in the modern economic age.
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The Problem with Energy Prices
Once long ago, I did a study of European energy use and real economic growth that showed its real annual growth rate average of 6 percent, yes 6 percent, seems impossible now, was achieved by real average growth rate of energy consumption of 17 percent, also a seemingly impossibly high figure! Small wonder then that when these numbers or the real effect of these numbers were absorbed by those owning crude oil, there was a shock that eventually resulted in the oil cartel. Of course, Libya was the country providing the oil!
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Millionaires in a Row
The world is full of copy cats each one of them trying to become a millionaire, and if they do thinking that they have discovered something special about themselves that makes them in some way superior.In an earlier blog, I wrote of the weakness in the ideas about the law of attraction as put forward in book written by several authors and entitled The Secret. Obviously, publishing is one of the easiest ways to become rich. One of my former bosses used to remark that the Catholic Church became wealthy from its publications, and he is right.
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Demand and Supply of Property
It is interesting to watch the expectations of those riding off the recent boom in house prices in the US and the UK. In both countries, there has been an enormous amount of captial put into the creation and revamping of property. If the amount of such investment is excessive what results is a downswing of activity until demand picks up to bring overall demand for property in line with long term needs. Whether these needs may be somewhat higher than in the past is an interesting question. Needs are an essential ingredient to the equations that bring about a balance in supply and demand.
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The Irony of Business As Usual
Have you ever sensed that the world is in a disconnected state from its own reality. You will mainly get this feeling when you experience two very different activities of people that are going in opposite directions at once.
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On the One Hand, but On the Other Hand
At this moment, I feel very much like Larry David, when he holds out two hands. He is weighing what appear to be two alternatives, either the prescription from his doctor or the advice of his pharmacist which proposes an alternative prescription. The world is so made that we have alternatives, and it was my luck that I chose at a university age the science of alternatives, economics.
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Opinions in Passing

Really Useful Boxes - North American Distribution ...
You can't image how useful these boxes are. And, they seem to be without a North American distributor despite being offered on the Internet through various distributors.
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Canon Sets the Pace for HD Video Cameras
In my opinion, Canon seems miles ahead of the competition when it comes to digital reflex and high definition video cameras. Its all the patents they hold and the quality of design of their products. If you have a problem with your Canon camera share it with me, AW Lake. Otherwise I will continue to think that they are the greatest for creating JPG stills and MPEG-2 video files that you can share on the Internet.
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Blogging from Turtle Bay In Hawaii and the Arnold ...
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my priorities are all a twist when it comes to golf. This morning, I walked along the coast of the North West of Hawaii's island of Oahu. Not far from where we are staying is the wonderful course designed, I understand, by Arnold Palmer. Was I attracted to the golf course first? Well no!
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Getting it Right
If you have ever speculated about anything, you will realize how difficult it is to get something right when you are working from very partial information. Recently, I engaged myself in the process of trying to understand why the Roman legion which was supposed to be in Dumnonia, the Second Augusta Legion at the time of Boudicca's rebellion, did not come to the rescue of the Romans attacked by Boudicca in the east of England near London or Colchester.
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Who was King Arthur? The Scoop
For many years, I have been reading about the British legendary King Arthur. I am even, at this very time, writing a book as part of my Wuh Lax novel series that will present the idea that King Arthur actually existed, but was lost in history. The name of my novel is Wuh Lax and the Lost King.
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The Death Portion of the Microsoft Based Software ...
One of the most difficult tasks in economics is the forecasting of destructive cycles in new technology. The economics scientist and historian Joseph Schumpeter frequently wrote about the underlying cycles within industrial society that bring about irreversible technical change. He used the term creative destruction and he saw it as a process in which capitalism contained within the very strands of motion which forced radical departures from previous industrial structures.
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Form Madness - Please Enter Zip Code
Wishing to purchase Apple iTunes software expert is asked to complete form. He is told country is United States, but has entered information for UK. He tries to change country but finds that it is the only element in form that cannot be changed.
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Install New Software No Problem
Computer guy has paid for and downloaded software from internet. He clicks on execute icon to install program and enters name, company and product ID when asked. Installation program wizzes into action and blue lines cross over computer screen as files are copied across. Suddenly, there is a beep. The installation has paused and query pops up.
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Introduction to Wim and Wooh

A SAMPLE OF PAGES

Welcome to Wooooooh's Stream
I began Wooh's blogspot in November 2007 during a coffee break from my painting and sketching. Since then I have prepared over 200 blog pages, and blogging, the daily writing that I do, covers a broad range of topics. Over several years, I have established myself as a struggling author of books for all ages. My pen name is AW Lake, and my friends call me Arthur, or Art.
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How to Make This Blogspot Your Home Page
These instructions are for Microsoft Internet Explorer users. First load the Control Panel using the menu item on your 'Start Menu.' Find the 'Internet Options' icon. In the top entry box type in: http://woohs.blogspot.com . Save the results. That's all that you probably have to do.
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The World of the Coffee Breaks and Books
The most wonderful thing about America, for me, at least, is the association of coffee with relaxing, reading books, and of absorbing books with learning. When I first lived in Washington, DC, it took me a while to get over the culture shock of the American way of packaging and presenting food.
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Burt's World of Delicious Dark Chocolat
In an earlier blog, I was praising the moments when one sat quietly with a mug of coffee and a book. A reader quite rightly pulled me up on this saying that I had omitted to mention the additional pleasure one can get by adding dark bitter sweet chocolate.
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Snowed in like Many People in North America
In case you had not noticed, it snowed again! Most people don't like the snow, but as part Canadian, I would be strange if I did not like the snow.
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The Canadian Identity - Does One Exist?
Canadians often ask the question whether or not a Canadian identity exists. Having lived in Quebec for almost a decade as I was growing up. Having lived also in Ontario for many years. Having lived in the UK for many years. And, having lived in United States for many years, I think that I am fairly qualified to answer this question looking at it from many points of view.

