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.

Is the Profit Motive for New Therapeutic Chemical Entities Correct?

WUH LAX WAS SURPRISED AT ME !

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?

That to me is almost a stupid question, but my children tell me not to use the word stupid, so I will say that it is an insane question. Are we insane not to give everything we have got to eradicating the problems of the third world. I think the whole of Western Civilization is pretty damn insane not to. we talk about being Christians, and we talk about being Islamic and yet we have so many people dying from disease in third world countries that we should all be thoroughly ashamed. Disease is every one's problem.

The West is so caught up in its struggle against cancer that it has forgotten the many more dying of diseases that we can actually cure. And, incidentally in the process we may just get to grips with some of the disease issues in the West that are connected to those of third world countries.

But, the insane part of this whole matter is the patent system that we are using to calm our feelings of guilt. No, our governments should fund at public expense massive amounts of research that is presently going into weapons of mass destruction and bullets, not to mention bombs and tanks. To not help our third world countries fight disease is insane economics.

Why does Bill Gates have to show our people the right direction? He has done enough to create the microcomputer revolution. Three cheers for Bill and his lovely wife! Our governments can lower interest rates for the banks, but they can't fund research into disease solutions. That is insanity at its worst and we are all part of that insanity. Help the people of the world. Help the children who are dying by helping to eradicate the diseases around the world that ravage their populations. Our globe is getting smaller and smaller and we need to think of each other as being like close neighbours, giving our neighbours a helping hand.

Are Typhoid Fever and Cystic Fibrosis Related?

SIDMOUTH MOON

There is a mystery why so many people in Europe have the cystic fibrosis gene. Few people realize that they even have it or that they may already have children that have the gene, or that they may conceive children with cystic fibrosis. Do the math. If one in twenty have the gene then so many people who are married have the gene, and so many of the children that they have will have the gene. It's all down to probabilities, and chances are that you won't have a cystic fibrosis child because the math is working in that way, but only the math.

Scientists are puzzled as to why so many people in Europe have the cystic fibrosis gene. It means that almost every family has had or will have the gene at some time. Again, do the math. This means that cystic fibrosis is everyone's problem and everyone should help those with cystic fibrosis and everyone should pay to see that the disease is given top priority and eliminated as problem. Right!

Well, no, not quite, and the reason may be that expression of the cystic fibrosis gene was in the past what saved a significantly large segment of the population. In other words, the people with cystic fibrosis may have survived a disease that other succumbed to. In other words, having cystic fibrosis may have saved those in the population from something worse. What could be worse?

Well, one possibility is typhoid. Read about that in an article in Science News. This leads me to the conclusion that there are really two problems that society needs to deal with and solving one may help the other. In other words, it may be that if we find a solution to the disease of cystic fibrosis we need to have a solution to typhoid fever. Everyone can get typhoid fever. Right! But, no! Wrong! If you think that everyone can get typhoid fever maybe you have not understood what I am saying. In the end, we may need to sort out both diseases and thus combine the research efforts. Fund typhoid fever research while you fund cystic fibrosis research. Such combined research works in all our favours because we may all have the same problem of the expression, or non expression, of the cystic fibrosis gene. We may all need to have safe cystic fibrosis to escape typhoid fever! Or, perhaps you think typhoid is not really a problem. I would chew on that one if I were you and take a longer coffee break for your creative juices. I wonder what the other diseases might be that this research needs to unearth.

Really Useful Boxes - North American Distribution Opportunity!

THE DARTMOOR STONE MOVER by AW LAKE

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. There seems to be an opportunity now for some budding capitalist entrepreneur to get a license to sell or manufacture the really useful boxes for distribution in North America. If you are an artist, you need to check them out. They are a really useful way to transport and store your paintings.

Maximizing Value or Efficiency But Not Both

WUH LAX AND THE COSMIC LANTERN

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.

Economics is bunk, not history! History is the story of economics and economic theory being bunk. People rarely take into account the needs on anything other than people. The importance of plants and animals in the world environment and economic equation is rarely included adequately because people generally are ignorant or just don't care about plants and animals, or other creatures of the earth.

Economists talk of general equilibrium, but they do not account for the disequilibrium of technology nor the environment. Governments can do away with valuable research programs to break away at the edges of our ignorance on energy creation because there is no real economics to argue for or against such programs, just awareness that they are probably, though not definitely right. Economists rarely take risk and uncertainty into account adequately. They don't know how to forecast technology, which would be the first requirement. They don't understand science which would be the second requirement, and they are hopeless at understanding knowledge creation, which would be the third requirement. Ask yourself whether the long term research programs the world needs are being supported by governments and you will probably get a negative answer.

