Repeating one's life

Killing!

When you fell a tree, what do you kill?

It seems to me that a tree is not just one living creature, but billions. Thus for me the killing of a single tree is like the killing of a billion creatures dependent on that tree to live.

We think of tree leaves as part of a tree and so they are, but each leaf has it's own individuality and life and death process. Each leaf is a living system dependent on a larger system which is the tree.

The seeds that create leaves are not automatic. They individually need to be warmed, watered and fed by the tree that sustains them. There are billions and billions of creations we call leaves. Each leaf has it's own birth, life, and death.

Have you ever asked yourself whether after a leaf dies, it comes back to life again as the same or a new leaf? What form of awareness does such a simple creation have? Or is it too simple to have any awareness at all? It must have something that we would think of as primitive awareness or it would not develop. Is it water that gives it that awareness? Or light?

That question may seem trivial to you, but are you sure it is not trivial to you. What if your reoccurance is like the seed that produces a leaf and each leaf is like a life. Does the leaf of 2009 bear any common relationship with the leaf of 2008, or are they completely different leaves/ lives? What is the memory and full experience of the leaf? When it dies, does it die each season, or does it die only when the tree dies? What dies?

What one dimensional experience constitutes the life of a leaf?

Death

Killing! What is death and killing all about?

When you fell a tree, what do you kill?

It seems to me that a tree is not just one living creature, but billions. Thus for me the killing of a single tree is like the killing of a billion creatures dependent on that tree to live.

We think of tree leaves as part of a tree and so they are, but each leaf has it's own individuality and life and death process. Each leaf is a living system dependent on a larger system which is the tree.

The seeds that create leaves are not automatic. They individually need to be warmed, watered and fed by the tree that sustains them. There are billions and billions of creations that we call leaves and they all have origins in seeds of some form.

What are these seeds that produce life or leaves? Are they just proteins, DNA, or RNA? Or are they more than that? We see them and we see that they live and that they are like leaves and like lives. Each strand of code that makes up a leaf or life comes from a generator of that code and the history of that generator goes back endlessly in time, or so it appears.

Each leaf has it's own birth, life, and death. Have you ever asked yourself whether after a leaf dies, it comes back to life again as the same or a new leaf? That question may seem trivial to you, but are you sure it is not trivial to you?

What if your re-occurance is like the seed the produces a leaf and each leaf is like a life. Does the leaf of 2009 bear any common relationship with the leaf of 2008, or are they completely different leaves/ lives? What is the experience of the leaf? When it dies, does it die each season, or does it die when the tree dies? What one dimensional experience constitutes the life of a leaf?

Who or what is editing your life in order to create the perfected or improved you? Or have you ever thought of the universe as your editor? It is what generated you. But, who or what are you? When all the coding is complete, are you something more? Do you fall like a leaf forever gone, or do you reappear as a new leaf reborn from the tree that is your generator?

When you fall asleep, you know that you will reawaken a better you. You know that sleep is when your generator rebuilds and works on you! Your awareness on awakening you regard as residing in you. But, what if you are like a cell phone and you are processed outside of you? What if you are reprogramned and your memory is outside of what you think is you and that you are only the instrument and not the complete whole of what is you?

What if time is recorded? What if your brain travels back to that recording? And, wait for it! What if the recording that your brain uses is not in our three dimensional world? Our future is not in this universe, or is it. What if your life is the way a living organism corrects it's mistakes?

It's all about me!

The only things that make any sense.

When I find time to think about such things as cosmology and the big question "why am I a human being and here on earth in the year 2009," there is little in the way of facts that make for handy or convincing explanations. It is not kust me. This question arises for us all. So, how do we explain the universe to ourselves?

I think one of the greatest gifts that we can have is that it is something we can ponder. There is no one forcing me to any particular opinion. I can research the issue and come to my own conclusions. Wow!

What a wonderful gift that is! My brain is relatively clear. I can reason pretty well and my parents are dead so I don't have to believe what they believed. I don't even have to be respectful of what others believe. I can think for myself and make my own mistakes in coming to my own conclusions. I can get lost in the wilderness of ideas and only have myself to blame if I get it wrong. Most of my readers enjoy the same privileges. Not all, but many! Well at least a few! I hope! Oh, please a few, at least. No, I am not the only one.

I can count on one hand the number of people that I know who also have the conviction that everything repeats on some way. I mean everything! Well almost everything! Well, everything that I can ever know or experience. That is the only reality for me that makes it all worthwhile.

I have to conclude that I am totally illogical. Everyone, I know believes in time and that one cannot go back in time. I don't! Time for me is like a line on a field. Every one I know is on the field, and most refuse to move off the line. I am so happy that I do not stand on the line of time on that field. That's what makes sense to me. It is that time is not a line. Time at the very least is a plane. I am thinking it is at the very least a torus and that what I am seeing now repeats itself over and over again not because it exists more than once, and it may, but that it is available to me to experience more than once.

There is probably more than one me, but that is not necessary, as the me that I am is and will always be sufficient because I will re-occur in some space sooner or later just as my world has re-occured for me, this time.

Thanks for reading.

Lost Blog

Using my iPhone I accidently zapped my blog on the film by Nikita Mikhalkov so here it us below for those who did not see it the first time, plus a few comments on Michael Moore's new film on capitalism. If you like to think, these are must films.


In Praise of '12' - A film by Nikita Mikhalkov
Posted: 12 Sep 2009 07:49 AM PDT
This Russian film is an amazing tribute to how far Russia has progressed over the last decade. The story of the film follows the deliberations of the 12 jurors who had to decide the fate of a young man caught up in the violence of post USSR conflict. Entirely in Russian, the subtitles on English were more than adequate.

I think that you will enjoy the many faces of Russian society revealed in this story which is a masterpiece of dialogue.

See it, learn, and enjoy the changing experience from what you thought about Russia to what you can think about Russia!

Michael Moore has produced a film on capitalism. I have not seen the film but Jay Leno says that it is a balanced view of what ails the economic system of the best country in the world, the United States.

What will ail all economies are the two human traits of imitation and habit persistence combined with the technological law of economies of scale, which together lead to the Pareto distribution of incomes, i.e. badly skewed in favour of a few people. It's sad that the economist of Italian fascism was so close to understanding why civilizations fail and could do nothing about it.

The Short Sighted Economist

The New Economy

The new economy is an economy that is based on the notion that it is not beneficial to save. It is an economy produced by governments that want revenue increases that arise from increased nominal and real incomes. The implementation of the new economy has serious consequences for real saving.

As governments keep interest rates extraordinarily low people don't save, but rather make long term decisions that commit them mire and more to a culture if low saving over the long term. This may mean greater spending and stock market growth, and rising property values for extended periods, but it reduces the proportion of long term incomes that people are willing to save in cautious savings media, such as bank deposits.

It means that only very profitable short term activities are supported in the stock markets of advanced economies. Long term investments struggle for financing in industrial economies while short term profitability of increasing production in low wage economies takes precedence. This gradually erodes the capacity of industrial countries to produce and compete because they have not invested enough.

Eventually, low interest rates produce a sagging long term economic equation similar to that seen in Japan.

Dangerous lending

Linking our future to China and larger scale enterprise

It's no secret that there is a close link between research and development and the discovery of useful knowledge, science, iinvention, and possibly innovation. R and D requires a redirection of econonomic activities towards low return activities. But, such cost is not attractive in many sectors, industries, firms, and indeed households of an economy.

Dominant firms protect their positions by reducing the profitability of their competitors positions so as to reduce their rivals ability to conduct competitve or novel r and d. Ultimately, such a process would result in a stifling of competition, and in turn a lowering of the profit rates for all but the most dominant of commercial entities.

In a world of industries based on economies of scale, those with economies will attempt to achieve more and more such economies until the distribution of profit in their area of competition is monopolized.