Au Canada, l'idéal est que des personnes soient capables de parler les deux langues couramment. Je suis coupable de pouvoir parler couramment une seule langue (anglais), et les autres langues moins couramment (français). Ce n'est pas parce que je n'ai pas essayé de parler français. J'ai vécu au Québec pendant une bonne partie de ma vie, et pendant que j'étais là, je parle français la plupart du temps. C'est avec regret que j'ai quitté le Québec après avoir obtenu son diplôme de l'Université McGill, mais l'impact du Québec sur ma façon de penser est incomparable, même aujourd'hui.
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Little Boy Big Dog
Little boy is three years old. Big dog is three years old, a loving golden lab. No one around! Little boy wants to get from garage to living room, but big dog is in the kitchen and the kitchen is in front of the living room. Little boy has to pass big dog if little boy wishes to arrive in living room!
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Welcome to Wooooooh's Stream

FROM MY DESK

I began Wooh's blogspot in November 2007 during a coffee break from my painting and sketching. Since then I have prepared over 200 blog pages, and blogging, the daily writing that I do, covers a broad range of topics. Over several years, I have established myself as a struggling author of books for all ages. My pen name is AW Lake, and my friends call me Arthur, or Art.

Over many years, I used to work behind desks in offices in buildings in big cities. This I exchanged for the joy of independent painting and sketching in a rural area away from the madding crowd. Increasingly, I have done writing for pleasure. I read a lot, and when I do I enjoy reading complete series of books, such as the Hary Potter series by JK Rowling, or the Captain Aubrey series by Patrick Obrien. I am reasonably well educated believing in continuing education as a rule of thumb. I have not always studied for degrees, but for the acquisition of new skills and for the joy of learning.

Why are the Pacific Hawaiian and Atlantic British Words for Going to the Loo the Same?

RHINE VIEW

There sometimes is no obvious logic to things. In Britain, we go to the 'loo', while in Hawaii, they go to the 'lua', which is pronounced virtually the same. For a word that is so basic to a language, one has to wonder why they are more or less identical. Is the Hawaiian 'lua' a result of the British past on Hawaii? It would be wierd, would it not, if the Pacific Islanders had discovered Britain some 15,000 years ago, and left this word as a residue influence. Stranger things have happened.

Design Science, Round Houses, and Innovation

BEAUTIFUL WHITE HORSE

When we look at the beauty that nature has designed into its creatures over many hundred millions of years, we have to wonder at the relative ugliness that man has designed into the majority of modern habitats for the ordinary person.

People deserve an attractive habitat that gives a positive force to their living. What tends to happen is a separation of quality of habitat such that your higher income people live in areas separated away from those of more modest means. This results in a general habitat for the community that is spotty. It's really nice in some areas and really ugly in others.

I think nature, which has had a head start on human logic by many million years, is trying to tell us something. The first thing nature tells us is that rectangles are not as good in designing habitats as spheres and rounded shapes. If we examine the work of honey bees we see that even they adapted the straight line and improved on the rectangle with shapes that are six sided. Are we less intelligent than the honey bee? Nature shows us many things about drainage and water proofing, hydrolysis and energy absorption from the sun. All these technologies of nature can be adapted by man to improve human habitats.

Buckminster Fuller the inventer and innovator developed the theoretical base for a new science, which he dubbed design science. Design science is based on mathematics that goes beyond the boringly familiar geometries of rectangles. Jay Kappraff, the mathematician rediscovered design science for himself and then suddenly became aware of Buckminster Fuller's work. By observing nature both individuals opened the way for many others to follow and based on their ideas, we can build architectural structures for all people that provide a more welcoming habitat.

The Roller Coaster of Speculation

SHAKING LANES AND ROUGH ROAD AHEAD

The world has a lot of liquidity despite the credit crunch in America which started the process of adjustment towards a sustainable balance of opinions. What governs the economy these days is not so much anything that is solid, but which portfolio mix will satisfy your risk preferences. For better or worse, we live in a world of speculation and the roads that we normally follow are weakening and blowing away like the sands of a desert in a storm.

This is what happens in the mature stages of war economies. The authorities have pumped so much liquidity into the system to finance the war that they are addicted to their own form of speculation which says that the war must be won at all costs. More and more money is pumped into winning and the cycle becomes one of excessive speculation in an investment in war. A bad economy results from investment excesses as there is a day of reckoning when the war is seen as a bad investment, or at least not a very good one. Its all relative, for while America spends money on investing in the war other countries can spend money on investing in goods and services not attached to war efforts. China, India, Continental Europe, and Russia, if it is wise, can leapfrog into better commercial positioning for the peace that follows a bitter war.

They are, in a very real sense, investing in peace. Listen to what Clinton and Obama are saying. They are saying that speculation in the benefits of fighting the war have to end. McCain is still unsure, but he has a history of struggling through the worse of situations, a dogged fighter, a formidable foe! And, they are right, but the big question is how much is enough. Well, the hidden costs of fighting in the middle east are going to hit all levels of the economy as mugwumpers try to assess their complex speculative positions.

