Schools of thought in the healing arts

Just as there are rivalries between universities, of esteem re competency, there are rivalries between schools of thought in the healing arts. There are rivalries in academic excellence of graduates, fields of study, and sports team competitiveness. Among fraternities, a bit similarly. Among religious groups, similarly. And between automobile brand showrooms: don't dare put an auto of a different manufacturer in a competitor's showroom.

The point of this here, is that to some significant extent, the healing arts have similar competing rivalrous groups, each proclaiming better-ness in some way. There are competing brands of pharmaceuticals; but pharmaceuticals are competing with herbalists, from which the pharmaceuticals sprang. Yet herbalism has continued to be increased in its knowledge base, too.

And there is a newer field in the healing arts, sometimes calling itself "electroherbalism," the generation of small electrical signals into physiology, that some researchers have found to closely mimic some herbal effects.

Another school of the healing arts has a body of experiential knowledge based on measuring and adjusting flows of a subtle energy in the physiology, such as in Touch for Health and Applied Kinesciology in general. And there are the various kinds of spiritual visualization gentle hands-on or distant-healing, and religious faith healing modalities, sometimes to directly offer energy advise on a subtle level to the being that is in need of better health, or calling upon an invisible God-being, often a wise powerful male figure spiritual presence, to do the healing as requested by a third party.

The field of Internal Medicine tends to work hand in hand with the pharmaceutical schools, to supply the herbal-chemical-developed substances utilized in that school of the healing arts.

The purpose of the healing arts is nominally that of improving the state of health of people and other living beings.

There are the surgical arts, such as for helping repair and provide a healing environment for broken bones of various types. There are those who do manual adjustments of the skeletal joints, such as of the spine in chiropractor work.

If a person feels in need of improved health, whether it is just a desire for better wellbeing in general, or responding to some perceived dysfunction that is significantly reducing the person's state of health, which mode of the healing arts will be considered best for the person?

Assuming that all of these schools of the healing arts are equally available for healing improvement of the person - sometimes called a "customer" or "patient; or even merely oneself.

Often the apparent severity and the level of urgency of the ongoing situation will strongly direct to some particular school of the healing arts, such as a broken leg would most likely seek out a surgeon with expertise in repairing that kind of bone. On a different part of the various spectrums of wellness, a person may just feel "out of sorts" after a hard day at the office, and would likely not seek out a surgeon, but rather someone in Applied Kinesciology or herbal arts - or even go for a cup of coffee, as an herbal help.

Nutrition is also part of the healing arts, food and drink that is chosen for the improvement of wellbeing, which is not always the same as tasty food or convenience foods.

Just like different college football teams, each have their very intense proclamations of superiority and their bands of followers; some groups much stronger than others, perhaps more for the wealth and power of the group more than actual general ability to improve the state of health of people and other living beings.

More apparent is that there are fields of specialty, such as the surgeon bone-setter and the chiropractor bone-adjuster, and the massage and physical workout specialties of relaxing, toning, and strengthening the muscles attached to those bones, part of the bone functionality.

Some groups have sought to gain a greater share of the customer base by having laws enacted favoring their modality of the healing arts, too. But here the decision factors are more controlled by business profit directives, than of resulting human wellness. The resulting success at gaining wealth from the customer base, and using that wealth and influence capacity to find ways to block customer access to the other rival healing arts modalities, has resulted in the ongoing wellness level of the human population, and that of the supported other living forms on this planet, such as in agriculture. Worse, that "allopathic" modality of the healing arts, in proclaiming that it is the one and only "true" means for healing, is stuck with having to take on healing tasks for which it is not ready or even inherently capable of developing efficacy in healing.

Yet it seems to me that it would be far better to instead pick the healing arts best suited to the wellness need, based on efficacy in the whole ongoing scenario of each individual wellness improvement need situation.

Abundant oil abundant CO2 low oxygen is test of responsibility

The news of fracking making huge amounts of oil available here in the Americas in the near future, is exciting news. I think that is where the fine couple living next door who had been working in the local wind turbine industry that has unfortunately been laying off people, suddenly vanished and went; since they had been oil workers before. Boom town in N Dakota.

Not being dependent on oil from the Middle East is great news. Us sending 80 billion dollars over there each year just for stuff we burn up over here, can now start to cease; and then those desert countries now can use their oil and selected microbes to make their land into desert paradises, with plentiful edible hydrocarbons for livestock. And, well-fed folks tend to not want to go raid their neighbors on this planet.

But. People do not seem to notice that burning oil for energy, consumes the oxygen of our atmosphere. People do seem to dimly realize that it does produce rising CO2 levels.

I have long thought that Nature had used the power of sunlight gathered over millions of years, to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere into the form of coal and oil underground, so as life could exist on this planet. We now enjoy that oxygen abundance and low CO2 in the air.

Maybe it is the deep memory of asthma in my very early years, of gasping for tiny bits of oxygen so as to continue to live, that makes me sensitive to the issue of us losing our oxygen in the quest for cheap energy for our civilization.

