Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

The new "Mirror of Tomorrow" on Ning

ronjon — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:42:27 -0700

This is a discussion about the new "Mirror of Tomorrow" website that RYD and Ronjon have been setting up on the social networking platform called Ning. It's a private discussion reserved for the Administrators of SCIY, located within a new locked subcategory named "Ning Technical":

ADMIN > NING FEATURED > .. Ning Technical

It started with the following replies to the article "How Many Lives," a lovely poem by RYD from his book Passing Moments. I've copied below the initial comments regarding the MoT site on Ning:

Re: How Many Lives? - a poem by RY Deshpande

by RY Deshpande on Thu 08 Nov 2007 08:01 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

So nice of you, Ronjon--and thanks. But let me push it a little further now. If we can have a poetry tab at the Ning's Mirror of Tomorrow, I could post the entire book, Passing Moments, there. What do you say--unless you think it is too early to go in that direction?

RYD

Re: Re: How Many Lives? [posting poetry on Ning]

by ronjon on Thu 08 Nov 2007 02:37 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

Yes, let's do it. I don't think it's too early to do so.

I don't know how to create a new tab on Ning. So, I've just implemented another way of doing it, via an RSS/XML link to a new subcategory on SCIY:

CULTURE>LITERATURE>..Poetry>RY Deshpande

Here's how to use it:

1) Post each poem as a normal article on the SCIY Webzine site. In the Categories frame on the Post Article page, deselect the Main Page, then scroll down the Category list to CULTURE/LITERATURE and select the CULTURE/..Poetry and CULTURE/..Poetry/RY Deshpande subcategories.

2) Then, and this is important, go to the "I would like to: Publish this article using:" item at the bottom of the Post Article page, and use the drop-down menu to select "a date in the past." Then use the Month drop-down menu and choose the month prior to the current month. E.g., if the current month is Nov, select Oct. Then do your normal Preview and Save to publish the article.

3) Following steps 1) & 2) will prevent the article from appearing on the Main Page or in the Recent Articles list.

4) A link to the article with your Article Title will soon appear on the Mirror of Tomorrow page.

Let me know how this works for you, ok?

~ ronjon

Re: Re: Re: How Many Lives? [New Tabs on Ning]

by RY Deshpande on Fri 09 Nov 2007 05:26 AM PST | Profile | Permanent Link

That’s a way out and I’ll pursue it. But that leaves the fundamental problem with Ning unsolved. It is necessary to have freedom to introduce tabs depending upon the user’s needs. Presently we’ve in essence only two—Forum and Photos. But there can be many other creative activities, particularly when we begin to visualize tapping the socnet potentials and possibilities. Video, educational sessions, science demonstrations, music, dance, drama, choreography, fiction, yoga classes, presentation of history, live debates, etc., etc.—the whole world of arts and sciences can open out and there has to be scope on the platform for working these out. Will it be possible to approach Ning with some of these suggestions and explore to what extent they can entertain these ideas? But I think it will be good if it happens.

RYD

I'll continue the discussion here with replies to this article.

~ ronjon

Life Divine classes via Skype, by Debashish Banerji

ronjon — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:00:00 -0700

Debashish Banerji conducts Skype-based online studies on Sri Aurobindo's opus "The Life Divine" every Wednesday from 7:30-9:30 PST. The audio recordings are archived. You can listen to recordings of these classes here on this page or the most updated versions in their archived location at:

Life Divine studies via Skype, by Debashish Banerji, Ph.D.

To join the Skype conference, please send your Skype Id to Debashish at debbanerji@yahoo.com

Notes:

1) These online classes began on March 22, 2007. To hear the early classes, go here, then scroll to the bottom of the page.