How then is discovery outside of established industries and concerns possible? Technology is notoriously difficult to dominate in a society where their is independent r and d. Hiwever, discovery isn't possible in societies that are dominated by huge firms the stife novelty as on Africa or in a world dominated by economies of scale unless the dominant firms themselves create new industries. But, one must ask why they would do that.

As a dominant firm, in addition to ruining your competition through economies if scale, you can ruin them by buying their shares and by trying to take control through public markets. Thus, for example, Cadbury's is bought by rival firms. And thus large firms increasingly stifle competition through the profits they mainly gather through achieving economies of scale, domination of profit, and accumulation of competitors shares acquired by higher profit margins.

In addition, the pace of domination can be accelerated without saving when interest rates are low. Borrowing to prevent competition in times of low interest rates means that innovation and growth in an economy can be stifled sooner. The money large firms gather is thus used directly to stifle competition. This process is speeded up when money is too cheap.

Low interest rates hasten the appearance of many undesirable side effects of the modern economy. People can buy houses only to see them lost when their incomes decline. Their incomes decline because solid growth dud not occur in their economy. Apparent growth was in real estate markets as developers achieved economies of scale and gambled on dominating the property markets. The competition arising from low lending rates fir money priduced house price inflation and a dakse sense of economic well being. The profits to builders and banks resulted in monopolization of profit and further maldistribution of profits, savings, and incomes. They banks were bailed out, but the lessons of the period were not understood and the process of destructive market forces in the US and UK will repeat as in the case of Thailand.

The low interest rates do not encourage people to pay off debt as they should, but

In the longer term easy money borrowed from China where economies if scale are enormous hasten the maldistribution of incomes on the US, slow the rates of meaningful innovation and bring about the disappearance of the middle class of society.

Low interest rates, aka easy money, hastens the destruction of social fabrics in the US that leads to fascism, yes fascism and not socialism. The greatest danger from low interest rates is social conflict leading to the many forms of fascism: communism, dictatorship, and outright fascism. Thus a dictatorship can result in the US which was the home of democracy, but is increasingly a place of social conflict and unruly goverance.

Underlying low interest rates is the competition between banks and between the finance rooms of large companies to stifle competition, redistribute profit towards their goals of greater economies of scale and dominance of society's income streams.

The process is addictive and repetitive and can only be foreshortened by slowing down the accumulation of excess savings arising in profits of large firms and banks.

We all, through the IMF, have flooded the world with cheap money thinking that it will produce a solution to the financial market turmoil arising from banks trying to achieve economies of scale by lending more and more at looser and looser terms.

It can only hasten the rise of fascist dictatorial tendencues of industries, countries and firms. Throwing easy money at the problem is not the solution.

Ask yourself why Africa us in such a mess after all the money poured into it through aid, and World Bank development loans. The problem is the weaknesses inherent in the solution that we opted for.

Throwing more money at our economic issues does not solve them when it makes them worse!

We think money in the hands of bankers will promote stability when it will only lead to more competition between banks. Banks are trying to dominate other banks and the more money they get to do this the less they will lend to small industry and the less stability there will be on the world economy.

The best policy right now is the most difficult to swallow if you are dominated by large industry and you are heavily into debt with banks. The policy is that of high interest rates to curb the growth of easy money and to ultimately slow down the pace of political change that is heading towards fascism brought about by social conflict.

The lending binge of the twenties and thirties in the last century led to the most dangerous of periods for humankind as people were pursuaded that the Jewish bankers were to blame for their economic ills. The real culprit was government spending and government demands for reparations. Governments brought about the first and second great wars! Will they bring about another?

Profit Motivation and Incentive Motivation Questioned by Research

What creates wealth? Pink's TED video

In his TED video Dan Pink, a failed law student turned creativity advisor, refers to research that establishes as fact that the profit motive of incentive for business development does not produce the goods as well as other motives! This fact has been well documented by economists of the Schumpeterian School of economics but ignord by orthodox teaching of economics in most US grad schools that do not have a strong historical analytical base.

Economic history demonstrates that innovation is not the result of the search for profit and incidently security.

Rather individuals who are entrepreneurs and innovators are driven by other motivations. This is known by PHD studies of market development as conducted by myself at Cambridge university in the 1970s. The orthodox view of the supremacy of profit as the driver of market development I determined to be false, but most left and right wing economists at the time at Cambridge were hostile to my ideas that other motives drove business innovation and market development.

Now Dan Pink refers to many studies that reinforce my earlier views which are not so different from those of Schumpeterian economists who were ignored by macro economists unwilling to recognize the serious gaps in their thinking and historical realities.

Indeed as Pink says invention and innovation by such companies as Google, Apple and Microsoft tend to follow other economic models where they achieve actual market development. I would humbly add that these models are of my school of thought.

Where companies have perpetrated social injustice frequently is where the profit motive has stifled other motives and resulted in market stagnation and the severe limiting of competition.

Artists Art and the Personality Behind the Image

It's more than personality! It can be genes, sexual preference, religion, culture, predisposition in any direction almost. That's why Dick said to me that there were no rules in art. Another, might say it's in the eyes of the beholder. In my views. for I have more than one, it comes down to states of mind and predominant states of mind. There are no rules to states of mind. We might wish there were!

Art works in many directions simultaneously. We tend to think that we are recipients of art, but the reality is more often than not that we define the art around us and place ourselves where we feel we would be most comfortable with the art we have selected to be near! We fill our homes with art the reinforces our predominant states of mind.

Artists may play along with this and lose themselves forgetting their role as creators of new states of mind. In other words, art can complement existing states of mind or it can attempt to create new ones.

Those artists that swim against the stream may be poor in pocket as well as skills. Or, they may be great artists attempting to create new states of mind.

There are many examples of art work that is strange and leads us down pathways to new ways of thinking. I like to compare the art work of Scientific American magazine with that if the New Scientist. If you have read both, you will grasp what I mean about creativity versus conformity. I won't go into the details here.

In societies where there is considerable social integration such as India, the art contains many layers is social information that is absent in the art if say Canada or Sweden, both of which are highly social communities, but which are rich in providing for fairly specific groups of states of mind.

And, so it is with art. We can surround ourselves with images that mirror our surroundings in some way, or we can use art to build states of mind that we would otherwise have difficulty in sustaining.

The Pfizer Fraud

Ignorance is not bliss. The Pfizer case pin points another enemy of the ordinary person. How is it possible to fight an enemy that uses tactics reminiscent of Nazi Germany? If one had any doubts that one must always always be on one's guard, the frauds by Pfizer should be telling you something.

It is not enough that you yourself research into hidden dangers. It us not enough that you trust only respected brand names. It is not enough that you work within established social norms. And, the reason is because of people and groups like Pfizer who break all the normal rules of society and still get away with it. Who are these people?

Learning one's way to success

Success and Achievement

The meanings of success and achievement are different. For example, it is possible to be very successful without achievement. Most of my achievements come through failures which seems counter logical.

It is even possible that one's greatest failures lead to one's greatest achievements. These one may regard as successes, but it seems more satisfying to think of them as achievements.

The notion of achievement carries with it a struggle against some sort of challenge to one's being successful. If success comes too easily it is downgraded. Why! The reason is that achievement tells you something about the passage to success. And, easy passage may be a success, but it is not so much of an achievement.

Making one's way from A to B blindfolded is more of an achievement than with vision. Doing a blog on the iPhone us more of an achievement than sitting at a large mobile or desk top computer.

An achievement may not be regarded as a success. Because a success and an achievement appear to be the same they may not be regarded as different. After all getting from A to B means that one is still at B no matter how one got there.

Many people view success as the object of it all failing to recognize that achievement on the road to success is also to be valued. Why?

The reason seems to me to arise because of the mistakes one makes getting to a goal. The more mistakes one makes and overcomes may have a value greater than reaching success without mistakes. Of one is very lucky one may make very few mistakes for a time and even for a long time. Nevertheless, the person who has made a lot of mistakes and learned from them is a very different person from the one who made few mistakes and had a relatively easy time becoming succesful.