In the recent few years, we have had a brief look at solar power use for directly powering our robustly growing civilization. We seem to think that cheap hydrocarbons ace out solar energy.

I will watch to see if we have learned anything about responsibility for the environment upon which we base our lives.

Right now I have little confidence we will use much wisdom. Profit rules; nevermind the costs to our lives. Our medical system is a plentiful example of our wisdom, since it is not guided by efficacy, but instead too often guided by a system of egos and reputations and maximizing business profits, instead of focusing on maximizing our healthy lives at low cost. Most likely this attitude will extend into the energy vs loss of breathable air arena, too, along with ocean acidification etc.

I could say something about an educational system that promotes this sense of irresponsibility; but I won't here. Also an informational system involved in it too.

Anyway, the local neighbors driving their huge SUV's here sneering at my bicycling with a backpack to buy groceries so as to save oil for other uses, are now vindicated. Or so it seems.

Jobs, the economy, the CCC camp system, and the US Civil Service

The creation of jobs has been an Obama administration focus for a long time, recognizing it is key to reviving the American economy.

There is much conflict as to who creates those jobs and who reaps the profit. Dems want the government to create the now-missing jobs, and America as a whole reaps the benefit; GOP wants the jobs to be made only by private businesses for their own profit and only if they make immediate profit for the business owners, and the rest of America is out of luck - a system of overwhelming leverage by the "business owners."

While I think that it is best that the jobs be based on supplying product needs of the nation and the world, and businesses have experience in doing that, I also am quite aware that private business has not been doing the job of maximizing the usage of the human resources of America - and they are currently still having much opportunity to do that yet are not doing it.

So, the reality-test has resulted in lack of doing the job of giving all people adequate and comfortable employment.

I think of the old technique exemplified by the Civilian Conservation Core that was instrumental in bringing the nation out of depression before. Typically young people would go off to "camp" sites and be taught to build things, getting things built thereby as well as giving those youngsters useful employable skills for when the economy revived back to normal functionality. Only the government could do that, the "government for the people and by the people" as we supposedly are.

As for cost, right now, the system that provides the nearest equivalent is the military, which brings in the young people, trains them and gives them experience in applying those skills. So the cost equivalent is the past decade's wars that supplied those skills and experiences to the young people. (I speak here of cost to the American taxpayer; not the concurrent cost to the nations we attacked so destructively without provocation, which is a karmic cost we have yet to fully face, a different subject than is being explored here, but useful in comparison of the two kinds of systems for government training and experiencing for our young people.) Thus comparable trillions of dollars would be justifiable in a new "Civilian Conservation Core" and similar job training & experience functions, paid for by the taxpayer base, like the wars were. In other words, some trillions of dollars spent over a decade. A bunch of money. But far more constructively in both skills and accomplishments, than was the war mode.

I have some life experience relevant to all this. I was a depression child, and thus was an only child, no siblings with which to learn people skills or have as helpers later. My parents were both employees of the U S Civil Service, another aspect of the government's depression-recovery activities, alongside the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) system; my parents met while employees at an Agricultural Experimental Station, a kind of facility that worked to help develop agricultural systems improvement knowledge, a function that farmers themselves would not finance yet would benefit from enormously. My parents both remained lifetime U S Civil Service employees, doing a wide variety of jobs along the way.

One place we lived was Window Rock, Arizona, when my dad worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The place had been built by Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) youngsters in the depression, learning skills and applying them, producing worthwhile things and being employed while the nation was still in depression conditions. The house we rented there was made from bricks carved out of the red sandstone mountains of the area; I often wondered how they had chiseled out and hand crafted those pieces of rock to make them near-identical bricks from which the house was built. The little desert town area had an integrated co-generation facility, its electrical powerplant's cooling water being pumped through all those red sandstone brick homes there as well as the larger administration buildings, supplying steam heat during the cold parts of the year, a high desert place that got significant snow. I well remember those steam radiators in the rooms of our house. All that system of homes, administration buildings, and powerplant co-generation system, was built by those youngsters of the CCC camp system, paid for by the government's CCC system for recovery of the nation. No doubt those youngsters learned a lot of new trade skills and responsibility while building all that; and those skills and responsibility attitude later helped the nation thrive when the private business system once again needed employees. Although I did not notice later a need to carve bricks by hand out of sandstone mountains, the craftsman skills to do that surely were useful in other private business endeavors; and the bricklaying clearly useful later too in conventional employment.

In a way, I too, received some later-useful training while in such public systems. In the mid-1950's I was a US Civil Service employee on my first electronics job, helping man a radio telemetry ground station involved in the testing of guided missiles, while I was a physics major in the co-op program with White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, probably headed to be a nuclear physicist. When I later had to drop out of that program due to the severe tinnitus and ADD that hit me in my Freshman year, making studying near impossible, I then got experience in surveying in the desert as a rodman-chainman, learning another new set of skills, in the Civil Service system. Seeking a woman to marry - there were twelve men for every woman at the NM State Collage I attended and so the competition for women was fierce and I lost out - I went east and got a job as a museum technician at the Smithsonian Institution in DC, another Civil Service Job, again learning new skills involving both my native artistic skills and my technical-type skills. And after that I went to work for the FAA as an electronics maintenance technician, and received formal electronics training in electronics engineering, as part of that job; all back in the vacuum-tube era of electronics. When I left the Civil Service system, advancing into employment in the private business system, those basic electronics skills were a head start, although that also was the time when solid state electronics was coming into being, and I was always self-educated in electronics from then on, learning what I had to know to do my job well, for a lot of different companies, and I became a top electronics engineering technician, even formally became a non-degreed electronics design-development electronics engineer at the peak of my career, in computer disk drive development.