At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, governments have think tanks to discuss appropriate measures for new technology creation and dissemination. Do governments read and understand what is coming down the 'turnpike?' Do they really have any idea how we can reduce CO2 emissions in the next twenty years. Are governments and business prepared to act decisively to ensure a safe distance away from earth's environmental destruction. Is China on board? What do you think is the priority now? What technology issues do you think are important? Extend your coffee break and think more deeply about the real issues that you can detect in a world of confused priorities.

The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 2. The Group

THE MANOR HOUSE

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.

At birth, human beings are normally fortunate enough to have automatic systems in place that predispose new borns to survival within groups. A baby will cry for food, will gurgle to indicate satisfaction, will stare to show awareness and acknowledgement of others present. Groups are something else! Groups emerge from other groups as a recognition of a difference. The members of a new group form a group because they observe a difference even if this is only a difference in direction.

A new group forms as one individual heads away from the rest even if only in thought. Others may or may not follow. When an individual strikes out in a new direction, there is generally the thought by that individual that there is something, or someone, or some group, over the horizon perhaps that meets certain specific needs more closely. Groups, once formed, or individuals departing from a group may try to get others to join. The group recognizes that an environment may require a group of a sufficient size for it to survive. What we see in modern society is the gradual breakdown of the authority of larger groups as individuals recognize that they survive in smaller and smaller groups.

What defines this process is the force that enables the survival of the independent group. Remove that survival mechanism and you force small groups to retreat into large groups and the process of group formation rather than group disintegration ensues. Ever wonder why civilizations rise and fall. It may be that the dynamics of the forces that hold a group together change and the large group can no longer survive and becomes increasingly fragmented. This dynamic occurs within groups, so there are subgroups within groups and subgroups form and move. All this is because of the processes of group discovery and group awareness. What leaders do is enable the group to discover aspects about itself that distinguish it from other groups in meaningful ways.

Technology is a very important force in the creation and destruction of groups. We have seen how the birth pill has affected the family group. We will see how the test tube baby will affect the pairing of individuals of the same or different sexes into groups.

Why it is important to make mistakes and get lost

THE SOMERSET MIST

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.

A crow caws away in the distance. She has seen you and her challenge is to watch you while you are in her area. If you were to get up and walk one direction she would caw one sound, but if you went the other she would caw another sound. She knows how to tell everyone that matters to her, who you are and where you are going. There are eyes watching you that you could never imagine. Unseen eyes monitor you from many places. And, so it is with the world. You may think that you are alone, but you are never alone. There is always someone or something following you and watching you.

If you have been watching the ABC TV series Lost, you will appreciate part of what I mean.

There are many ways to be lost. One of the aspects about being lost, however, is that you have an opportunity of self discovery. At some point, usually from fear, your senses are heightened and you have to think if you are to find out where you are. Generally, you have enough where-with-all to discover how to find your self. You look for the smallest of clues to determine a direction from which you have travelled. If all else fails, you retreat as far back along the route that you think you have made and try to guess which turnings you took.

Another way you can get lost is when you have prepared something, as on the computer, and the electricity goes out suddenly. Everything that you have been working on is lost. You may have spent hours on the work that you were doing. The great thing about having been lost, and we all lose ourselves at some time, is that having has the pain of being lost we learn to avoid being lost the next time. Or, at least, we learn to avoid the worst consequences of being lost. It is important to ask for directions if you are lost. It is important to set marks on your route if you are travelling in unfamiliar territory. Even mental marks helps as in remembering yourself for a half second and recording your surroundings and yourself within those surroundings.

The Joy of Sketching

NOT DUMBLEDORE!

Sketching is partly serious, but mainly the mind at play. It is not simple, but it is rewarding if you persist. It is also extremely useful in any activity requiring thought. I frequently sketch just to be creative. Much of the images are exploratory, and it is often easy to get discouraged when they don't immediately take a shape that one likes. That is why it is useful to do verbal sketches as well as visual. A verbal sketch requires the same tools of a pencil and paper.

Sketching, when it is serious, may be a valuable tool in creating thinking. The teacher Edward de Bono has many ideas about how one can use sketches to get your ideas into a form where they can be used. He developed the idea of thought hats where you assumed a role and took it to its logical or creative conclusion. Put on a type of hat and think in the way that the hat you put on would suggest that you thought. This idea can be expanded in many ways, and I am sure actors often have to assume thought hats when trying to get their characterization correct or interesting.