There may be a price to be paid because of easy successes. A portfolio manager may be very successful and yet not have achieved much because the stock market was bullish most of the time. Boasting of success put of an easy market is, however, foolhardy. Another manager in a bear market may have had less success, but indeed be better prepared because of the smaller achievements sting from cutting one's teeth in periods of hardship. The two managers are very different in their capacities and though one may be regarded as more successful, that person may not be able to manage a more difficult market. This is only one of many examples one can think of.

The problem with today's world is that it fails to see the difference between achievement and success. This is extremely important when evaluating the performance of people or larger units such as economies or firms. An economy such as that of India achieved much to get it's agriculture where it us today. Industrial economies may be more successful in producing crops on large scale and bringing prices down, but have they achieved as much. They can destroy the agricultural sector of India without achieving anything that has lasting value. This is because it is much easier to be successful with economies if scale in agriculture even though it is a minor achievement, easy peasy.

We are in danger of misinterpreting successes as achievements and so miss the point of it all. It is far more important to promote achievement in the grand scheme of things. Having a thriving agricultural sector in India is far more important in it's achievement than the short term success of other countries being able to easily out price Indian agriculture and produce more misery and unemployment in that country while a few firms with machinery in Canada producing wheat make bigger profits.

Say no to free trade. It is not a success story for humanity.

What is Love to You?

Sanity and Love

The feeling of love in the popular mind is very often associated with being out of control. My favourite association of the feeling of love is that of sanity and being in full control.

One might say that a precondition of my favourite notion of love is when one has full control of ones feelings, emotions and rational thought, and yet has that additional process going on of love.

This does not occur when one is overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but when one can calmly experience a deep feeling and know the qualities of that feeling and be guided by those qualities. Such for me is love. It is the height of being sain and healthy, being relaxed and in control, wanting and anticipating without artificial substances, physical or mental imbalances. It is awareness when one is at one's best on health and in surroundings.

Love to ya!

Whither Space-time

As I Write so I Think

Those who know me are apt to be most critical because of the availability of points on which my perception departs from that of others. That people really close to each other can live in very different perceptual structures is well known. That the person next to you may be like an alien being clmes as a surprise that we come to terms with in courts, in work environmentsm, on the street, and in conflicts.

We may look at the sane things with similar tools and yet perceive vastly different entities. That us why science us so successful at building bridges because it forces us to make some of the perceptions in a common frame work of reference and agreement. Unlike religion, science builds bridges to common understanding between people who are sane adults. Religion in contrast seeks to take away copmonly agreed frames of reference in favour of specialized reference which must be learned or experienced.

Our difficulty, however, is that science too is a religion based on the perception of quanta. Quanta are what give the world it's physical qualities and laws. Yes, quanta do exist and they are governed by universal laws. Any breaking of the physical laws requires the whole framework to be reassessed and that is expensive.

It is done, however, over and over again, so much so that science is actally able to make progress while it's competitors, the other religions, remain somewhat stagnant in the development, at least in general terms.

Now science teaches us that black holes exist on enormous numbers and that our universe is a huge upward scaled e entitiy of unbelievably large size. It also says that a considerable amount of energy and matter that could explain the distribution of observed matter is missing.

More of what is, is not, and most of what is not, is! What a paradox!

If our universe is inside a black hole then the light of our universe does not escape because energy in huge amounts is being pulled into our universe and cannot escape as light hitting as it does the boundaries of our ability to observe and the horizon of our universe, the entrance energy edge of the black hole that holds our universe. We are truly captured.

Now suppose that the end wraps time and matter to the full cycle of a loop such that time bends around. This could happen as a ginormous circle and look somewhat like the ancient Egyptian religious symbol that used to be carried around the wrist as a symbol of spiritual / religious understanding.

Alternatively, the image of our universe might look like a huge infinity symbol that represented eternity to the ancient Britons descended from the more ancient Egyptians. The image is akin to the symbol of recycling and return, of the hare.

In any event, it is my guess that although the Egyptians and early peoples could not see all the details of our galaxies and universe, their astronomers may have guessed at it's dimensions. Thus it is that complete societies were devoted to the notion of recycling into another world. It's hard to imagine that they thought the ships, tools, and food that they buried with their dead would remain useful. They probably thought that the structure of supports for life could pass through the same veil of death ad human beings. In other words, all matter is living and just patterns to be used in physical environments that may occur with the passage across the veil of space/time, which may be more immediate than sciences or religions give credit.

Megaspace .. getting to grips with the vastness of the world

It would be presumptuous to say our world because the world is so enormous. It is beyond anything that we can ever imagine.

The way the universe is engineered defies imagination and presents an insurmountable challenge to those that would wish to fathom it whether scientist, religious, or philosophical. There are, however, a number of clues.

I refer frequently to my abstraction, the world of Wuh. This is a universe on which light is motionless and everthing around explodes at the speed of light. Tangential to exploding matter is the world of matter which is what we observe. It too is driven by enormous forces of exploding. These we refer to as the big bang and we do not yet use the vocabulary of the recurring big bangs or the infinite number of big bangs that super-impose their history on our own.

It is almost unbelievable that witih our visible world that we should discover an infinite number of heavy energy objects that defy reason in their number and individual immensity. And, yet within each of these enormous objects there is a universe as enormous as the ones, for there are an infinite number, shaping 'the' or 'our' immediate universe. Within each of the huge energy objects that contain a universe, we can expect to find a billion billion+ objects of similar mass.

What we have here and there us a megaworld that obeys the properties of fractal mathematics. The world is infinitely fractallic. That is not just an observation. It is a law!

We see that law in everything extant or in the motion of creation. It applies to technologies that we create, our immediate economics, the weather, the soup we eat, our plantary life. It even applies to fossils we see that have been around billions of years.

If the universe that we see has been around less than 20 billion years, we would be so lucky because that defies even simple reason that tells us, it is part of a larger construction infinite in age backwards in time and forwards in time. Yet we know that time is only a representation of energy so all time includes all time which has been, is being, and ever will be. Time is unreal. What we experience as time is a differential of force in something already here being visited by light. We are light. We as creatures of light experience time, but time is not what we think it is.

Saving energy

Hours equivalency

It's a vain objective for me to try to equivalize the number of energy units for vehicle travel. But perhaps hours driven equivalency is a step closer in the drirection of reducing one's absolute dependency on motors in a world of urban sprawl.

My proposal to myself is to reduce hours of driving my vehicle. This could be done through the budget approach where I would set a monthly limit on travel costs that rely on energy.

In practical terms this would mean one tripto the store each month instead of twenty. To stockpile, I would buy goods that have a shelf life of a year or so. I would buy precooked foods or foods the are fresh that could be gotten by walking.

On getting from A to B, I would allow myself one hour driving per one hour cycling or walking. This would additionally be wrapped up in a monthly budget allowance that would limit use if fuel that is not shared with others such as drives on my own. I allow myself flights in jets as these are shared and travel by train or bus is shared!

Guess I can but try!

Throw two stones in a pond -The spread of two flus

There are a number of health concerns facing the world right now. I have attempted to address these in my blogs going several years back and though it is not pleasant to review my previous speculations it may be instructive.

My main concern is the very large stone of possible world famine thrown into the world arena=pond several years ago and beating it's way across the middle east into Asia. It is the disease affecting wheat, and seems to have penetrated into Iranian farm lands on it's way into Afghanistan. We should all be concerned as this old danger continues to threaten world stability, take lives, and may bring about failure in attempts to help establish the bases for democracy in Afghanistan.

Left unsolved the problems associated with weaknesses of wheat harvest protection could foster reckless food production of chicken by those threatened by starvation. What we are seeing in the deaths in Egypt due to bird flu is a possible harbinger of worse disease epidemics to come? At the root of the problem is starvation, small farms being put out of production by larger industrial farms. Ever wonder why income distributions correlate with economies of scale?!