2) Click on the more » link below each Hipcast.com icon to see the beginning and end of each LD quote being discussed, and a link to an online version of the text graciously provided by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Topics within "Intro to SCIY" Category

ronjon — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:18:44 -0800

Click on the names of these subcategory ('Topic') folders to see articles relevant to each Topic:

HOW TO USE SCIY

.. What is SCIY

.. Getting started

.. Tips re using SCIY

SCIY EDITORS

.. RonJon Anastasia

.. Debashish Banerji

.. Richard Carlson.

EDITOR TRAINING

THE BEST OF SCIY

2005 AUM

'Reflections on Machine Consciousness,' by William Irwin Thompson

ronjon — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:57:32 -0700

I've taken the liberty of typing in all of Chapter 4 of my copy of this important book, because it powerfully addresses one of the main themes of SCIY, the manifold relationships between science, culture, and consciousness. (ron)

"It is a paradox of the work of Artificial Intelligence that in order to grant consciousness to machines, the engineers first labor to subtract it from humans, as they work to foist upon philosophers a caricature of consciousness in the digital switches of weights and gates in neural nets. As the caricature goes into public circulation with the help of the media, it becomes an acceptable counterfeit currency, and the humanistic philosopher of mind soon finds himself replaced by the robotics scientist. ...

"Both the mechanists and the mystics say that we are now at a great bifurcation in human evolution. The mechanists like Ray Kurzweil, Danny Hillis, and Hans Moravec prophesy that we are at the end of the human era, and that 'nanobots' are about to be embedded in our bodies until our antique organs of flesh are entirely surrounded by a new silicon noosphere of networked computers. Like ancient mitochondria or chloroplasts surrounded by the gigantic eukaryotic cells, we are about to be engulfed in the next evolutionary stage. So the mechanists see noetic technologies surrounding human culture and consciousness and compressing it into an endosymbiont in a larger and swifter and more elegant evolutionary vehicle. ...

"Mystics flip this literalism over to see technology as a system of externalized metaphors that derive from pre-existing ontological modes at play and at large in the universe... For the mystic — be she Cabbalist or Sufi — an angel is a 'Celestial Intelligence' — a form of cosmic noetic organization that does not require a detour through animal evolution. So when Kurzweil claims that by 2030 implanted nanobots in the bloodstream will enable humans to turn off to the outside world to attune to a virtual reality, the mystic would recognize a literalist rendering of the process of meditation. Kurzweil's vision of the world in 2030 reminds me of Borges's 'Library of Babel'. 'I suspect that the human species — the unique species — is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, useless, incorruptible, secret'. [2] And here we need to be sensitive to the full force of Borges's use of the word 'Babel'. ... "

Soros attacks 'craze-following' institutions for inflating oil prices

ronjon — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

George Soros, the billionaire financier, has rounded on institutional investors who have been ploughing money into oil, saying they are following a "craze" that is inflating a commodities bubble and harming the global economy. And he predicted that the rise of index funds that allow retail investors to bet on the oil price could lead to a crash that destabilises more than just the commodities markets. Mr Soros was called to give evidence on Capitol Hill as US lawmakers investigated whether "speculators" were manipulating or otherwise influencing the price of oil, which has doubled and doubled again in the past five years. A 25 per cent spike since the start of the year has sent petrol above $4 a gallon in many US states and sent the issue to the top of the political agenda. ...

Triggering Global Revolution

ronjon — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

... The state capitalism embraced by Vladimir Lenin and carried forward today under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has immunized itself against the machinations of financiers and the collapse of the dollar. Russia is preparing for an economic storm. Capitalism contains, within itself, the germs of its own destruction. The dollar has become a paper currency and the collapse of the dollar is therefore inevitable. This collapse may not happen today or tomorrow; but one day, it will happen. The fever of financial crisis has already raised our collective temperature. Real estate values are falling. The stock market cannot remain high. There is a banking crisis, a credit crunch, an energy crunch and more. An economic unraveling has begun. Once this process becomes full blown the unity of the Western world will be undermined. The free world will become unstable. Demagogues will rise to power. Violent political passions will be engendered. Russia will be powerful again.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Charles Plosser, has warned that attempts to stabilize the banking system are distorting markets and preventing asset price corrections. Worse yet, financial stabilization policies “subsidize risk-taking” by leading financial institutions.” Such policies, says Plosser, risk systemic instability through the promotion of moral hazard.