When one sees speculation in gold one knows something really bad is going down. Offsetting the speculation in wheat is effect of farmers realizing the potential gains of growing more grain. These have induced the farmer to sow an extra large seasonal crop. That's wonderful you say, the farmer is the seasoned veteran of speculations. Dealing all the time with changing weather patterns, wind, and water, wet and dry, the farmer, however, is in no better position to speculate wisely. What we often see when farmers speculate is over investment.

Its almost as if there is a disconnect between farmers and the reality of wild speculation as it emerges. The plain fact is that follow the buck speculation without any regard for historical patterns of excess leads to wild results. A solution to a problem, you might say, but what happens after over-investment is a long, a very long period of under investment, as those that have been burned hedge their bets. The key is to dampen speculation so as to bring about a more orderly mix of views that achieves a longer term investment path that is sustainable.

Burt's World of Delicious Dark Chocolat

WESSEX CHURCH INTERIOR

In an earlier blog, I was praising the moments when one sat quietly with a mug of coffee and a book. A reader quite rightly pulled me up on this saying that I had omitted to mention the additional pleasure one can get by adding dark bitter sweet chocolate.

In my case, living in England for much of the time, this is a square or two of Green and Blacks, Organic Bittersweet Dark Chocolate with 70 percent cocoa content. The bar of dark chocolate that I presently see before me mentions that it is certified organic by California Certified Organic Farmers. So I must have bought it in America!

You can buy the Fair Trade dark chocolate at your local OXFAM book store, should you live in Britain. Not only do you have an opportunity help the starving, but you get a chance to acquire a second hand book at a very reasonable price. If you buy Fair Trade products, you can make a difference. This is not intended to sound like an advert, but it does. I apologize!

The Automated Computer Virus is a New Threat

ANALYSIS BY LAYERS

The world of safe computing is getting increasingly more difficult as malware producers paid by organized crime syndicates are stealing your information through automated Trojan horse and virus creation. That is the frightening message of an article by Brian Krebs in today's Washington Post on line.

We know of the dangers of Internet spying, but we still live with the notion that it cannot happen to us. It should alarm you that the software houses that protect your computer and your network are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up. You may need to go off the net, or have an off net network that is absolutely secure.

Energy, Inflation, Growth, Interest Rates, Exchange Rates, and the Fed

LONDON UNDERGROUND SEAT

After a very long period when inflation seemed to be very much under control in the United States and the UK, we had better than average bursts of trading-up in the stock and property markets. The US dollar lost ground to the Euro, the Canadian dollar and the Pound. United States, the UK and Canada were economies to watch despite their seeming success at restraining inflation. All three were involved in fighting foreign wars which still are costly, and which seem to have no end.

Background as I see it

You would think that the financial districts of these countries would be thinking longer term than they were. We had the experience of money financed wars in the past. The weaknesses of the currencies used to finance them resulted in more US dollars in the international system than people wished to hold.

Ross Perot and his campaign in the United States got the people there aware of the dangers of money supply growth spillovers into debt financing of Government spending for the purpose of arma ment building or war waging. In his period, it was the effort by Reagan to dominate the surge in military protectionism that would bring Russia and the Solviet Union to the bargaining table on their military ambitions. The end to the cold war resulted. One wonders whether the existing administration has the common sense to see Russia as one of the key players for peace in our time.

The problem as I see it

The story is very different now. The United States is very much in hock to Asian economies, which have adjusted to previous excesses using US dollars for growth. Now they have a better mix of borrowings to finance development at a pace that Europe and America cannot match. What the Fed did was monitor inflation rates in the US and try to jump start the US economy through lower interst rates and cheaper money. This worked as long as the American consumer was willing to pile on additional debt to keep the economy and GDP bouyant. The problem has been that it worked so well that many had their wardrobe and housing needs met only to find that the economy has soured in the short term and does not look to good in the long term either.

When modern day economists want 'cheap high' growth numbers they tend to push the housing market and keep the price of houses outside of the inflation index. What they are doing is pushing consumption forward in time and creating the subsequent economic downswing. Their saving grace is that people do not adjust to a slowdown in consumption but persist by getting further and further into debt. The banks take risks and feed the persistence of consumption habit extending the period over which excessive consumption occurs without adjustment. The economy figures in this period look good because real consumption the figure that banks and businesses watch is reasonably high. The economists realize that the economy is growing too fast, but the political cycle just happens to sway them to take a political line and not an economic one. They pray for what's called a soft landing.

What we have in America is a very long term problem because we have a country that has burned its real economy out. Consumers are hocked up to the nine jars. Things may be partially saved by financial innovation as it adjusts to the present cycle of boom and bust. It will not have long term recovery until a huge group of innovations come down the pipe line. These are likely to be associated with energy production and distribution as well as cut backs by consumers of products that are energy inefficient.

Gratuitously, the American economy is telling its people that the way to end the present severe recession is by falling behind efforts to make the economy far more energy efficient that it has in the past self-identified with. To sum up, what is needed now is a brilliant effort on the part of the Fed to reexamine its approach to inflation by including inflationary pressures in energy and housing into its mathematics more forcefully than in the past.

This does not mean higher interest rates once people have had a chance to lock into fixed interest rate loans, but higher rates may want to happen if only to give the dollar some credibility.

Economics is now about adjusting the balances of energy use.

What is going to bring about the long term balance in America needs to be an innovation push. The resulting domestic growth arising in the real US economy productive sectors would save matters rather than money growth and imports. It's neither one thing nor the other, it is both. This means that both the forces underlying supply and demand have to be understood as part of the energy resource equation. The supply thing is that America needs to get alternatives to oil. It cannot go on importing the Texan way and letting oil run the economy. If it does not find the alternatives, then everyone will see and inflationary economy, no economic growth to speak of, and much higher interest rates.