On it's own bird flu is not so much a general worry because it dies not seem to spread widely except through areas where people are already experiencing tremendous strain to survive. In thebwaybit spreads, Bird flu is more than one pebble thrown into the world pond and it's frequency of distribution may be correlated with hunger. We see failure to produce enough wheat or the over pricing of rice or rice shortages.

The distribution of some famines and that of bird flu may be correlated. Fighting one may fight the other. Protecting wheat crops in Afghanistan may help reduce the spread of bird flu. Think of a huge number of pebbles thrown into the world pond and you have the risk of bird flu.

The other stone thrown into the pond is that of swine flu. Around the generators of swine flu, the huge polluting factory farms of swine, the risks of generating novel swine flus would predictably be higher.

By being more human to our swine we may save the planet from future pandemics and novel virus strains, over the long term.

Right now the economies of scale of crouding more and more pigs into larger and larger factories is like throwing a huge stone into our world health pond. The risks from new and more virilant strains of swine flu are still being generated by huge unhealthy factory pig farms located in almost every country around the globe.

It is the economics of the technologies of farming on ever increasing scales of food such as wheat, rice, chicken and swine that precurse the presence of novel and dangerous viruses.

If the technology of large scale farming does not produce dangerous flus then that is the greater mystery or the worst of health cover ups.

the upscaling of agriculurtural technologies so as to bring about economies of large scale industry allows for an increasing tof he risks of bigger and bigger systems of waves of disease as we create stronger and stranger varieties of virus. Large scale production also breeds the feeding grounds for catastrophic events such as would happen as enormous plants fail to produce or create unhealthy conditions in the surrounding communities, the spoiling of land habitats for wild animals and vegetations, the overspecialization of types of strains of DNA or methods of manufacture using energy or technologies that express themselves as strains on other technologies, DNAs, wild
life and humane communities, general health of wild and domesticated systems.


Now what should happen in communities where large scale production of pork and chicken co-exist. Yes, the risk of novel diseases goes up as it is less and less healthier for the poor pigs and chickens, or as less care is taken about sanitation and people or creatures in the surrounding areas are placed at greater inconvenience, or risks.

On the really large scale disaster scenario, we need only large wave of fast spreading swine flu to mix with one small but deadly wave of bird flu and presto we have a novel flu that spreads fast and wide and kills like a plague.

Make no mistake, it is the emerging risks of large scale agriculture and production that place humanity in this danger area. The economics of scale in production should be appropriately TAXED to account for these risks.

The burden on world health costs should be born increasingly by large scale industrial farms who are making excessive profits and destroying more balanced income distrutions. To cover our costs, we should prepare our representives in government for placing the costs of antivirals and vaccines onto the shoulders of those who create the greatest risks. They are the upscale swine and chicken farm multinationals who do not allow inspection of their plant by health inspectorates.

We should have world health police to inspect the environments that pose us greatest risk of novel and dangerous disease. Perhaps, it is large industrial farms that head this list!

Smaller is more beautiful, and safer for the world community.

Flu Pandemic - Who is in charge?

The long and short of it is that when a nasty form of the H1N1 virus strikes it is your life on the line!

The problem is somewhat akin to the story of the three pigs deciding whether or not to build protection out of straw, wood or brick. The wolf is out there, but you have no idea which direction it might turn. Others around you are working on their straw, wood and brick strategies. Some are doing nothing. What should you do?

The thing to remember is that a brick protection takes the longest time. It is the only form of real protection. Once you have built one brick or stone structure it gets easier and easier. Castles are the epitome of protection and wolves have no chance of entry except by stealth and hiding in something you bring into your castle. You would not let a wolf across the draw bridge so you had better have an early warning system of it's expected arrival and then as many tools as you can gather to ward it off!

I have news for you. The wolf really is out there and we don't know how dangerous it really is. Remember that it is a wild animal and can play you for a fool if you are little miss Riding Hood and let your guard down. No a wolf is a wolf and highly dangerous on most of it's appearances. We have seen the sheepish quiet side of this wolf, but it may just turn nasty or bring along some if it's friends such as pneumonia which we have weapons against if we would but use them.

Being strong is no assurance that you would win in a fight against the wolf. The strong are sometimes foolhardy and overestimate their capacity to ward off the wolf. Being smart by realizing you are in charge and looking out for your family is the way to go. Plan well ahead and don't be ashamed to build a castle or two with mote and draw bridge if you have a mind to. Yep! The howling can be heard and the wolf is on it's way.

And, I am not crying wolf!

Why Bubbles Occur and why the Bubble economy is So Destructive

On being modern, we can assume unsustainable objectives as a community.

The developmental model used by many people contains concepts of modernity that really don't measure up to what being modern really requires.

I have spent years trying to understand why the Roman Empire failed so miserably and what really were the choices made by people that brought about history's greatest bubble economy. The Roman economy imploded spectacularly, and so too have many others that followed similar developmental paths. What we need to ask is why and what draws communities into bubble development.

Regarded as a haven of civility in a sea of barbarity, the Roman empire was regarded by many wantabe communities as something to be emulated. This tendency towards the large scale governnance of communities continues to inspire.

We saw, however, that the copy cat German Reich under Hitler, the copy cat French imperialists under Napoleon, the copy cat Stalinists under Stalin all produced misery for their nations and those around as these experiments with social expansion on the Roman model failed to sustain viable pathways of community growth.

Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, China, and USA have all experienced the tragedy of societies hell bent on dominance of their surrounding communities. Eventally these 'empires' burst and the bubble of destruction following makes the communities unrecognizable from their ancestral roots.

The history of change based on expansion into the territory of others is replete with the pain it brings to the expansionist community. From within the volcano of bubble growth comes untold misery and destruction as the infected community spreads it's diseases of dissatisfaction onto neighbouring communities.

Seen in this way, we can understand why wars continue to be an outcome of bubble growth in which greed and the trap of debt burst out into the world landscape! It seems that people are drawn onto destructive developmental paths all too easily. Does it have anything to do with scale and the expected returns from increasing scale? I think so.

Economies of scale are a result of technology and the grail of enterprises of all forms: cities, economies, empires, farms, firms, boxes, ships, .... many things!

Organizing on ever increasing scales means greater profits and increasing returns. There is no limit to technology upscaling except that it leads to death!

Technology upscaling is addictive and produces an adrenalin rush for a community that leads that community down a pathway of self destruction. This path is always a death march or funeral corridor for individuals and communities. It arises because the next fix is always larger.

Seen in this context, the expansion of industrial communities is a form of social addiction that will lead those communities towards self destruction. The reason is simply that economies of scale of one community eventually impinge on the adjacent communities who struggle to survive. There is only one winner in the economy of scale process and that us the larger more efficient unit. Farms get oversized, firms get oversized, communities of people get larger and larger.

Miniturization allows economies of scale to be achieved and the process of seeking after economies of scale continues into smaller and smaller quarters. Engines get smaller yet produce larger and larger amounts if energy. Computer chips get denser and denser. Pills become more and more potent and more and more addictive.

This is the inner and outer city of development in modern times and it's outcome is an addictive process that leads to earlier than normal death for the individual or social participant. Cities die young, farm communities cease to have a soul, unemployment rises and the income distribution skews away from even distribution. Managers die in the harness, addicts lose control and waste their lives in narrow pursuits that kill them. People cease to exercise by walking as much as they should and vegetate into sedentary blobs of obesity.

I am speaking of myself!?

Dying in Ontario

Where failure is normal.

What does one do in a society where the acceptance of failure is regarded as normal?

Look around you and you can see failure everywhere! It is normal, but it is highly dangerous. In Ontario, we accept that our agricultural development has been a success story. In fact the story is and was very different. They say what you don't notice about the deterioration about you won't harm you. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are communities in Ontario, such as the religious communities of people who are careful with what they do in their local world. Gone is the basis of Ontario's hardword furniture industry.