The whole financial system has become an exercise in moral hazard: massive indebtedness, consumption on credit, out-of-control social entitlement programs, protections for investors, corporate bailouts and the greatest moral hazard of all – our fiat currency...

According to economist and Nobel laureate Robert Mundell, the U.S. dollar is headed for a major crisis. “I see the problem coming maybe in the next recession,” he explained. Credited as one of the “intellectual fathers” of the single European currency, Mundell is presently advising the Communist Chinese. “The swings in the dollar–euro exchange rate are big problems,” he noted, “and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Americans get the benefit of these swings and Europe gets the wrong end of the stick.” ...

Perhaps the day is coming when oil-producing countries won’t accept dollars in exchange for oil. Perhaps they’ll want real money instead of paper. Behind the “new financial instruments” intended to save the banks we find paper. Behind the paper we find the dollar. That is to say, more paper. The U.S. Constitution is also made of paper. What previously backed all this paper was character; a willingness to work hard and accept pain – as well as painful truths. ...

Faltering Economy squeezes the American Dream

ronjon — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:49:30 -0700

Work hard, play by the rules and tomorrow will be better than today. That implicit promise has been at the core of the American Experience through good times and bad. -- But now, whipsawed by plummeting home values, $4-a-gallon gas, rising food prices and gyrating financial markets, Americans increasingly fear that the national bargain has unraveled, that their once-steady march toward affluence has derailed. In a new USA TODAY poll, 54% of those surveyed say their standard of living is no better today than five years ago.

"Fewer Americans now than at any time in the last half century believe they're moving forward in life," concluded a recent report by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center. -- The USA TODAY respondents were more upbeat about the prospects for improvement in the next five years, but only 45% expect their children to live better than they do...

So is the American Dream dead? Well, it's at least wounded. ...

Investor: Clean Tech Is Only Hope for the Collapsing Economy

ronjon — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

As the mortgage and financial crisis continues to notch more victims, the question on many economists' minds is not whether a recession will happen, but how deep it will get and how long it will last. But one prominent voice thinks the high-flying finance industry isn't going to bounce back -- and that we'll need to look elsewhere to set the U.S. economy back on firm footing.

Eric Janszen is an angel investor and founder of the contrarian market website iTulip.com, which The New York Times credited with "accurately predicting that the [internet] bubble would pop." Now Janszen believes the American economy needs a fundamental restructuring away from its foundations in finance, insurance and real estate. His prescription: a new bubble based on green technologies. In a widely discussed Harper's article in February, "The Next Bubble: Priming the Markets for Tomorrow's Crash," Janszen argued that clean tech is the only sector that could create enough "fictitious value" to replace the losses from the housing bubble, if only temporarily. ...

Only Greentech Can Save U.S. Economy, Says Über-Investor

ronjon — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...We need another wealth-generating economic bubble. And that, said Novogratz, must come -- can only come -- from new energy sources and green technology.

"As the price of oil goes up, there's got to be a green revolution. I think of what will be the next driver of the American economy, and it's green energy. That's a huge growth opportunity. It's not about the pollution. It's about the energy. Gas will go to $10 a gallon," he said. ...

The end of the world as we knew it is upon us

ronjon — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

The oil age began in 1860. By 2006 the world¹s oil rigs pumped oil at a rate of 85 million barrels a day. They haven¹t come close since, even as prices have risen to more than $100 per barrel. -- Breaking our fossil fuel dependency will require plugging into the grid instead of pulling up to the pump. And there are some interesting energy options and others are doing a lot more about developing them than Americans.