Moreover, the alternatives can come from many sources: a tougher stance with the automobile companies to bring the efficiency of new cars over 50 miles to the gallon. The best thing would be for consumers not to by anything less, even if it meant that a severe adjustment resulted. The second is for a wave of investments into making all homes and appliances far more energy efficient. Widely published standards of efficiency are needed and every appliance should be graded by the standards. In effect, the economy needs to trade up its products to ones that are about ten times more efficient than existing products.

We can get really excited about the US economy on the basis of its innovative capacity, but not under present leadership and administration. I am thinking that the only one that really would know how to bring about the changes needed is someone like Al Gore, but he is too unpopular. On the basis of experience and knowledge about which economists would do the best management job, Hilary Clinton would be my next choice, and she really wants to slow down the deficit spending on the external war efforts. Good for her! There are so many opportunities out there for Americans to enjoy, but they need to take a leadership role in innovation. I like Barack and maybe he would have the necessary insights, as well, but he needs to prove he understands energy economics and would take Americans into a more efficient energy future.

Researching on the Internet for News and Information

WALKING IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

The Internet is revolutionizing the way we see and gather information about our world. It is a very effective research tool. What follows is just a sampling of the better sites that you can use to find information:

Leading Search Sites

The most popular of the search sites is Google.

Leading Blog Search Sites

One that has great categories would seem to be Digg.
For general info there is also Reddit.
For IT and computer nerds there is Slashdot.
For media commentary there is NewAssignment.
For legal information there is Scotusblog.
To set up your own blog feeds and sources use Google Reader.

Personal networking sites

Very popular is Facebook.
There is Twitter.
Interestingly, there is Friendfeed.

The Economics of Spherical or Round Homes

IS A BOAT A SPHERICAL HOME?

What on crazy earth is AW Lake thinking about now? Spherical homes! What on earth is a spherical home? Is it a yurt? Well no! It isn't.

1. May be more suitable for overcrowded areas
Well, I am not quite sure, but to give you an idea you can visit 'This is London' where the designer Martin Manpuch is well on the way to popularizing such homes as a solution to overcrowding in the London, England region.

2. May be more suitable in windy areas
My curiosity is raised by the resemblance of some homes in Asia, and the Pacific to homes in early Britain, and to homes in Africa. These are round homes and have their very modern counterpart in design efforts. Perhaps they can withstand hurricanes better and may be more suitable on islands or the Florida coast line where there are harsh winds. New construction technologies are emerging.

3. May be more suitable in damp areas
A sphere with a water proof base would obviously have advantages in wet areas. build a home like a tree with roots that go down deep. Lift the home off the ground using the concrete post in the center that offers a way up and down as well as supports the center of the structure.

4. May withstand earthquakes better
The idea of a dome structure seems safer and stronger in earthquakes. The dome that floats or spherical home that floats would survive as the ground sand turned fluid.

5. May be more environmental friendly
A round house reduces the area that loses heat. Try the mathematics. See examples at energy shows.

6. May be more fun to live in
Geodesic domes are a very real possibility. Think of all the ways that homes could be designed. One could even have a slide to get out of the spherical home that no-one could use as an entrance. Kids would love the new atmosphere.

7. May be more economic to build
A dome uses less material to build. It has to do with technology of circles and spheres as in the case of building super tankers. Do the mathematics and see. Round houses served the British community for millenia.

8. May help to reduce unemployment in industrial countries
By building more round houses, we can help create new employment opportunites for design and construction technologies. These new technologies can embody the latest discoveries for environmentally friendly construction.

9. May use technologies intensively and lead to new technologies
There is an interesting possibility of building your spherical home underground. You would need to watch out for roots, but you could let the trees grow and you could pipe in light. There is the possibility of new materials and design. At the very base of the sphere one could have a ballast to hold it in place!

10. May be easier to use in friendly community design efforts
There is a desire of people and communities to return to round house designs and people will fight to see the technology is implemented. What we have is a failure of commercial follow up because the craftsmen are not trained to think in the round. We could perhaps think of designs coming from China where round houses in communities are very successful.

11. May build home owner pride more effectively
Round homes are certainly the preference for those that have the money. They tend to have space and other outdoor living room areas that the home owner can beautify while contributing to the environment planning trees and creating a canopy effect for birds and small animals.

12. May allow personalities more expression
There is something about a round house that is inviting. Its not correct to say that such houses are not possible because there aren't that many around. Would that people demanded more round houses and thought of ways to put their personality into the dwellings that they owned.

13. May use new materials and lead to innovation of new building techniques
This link to experimental design in England does not suggest something very modern, but designs of round houses have improved a lot. What the round house did accomplish were eco-friendly goals and these beat most modern rectangular house hands down.

14. May be easier on the eyes
From very ancient times, our ancestors knew the beauty of round circles and communities of different types of round houses have survived for millenia.

15. May be more energy efficient.
The newer designs for round houses are obviously more energy efficient.

16. May be more robot friendly
Robots can negotiate a round house by going round in circles. They don't get caught in corners! Does that mean that round houses will be the future. What do you think?

17. May be more user friendly
What are round house like to live in? They do fetch a good price because of their rarity.

The World of the Coffee Breaks and Books

AMERICA'S STATUE OF LIBERTY IN NYC

The most wonderful thing about America, for me, at least, is the association of coffee with relaxing, reading books, and of absorbing books with learning. When I first lived in Washington, DC, it took me a while to get over the culture shock of the American way of packaging and presenting food.

