About corporate money going into elections

Corporations are currently considered an entity, as if an individual person, as to legal status, if I understand correctly. Therefore, each corporation ought to have the identical rights and responsibilities as an individual human being entity. This includes the right to vote (one vote each); the right to contribute to a political candidate (same limits and provisions as an individual human being.) Following along on this principle, it would also need to submit to all the other laws and penalties that apply to an individual person, such as not exceeding speed limits, running stop lights, deliberately harming or killing another person, etc; but that is going a bit off the current topic of corporate money influencing elections. The point is, the privilege ought to have the same responsibilities and limits, too.

A corporation might be faceless, but it ought not to be able to hide behind that mask from an individual entity's limits, responsibilities, and penalties that any other individual entity person are required to obey; along with receiving the privileges, such as contributing funds toward a favored candidate in an election.

Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation - acronym LASER - is generally credited to have been first demonstrated 50 years ago (1960) this Sunday, "anniversary of the first demonstration of a ruby laser at the Hughes Research Labs," as marked in the interesting article online "Lasers scan future possibilities" at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8675972.stm This was done by wrapping a ruby crystal with a flashlamp that pumps light energy into the ruby's outer electrons, and having reflective surfaces in two directions bouncing light back and forth between them while having the ruby in between them, so as to coordinate the timing of those pumped-higher electrons dropping back down into their lower energy state and emitting a photon of light while doing so. The use of helium-neon lasers for continuous lasing came shortly afterwords, enabling the continuous emission of coherent light; in contrast to the brief ruby crystal laser light burst due to the brief flash of the flashlamp.

Yet the phenomenon had existed long before that, available to be demonstrated, and most likely can be done right now in your home. Find some appliance, such as many of the outlet strips that are used in one's computer setup, and find one that has the little orange light that is flickering a bit. The aging pilot light on it is a little bulb containing the gas neon; it has a resistor in series with it and is across the AC power line, to indicate that there is power applied to the outlets in the extension strip. When the voltage across the lamp goes above 45 volts, in either direction, the neon enables current flow through it, limited by the 47K ohm resistor. As the voltage cycle goes up then down below 45 volts, the neon light goes out, and restarts again when the voltage again reaches 45 volts in the other direction. When the little neon bulb ages, the quality of the gas inside deteriorates and it starts flickering. So if one dims the ambient light on the neon pilot light, it flickers more, having a harder time getting started emitting light - which is the clue to lasing, that need for adding ambient light - so do an experiment and shine a small flashlight on the neon pilot light, and it will then glow steadily, no longer flickering; its emission is being stimulated by the added light. Very weak "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" yet indeed it is that, although not being reinforced by mirrors bouncing the light back and forth through the gas, necessary to provide a narrow directed beam of coherent light, going through a partially silvered mirror at one end. I recall experimenting with the little neon bulbs in the early 1950's - the most embarrassingly memorable of which was when, at age about 17 and lacking awareness of the need for the 47K current limiting resistor, holding the glass neon-filled bulb carefully I inserted its two leads into an AC socket, which produced a brief brilliant blast of light, not so much from the neon in the bulb but instead from the vaporization of the leads of the bulb due to the huge current going through them - so they have been around since before that; this was before the heralded discovery of lasing in 1960.

Lasers have been important to me in the years since then - such as a R&D job I had in the mid-1960's which sometimes involved use of a 5 mW helium-neon laser - and the pocket laser pointers I used when giving my presentations of my transportation concepts at space technical conferences - but the point here is that there may be phenomena in our everyday lives that only seem a bit odd, yet are potential demonstrators of principles that could be explored - instead of just being ignored - and maybe lead to some very useful devices and their applications.

Proposing the concept of the human resource development corporation

It is looking like employment is the key issue for America now and for the near future at least. Not just employment, but the broader meaning of the appropriate and full use of human resources. Right now, the country is limited by the setup that there must be employers, businesses, corporations, to provide the jobs and define what is to be done in those jobs, and fit available people into those jobs. But if those corporations are not providing those jobs adequately - as has been happening for a long time already - there is a huge loss of human resources going to waste.