When I was a student at university, I would rarely take notes in the normal way. Much of my time was spend sketching logic maps of the lecture material as it was being delivered. I would use blank unlined note paper and my notes would look pretty disorganized to most people, but underlying them was the logic of the lecture. I rarely got less than an 'a' using this method and saved myself a lot of time trying to remember my notes. They just seemed to be more memorable.

Economists Search For Equilibrium

BICKLEIGH CASTLE

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.

The most famous macro economist of all time John Maynard Keynes also concluded that economies rarely reached an equilibrium. This did not stop classical and neoclassical economists from assuming equilibrium in their models. What resulted was the great schism between those that assumed economies would attain equilibrium and those who in face of severe criticism maintained that economics were constantly adjusting and generally were to be found in a state of moving disequilibrium, albeit dynamic.

What amazes one after reading all this history of thought is that the economists who proposed equilibrium did not seem very sophisticated at political science, and after all the field had been named political economy. The reason is obvious. For if you shared one view of politics and wanted to maintain the status quo, whether you were communist, liberal, or conservative, you would want to view the economic world as being in equilibrium.

That you were totally wrong did not matter. You wished to believe in the myth of economic equilibrium. So entrenched were the ideas of the equilibrium people that they would stop students from getting post graduate degrees if they viewed the economic world as in disequilibrium. The left wingers and the right wingers would select leaders and they would agree amongst themselves to maintain an equilibrium of graduates who exposed there respective views of the economy and indirectly political philosophy.

Thus in return for two PhD graduates of equilibrium there would be in return two PhD graduates of disequilibrium. So the result was a state of equilibrium, you might think. But no! The problem was that no matter how much you avoided reality by allowing only mathematical models of equilibrium to pass a PhD, you would end up in disequilibrium because more students wanted to show that economies were in disequilibrium. So to solve the problem, PhD graduates proposing dissertations that exceeded the number of those producing theses of equilibrium were stopped from getting PhDs by being failed, or discouraged, or told to do more work so that they waited five years or more in a queue before attaining their PhDs. Such was the state of disequilibrium at the best British universities in the world when I was a post graduate student.

What is it like now?

The Impact on my Reading and Writing of JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series

As a book writer, I can quite proudly say that my desire to writing and subsequent writing was tremendously influenced by JK Rowling's success with the Harry Potter series of books. I came across Harry quite by accident. Many times, I would visit Borders Books or Barnes and Noble at lunch time in Washington, DC. Books are my passion, and I like all kinds of books, fiction or non-fiction. I am aware that I was aware that he was being promoted. However, my interest was in series of books because I loved to read on the metro, and when I did read I would read a whole series. This was over a period of a decade, at least. There may have been three or more Harry Potter books out there before I really became aware of them.

For several months, Harry would be staring at me from the store book shelves, but I must have missed him many times before I made the plunge and bought the first Harry Potter book in my life. It has had a profound influence on my perspectives in every sense of the word. I bought the book because there was a Harry Potter series of books. This made sense to me since the Harry Potter books require an investment in learning characters. I am not very good in remembering all the different characters in books before losing interest, so I have to think there is a payoff from all the effort.

One of the comments on my own book series of Wuh Lax has been that there are so many characters. To be honest, I don't really care, and to be frank its because I can remember them and I think young people reading my books will remember them. It may be now because they play computer games and in such games one has a host of different characters. It may be easier for kids to remember a larger number of characters. If one invests the time to learn the characters in the Wuh Lax series you will be rewarded. I don't really expect you to buy the first in the series until I have about three or four of the series in print and on the books shelves.

If you have read the first Wuh Lax book, you will know that some of my characters are based on real people who have influenced my life and have passed on to the other side. In my book, they come back as actors within an ethereal realm interacting with our matereal world. The ghosts of the past people are what drives events in our present day life experiences. That I am sure of, so it is not very difficult for me to imagine my mother or my cousin, or former friends and relatives visiting me and my characters in the here and now or in the past. Another thing that you will know is that my book is very philosophical at its roots and has a lot of science in it. The first book is only an introduction to these aspects. My writing will be educational as well as entertaining and will contain all sorts of discoveries.