Take a Coffee Break in a Book Store

Its important to take regular coffee or tea breaks, walk around, do some stretches, relax and get rid of tensions, chat with some people, laugh and smile, daydream. The coffee that you drink can give gives you stimuli that you need to work smoothly and alertly. My favourite times are the memorable coffee breaks that I have had with family, friends, colleagues at work, strangers around the world, people at conferences, and people in book stores. The best thing for the book store has been its association with coffee and with relaxation. A book store without a coffee shop are no longer attractive.

Food Differences

As a Brit, I felt that American food looked rather soggy. I know this seems strange, and I know Jay Leno's recent comments on late night TV about British food are something similar. His attitude is that British food was pasty, not very appetizing. Boy, have things changed! Now, I think British food is right up there with the best of the best, especially the pub food. Americans have wonderful chains of grocery stores that sell healthy foods. The chefs have changed almost everything for the better, or so I would like to think. Even school food is getting better! I am told. Food generally now seems to being prepared in more appetizing ways, but there is lots to do.

My experience has been that shopping for better quality food, especially coffees for your coffee breaks brings enormous personal benefits. I have moved off sugar and sweeteners in my coffee by eating something sweet alongside my coffee. That something is a something that I would have eaten anyway, such as a zone bar, or blueberry oat bar. I try stay away from anything that contains wheat flour, eggs, fructose, and milk.

Ever heard the expression that it is the white things that are bad for your health. It seems true in my case: white sugar, white sweetener, salt, white bread, white flour, white milk, and the white of an egg.

Places of Meditation

I have a places of meditation and they are not far from books and coffee. Avoid people and places that do not offer you peace and quiet. Develop an inner peace that comes from learning and from being at ease with yourself and your world. Begin quietly in a coffee shop alone with your thoughts. Then, gradually free your mind from your thoughts and just allow yourself to drift into a state of relaxation and meditation. Awaken after twenty minutes and join in the 'fun.'

Life Consequences of Misunderstood or Only Partially Understood Laws

NYC SKYLINE WAS CHANGED BY EVENTS

We might ask who was ultimately responsible for the events of 911 in New York, and if we do we are presenting the question from the space-time world of classical physics. The tendency is to think that something was done to America, rather than to think that America attracted a negative force. The events of 911 were America's wake up call. There are those that see such damning events as arising through what is referred to as the secret. This approach suggests that American's attracted their own karma or destructive force. In a way this is true, but we do not ultimately know whether the force operated from with America or came from outside. There are some who write very interesting material on their own personal experience with the secret, the laws of attraction. In contrast, I, then proposed my ideas of 'the laws of association,' which fall within a cause-effect dynamic rather than an acausal 'quantum' or 'semi-mythological' dynamic. This was my response to the notion that your mind has to be tuned into the positive vibrations of the universe, which I think is correct. The problem still remains that the distribution of benefits is hierarchical, very uneven, because the skills of the the tuning instruments in our respective brains is distributed unevenly! In other words, even if the 'mythological' laws of attraction do work, some people are better at initiating them than others because they have brains that are more easily tuned to the positive vibrations.

The laws of attraction assume that events happen because of something that you do to attract them. The laws of association assume that events happen because of something that you do to associate yourself with the sources of events. In many ways, the laws of attraction and the laws of association are very similar, but there are subtle differences. The laws of association are closer to laws that you can research and can verify by means of the scientific method. You need science. The laws of attraction are not yet laws that you can verify by the scientific method. You need faith. The laws of attraction are not verifiable because they are based on a wonderful mythology of waves with agents at the source of the waves who are actually working with or on you for whatever reason, but mythology, nevertheless, has its value.

As an aside, when I write my blogs, I am trying to lead the reader down a pathway, a dynamic of thought, that the reader might not otherwise follow. Initially, the reader may or may not be attracted to the title of my blog page. By associating with the page, the reader will learn how to think and this will be an importance step towards independence and freer movement of thought and living. My ideas will attempt to point in directions that will give greater freedom in terms of moving towards a longer length of life. This approach emphasizes the economics of the life cycle that are often forgotten. If you extend your life by living longer, then you do the impossible. What you do not want to do is attract death by associating with those things that increase your probability of dying. If you engage in risky behaviour of any sort, you may attract forces of association, as well, as attraction. Now that's a thought, so be careful.

We forget economics at our peril for it is the economic laws that really govern our universe and not the physical laws. The beauty of the economic laws is that they include us and our dynamic in ways that we would not expect. The laws of economics are all powerful as the Fed is just now realizing as it tries to bring America back from the brink of disaster. What Americans do not realize is that terrorism has as its most effective weapons, the seeds of destruction with the agent of destruction arising from within the victim's own tendencies of excess and addiction. If America is addicted to war then planting the seeds of war will ultimately lead to its destruction. Yes, the seeds of war have been planted, but they are to be understood as coming from within the weaknesses of the US economy and its inherent social instability. Watch the series OZ about the Ozwald maximum security prison to see what I mean.

The seeds of war that are planted by terrorists aim a redirecting destructive tendency of Americans towards addictive processes that can be easily manipulated and lead to unpredictable social consequences. Inflation, debt, doubts about commercial trust, monopolization of resources, excessive ownership, excessive consumption, wasting of energy and fragile resources such as wild animals, dominance of the military sector of the economy, inward migration beyond absorptive capacity, mismanaged or misguided fiscal policy, excessive dependency on imports, and so on. Remember that how we treat our animals is a reflection of our nature. We do best to move away from a violent nature and treat our animals with the love and respect they can thrive on.

What is Coincidence?