So I not only did useful productive work needed by the country while an employee of the U S Civil Service system (which I pointed out was started in the depression days to get the country functioning again) but then those skills and experiences got me a head start for when I joined the private business system as a corporate-system's employee. The U S government's job system enabled both my parents and myself to have a modest job income, do useful work needed by the nation as a whole as part of that, and when the economy was up to it, I went on to be a highly productive employee in the private business system until the economy went into a slump and I got laid off and was too old to get an electronics tech job anymore, and was of retirement age, so eventually I gave up and decided I was retired, just doing volunteer work and an occasional part time paid work in newly learned fields related to natural history.

So those are real-world experiences involving a public employment system operating in parallel with the private business system, how it really worked. All benefited.

Expecting an uncoordinated private business system to "naturally" upgrade the nation's job skills as part of jobs created to include that task, employing a maximum number of people doing things they could learn in a non-excessively-stressed lifestyle, has yet to be done. Or even talked about, as far as I know. They do not consider themselves their brother's keeper, as the saying goes.

Speaking of "brothers keepers", a scenario I see possible in the existing arena, that does not involve a government-sponsored job-creation system like the CCC and US Civil Service system, is that there is one religious group, rapidly expanding, that has always been business-focused, teaching its youngsters about business by requiring all its young males to own and operate some kind of business as part of their growing-up process; and probably would like to take the Presidency and make the whole nation a business system under their control and for their exclusive profit. But it is a young religion, not adequately identified with America as a whole; and thus likely would be run secretly at the core by their religious elite, instead of by the will of the American people, especially at turn key events and issues. Does America want that to happen; will it happen by default, I wonder. (And I worry about any "fundamentalist-type religious patriarchical organization" getting its fingers on the trigger button of America's vast nuclear arsenal and war machine. PC&APCA, too often proves correct. Beliefs that one's religious grouping is God's exclusive chosen ones, always gets humanity into trouble, sooner or later.)

So it seems to me that a combination of a new CCC-type system, with an expanded U S Civil Service system, both wisely guided (well, it was wisely done before, somehow,) is the most workable way to go at this point.

And of course I have, for several years, urged the formation of a "Home internet-linked educational-manufacturing workstation" system be established as part of America's recovery; but the private business system has ignored that; and since it is for the benefit of the American economic system's recovery, it might as well be part of that hypothetical CCC & US Civil Service expansion mode too, so as to include getting the essences of manufacturing back into the American mind. And to enable everybody in the nation - everybody - to get into the part-time job-holding slightly productive mode mindset, a solid place from which to go beyond there.

There are ways to solve the problem, if enough of us remember that we are Americans instead of special-interest group members.

Attempting to comprehend business ethics related to religions

Examining over my lifetime, I have formed a hypotheses, another regarding "what people do do." The back of my mind seems to always be sifting my experiences, attempting to comprehend them, including personal ones as well as those heard or read from others and news and magazines over the some seven decades I have been reading. The current insight hypothesis, attempting to form it into words at least somewhat adequately, might be stated as follows.

A group of inter-related people-phenomena involves business ethics, religious grouping, and patriarchal authority. It starts with hypothesizing about why some groups of people can rob other people of their ideas that could be used to start a business. It is thought that these folks would not do that to members of their own group. On further inspection it seems related to "religious groups" in which they would not do such ripping off of the business-potential concepts of one of their own group.

The justification for this is that the brothers of their own religious group consider all non-members as not brothers, and those outsiders are doomed to eventually be destroyed by God anyway, so why not grab away their goodies in life, if they are tricky enough to do that without getting caught. And coordination of a few brothers make it easy to pull the theft off.

The key point here is that first they chose to rob the idea-originator instead of attempt business relationship negotiation to share in it; and that they mentally justified this ethics by being told that all non-brothers are doomed anyway, so it is not really theft of the ideas for new business products.

Further analysis of this phenomenon, sees a consistent pattern involved in this human behavior, including through much of history such as in the Old Testament too. Apparently genetically-related males have a subtle linking that makes them special, and they often are of different mothers but the same father, such as in harems and sheiks, and other polygamous-founded groups. Lots of examples past and present.

As for the apparent innate hostility between these bunches of guys who have different polygamous fathers, all seems quite consistent with the ancient mammalian herd pattern, where males battle it out to get all the reproduction access by just one male or select few; the others being forced out of the safety of the herd by the dominant male which then fathers all the next generation of the herd. Human males sometimes seem to have inherited this behavior quite accurately, except they do not use horns on their head to assault each other, but have a far wider range of trickery and weaponry available. In the Old Testament the tales of some tribe leader deciding to go wipe out the males of some neighbor tribe and taking the women as slave wives, for example.