Germany leads the world in its installed capacity of renewable energy sources (25 percent), and is the third largest producer of solar panels after China and Japan. -- The share of electricity generated from renewable sources exceeded 14 percent in 2007, an increase from 11 percent in 2006. This means that Germany has already met the European Union¹s target that 12.5 percent of electricity should come from renewable sources by 2010. -- Enercon, a major wind equipment maker, claims that the renewable-energy business will become a major part of the country¹s manufacturing business, alongside cars and machine tools. Employment in the renewables industry is now 250,000 ands expected to double by 2020. Throughout Germany, around 160 technical institutions are doing research on alternative energy. ...

Transition Network: tackling Peak Oil & Climate Change, together

ronjon — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...The transition model emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to:

* significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil)
* drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)?

Typically, self-determined solutions will involve some flavour of relocalisation. -- We're building a range of materials, training courses, events, tools & techniques, resources and a general support capability to help these communities. ... We're hoping that through this work, communities across the UK will unleash their own collective genius and embark on an imaginative and practical range of connected initiatives, leading to a way of life that is more resilient, more fulfilling and more equitable, and that has dramatically lower levels of carbon emissions. ...

"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 5: THE PHANTOM AGRICULTURE

ronjon — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

This is Chapter 5 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first four chapters, go to:

• Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis
• Chapter 2: The End of Civilization
• Chapter 3: Soil-The Basis of Life
• Chapter 4: The Forest

I hope you find this as interesting and important as I have,

~ ronjon

The Old Titans All Collapsed. Is the U.S. Next? - Washington Post

ronjon — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:56:12 -0700

... Here, then, is the unnerving possibility: that another, imminent global crisis could make the half-century between the 1970s and the 2020s the equivalent for the United States of what the half-century before 1950 was for Britain. This may well be the Big One: the multi-decade endgame of U.S. ascendancy. The chronology makes historical sense -- four decades of premature jitters segueing into unhappy reality.

The most chilling parallel with the failures of the old powers is the United States' unhealthy reliance on the financial sector as the engine of its growth. In the 18th century, the Dutch thought they could replace their declining industry and physical commerce with grand money-lending schemes to foreign nations and princes. But a series of crashes and bankruptcies in the 1760s and 1770s crippled Holland's economy. In the early 1900s, one apprehensive minister argued that Britain could not thrive as a "hoarder of invested securities" because "banking is not the creator of our prosperity but the creation of it." By the late 1940s, the debt loads of two world wars proved the point, and British global economic leadership became history. ...

With the help of the overgrown U.S. financial sector, the United States of 2008 is the world's leading debtor, has by far the largest current-account deficit and is the leading importer, at great expense, of both manufactured goods and oil. The potential damage if the world soon undergoes the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s is incalculable. The loss of global economic leadership that overtook Britain and Holland seems to be looming on our own horizon. ...

The Reason Behind High Oil Prices

ronjon — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...Commodities have often been the refuge for investors who have lost money on equities or fixed-income investments. Moreover, the commodities rush today is not limited to oil; now we also have runaway food and feed prices. Could it be that all the financial losses on subprime mortgages, plus the anticipation that the option ARM mortgages about to reset could be an even bigger problem, combined with the huge losses in securities last year, are why investment money today is flooding into often unregulated commodities, where the demand pricing of the final goods is inelastic? Consider this: You may not buy gasoline or even eat today, but by next Monday you'll probably have to do both, no matter what it costs. Basically, besides enabling the Fed to bail out Wall Street and our banks again, every time you gas up or eat you may be paying investors to cover other financial losses. We know that investors can't control their losses on mortgages, securities, or bad loans. But, demonstrably, if not restrained they can drive up the price of goods that we can't get out of buying. Odds are, that's what's really been going on. ...

"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 4: THE FOREST

ronjon — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

This is Chapter 4 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first three chapters, go to:

• Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis
• Chapter 2: The End of Civilization
• Chapter 3: Soil-The Basis of Life

I hope you find this as interesting and important as I have,

~ ronjon

Happy Days Are Here Again - Not!

ronjon — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...The risk analyst Sayajit Das has had the most insight into the financial markets dimension of this meltdown. Well before the credit crunch hit, he was warning that it was coming and what would bring it on. So what's his take now? That what's happened so far is only phase one in a massive deleveraging of a world addicted to debt. ...