SUNSET AT KINCARDINE'S LIGHTHOUSE

I am prompted to write about coincidence because of three events that have happened to me during the past twenty-four hours. The first is a coincidence of a 'word,' and the second is a coincidence of an event in time. The two coincidences together contrive to create an event in my mind that tells me something meaningful.

Sometimes, we have things happen to us that as I put it 'should not happen.' That they happen to me fairly regularly makes me aware of them and causes me to think that there is something unseen going on around me, and that I should possibly accept that there are secret guardians at work, known only by what happens, or that I am missing something about how 'my universe' has been constructed for me to experience, or how my universe is constructed.

I wish that could dismiss the coincidences as deriving from known probabilities, but I can't, even though I am trained as a mathematical statistician. In statistical terms, I am seeking the generating function for events that are unrepeatable. I can never reconstruct the events. They will not happen again in this life cycle. They have a probability of almost zero.

I wish that I had such events to prompt me to gamble but I don't. There is no way that I can possibly benefit from the events other than this blog or by reading a meaning into the events that triggers behaviour that I would not initiate without the events.

My recourse is to re-examine the subject matter of coincidence. I would begin with the book 'The Roots of Coincidence, An Excursion Into Parapsychology' written by Arthur Koestler. Koestler focuses on the possibility of telepathy in the causation of coincidence. This could have contributed to one of my cases, one which occurred yesterday, and which involved a human being, but not to the one which occurred today. Its possible that I am missing something about how the world is constructed.

Let me describe the first coincidence and see what you think. I was in Stratford about two weeks ago, and arrived at the Home Hardware five minutes before closing returning from Orillia. During the five minutes, I picked a colour from about two hundred different colour cards and had the paint mixed. The name of the paint colour was Lily. I painted a bedroom with the paint and used it all up, but needed more for a second coat. I returned to the local Home Hardware, but I had forgotten to bring my colour card and there was no one serving at the paint desk in any event, so I left without paint. I selected a colour card of the colour that I thought that I needed.

Sunday, I returned to the Home Hardware, but in my town which is about 60 miles from the other Home Hardware store, with the correct colour card since I had chosen the wrong colour card the previous day. I had with me the lid of the paint can and it had the codes needed to identify the paint colour. Up to now everything seems pretty normal doesn't it. If you think you are clever tell me what you think the coincident is, based on the above information. I am sure that you cannot.

I handed the lid to a girl behind the paint counter. She was one who mixed up paint. She was one of two girls there and she volunteered to serve me. She went to the computer and entered the numbers, then came back to me and said smiling all the while that this was her colour. She shouted over to the others nearby that someone had named a paint colour after her name, which is Lily. She looked at me, and said, "My name is Lily." I was puzzled and then she explained that the name of the paint colour was 'Lily.' Out of about 200 colours, I had selected 'her' colour and had been served by her. She mixed the paint.

Thinking back on the coincidence, it still seems extraordinary. How many people do you know named 'Lily?' How many Lily's work in paint shops? It was a Sunday, and I could have got the paint on another day when she was not working. I had chosen the paint colour as a split second decision. I could not remember the colour exactly on the Saturday, when I intended to get the paint and forgot the paint tin lid and had lost the paint card. I did not recall the name of the colour of the paint until she told me.

I won't tell you about the other coincidence right now until the story has played out much further. There may be much to record!

Was the above a coincidence? What do you make of it?

Figuring it all out, Coincidence, Fate, Luck, God, or the Source of Being

A HARE'S BREATH

by

AW LAKE

What is the true nature of our world, or is it even a world. Who or what governs it. I am never really sure whether my friends think that it is a rightful preooccupation for anyone to try to figure it all out. That has been the bane of serious speculation through the ages. "Who are you to speculate about such unknowable matters?" "What is your authority?" Even worse, people who did come up with new ideas were called heretics. They were stoned, burned at the stake, poisoned, clubbed to death, shot, to name but a few of the awful outcomes.

The fact is, however, that normal people can't help wondering, and even those like Richard Dawkins, the evolutionist biologist, who preaches the notion of God 'the delusion.' Well, he seems to protest too much! I wonder at his keen interest in this greatest of mysteries. Certainly, the world is moved by the forces of evolution, and most of us, but not all, are now outside of the denial of that. Visits by children to websites that tell us lots about dinosaurs. They prove in a verifiable way that there is a longer earthly history than the Bible allows. Those that think otherwise need to 'Wake up!' as Jesus Christ said. The issue is not whether the Bible is the word of God, but whether we recognize Jesus as evolution, and evidence of evolution as Dr. RM Bucke, of the London, Ontario in the late 1800s, insane assylum would have us believe.

The fact is that Walt Whitman, who lived in Dr. Bucke's time believed in human evolution and believed that he was, himself, part of human evolution. Whitman did things on the battlefield of the American civil war that no humans would normally do. He actually went out onto the battle field and saved lives without fear for his own personal death. Would that the arab terrorists were more like him, and went about saving lives. They would give their cause a tremendous boost if they did.

It is interesting that terrorists take lives rather than saving them. They damage the causes that they are fighting for because they give others the urge to destroy the civilizations from which they have come. If bin Ladin's plan is to destroy Saudi Arabia then he is succeeding. He would do much better giving medicine to dying children.

I am keenly interested in learning about human evolution.

People often ask me, "Do you believe in God?" I find this question often reflects a bias on the part of the questioner. It would not be appropriate to answer, "Whether or not I believe in God is my personal matter. Go mind your own business." My answer is "Yes! I believe in God, and God believes in me!"