In modern America and other nations, there are various religions who are out attracting new members, though what happens is that new reproducing age females get absorbed into being single-moms or temporary marriages, and the incoming males are sternly told that to seek to attract a woman in any way is to sin and therefore be punished. This phenomenon seems strongest in the newer "fundamentalist-mentality" religious sects around the world, which are attempting to grow in numbers as fast as possible; even in ancient times this made more potential warriors to fight those of other "religions."

Also, on another aspect of those "religions," there is a spiritual aspect, each religion claiming exclusive adoption by God, who in each case is called different from the God of each of the other religions.

And in this spiritual part of the phenomenon, are not-easily-observed but-repeatable effects that science has so far avoided exploring much; but are part of the whole universe that science seeks to accurately describe.

The "religions" however, clearly deeply know of the phenomenological techniques to set themselves up for advantage, more powerful when bonded well and particularly bonded through genetic closeness.

Yet, the phenomena are not really linked to patriarchs and their broods; but are actually universal to mankind and life in general.

This hypothesis seems to be a best-fit to a wide range of observed phenomena in my lifetime. Science seeks to understand all of nature and her phenomena, including that of human beings. The root concepts of fatherhood, motherhood and progeny siblings, are spread through all kinds of life forms, even plants. The subtle resonances of genetic closeness tend to strive to maximize its own kind's success in each case, as if a separate God was their shepherd, in each case. It takes a larger view grasp to see that those gods are really aspects of one God that is subtly being one with all creation. Maybe a God that is enjoying the show. Or enjoying being in it as the players.

And so, explaining how the business ethics that encourages ripping off of non-same-religious-group members instead of doing honest negotiation to share with the non-member's creations that have business potential, it is just part of the show.

And the stresses created by this behavior are well known to eventually reflect back on those who made those decisions, until they learn about "karma" and then responsibly become a higher form of being. Per present-day human inter-relationships and similarly those of thousands of years ago too, we as a species clearly are repeating the lesson, still not generally having learned it yet.

It is not only the gathering and valid integration of knowledge, but also what is chosen to be done with that knowledge, that defines the quality of beingness. Perhaps this is useful as a parameter of wisdom.

American jobs and a hypothesis of scrappiness and harmony

The creation of jobs for American workers is really important, I think. Everybody needs a work income - well maybe some of the already-rich folks don't, but the rest of us do - and that also has the important result of adding to the nation's Gross Domestic Product.

President Obama has a jobs bill that he feels is a best-fit compromise way to get some of these jobs going, to maintain essential infrastructure and education that is part of what makes this nation function.

Yet there are those who are opposing this jobs bill. Vehemently opposing.

Apparently their claim is that jobs only ought to come out of the private sector.

It ought to be very plain to everyone that the private sector is not actually doing that; otherwise there would be no unemployment problem ongoing. (Notice the unemployment problem happening right now and getting worse by the day? Notice?)

This is a plain reality test about the claim that private business is willing and able to get the job done for America.

Now, it is possible that the missing jobs are being held back by the wealthy private business employers, just to cripple the present Administration so as to have their own people take their place. I think this is called "politics." The implication is that once the GOP is back in the saddle again, the private employers will release the money to create those needed jobs.

But I think business is more practical than that. If they thought they would make money by hiring the unemployed, they would be doing it. It is not being done. And would not be done even if the GOP was back in the saddle, running America like it did the first eight years of this century, if dependent on individual business bottom line increase.

I doubt that depending on voluntary private business support of America's workforce optimum utilization is going to happen. Responsibility for the whole system is rarely involved in ordinary business establishment planning. The only folks that get a job are the ones who happen to be handy for filling a job function needed by some private business. The other potential workers are not even thought of by businesses.

This all seems fairly obvious to me, and ought to be obvious to most everybody. But clearly it is not obvious, otherwise the GOP folks would have no backing and would soon be outta there.

That is not the situation as of today's news; the GOP is right in there blocking the Administration's best effort to get jobs going to both reduce the number of unemployed, and to get critically important things done needed by America as a whole, like the above-mentioned infrastructure and education items.

Not part of Obama's job stimulation plans, is the manufacturing jobs-creation system I created and have proposed for several years already. It is hardly the only way to do it, but as a relatively simple and quickly implemented technique for rapidly enabling America to get back into the everyday manufacturing mentality, it looks capable of achieving that. It would get everybody into the productivity loop, increasing practical manufacturing skills and education level, without commute expenses and energy costs, and producing a few salable items the nation needs, at lower cost than can be done by conventional manufacturing in the US. Everybody wins. Except, clearly some powerful folks don't think it is a win for them, else it would already be happening today. (In case somebody does not know what I talk about here, it is the "Internet-linked home manufacturing-education workstation system concept.") I think that America needs real manufacturing capacity development based on the technological level of the nation.

And it clearly is not currently getting created by private business; and even if the Administration comprehended and was interested in it, the politics has blocked money availability to do such things by the government.