Farms are no longer surrounding fields with trees for birds and wild life. Gone soon will be the soils for growing fruit and the small scale fruit industry. What Ontario had is not missed because the young don't remember what they never saw. Rivers full of wild life. Ponds teaming with frogs.

Birds that once thrived are now extinct. Beautiful landscapes carved into ugly unnatural concrete mazes and lifeless deserts where habitats for harmless creatures once thrived.

What are we doing? What can Ontario farmers do?

They must say no to the cities that swallow up the land. People need to say enough with the sprawl that kills the countryside. Children need to experience the beauty of Ontario as it once was. Not the present polluted dump heap of chaotic shyte.

We can clean up the province, but we have to notice that it is dirty first!!!!

Shape of the Universe, Gravity, Light and Time

Space and time are interrelated. We look into space and we perceive light that comes to us from an earlier time. It just happens that in the earlier time space was smaller and light since earliest time spreads out further and further into a vaster and vaster space. It suggests that time is very closely related to scale and size.

I sense that there are three spaces. A space on the inside which to me is the past or inner space and a space on the outside which is the future or outerspace and a sideways or tangential space that bridges the other two spaces.

In my model of the 'world' the three spaces of past, present, and future coexist. This is why the general theory of Einstein works because although the traveller in Eistein's universe does not age because of plasma speed motion he/she can come across others who did not move and who consequently aged.

The problem with the general theory is the e=mc2 misses out -e=-mc2. But, how do you include this other direction of space without bothsides of the equation dropping away. The answer is that there is another element of the equation that us missing and that element is gravity.

The new equation is:

ge=something, where 'g' is gravity.

What can that g be? We know that there are two directions of motion and energy in space time. 'g' links these two to bring about equivalence.

In my model, energy is of direct consequence to fermions but not to light which occupies space and time differently and is not subject to material exclusion principles. We see some of these properties of matter in plasma where motion is so fast that it does not have the time spacial limiting properties of gases, liquids, and solids.

Were we to think of our spaces as tangential motion and energy moving in specific dimensional spaces and gravity as moving in a different but very reacheable space, we would envisage my physical world together. Few people seem to be able to do this simple visualization.

With ge, we are able to see that the universe is recurrent and not unidirectional, that the big bang did not really happen, and that the past, present coexist in a universe without time as a space but time only as an attribute of viewing space in a highly restrictive viewport.

Our problem as human beings is that we do not have the lense of our brains calibrated to see time as only a consequence of our 'electronic apparatus' and not in any way characteristic of our 'liberated' reality.

Remember that human beings are copy cats and that they are creatures of habit. These two mental features are like machines programmed to carry out a small number of tasks, but as yet incapable of seeing or relating to the wider surfaces of their universe.

That too will change as new technologies will be invented to permit the mind/brain to travel forward and backward across 'ge'.

Network Inefficiencies Encourage Hackers

I should add market inefficiencies! As it were to revisit the Napster mechanisms of circumventing unreasonable costs. Where the actual market is artificially restrained by monopoly or poor governmental choices and licensing, one can expect a proliferation of black market activity. This is like a school for scandal! In the case of telecom streams this means hacking will be rife as users perceive the market as being out of wack with what is available from a simple hack. Market leakages to black markets redress some of the inequities produced by excessive market advantages that are purely administrative and bear little relationship to non-political advantages. Such is Canada and it's relationship to European and US markets. The Canadian hacking community will flourish given these incentives of mis-managed market mechanisms.

High Cost of Canadian Cell Phone Use

It would appear that nothing has changed in Canada. It is still extraordinarily inefficient. This is especially the case in telecommunications where monopolies drain Canadians pocketbooks while offering poor service without competition one would like to see so close to the US. Essentially, Canada is moving away from being competitive and will be very vulnerable over the long term to outside shocks.

The Pace of Evolution

We do not see the obvious some times, but it is increasingly evident that technology defines our existence increasingly. We used to see nature as a solution provider, but increasingly it is man's domination of nature that motivates intelligent life. The problem with this is that it reflects an imbalance between constructive and destructive forces, and in evolving, man has all to often become the destructive force. For example, in Africa there is the capacity to grow enough food to end starvation world wide! But what does mankind do with this opportunity? It is destroyed. What are you evolving into? We have the tools to end AIDS worldwide and to end hunger. We gave not figgured out the organization of these tools to do good in the face of unkind opposition that is not well informed. Can we educate people to end the cycles of misery or are there always going to be areas of immense suffering that we cannot ever reach?

Blogging with a mobile phone

Small is better. I've concluded that Microsoft has lost already!

Medical Systems

It might be said that a society gets the medical system it deserves. However, what we are really talking about is how people prioritize the suffering of others. Many communities think of America as somewhat hyprocritical because of the unnecessary suffering that goes on within it's borders. Shame on you, America can't you lead the world in a medical system for everyone.

Left and Right Wing

Does history not tell you more often than not that being on the left means you are trying to reduce people's suffering or the suffering of others, while being on the right means that one wants the status quo even though it means people and creatures suffer! There us nothing shameful about being on the left, but there is something shameful about not being aware of suffering whether you are coming from the right or the left.

Will the madness not stop?

The Internet is very good at highlighting activities of madness where animals or people suffer at the mercy of people making a living or garnishing a 'bloody' profit. Lately the sale of asbestos from Canada to India comes up, as does the silent slaughter of dolphins in coves along Japanese coasts. Neither activity should be allowed by law yet Canadian politicians and Japanese have not passed legislation. What is it with these 'Bushy' governments?

What is it with these Alberta gunslingers that would rather slaughter more than a dozen bears than build fences!? The bears are dead but not the need for an annual cull because the solution is an ass of mental depravity. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Where did all the oil money go if it wasn't into the hands of people who do not care for anything let alone a few very ordinary animals that just might be telling Albertans that they are sleepwalking away from common sense! Who is in the wrong the bears, the dolphins, or the men and women who seem not to have complete grade school?

From the Back Room to the Woods

Computers are indeed evolving. There are now more computers in the wilderness than there used to be in the cities. From cool cellar to office, from office to desk, from desk to lap top, from lap top to hand. You get the idea of an evolution? From IBM to Hewlett Packard to Microsoft to Apple, and the trend continues. Or, do you not see the cycles?

The How and the Why of Ghosts

Do you need to take the idea of ghosts very seriously? Perhaps not, because they are not something that you can ever put you hands on, especially if you are a practical person. Are ghosts relevant in one's everyday life? Possibly not, but you really don't do not know.

Ghosts are very personal things and they are tagged to the past and places of the past. Since most people think that the past does not matter all that much, then ghosts won't matter that much, perhaps.

Our past realities define the how and the where of ghosts. The why of ghosts is more complex. Ghosts do exist, and they do come in many forms. They are a mental fact and reflect how our brain works and what our brain is capable off. If I say that time and space are the same thing a la general theory of Einstein then I might be forgiven if I say that in the future we will visit earth as ghosts. If you travel fast enough the earth will age while you remain young. As a young person you may arrive back on earth to find all your friends of a few moments earlier being presently just ghosts of the past. Yes ghosts really do exist, but we don't yet know the why of the ones we have experienced. We do know that they are possible and that our mind has many ghostlike qualities. We do know that everything we do or say continues on, otherwise Einstein would be wrong and the general theory of relativity would be false. We know that is not the case and ghosts are very real!

Memristors .. Are we ready for another electronics revolution?

Well it seems that nature is telling us that natural electronics still has a few surprises. One of these is a future component of electronic circuits that could make everything that we have seen so far seem like kids play .. welcome the memristor!

Wars are Obsolete and Peace is State of the Art

So many young men and women have gone to war at the urging of governments and organizations that were misled or deranged that we can say that wars are our greatest threat. We can see clearly that those that started war failed miserably. They inevitably lost more than they could have gained through other means. We can easily say that war is generated by losers.