Without some form of personal experience no one believes in God. It is important that a person know that they have been visited by God in some meaningful way. If someone said that they had been visited by God, who in some way opened up a communication channel, I would want to know more about the nature of that visit was and more about the nature of the communication channel.

I would not dismiss anyone's claims outright.

Through history, people have claimed that God has opened up communication channels for them. Such people ended frequently up in insane insylums or were killed by others because they were outspoken about something extraordinary that they could not understand. What we have is a failure to communicate. One has to wonder why God fails to communicate more effectively and we can only speculate about the methods that would be used if ever.

In the period recorded by the Bible, Abraham came down from the mountain with the ten commandments written on tablets of stone. The strength of the Bible is that it is the collection of very ancient writings. Many communities may have have had similar experiences, but they did not have writing and could not communicate their experiences for later generations. The Romans did what they could to destroy competing civilizations and any written materials that these civilizations possessed.

The Romans destroyed the civilization based from Carthage; they destroyed the civilization based from Alexandria; they destroyed the civilization based from Mona, Britain; they destroyed the civilization based from Jerusalem. They absorbed the civilization based from Athens. Because the Romans were so destrucive of other civilizations, they impoverished the world in ways that we can only begin to imagine. What we have received down the ages is a very narrow Roman slant on history and civilization. We know too little about the Carthagean, Alexandrian, Monian, and Jewish civilizations and experiences. Western culture, based dominantly on the Roman civilization, is a fragment of what it could have been. Our potential Western heritage was destroyed by the aggressive war like Roman culture.

The crusades helped to regained some culture that perculated through from North Africa into Spain, eventually, to spawn the Renaissance several hundred years later. That was a very slow process and did nothing to redress the losses, for example, to replace the pharmacopea of the Alexandrian civilization that would have given us medicine and would have resulted in more rapid population growth and possibily the escape from the spread of disease that wiped out so many people. Some of the worst of the great plagues might have been avoided! We might have had a knowledge of microbes and germs many generations earlier.

In any event the improverishment of knowledge, that the Roman dominance of the continent caused, resulted in its own declining influence and eventually in the crusades which were the first serious and well financed attempts to recover lost knowledge.

The crusaders may have been the one's to rediscover penicillin, but how was that information lost.

Accelerated Learning - Better School Grades - An Artist's Approach

WESTERN BARBADOS SHORE

Learning and discovery go hand in hand. Most of us want to discover things and some of us have unearthed ways to do that. The first thing an artist does, and there are many brilliant artists, is assign priorities in the right order. The highest priority goes to you, the learner, the young artist, the one who wants to learn. You need to get to grips with yourself as a person before you can really begin the process of accelerating your learning.

As often as you dare, for we all have the challenges of others around us, get to a place that you find peace. Probably, this is in your bedroom, assuming that your brother or sister, or your mother will allow you some peace. Whilst alone, just think about yourself for a while. You are the most important person in your world and if you are unhappy or lack peace then you need to seek a way to find both. Being unhappy yourself means that you can do things for yourself to cheer you up. Think of funny things or strange things that you have noticed during the week. Try to see the funny side of them.

Almost every thing has a funny side, no matter how dark it seems. Try to see the irony of your situation. You may be unhappy, but there are many more your age that are unhappier, unless you are the most unlucky kid in the world. Even that is ironical. How could you out of the billions of kids in the world be the unhappiest kid. No, its just not possible, especially if you are reading this blog!

Accelerated learning and learning of most kinds requires observation that can be recalled. If you are truly aware of yourself, your brain will remember that situation and what you are trying to learn because it builds links to your awareness of yourself and what it is that you are learning. You learn least when you are unaware of yourself. Self remembering is at the seat of learning.

Related to the technique of self remembering is the technique of achieving a peaceful state of mind. If your mind is not peaceful, you will not learn as readily. To learn you can have soft music, but it needs to be peaceful or to be harmonious with your mood of learning. You can play load music and learn and be a peace within yourself. Its probably not a good idea if you are trying to learn for exams because your mind will recall better if you were playing the load music and you cannot do that in an examination hall. Its best to study for exams in the quiet of a room where you are not being distracted by TV, by family or pets. You need to create such a place in your home, if possible. If you can't do that, you need to go to a restaurant, library, coffee shop, book store, or some place quiet where they don't mind kids sitting quietly learning, sketching and reading.

1. Mind Mapping and Thinking

The origin of some of my ideas and my sketching of lectures comes from the work of Tony Buzan on mind mapping. Its very useful to learn how to do mind maps. There are lots of free software programs that help you in the process while you are on the computer. The range of mind mapping tools is absolutely enormous, so I won't try to tell you which ones to use, other than to say that you don't need softward to mind map effectively.

I learned how to take lecture notes by use of mind maps rather than normal lecture notes across the page. The mind map lecture notes you need to begin with a notebook that is blank. Instead of writing sentences while a lecture is being delivered, you draw the lecture as a series of mind maps. You begin by understanding what the lecturer is trying to say, and you use the mind mapping method to record the points the lecturer is making. This is a dynamic process and requires a bit of practice, but I found that my lecture notes for lectures given at British and American universities about social sciences, literature, history, physics, mathematics, and computers, were better because of mind mapping techniques.

2. The Law of Associations

Think of yourself as a budding artist. We, all, are artists in our own specific ways. Learning comes by association. If you want to learn something, you need to associate with that who is that is going to teach you, or what medium you can use to teach you. No association means no learning. There are many ways to associate yourself with an instructor, agent of instruction, or technology of instruction. If you want to learn how to drive for example, you associate with a car, with your parent or friend who is older and knows how to drive, with a book on how to drive, with the road, with the parking lot, with the highway, with the signs, and so on.