(Worse, there have been some sleazy scammers online pretending they are doing it, giving it all a bad reputation. Deliberate?)

If America were as great and competent as we assume, such problems would not exist. We seem to be able to come together to wage war on an outsider, and achieving wonders while doing so; but we are not nearly so capable for doing our own housekeeping.

Maybe it is our portion of scrappiness nature. Gotta have those conflicts to show whose better. Right down to the individual young man graduating from high school, needing to show off so as to get more attention from the cute gals by whom he could eventually reproduce; all often part of the creation of the next generation.

Groups form since they usually can wipe out the mere individual, ganging up on him overtly or covertly. And those groups form confederacies with other groups to get greater leverage; and states become the United States. And that Union faces outward to the world, ready to scrap.

Yet at each level, the grouping needs to have internal harmonious functionality, supporting the whole. On the smaller level, this is forced by the need to take on the rival groups. Improved productivity of goods and services can be part of this internal harmony enabling things to get done. Can be, but not directly linked to success intrinsically.

And that is the problem explored here. It is not a generally recognized intrinsic mechanism for internal harmony. It can get aced out by the scrappiness social force.

And that seems to be what is happening in America right now re job creation.

Refs:
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/08/again-thinking-of-how-to-revive.html
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/09/again-on-internet-linked-home-sited.html

Good luck Mr Gorsky

Way back in the early days of email, I had received a humorous (yet said to be true) account of something that happened on the first Moon landing. Since the file had already gotten in a format no longer readable by my recently operating system upgraded computer, I thought it worth converting via an old computer and placing here, as possibly a place to preserve the gem instead of letting it turn into bit dust like so many files have already done, as formats go obsolete.

So here it is, minus the names in the email path, of course, and fixing carriage returns:

"When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control.

Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.

Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

On July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in his backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in beneath his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky.

As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Sex! You want sex?! You'll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

True story."

9-11 The bottom-line root-level solution that has worked in the past

This will be a bit blunt, and some tough people won't like to hear it. But one cannot solve a problem by dealing with the wrong problem.
The "9/11" decade's commemoration ongoing today reminds me that the 2001 fracas was an example of the extremes gone to show how deeply the human mind is related to the same root as the monkey mind's kind of motives. Clearly the fracas demonstrates that we are not nearly as advanced a species as we like to proclaim in the classroom. Only the degree of cleverness and tool-using capacity surpasses that of the chimp mind, but the motivation part is too much the same. Call a spade a spade, and move on from there, best possible.

It is doubtful the perpetrators crashed the planes just because they were bored and did not have anything better to do that day; therefore it had a purpose, and most likely that was to do exactly what it achieved, to bait America into throwing its wealth away waging a historically unwinable place of war in the desert mountains in a far away land, at a vastly greater cost to America than merely rebuilding the towers, putting out "wanted" posters, and beefing up security would have cost.

That the World Trade Center towers were chosen to be the first to be hit, in a series of hits done not knowing how rapid America's defense would catch up, and considering that the Trade Center was a major symbol of the economy, not that of government, points out that it was primarily an economy fight, not an ego or "religious" fight, despite first appearances.

That kind of baiting into more disastrous battle only works between bully minds, note; the challenge of who is better than who.

Wiser people recognize the gambit and respond in far less costly, and more effective ways; but the bully mind has just got to instinctively go bash-em back to show the watching fertile gals just who are the better alpha males. Some leaders have not learned to tame those deep instincts as well as others have, and the perpetrators picked the right bunch to bait; it worked perfectly. "When will we ever learn?"

How about starting to learn now? (I hope that does not involve the bully-minds disposing of the messenger. As I said before, this was a bit blunt, and some tough people won't like to hear it.) But one cannot solve a problem by dealing with the wrong problem. Just how much do we want to solve the real problem, so it won't keep coming back to insist we play its brutal ego game?

The bottom-line root-level solution that has worked in the past is that of demanding a woman for every man, and a man for every woman. Starting when coming of age and occasionally swapping around ever seeking an adequately best fit as we grow up and older. No lonely bed any night for anybody. No hoarding of mates. No bully allowed to deprive anyone of a mate by any means anymore.

And that then leaves constructive cooperation remaining for our attention, and thus opportunity to show the finer side of being human. There is a very big world out there needing our intelligent responsible care, if only so that we continue to have its capable support in return; and an even bigger and interesting universe awaits, if we are up to the task.

Musing about the octahedron shape

One of the Platonic Solids, or their edge equivalents, has long been of interest to me; and am not sure why, but is again on my mind now. It is called the octahedron.

That shape seemed to draw my attention during breaks when working as a contract electronic technician at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, when I would often wander next door to the Von Karman Auditorium's window display, showing replicas of their spacecraft as of back in the early 1970's when I worked there. Although not of equal sides, that octahedron basically was a horizontal triangle coupled to a smaller horizontal triangle above it, rotated by 30º, and the corners all connected by similar rods, each set forming another triangle itself. This clearly had the effect of a minimum yet stiff structure that defined two parallel surface's relationships with each other. In other words, the support of a higher parallel surface, by a lower surface; rigidly held yet with fewest parts to do it.