It is also false to say that human nature predisposes people towards war. More accurate would be the assertion that war is a trap of nature coming from outside human desire. People are led into war unwillingly like being channeled down a fast moving river. Those caught in the current drag others in with them in a firm of overwelming madness that goes totally against what is in everyones best interests. Technology is the generator of war and an ignorance of how to manage technology safely is at the source of misuse that ends in war. Religion is a form of social technology that can be misused and the mismanagement of religion is at the root of many wars. Addictions are at the heart of many wars and represent technologies where people are incompetent users. At the heart of peace is the capacity to use technology towards beneficial goals. It is this, the direction of the use of technology, that is at the heart of peace.

Education on the proper use of technologies will create peace. Teach people how to use drugs effectively and how to eliminate addiction and one will create peace where drug wars once were.

Show people how to remove guns from temptations and one can eliminate the urge to use guns as a method of resolving differences.

We need to invest in peace making technology as much as we do in the instruments of war. This applies to religions as much to governments as to war lords and organized crime.

Downsizing as a Way to Reduce Waste

It is a paradox, but the prescription of many economic experts during hard times is to create more waste. This all to often is what economic growth is all about, and it is particularly nasty in the case of small economies.

My favourite economics professor at Cambridge was the growth theorist Lord Kaldor, who was also my examiner on many occasion. Lord Kaldor held that the strongest law in economics was fertility and he associated this with economies of scale and size of productive unit.

Most economists realize that a single enormous plant is now the most efficient way to produce, distribute and sell almost everything. If one can make something smaller as the iPhone has done with computers then one has actally enlarged the something. Accordingly, as the transistor and integrated circuits became smaller they actally became larger on economic terms.

The size of everything is an economic decision and everything in economics is affected by technology. My technology determinism thinking did not go down well at Cambridge University because the more traditional social determinism views of markets and economies held sway. However, our reality is that is you live in a small economy the size of packages of items such as shampoo will be larger because the seller and producer want you to buy more than you need. Think everytime you eat that you are made fatter by oversizing of delivery systems and you will soon see how technologies of scale impact on who you are, who you are with, what you do and don't do. Yes you are a technological not and economic solution!

My finger is not small enough

Ever notice that when you use a touch based instrument you are too large. You are so inefficient!

Understanding Comes More Certainly if You Understand Statistics

It is no accident that science uses statistical method a great deal. Statistics represents a tool box of generating functions that create series that approximate series that are evident in the real world. Our everyday life is a result of sequence in which one thing follows another. When a statistical generator is found that matches the sequences of everyday life then one can use the statistical generator as an approximation of the expected sequence of events. This is where the real power of statistical generation lives.

Most often stastical series come as a consequence of cause and probable effect or as effect and probable cause. Looking back within a sequence of events helps us to understand. Then using that understanding and observing results help us to understand more. Eventually, we may understand without any hitches, but we need to be mindful that even a machine can break down if hit hard enough with a monkey wrench, or a system an break if it ets overloaded with monkeying around or just plain overloaded by too many monkeys.

Rising Water Levels

The water beside Lake Huron looks spectacular without the breeze, like glass. Those of us who notice will see that the Lake's water level is visibly higher than last year. Huron is an interior lake, but it's history will reflect what is happening elsewhere. The amount of water that will make a lake as large as Huron rise a meter is enormous, but that is what seems to have happened on less than three years. We are not worried about rising water here so much but are we mistaken to be so calm?

Maybe the muons are falling on our landscape and seeding low cloud formations. We see more rain these days here in Huron woods region. That is better than the lack of rain experienced where they normally see more rain, the maritime regions of British Columbia. What about the forest fires of Austrailia and BC!

Generally, water levels globally could be rising despite the building up of ice in Antarctica. The Artic ice is melting and we assume this to be a consequence of higher levels of co2. Might this also be due to sun spot activity peeking in the latest upward swing.

The earth is bombarded continuously by large energy particles and we don't have much insight as to the effects and cycles!

The Hard and the Easy: Why the West Needs to Think About the Direction of Economic Growth and Choose the More Difficult Path.

Unemployed technology and technologists not the banks are at the route of our economic ills. Overemployment in easy tecnologies of construction have been the wrong direction of growth by many economies. Short term profits and capital gains are not the way to run an economic system. There needs to be leadership towards the development of new industries within hard technologies rather than the easy peasy products that is driving western economies into penury. Growth by inflation in housing sectors and rralestate speculation is no way to manage an economy. Low interst rates indicate failure to choose the right direction of economic growth. Governments appear to be addicted to corruption of the politicians who have become specators of inflation rather than working to increase employment in new more difficult industry. Where is the leadership in spending taxes raised fr gambling, drugs, housing inflation, co2 pollution of or environment? Where is the incentive to keep people employed in the more difficult agricultural practices that are environmentally friendly? Who is directing the directions of economic change into the more difficult industrial or agricultural paths that we need to explore?

Is the New Gun Registry System a Pipedream?

This new UN gun registry covers all weapons and comprises a massive database system that can be used by law enforcement officers worldwide. Every weapon has a finger print. The new database stores that finger print before the weapon is sold to a member of the public or delivered to the military. All weapons manufacturers in all member countries of the UN must provide the information to the worldwide database before the weapon is sold.

This new system to be announced in time by the UN's new crime prevention unit has the capability of tracking down every new and existing registered weapon to its victim if the projectile or bullet is retrieved. Even in a wartime scenario the innocent victim of killing by a soldier can be traced to the soldier's weapon. The system will save lives if only because the criminal will know that use of a weapon will be traceable by an international police or UN agency.

The new database to be implemented requires that every existing owner of a weapon be registered. All weapons of soldier will be registered under the new system. This information is to be kept in a central database for access worldwide by police forces and military law investigators worldwide over the Internet. Any weapon that does not match its registered finger print will be confiscated and destroyed.

All weapons worldwide will be registered whether for military or civilian ownership. The new system will require of member countries of the UN to provide timely real time information. An country that does not provide such information is to be boycotted.

Don't believe everything that you read.

The Mathematics of Panic and the Mexican Swine Flu Pandemic

No one yet knows for sure, but the evidence is building that the Mexican flu pandemic is real and that it has had a three week gestation period beginning in earnest possibly during for the first week of April 2009. It may have spread out through people travelling away from the breeding wastes of several large swine farms at La Gloria near Mexico City. That is only an hypothesis. The big question is that, given present deaths in Mexico now stand at over 150, how long will it take before similar numbers appear in other communities across the globe. In other words, how long before you or I no matter where we live can expect to see the virus in our community. And, then how fast will the numbers of serious cases climb in Mexico as a potential pandemic gathers speed.

I have to say that the pandemic seems more than potential and that is why the potential for panic is as great as the potential for pandemic.

A rough calculation based on a three weeks gestation period for an area that has been saturated with the flu virus mutating and evolving suggests that not all those that have the swine flu virus will have the virulent strain. In fact, many case of the virus already reported around the world will have strains that have not yet evolved into a killer strain. They may never evolve into a killer strain and indeed may provide a means of protecting people from the killer strain or strains when these eventually arrive.

My very rough calculations of percentages for what they are worth would preliminarily suggest a 5 percent mortality rate out of those that have actually caught the killer strain and get seriously sick. This means that the figure for the total number catching the swine flu virus with all the other less dangerous strains could be a much smaller proportion, say less than 1 percent. This is just a wild speculation for setting out the arguments that a panic response may be more serious than the spread of the killer varus itself, at least initially, and if we are very lucky we may get immune to the killer strain by catching the non killer strain. Being or getting sick from the swine flu does not mean you will die. We do not know what the proportions are or will be. Some people may be already partially protected from less dangerous forms. We do not know what will protect from the killer forms.