Associating with someone who already is highly skilled at what you want to learn is the best way to learn if there is any way that you can watch them in action or if they can teach you. You associate with your parents to learn how to be a parent. If your parent is not a good parent then your association with your parent won't teach you how to be a good parent other than by reverse copy catting. In this case you learn what is correct by observing what is incorrect. If you want to learn how to make someone happy, you do this by both copy catting and reverse copy catting. You watch what achieves happiness and you watch what makes for unhappiness. You learn by associating with the process that you wish to acquire skills in or knowledge about.

Associations can come directly by past experience or by sitting down and trying to think what would be a way to associate yourself with something that you wish to learn. As an artist, I do this by taking a blank piece of paper and writing the word me in the center then drawing a circle around it. The circle doesn't have to be perfect, but just enclose it. Suppose I have the goal of my learning to be to get a job that pays me a million dollars a year. To learn how to do that I have to associate with something that is connected to an annual income of a million dollars. As I am doing this I realize that there are sub conditions that I wish to place on myself. The first is that I want to associate only with an income stream of a million dollars that is earned honestly. If I am a young Canadian boy that might mean a hockey player, who plays for the professional league. So, there I am, aware of myself, and writing on my piece of paper the words 'hockey professional.' To accelerate my learning about how to make a million dollar income, I could associate with a hock player who earns an annual income of one million dollars.

There is a problem, or better put, a consequence arising from the law of association in learning that I, as an artist, put forth, and that is that associations also bring about learning of other things very rapidly. By associating with one thing, you associate with another, and you learn about the connections between one thing and another, and you see connections or associations that you would not otherwise see. That is why I think that associating with history and our history is so important to learning.

If you do not associate with the history of what it is you are learning about, you miss the connections that will accelerate your learning, you miss the 'don't do's of learning. For example, if you want to learn how to build a better society, you will accelerate your learning about how you can achieve that goal by actually associating with a better society, but you can also learn by associating yourself with a much worse society and seeing how not to build a better society, by associating with those things that do not build a better society. In this process of association, you need to associate with the events and things of the history that you are seeking to learn about, all at the same time not forgetting to associate with the negative things so that you learn about them as well.

Learning is a very personal thing, and one for which there are other aspects that you need in your achievement of accelerated learning: wanting and sketching; daydreaming and concentration; steps to memory improvement; enjoying your research home work.

3. Wanting and Sketching

When people would ask me what attracted me to painting and sketch, I would say that it is important to want something first. I would visit the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC almost every lunch break over several years. It was a great way to have a great meal and to se the work of the best of artists. In other words, I associated myself with good art of some of the best artists that have ever lived. In this way, by seeing their work and by copying it, I was able to progress rather rapidly in my skills as an artist. I got so that I felt there was no image that I could not create. Boy was this wrong!

What I have learned is that the world of art is in the galleries, but it is also widely distributed around the globe. There is fantastic stuff being done in private studios that lean towards or away from the electronic arts. To learn how to draw on the computer, I went to Montgomery College in Rockville and then to the University of Maryland. I attend both these university art environments with the female artist Lesley Skeith, who was a perfectionist and a brilliant copiest. Unfortunately, Lesley passed away suddenly from breast cancer in 2002 but before she died, we had worked together many years on many art and computer projects. Lesley had a great sense of humour and an eye for composition that was simple marvelous.

In 2001, I did an oil painting of Lesley Skeith staring at the bulletin board at Wake Forest University, where her son Mark Skeith attended. Mark attained a first rate degree and lived in Japan afterwords learning Japanese. At the time of the painting, Mark was working in the university library and was enjoying the world of pig kidnapping. His fraternity hit the headlines when the kidnapped a pig from a farmer. Mark was fun loving and got himself into many difficult situations before maturing into his new world of diplomacy and international relations.

4. Daydreaming and Concentration

What I was doing in the previous paragraph was day dreaming. Day dreaming is an important tool of the artist and is key to motivation and inspiration. In a day dream, we tend to be aware of things in an independent way that frees us from reality and allows the creative side of our brain a free reign. In our day dreams we travel to places that we would not normally go, and associate internally with impressions, sounds and images that have been captured in our past at times when we have been most aware of ourselves and our wants.

Day dreaming involves the mind concentrating on visual or aural direction and impressions that have been stored up by our brain for future use as in dreams, useful recall, or day dreaming. Scientists really don't know where the brain stores information, or whether the brain is an instrument of retrieval of information that is accessible through time because of channels that the brain 'lays' down between instances of time. There are reasons for thinking that the brain has associations with the quantum physical world. Such research is being undertaken by Roger Penrose at Cambridge University, who was a creative thinker about the role of higher mathematics in art and space. Tegmark a Swedish physicist disagrees with the notion of the brain being active at the quantum. The fact is that at present nothing has been verified in this complex field of study.

5. Steps to Memory Improvement

The usual method of remembering something is read, register it in the brain, and recall it from the brain. The recalling is very important and if you have a method of registering information as well as retrieving it you are well a way to getting straight 'A's in many schools. If you use mind mapping methods you will find it is much easier to remember an associated point than one that is unassociated. In schools in Britain, where marking on the curve is prevalent, you may be brilliant, but fail. It's the British way of dumbing down! Memory is not enough in some school systems to get you a pass. You also need to learn how to think and process information. Mind mapping techniques can assist with that as well.

6. Enjoying Your Home Work

When you read your notes that are mind mapped it is amazing to see how quickly you learn and recall information assuming that you have the correct associations. You will enjoy your home work much more when you use mind mapping techniques.