What the Harry Potter series did for me was show me how to develop a world using words and then populate that world with information and mystery that will ultimately provide entertainment while it educates. The reaction of many people to the Harry Potter series was that it was evil in some ways because it took kids minds away from Jesus Christ or religion. Many churches wanted to ban the book. Of course, this is absolutely against what I felt about the book, the series, and the author. I could relate to Harry as a closet boy, bullied and deprived. Immediately, I wanted him to rise up and be somebody important. What Rowling did was give him a destiny and for that I was eternally grateful because harry Potter really came alive as a being within my mind. He is as real as Captain Aubrey in the Patrick O'brien series, or Hornblower in the Forrester series.

My favorite author, as you may know is Captain Frederick Marryat. He is one of the few writers to satisfy my yearning to read within a single book. Marryat's book, 'Children of the New Forest' was transforming. Another writer, who is stupendous in building a story is Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe.

The Processes and Regions of Discovery - 1. The Self

BEAUTIFUL DARTMOOR

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!"

I often meet people who say that they never read fiction, that they are grounded in the real world and don't need the rubbish of imagination to cope with the real world. This is, in my opinion, the gravest of mistakes. It is like saying I do not believe that humour is good for me. Humour is the operation of the imaginary component, when we see logical constructs come in conflict with each other, and we make a discovery about the truth of our reality. It is that we are not real, and we are not part of a real world. We need to understand this fact before we can make any progress in the world of invention and innovation.

I have determined four broad areas or types of personal discovery, which can actually include scientific discovery and invention. I would recommend that you develop your skills in each of these groups moving to the next level as you progress. Unlike the discovery process in some teachings, I see the discovery of the world as the last stage and do not put primacy on self discovery as the end of the process. But, I do see self discovery as essential before world discovery.

1. The Self
2. The Group
3. The Roots of Being
4. The World

The greatest discovery region is that of world discovery. That is why you exist, not self discovery. Self discovery is only a pre-condition for finding and then be enabled to make true discoveries about the world, to invent new technologies and understandings. Ever wonder why those who are too religious or self centered don't invent useful things for the world, don't make things that enable real progress in the world! They are too wrapped up in themselves.

Most people get the sequence of discovery wrong and end the processes of discovery within themselves. This is not correct. Discover yourself first then the world. You will find that as you enter the last process and make discoveries about your world, you will be strengthening the processes of self discovery automatically without effort, but initially you need to engage in self discovery:

These types of discovery are related to how we process information that forms the basis of our discoveries. They do not tell us what we discover, but direct us towards the processing that goes on and the motivation behind discovery. What we don't often realize is that we discover things about ourselves and our world because our psychology enables us to or we don't discover things because our psychology disables us from discovery.

Discovery associated with yourself or the self

What you need to discover in the self-discovery process is what your brain is willing to let you discover. You brain is a very fast component of your being so you may not be aware that it is even an enabler or dis-abler of your desire and directions of discovery. You may not even be aware that you need to tune into what your brain is actually doing. If you don't you are captive to your brain and all the limitations that it places on you to keep you from discovering yourself.

Some people go to the point of disabling the brain through drugs. But while these methods may work for a time they are addictive in that they are very unreliable after repeat attempts and more of the drug is required. No! Don't use drugs to discover yourself. They are very bad. Use your own will to discover yourself.

Better still there are some writers that help in the self discovery enabling process. Authors such as Norman Vincent Peale very quickly draw you into methods that target your inner self discovery mechanisms. Alternative, you will find that some fiction writers are very strong stimulants of inner self discovery mechanisms. Tolkien, in particular, is extremely helpful. I am not referring to the films that were based on his books, which fall into the group discovery process, but on your reading the books of Tolkien alone and seeking to comprehend what he is saying to you about how you can discover who you are.

Read the Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings. When you have finished these books you will have discovered yourself, I assure you. But, you must read the books. It is not the visual presentation of Tolkien's ideas from outside that will help you discover yourself, but your own mental images of the what he writes, which will trigger mechanisms within your mind that will enable your to begin to discover yourself, perhaps deeply, for the first time.

Another writer that I can recommend for self discovery is Mark Twain. His books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are particularly good at helping one to discover oneself. The thing is though that you must read the books for yourself quietly and privately.

When you read, find a comfortable place that is very quiet. Turn off the radio, music, turn the light down to soft, have something to drink beside you and a few treats to munch as you read. Prepare yourself for a long trip into the worlds these authors create. As you enter these worlds you will discover many things about yourself.

Think about what Tolkien or Twain are saying. Try to get inside the characters and build mental images of the worlds in which the characters live. As you do, you will develop skills needed to discover yourself, awareness's that you will find valuable in your self discovery process.