Now, corporations typically exist for the purpose of "making money" although many get started with a vision to provide a very special product or service to the country - but then with new management the vision dims and the focus is only on the bottom line, how to make the most profit, as demanded by the stockholders need for those investment dividends for their income.

So the function of employment is mostly a happenstance to the corporations; making sure everybody is happily working at an appropriate job, is not their responsibility. So, whose is it? Nobody's? Is it every man for himself, abandon ship? Or form allegiance with some Captain Bligh.

The thought congealing out of the murk seems to be that maybe the country - we the people - might well look at the appropriate and full use of human resources of America as a reasonable and maybe even a very necessary requirement. Since clearly the businesses, the corporations, have not taken it on to do the job, maybe it ought not to be in their hands anymore. At least not in the absolute power form it has been in.

How to do this? Perhaps there needs to be another path added. The dominant path has been that a business projects that a product or service will sell, and invests in the infrastructure to provide those goods and services to the customer, and if the customer base responds with appreciation, money flows up through the business to pay off the loans, pay for the employees and management and other infrastructure, providing feedback that it all is working. If they need more people to provide more goods and services, they go hire more. This means they need to have a eager pool of desperate people to hire at low wage to expand the business; or sometimes lure away an employee from another company to fill a position.

So the "other path" to be added might be that, instead of there being the pool of the unemployed, that they instead be essentially employed by another entity - maybe the government or civil service type system, or possibly by a corporation that is backed up by the nation that benefits by their existence.

This hypothetical corporation, then, would have the responsibility of "employing" all otherwise unemployed people. The jobs would be fitted to the aptitudes of the individuals, and primarily intended to increase the employees skill levels, through on the job training. Some of the OJT could be simply sending them to college or trade school. Or it might be digging the proverbial holes and filling them up again. Or both. Although some products and services are likely to be salable as a result, the primary product would be the finer potential employee ready for working out in the ordinary business world.

Since the nature of what we do is changing rapidly, as civilization advances the needs are not static. So there would likely be lots of fluidity of work position, between corporate employment and then back into the hypothetical human resource development corporation, for more retraining, broadening of skillsets and capabilities, finding new interests, before heading back into the business world workforce in some specific job position again.

There are some apparent advantages to linking this into my earlier proposed "home manufacturing workstation" concept, which could be the worksite at home, linked to function in either the human resource corporation or at times for some specific corporate business function including small scale manufacturing, without the wasteful commute to a central business worksite, for many job junctions.

This concept of an overarching human resource development corporation would include, as I envision it, everybody who is not currently employed in the regular work world. That includes not just the unemployed engineer and dishwasher, but also the handicapped, hospitalized, and retired folks. They all would be seen as potentially able to be productive withing their skillsets and situation; and the hypothetical HR Corporation would have the function of finding out what each person can do for the mutual benefit and satisfaction of both the nation and the individual, and using available resources to connect the individual with the resources for utilizing and improving them.

Most likely the real world situation will just be to stumble along as we are doing, and the corporate would will take up and use people as employees for the normal employment, and all others will just be out in the cold waiting for some business to provide a job. But this concept I have proposed here, at least could be pictured as an alternative that could be of great benefit to the country, and ultimately beneficial back to the conventional corporate business world through having a much finer skillset pool of future employees.

The basic principles of learning

Thinking of making a response on a writer’s group forum, to a fresh asking of the old question of what is the effect of people watching such things as grisly WWII documentaries and Star Wars brutality, I have gathered what seems to me to be the basic principles of learning. It also applies to some of the posts re education I have made in recent times.

Compiling what seems to me to be the five basic principles of learning:

1. The protoplasmic moving toward that which nourishes, and away from that which causes pain.
2. The basic educational process: “Monkey see monkey do.” Watch me write on the blackboard, then write the same on your paper. Watch me pounce on him, so you know how to do the same.
3. “Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
4. “Half the solution of a problem is first the full and correct description of the problem.”
5. And “People are ruled not by force but by their imagination.” This principle is also used abusively from schoolyard bullies to world dictator wannabes.

- We as writers also seek to rule the imagination of the reader, if only for a little while. As do movie producers. And as do spin-masters of politics, business, advertising, and the news media. We as writers hope to make it more fun and interesting; but the arena is the same, that of the imagination.