As regards alarm, one should realize that those that will catch swine flu may be very large indeed, again I must emphasize may be, since mathematically we have no way yet of telling people more than that. This will lead to panic, and panic is morel Ikey than pandemic of the killer strain. As I read it, a pandemic of the swine flu virus is not the same as a pandemic of the killer strain the swine flu virus. Thus, you will probably survive the pandemic if you are reading this article, however you should be aware than you may still panic, and the panic may be more dangerous than the part of the pandemic of the swine flu virus that is not the killer strain. If you can understand that then you have the gist of my comments.

It is possibly the case that once people in your community have contracted the swine flu virus, you, yourself, will catch the virus in about three weeks even if you try very hard to avoid it. Be aware that many people may have to have the non-killer strain before it has evolved into a killer strain. Averaging everything out, the average person is safe, but there is a good chance lots of people will get very seriously ill around you.

Just keep your cool and do what you think will maximize your chances of surviving the worst. Get food and drink together for the long haul, get anti-viral cleansers, get loads of tissues and bags to dispose these,. Read as much as you can about how to protect your family and your community. Above all, do not panic. Survive by using your wits, and do unto your neighbour as you would they do unto you.

The New Stereotypes and Why They are Damaging

I see the creation of new stereotypes as a social process to give human beings comfort that they are addressing the ills of their world. The real problem is that the new stereos, many of them associated with bankers and banking, do nothing to help our situation other than appease our inclinations towards negative attitudes.

In essence, the main players in the unfolding of the financial crisis were innocent of a knowledge of wrong doing. Most were people being pragmatic within their perceptions of what the rules of the economic games being played out. They did not realize that the senior supervisory managers of the game were ignorant of the ultimate effects of the market game processes or had their heads in the sand. Our stereotype is, however, different in that we have cast them, all banking industry people, as willing participants in games of deception. That these stereotypes do not really apply to the vast majority of people in the financial world is too often forgotten in the rhetoric of politicians and housewives alike.

We have been through many histories of destructive stereotyping that has led to massive amounts of injustice to innocent parties. What we all have to presently endure is that the approaches of economic analysis that are presently in place worldwide are not sufficient to the task of understanding economic processes. The whole science of economics has to improve beyond its own stereotypes.

It is no longer sufficient to use the mathematics of economics to solve economic problems. There needs to be much more empirical and information gathering in economic analysis of forms that take into account the real complexities of economic and social structures. We are far down the ladder of solutions and need to climb into realism. Our shortcuts of analysis are damaging our people and communities.

The Continuing World Economic Crisis as Mistaken Identity

The problem with understanding economic problems is that there are many ways to analyse an economic situation. The leaders of the G20 have resolved that a multi-pronged approach aiming to end the liquidity crunch while amending the rules under which banks operate should do the trick. Do their efforts represent a real solution or are we seeing the playing out of another drama of ignorance about economic processes?

A feature of the G20 proposal is that it partly addresses the demands of Gordon Brown for stimulus while partly addressing the demands of European leaders for reformation of the banking system. It is wonderful rhetoric, but does the rhetoric contain the solution, or might one ask in all sincerity whether there is at this point a solution. In my view, this rather depends on your point of view and how you see the economic processes playing out over time relative to what you consider your ideal.

Its obvious that the main target of community leaders should be to minimize inflation while maximizing real growth in new directions such as to resolve other crises that humanity faces. The measures proposed in the G20 statement of intent will go some of the way towards resolving the different crises, but what will play out will be huge differences in emphasis in different countries because of their respective competitive situations and whether they are the initiators of the crisis or the unfortunate recipients.

One has to ask the question why the credit crunch. If one gets the right answers then it is possible that solutions may be found. However, if one asks the wrong questions or looks at the economic processes incorrectly, one can easily foresee a continuation of 'issues' rather than their resolution. In my view the wrong people are reviewing the financial processes and probably getting it wrong. This is not because they are not brilliant in the field of economics or finance as presently defined, but because the whole science of most economic analysis is built on mistaken identity based on stereotypes that no longer apply. Partly, we are all to blame because we believe or have faith in mathematical analysis as the end of the story rather than thorough examination of the details through time.

Mathematically, we can examine the economic problem from a macro or micro economic perspective. In conventional macro economics, it is not obvious that there was rampant and destructive inflation. What was overlooked was the disjoint between short term financing and long term need. The gap between the two was bridged by a false and failing macro economic approach. What was needed was a measure of processes of inflation that are socially divisive.

This was definitely overlooked by the IMF whose role it was to have such an indicator. Do you think they will advise on the correct measure of inflation the second time round. I don't, and that is a real problem for the world! Their macro economics approach is presently insufficient to the task. They need to get a better measure of inflation and act accordingly.

Another aspect of the G20 communication is that there needs to be changes in the rules of banking. This we would all agree. The problems we have identified are associated with leveraging, hedging, borrowing short and lending long (in all environments of immediate, short and long term financial markets), debt burden creation by not limiting loans to weaker segments of borrowing, arm chair banking at it very worse, disregard for prudent loan management. All these are, however, to misidentify the real problems, which I believe will be allowed to continue unless they are understood for what they are.

Economists are prone to forget the very close connections between stock market activity and money market activity. When both markets are structured in such ways as to produce instability from their very nature, this does not augur well for the economic system as a whole. I believe that the structural problems of the financial system have not been identified or are being ignored while the focus is on the effects of bad structure not the elements of bad structure that need to be address.

Yes, my dears, mis-identification is the order of the day, and habit persistence of bad habits will govern the greater mess me will be forced to endure.

The Case For Christ - A Review of Lee Strobel's Book

Lee Strobel is a well known and highly respected reporter, who has written many books about why Christians should continue to believe in Jesus Christ as their saviour and as authentic.

In my view, his case for Christ book has to rank among the best on the subject of the authenticity of Christ. His book outlines the failings of much serious research work over two recent decades to get a clearer picture of Christ beyond what was known thirty years after his death and carefully vested for inclusion in the New Testament over the century afterward.

The reader will find that Strobel's book is extremely well written and its conclusion very clear, namely that Jesus Christ lived and rose from the dead in a way that we would today regard as supernatural. The Christian story is of a miracle, a series of supernatural events that cannot be explained away by recent research. On the contrary, much of current work on the historicity of Christ that seeks to present an alternative view to that presented in the early days of Christianity fails on almost every count.

One is given such wonderfully presented information by Strobel as to conclude that it is worth every one's time to begin reading the Bible, if they have in the past failed to do so, because what Jesus says and does may indeed be supernatural and unique in the history of mankind.

Read Strobel's book and judge for yourself. I think he makes mincemeat of many weaker and falser claims by those wishing to destroy Christian faith.

Why the Present World Financial Crisis is an Opportunity

President Obama and world leaders came through yesterday and presented a wonderful opportunity for the young people to develop a new world order with a soundly based future that properly takes into account the numerous failings of excessive or rampant market growth.

My own research suggests that companies, and the human beings that drive them forward, are by-and-large opportunistic or paranoiac copy cats. Life is a competitive race in which people are likely to neglect the needs of others and they charge forwards to higher and higher levels of pleasure and satisfaction. Fear, as well as, fervour and lust are at the base of aggressive behaviour.

By change from competition towards competitive cooperation or cooperative competition, we can move closer towards more ideal forms of market and social development that recognizes our basic desires, but at the same time curbs our worst appetites. That is what communities and community communications could be designed to achieve. It would be much better for religions and companies to recognize that they cannot be overall winners. Organizations need to come to terms with living in a cooperative but still competitive environment. When governments recognize this, organizations can recognize this and eventually the people within the organizations can recognize this. It means that we need to have a human bill of rights that all governments, all organizations and all human being can be held to task on.

Once we have reached the goal of cooperative competition between human beings, we can expand our bills of rights to include all living creatures. There is room enough for every living creature once we get cooperation as a norm between human beings.

The Evolving World Economy

A consequence of the mistakes made in the financial sectors of New York and London would seem to me to be that their time of dominion is rapidly entering a new phase. If Britain and America engage in meaningful reforms of the financial structures, there might be hope of their lasting well into the future, however, the force of old habits and prior commitments to financing long term goals with short term money does not auger well for their futures.