Although composed only of triangles, the octahedron shape also contains a square, if one looks for it. Cut through the plane of this square, it creates two pyramid structures that have a four-sided base. I don't know if this has anything to do with my interest in it at this time. I seem more interested in the aspect of supporting two parallel planes with maximum stiffness for the amount of material involved.

Maybe I need to make a table? Where to put it in my tiny already overstuffed house? And a triangular-shaped tabletop is not an efficient way to use space in a basically rectangular house structure. Yet it is interesting to me again now.

Maybe I could adapt it to become a major part of the solar concentrator projects in my back yard, coupling ground level up to swivel level of the six foot diameter dishes.

Well it seems I just have to make some kind of 9/11 post

Well it seems that I just have to make some kind of 9/11 post. Lots of online news articles about recollections and asking people where they were on that day ten years ago. So what could I say that is worth saying on the subject?

I was at work in Pomona, CA, working at Orbital Sciences Sensor System Division, as an electronics technician, doing whatever I was told to do. I had no radio or direct source of info, but clearly others in the room were responding to something unusual, and I was noticing things. None of it made sense. It is an overwhelmingly complicated world to me, and it often seems to me that people do irrational abuse and hostility damage to each other when they could be instead working productively together for mutually beneficial things. But I learned long ago that those who declare themselves to be bosses, are the only ones with any say so. I needed a paycheck, and so I did my work and tried to keep a low profile to avoid the flak.

As I slowly learned over the next few days, what happened clearly was out of the comic books I had read as a youth. Classical comic book plot thing, except not in the colorful comic book pages this time. And the date done, 911, was the American call for emergency help. Clearly whoever planned the fracas was really tuned into the American way.

But it developed it was done by a bunch of Saudis. Yet next thing I heard we were invading Afghanistan. And then Iraq. So what kind of nuttiness next, I wondered. But not for me to have any say. Most likely anything I would have to say about it would be based on very incomplete info, anyway; and no one would pay attention.

And a few things happening in that time frame still seem to be pertinent yet unknown how they fit in; all could be quite erroneous in conclusion, too. So some part of the back of my mind watches and collects possibly related pieces of the puzzle, one of lots of such puzzles about life.

Stuffing those specific data points of that time era, into the upcoming anniversary date, I wonder, is there going to be a new idiotic thing happen in line with that monkeybusiness again. The news has articles seemingly with that same question, too. And I feel a general unusual level of anxiety which I have learned is actually some empath skill I have regarding people's emotions in my area, that I cannot easily separate from my own emotions - decades of experience has shown me something weird but consistent. I live with it and get on with life. But like the "Super Bowl Sunday" effect, something seems in the air and its cloud's lightening will likely strike somewhere, like that stirred up from the energy generated by millions of couch potatoes excitedly yelling on Superbowl Sunday, synchronized by events seen on screen. All strange to me. But, ignored at my risk.

All I can figure out at this point is that this is an opportune time to be prepared for emergency, like a fire drill. Check your supplies, stored drinking water, food for a few days, first aid kit, radio, flashlights and spare batteries, maybe a tent and camping supplies.

Around here folks would also have some high powered guns too, useful for quickly causing the extinction of all deer and other edible species of animals in the first day or less of a major retreat to the wilderness by the hordes of survivalists. And, some fishing equipment; there are some lakes and the Columbia River is only hundreds of miles away.

Some people might even have solar chargers for their batteries.

I tell people to have a Clark-type zapper as the best thing in their first aid kit but people just think I'm a nut and ignore me; or worse, look at me suspiciously. I do my best, even if I apparently am the world's worst advisor or salesperson. Having Aspergers one sort of gets used to that kind of thing, even it it makes no sense to me. Probably like a color blind person trying to interact with color.

Yet despite the conclusion that this is a good time to take stock of one's survival supplies, and being aware that American comic book story writers were not those subsequently chased at the waste of America's wealth, I also have the nagging memories of some real oddities in the weeks before and after that signature 9/11 event. In these past ten years I have formed several quite different hypothesis about them, including that none were related at all, and some quite related and in one rather detailed data hypothesis suggests I may have inadvertently played a part in preventing catastrophy in the LA area at the same time. Or, I was being set up to take the rap for local militants' monkeybusiness. Lots of hypothesis. All waiting for more data to see if it fits into those puzzles. Something could be up, long in the planning and not going to seem like from the real source.

Most likely 2011-09-11 will come and go with nothing much unusual happening, however, much like Y2K did.

So very much needs doing in America and the world right now; constructive activities for all our mutual benefit. How about us using our energy to act responsibly? Why? Well, life can be much better for all of us that way. Is that likely to happen? Well, there can always be a first time.