It's a classic asset price cycle. Look at just about every boom and bust cycle in history, and you'll find it was built on cheap credit, easy lending and lax underwriting standards. And this boom was the biggest. The legacy is a burden of household debt without precedent. As real estate prices boomed, households felt wealthier and borrowed against their (inflated) assets. As the price of property soared way beyond the growth in wages, people borrowed more and more to break into the market, running up debts on credit cards to make ends meet. In countries such as the US, where wages were stagnant or falling in real terms, people borrowed against property to maintain their lifestyles.

Now the easy finance is drying up. If there's a serious global downturn that pushes up unemployment rates, it could get ugly, as people unable to service their debts are forced to sell assets causing a further downward spiral. Default rates will rise and financial institutions will suffer further losses. Beyond the household sector, there's the vast army of self-employed workers who set up small businesses after the corporate downsizing cycle of the 1990s. Many borrowed against their homes to do so, and have survived on thin margins during good economic times. In any downturn, they'll be the first to go. ...

Effects of the US recession on Asian growth, by Nouriel Roubini

ronjon — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

In early 2006, economist Nouriel Roubini broke rank from the prevailing consensus opinion and blew the whistle on the US housing bubble and held out grim warnings of a US ‘recession’. That contrarian bearish outlook has been proved spectacularly right two years later, and Roubini, a former White House aide and chairman of the Roubini Global Economics Monitor, is justifiably credited with having first ‘called’ the sub-prime crisis. Here are his latest forecasts:

"In the last few day I have been at the Asian Development Bank meetings in Madrid and then visited Hong Kong and China. I have presented my view on the severity of the US recession and its potential effects on economic growth in China and Asia. Will this region decouple from the US economic contraction?

The answer depends on the severity of this recession. If the US recession is short and shallow (a V-shaped recession lasting six months) then there is enough of a domestic growth dynamics in the rest of the world and in Asia that the global economic slowdown would be very modest. But if the recession is more severe (a U-shaped recession lasting 12 to 18 months) then that US contraction, together with the sharp slowdown in the other G3 economies (a good fraction of the EU could be soon in a recession - specifically UK, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal - and the rest of the EU is sharply slowing down; while Japan is also headed towards a recession) will negatively affect growth in China and Asia, much more than currently expected by macro analysts and markets. Direct and indirect trade channels, financial channels, credit crunch channels, dollar weakness channels and confidence channels would lead to a signifcant slowdown of growth in Asia. ..."

Suicide Dictionary, by Paul Lonely

ronjon — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:42:15 -0700

I met Paul Lonely last night at a friend's gathering. When I told him a bit about SCIY, he said he was an admirer of Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri, and graciously offered to send me a link to his own new book of "post post-modern" poetry: Suicide Dictionary. I've been looking over his website and his work is quite impressive. E.g., see below the words of one of his many enthusiastic reviewers, the artist-musician Michael Garfield. ~ ronjon

I am the voice of a generation starving for an adequate myth. Myths are the carriers and conduits of a vision - the metaphors and narratives around which we organize and accrete our understanding. Every generation has come together within a mythology, and used it to push forward into its fruition. In a way, we are nourished by our myths in return for fulfilling them.

It must be said that my generation has more mythology from which to choose than any before it. We stand before a global buffet of stories, food of all flavors, information crashing in from all sides, an unprecedented panoply of cultural richness. What we lack is an organizing directive, some way to handle all of this humanity without shrinking from its light or dissolving into incoherence at the spectacular diversity of it all. Imagine everyone in the cafe trying to force-feed you simultaneously, and you'll get the idea. In spite of our wealth of culture, we hunger for genuine, hopeful, reconstructive narratives that is, integral myths. Almost no one is telling my generation, or those to come, what to do with this orgiastic diversity of experience. Our myth has been one of dissipation, of dissolution the end of oil, the end of modernity, the end of the biosphere, the end of western hegemony, the end of science, the end of childhood. We are born into a world that has come together just in time to discover it is breaking apart.