The winners in our financial crisis should be those that can think into the longer term, not the thieves of our futures. There has to be a way for governments to redirect thinking towards long term views that build in low risk approaches to financing. It would better to have slower growth that is well founded in innovation and good judgment than to have inflationary growth that rushes into the future faster and faster as it heads towards a poor or tragic outcome.

What is Natural?

At a time when we see and hear so much about Charles Darwin and his wonderful life researching and discovering the origin of species, it is quite natural that one should ask what is natural. Well, we could say that what is in the past is natural. How far does that take us? Most would probably think that it does not take us very far. Can one say that what is in the future is natural? As one goes through this process of considering what is natural, one gets closer to the idea that there are some things that go well beyond the natural. Is it fair to add all these new things that we discover in the future to our category of natural. I have my doubts.

My inclination is to reject this notion of natural and think of the world as being supernatural. The category of supernatural for me at least includes what is natural and then adds to it. I don't think all the past was natural. One has only to ask what came before the past and one has no answer. What existed before the big bang and why was there a big bang? Its not satisfactory to me to say that everything after the big bang was/is/will be natural. My view is that all this stuff we see around us includes the natural universe plus a very large supernatural universe. Its not that I have any proof, but I am not going to wait forever thinking that this is all there is, or ever was. That would seem to me to be rather silly.

The Crash Georges

My pet peeve is that two Heads of State named George crash landed their economies, when they could have landed them much more softly and the world would not have to change so much. George Bush crashed his America and George Brown his Britain.

A consequence of George Brown's failure to produce a soft landing will in my view at this moment in time (opinions change) be the loss of the UK Pound Sterling as an independent currency. As the pound weakens because the UK financial is inhibited from crisis creation a benign consequence could be for Britain to join the Euro system.

Had Britain been part of the Euro system, there might have been greater sensitivity to the forms of inflation that are socially divisive, namely the inflation of costs of operating and owning a family residence. As it now stands, George is unrepentant in his mistaken view that his lack of sufficient understanding of evolutionary economics was not the source of the crash landing of the British economy.

Is the G20 Challenge an impossibility? Not yet, but pretty close!

Later this week the G20 meets in London, England under extraordinary security. Heads of State will discuss options for our future based on their assessment of the processes of economics that generated the present difficulties.

On the top of the list must be the future role of the IMF, and one can be forgiven after what has happened whether the IMF has been neglecting its mandate, which is to ensure that the world economy grows and inflation is kept in check. The idea may have arisen in many minds as to whether it is a failing of the staff of the IMF or its political bosses. Its one thing for staff to comment on what countries should do, but quite another to buffet the pressures of governments pushing their own agenda a views of what makes good world order.

The IMF Slept While Housing Inflation Raged in the US and UK.

At fault is the price index used by the IMF to assess whether inflation exists. A new index needs to be worked out that assesses contributions of inflation in long term investment forces, such as housing, land rental, residence rental and property. This is a minimum and security of pensions and of pensioners is at stake.

The main economic idea to be supported is that inflation is socially divisive and has in the past contributed to the deterioration of the social fabric of the period immediately before the second great war.

The role of the IMF, its primary role, is to ensure that the world does not deteriorate into stagflation that brings about international conflict in trade and investment, especially if such deterioration and conflict can be avoided by good economic policy.

Stability in the Housing and Building Industry

Its very strange that Gordon Brown should be mouthing off about how upset he and the people around him are about how profligate the banks have been. Going back in time, one can see that the approach of allowing the big five in the UK to lend to the housing market resulted in an over investment in that market relative to what could be sustained. Its fairly easy to see that liberalization of the banking system in this one aspect was controversial from the start as it was based on the wrong assumption that banks in the UK could lend long and borrow long. That is not the case. Even building societies have problems borrowing long.

The competitive reaction analysis done by Knickerbocker in the 1960's, by Gary Hufbauer in the 1960's and by numerous economists like myself in the 1970's, was suggestive enough that American banks would bring with them a competitive reaction relationship from the US and the very financial technologies suitable for America but unsuitable for the UK. The US banking system is vastly different from that of the UK and the rules that US banks like to follow are competitive, dishonest and legalistic rather that cooperative and honest as in the UK. In essence, the British banks increased in number as Building Societies became banks. The ethics of British bank fell prey to the lack of ethics in American banking. The US disease has been seen around the world and suggests that we need to move to remove the sickness of doing what is legal and replace it with doing what is good for everyone.

At the very least, the OECD technology wing should study the competitive situation in banking systems of the members of the OECD and come up with proposals for reform.

Stability in World Banking and My Recommendations of Starting Steps to Achieve it

It is fair to say that people are holding too much debt. Much of existing debt needs to be written off, but it needs to be done within a cooperative frameworks rather than competitive frameworks. Under competition, banks will gobble each other up as they dishonestly portray their financial situations. Camouflage and obfuscation is the 'order of war' between banks. People will be thrown out of houses to make balance sheets look good!!

1. The OECD should study the technologies of the banking systems and make recommendations based on high technology considerations.

2. The OECD should also study the nature of banking sector risk and make recommendations regarding what forms of hedge funds would be permitted based on risks of the forms we have seen and based on simulations of potential industrial growth permutations.

3. The IMF should reexamine the role of the SDR as a commercial medium of exchange and store of value. The US dollar as a stable unit of account is exaggerated. The Chinese, Brazilians and Russians are quite right in asking for a basket of currencies, and in my view it should be the SDR.

3. Oil and energy taken from the ground (gas, petrol, wood, and other contaminate) should be priced in SDRs. The IMF should regulate these pricess to ensure the environment targets, what ever they may be, are met. A proportion of the revenues should go to the IMF to help finance solar energy and clean energy production in small economies. Energy from the sun should be priced in the currencies of countries of source.

4. A better approach for housing finance is that certain debts be forgiven over the long period on a sliding basis. What should happen, in my humble view is that all housing debt after 2004 be locked in at fixed rate of two percent and the 60 year maturity assigned. Each year thereafter the maturity of the loan should be adjusted forward by one year. After fifteen years these loans should be reviewed and differentiated between manageable and unmanageable accounts. Those that cannot afford their properties should sell them and move to other locations.

5. All new loans for housing should have a fixed interest rate of greater than 2 percent. All borrowers should be allowed a single multiple of 3.5 times current annual income, and married couples 5 times joint incomes. Capacity to repay should be the basic rule.

Wuh Lax Rules

1. Don't smoke... ever!
2. Drink only in moderation, and keep as wheat free as possible, for health and nourishment.
3. Be as honest as you can be in all things.
4. Treat others as you would treat yourself.
5. Exercise as often as you can.
6. Eat only when hungry and eat for health and nourishment.
7. Talk when spoken to. but talk in moderation and listen attentively to others.
8. Remember that people are varied and enjoy them as you would good books.
9. Rest often and be tranquil frequently.
10. Avoid profanity.
11. Cultivate friends assiduously.
12. Try working with those who oppose you as your preferred option.
13. Find out new things by figuring out the universe.
14. Create novelty and be inventive in your attitudes and attempts to master new skills.
15. Do voluntarily give up.

The Real Losses During the Present Financial Crisis

Strange isn't it that when everyone is looking at stopping the bonuses at AIG as a moral issue, the people at AIG and administering the rescue package see it as a competitive issue. We have to pay out the bonuses in order not to lose the brains behind financial market turmoil. These precioiusly smart individuals have to be kept within the fold of American industry. This sounds a bit like the retention in the United States of German military and bomb scientists after the war. We can't let destructive genius escape into the void. What the administrators of the rescue packages appear actually to be saying is that the destructive scientists will or could come back and beat us at our own destructive games! The real loss to America is, however, that the destructive games will not be stopped because the country worships them. They represent its new and resident gods, the 'now' gods of financial warfare.