Productivity increase by broader utilization of worker's education and viewpoints

In the proposed jobs system, it seems the way to do things that people already know how to do. And to provide an educational system that supplies the business system with competent workers. But the workers would only have the voice of collective bargaining regarding benefits and pay. What I am realizing is that all those workers for those businesses, have a huge knowledge base and they are right there seeing reality on the job. It seems a great resource being wasted if there is only top-down communication flow from management. Management is missing out on a major resource about the actual products and services being produced by the workers on the floor. There needs to be a rewarded communication path from the intelligent worker seeing opportunities that management does not realize, ways that could improve efficiency or product quality or even variations for potentially successful new products. Management would do well to acknowledge the intelligence and viewpoints of their workers at all levels. This is not the normal way business has been done in the past, I know. Yet if we are to do better than before, we need to find ways to do it, and this seems an area worthy of exploration.

Again on the internet-linked home-sited education-manufacturing system concept

Am writing another blog post on this subject, as it seems to me to have immense potential to help mankind right now, and the means to do it exists.

I also wish this could get into the hands of Steve Jobs, as he has the expertise for blending the hardware and software combo to get it going quickly. Plus, he has the money to make it happen; and I think it is in line with his life purpose.

The concept is named the "internet-linked home manufacturing-education workstation concept" or variations of that, in my posts and other writings of recent years, such as on Scribd.

It is a complete system concept, more than I want to again write about in totality in this post; but its essences are:

Its primary purposes are to enable America's large unemployed or under-employed middle class and poverty class to economically and quickly get back into contributing to America's GDP, and to provide a continuing means for increasing their skills at the same time. Conceivably it could expand worldwide to developing countries, eventually.

It would bypass the current bottleneck inhibiting America's manufacturing capacity that now is blocked by the requirement that manufacturing all be done by conventional corporate facility on-site employed work. By eliminating the need to commute to some on-site manufacturing job, the time, energy and money involved in daily commute would be eliminated. It would also expand the conventionally-employable skills in the population, too; increasing with time until conventional manufacturing in America catches up, decades from now.

The key technology development needed is to create the devices that connect via USB to one's home computer, that provide a small scale manufacturing capability for performing sub-assembly work. Such devices could encompass a wide range of manufacturing processes, from drill press work to injection molding to chemical processing to QC work. The software and internet linking would also focus on helping the person at home learn how to use each such workstation device, thus increasing their skill set.

The workstation devices would operate in a feedback loop through the internet, assisted by built-in telemetry in each workstation, to provide both instruction to the user re needed precision refinements, and to provide quantity of resulting product done at each workstation.

An example of how this would work, utilizes a drill press operation workstation computer peripheral.

In operation, a box is delivered to one's door at home by commercial carrier or by local neighborhood truck.

In the box are a bunch of smaller boxes, each much like the kanban technique developed in the Japanese just-in-time system. Each kanban contains raw material or partially processed material, along with a magnetic card or memory stick that is associated with the kanban. The memory card is input to one's workstation which then goes through the computer and internet to a management location for that product, which might be either another home-workstation or at a corporate site. The input also appears on screen, defining the processing to be done to the sub-assembly by the home-sited employee.

In this example, the home-sited employee would place the component on the drill press table and match up the specified coordinates; the user would also install the specified drill size into the drill press, for that hole and similar sized holes on that sub-assembly. Sensors on the drill press would monitor the chuck expansion to provide feedback to the user and to the internet-linked management system site, as to the size of the drill bit that is actually installed. Each downward drill process done on that board, and the coordinates where drilled, and for all similar sized holes on that particular component, would be recorded both locally and by distant management.

Different sized holes needing to be drilled into that component would be similarly handled by the home-sited worker, eventually finishing that type of operation on that component.

That could be the only type device at that home location, or there could be other type operation devices that could be on the same workbench at home, such as for threading some holes or for assisting in using hardware for attaching together several pieces of the larger sub-assembly.

When all the processes have been applied to the contents of that kanban, and all the carton's similar kanbans or related kanbans, the employee puts the sub-assembly back into the kanban box along with its memory card, and prints the label for where to have the delivery system to next take the box of kanbans, when they are all done by that particular home manufacturing workstation.

The benefits of such a manufacturing concept include the resumption of large scale manufacturing in America, made economical by largely eliminating the expenses of commute by employees, and expenses of the huge buildings that on-site manufacturing require, thus adding to the nation's GDP in this time when conventional businesses system are not doing the job. Most of all it would maintain the skill level of America's potential workforce, and gradually improve the skill levels by the built-in education aspects of the home-sited manufacturing-education system, reversing the current trend of deteriorating capabilities of the unemployed or under-employed work force. It could also bring into the workforce, people who are otherwise not positioned to do full-time conventionally employed manufacturing work, such as retired people, family-tending housewives, partially handicapped people. And the self-esteem of the workforce could once again increase, a healthy thing for a can-do America.

In the extreme, conceivably the system could expand to where even a homeless person could step up to a steetside version of the manufacturing system, crank out some product, and receive payment on the spot for whatever work the person got done.

It could change the whole trend in America about manufacturing in a worldwide economy. It could restore a significant amount of self-sufficiency to the nation too. And we are at a technological level where we could immediately get to doing technology development on the system right now. Especially if someone of Steve Jobs caliber takes on the task.