But Paul Lonely is changing all of that. What Paul is doing for us - the generation growing up alongside the academic reconstruction of integral theory - is offering us a new mode of experiencing these truths. ... Freed from the conventional trappings of historical spiritual texts, blindingly aware of its own cultural embeddedness and laughing at it compassionately, Suicide Dictionary belongs in a thin pantheon with the paintings of Alex Grey as a message for and from our collective future. It is playful and colorful and fluid, in stark opposition to even the most inspiring theories of the world into which we walk with one eye open. That Paul has used language to communicate this utterly translinguistic vision is a testament to his cleverness his book is winking at all of us from behind the veil, like the Tao Te Ching or its formal predecessor, the Upanishads. Every page rings brightly with the cause to which he is devoted. ...

Peak oil and The Limits to Growth: two parallel stories

ronjon — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

This is a good summary of the historical and current scenarios created by computer modeling. All but a few exceptional scenarios continue to show a horrific overshoot of the Earth's ecological carrying capacity and resulting collapse of human population and civilization as we know it. This analysis is by Ugo Bardi, a chemistry professor at the University of Firenze, Italy. ...

"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 3: SOIL-THE BASIS OF LIFE

ronjon — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

This is Chapter 3 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first two chapters, go to:

Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis
Chapter 2: The End of Civilization

I hope you find this book as interesting and important as I have, ~ ronjon

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger

ronjon — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation... And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. -- The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007 ...

As consumers step on the brakes, will the economy hit the wall?

ronjon — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

After years of piling up debt and neglecting to save, Americans are reining in their free-spending ways -- which could signal a long road ahead... -- "We're at a watershed moment," said Jay P. Feldman, an economist with Credit Suisse in New York. "The era of consumers living beyond their incomes is at an end."

Most economists expect the gross domestic product for the first three months of the year to show that consumption inched upward a few tenths of a point, enough to keep the economy above the zero mark -- though barely. That pales next to the 2.5% and 3% leaps of recent years, and much of the rise will be the result of Americans' paying more, especially for food and gas, not buying more.

"This is going to usher in a period when consumption is going to be as weak as we've seen it in two decades," predicted Edward F. McKelvey, senior economist with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York. ...

SCIY's Readership sets new record in April 2008

ronjon — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:00 -0700

SCIY's page views totaled 1,986,013 hits through the end of April 2008.

We reached a new high of 36,102 Distinct Hosts Served (Distinct Readers) during the month of April 2008, a substantial 22% increase from March's previous record.

We had 158,669 total Page Views during the month of April 2008, a decrease of 8% from the record number of Page Views in March.

Our Bandwidth during April was 12,213 Total Megabytes Transferred, a slight decrease of 4% from the record Megabytes transferred in March.

These numbers indicate that our average Distinct Reader viewed slightly fewer pages during April than they did in March, possibly due to the longer average length of the articles posted during April. ...

Albert Hofmann, 102; Swiss chemist discovered LSD

ronjon — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:00:00 -0700

Albert Hofmann was a synthetic chemist with Sandoz Laboratories, now Novartis, in Switzerland when in 1943 he stumbled on the hallucinatory effects of LSD. After it became seen by Harvard's Timothy Leary and others in the '60s as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, and then as a major recreational drug, ...

"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 2: THE END OF CIVILIZATION

ronjon — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:00:00 -0700

This is Chapter 2 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first chapter (including the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction & Table of Contents), go to Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have,

~ ronjon

James Howard Kunstler: April 28, 2008 - A Collective Psychic Bubble

ronjon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:00:34 -0700

...This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days? ...