Jim Cline
jedcline@gmail.com
http://www.kestsgeo.com
2011-09-08

A collective sense of responsibility

Reading "Pray that naysayers are right about climate change" by David Horsey http://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/2011/09/01/pray-that-naysayers-are-right-about-climate-change/ again am impressed by the depth and balance of that author's wisdom.

The complexities of all the "players" in the overall scenario are almost beyond my comprehension; Yet David Horsey has come up with some quality summaries here, I think.

My own vote would be to accept the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, considering that America is very dependent on energy supplies and huge amounts of it, to survive.

And we as a nation seem unable to function with anywhere near adequate comprehension, vision, responsibility, and ability to act responsibly.

As Horsey says in the article, "There is not enough political will because there is no collective sense of urgency. Denial is the reflexive stance because the science is too ominous."

The "collective sense of urgency" was what got the Apollo program going and achieved. Otherwise we would have just continued to spend our equal amounts of money on such things as cosmetics, or quarters put into video game machines. But we were freshly scared enough to be building nuke shelters in basements and backyards then due to the Cuba thing, and the thought of the Ruskies also building nuke launch sites on the Moon aimed at us was too much; we got that collective sense of urgency and went for the Moon, and achieved that which was long considered impossible.

(I will just barely mention - once again - here, that I foresaw the 'clean" energy crisis on the way to happening decades ago, and struggled to find what appeared to be some viable ways to solve the problems of need for non-petrochemical large scale electrical energy, and for cleaning up the nature-non-recyclable junk of our discarded industrial civilization's stuff. I won't mention the resulting concept's proposed project's name here - "K...." - as it might get this post automatically blocked on the net, for all I know; such is the power of those who have been blocking it for over two decades.)

The focal point of this post is to explore Horsey's term "collective sense of urgency" as a key concept for America's survival.

More generalized, the focus here is on what might be termed "collective sense of responsibility."

That seems something I fantasize that all Americans can have. Yet that fantasy got me into the belief that my concept "K..." (again avoiding mentioning that name in this post) would be eagerly taken up by America and then the world, seeing it as a way to solve the big problems upcoming and forge a great new opportunity path for civilization. Twenty-two years later and the concept is still as if non-existing among the options.

I have had time to do some pondering about the why-nots during these past two decades.

It is a visionary thing. Among the eight basic psychological types (ref Jung and Temperament theory) "visionary" is only easily comprehended by half of them.

The opposite type, the git-er-done redneck type so necessary to actualize things in the physical world, seems to not be aware that "visionary" is worth a notice at all. The git-er-done type man is too busy in the game of grab-all-you-can-grab, and the women who go after those men so as to get easy shared resources. Git-er-done types built the Moon rockets and walked on the Moon.

And then mostly walked away from it all, when there was no more money nor glory in it. (Not in all cases, of course; notable exceptions happened, like Buzz Aldrin, ever promoting space activity.) Some pursued money and glory in the launch vehicle privateering thrust; but as for what other vision, is not so clear to me. Most likely there is great complexity in the mix of motives; as with all of us.

NASA settled down to fulfilling the responsibility of ensuring that America maintained technical competency and skilled manpower to take on such national defensive tasks if they come up again in the future; sponsoring projects that exercise such industrial and manpower competency, seems to be its sole function; as it's function was from the beginning.

NASA's functional purpose was therefore not that of maximizing America's growth into space resources in a fulfillment of a "collective sense of responsibility" or NASA would have taken on the "K...." project starting in 1989 as I described it, and we would already have the transportation system built and functioning by now and have some large scale electrical energy already being beamed down to take over some of the petrochemical-sourced energy supply for America by now.

The "collective sense of responsibility" involved began and ended with the perceived threat from outside, of the whole nation. The Apollo project and follow-ons did not threaten the wealth of the power barons of petrochemical supplies here or abroad. But the prospect of the Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO does threaten that wealth expansion.

Unless, of course, they gain control of it and somehow it becomes an easier path to wealth than just sitting on business-as-usual. I don't see that likely to happen in my lifetime. The "collective sense of responsibility" clearly was not involved.

When the redneck git-er-done types have too much control of the government, as has been happening a lot in the past decade, we end up with the situation we now have as the referenced article's pointing out. There is a lot of attractiveness for demonstrating the git-er-done mode, including having lots of goodies and women, major needs in life for men. When the nation gets weakened by too much of this going on for too long, and too much has been grabbed-out-of the economy, we are here in it. And getting deeper in it by the day.

Obama's effort to stimulate jobs deliberately, primarily construction worker type jobs, would have to be paid for by more taxes on the money-hoarders. But the money-hoarders play the power game very expertly if not responsibly. Government-sponsored jobs are necessary because the private business people have not taken on the responsibility of building an adequately abundant job base in America. Clearly not considered their responsibility. If they are considered the only ones who can create jobs ... the situation is obvious. Nobody is minding the store.

To get to where one wants to go, first requires knowing where one is at the start of the journey. Otherwise the map is not very useful. Thus this post: a bit of effort to figure out where we are at right now on the map.

The path seems to involve the definitions of "We" and "collective sense of responsibility."