2004-09-22
Bring all your gifts to play in life
Sometimes people get caught up in a hurry-caine tornado of reactivity; what a mis-application of human power! Here is a reminder, "Our Gifts", which I developed from various handout materials when I was studying "psychosynthesis" psychology (Psychosynthesis psychology explored concepts that people were each a confederacy of thousands of sub-personalities; and that all aspects had spiritual components; Psychosynthesis was started by Assiogoli, and was an experiential taught subject exploring one's own self and that of other students present, provided firsthand knowledge; long term focus was on group efficiency such as in business) in the mid-1990's, the handouts referenced here were a composite of the finer qualities that each of the basic types of people embody. This is also in my early web pages on http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/
Compiled from psychosynthesis workshop handout notes describing the better qualities of the 7 basic types of people, key handouts were written by a Michel Robbins, I think, which helped stimulate the following inspiration. Which of these are closest to your strongest pattern? And can you appreciate the others, see their validity ... those of other people?


A higher vision: Our Gifts, bringing our all to the task

1. May we liberate people from all forms of bondage and oppression.
-- Thus may we become dynamic, powerful and benevolent leadership serving the greatest good.

2. May we have a wise and complete understanding of life so that we can teach and illuminate others.
-- Thus may we have a deep intuitive loving-understanding of others, so that we can nurture them and help them to unfold their highest potential.

3. May we arrive at truth through the power of deep thinking and careful reasoning.
-- Thus may we have great mental agility and resourcefulness, applying them creatively to intellectually challenging enterprises.

4. May we be mediators, reconcilers of human conflicts and instruments of peace.
-- Thus may we express great artistry in every aspect of our lives, thereby inspiring others to increase their sensitivity to beauty.

5. May we invent and develop those mechanisms, instruments and technological improvements which will transform and uplift the quality of life.
-- Thus may we become vitally involved in discovering solutions to Nature's mysteries through scientific research and experimentation.

6. May we serve God, the Highest Ideal, with complete faith and utter devotion.
-- Thus may we live with complete faith and commitment, true to our highest visions.

7. May we take a practical, administrative role in redesigning and transforming the patterns of human civilization, so that for all people an excellent new order to life may emerge.
-- Thus may we bring rhythmic order out of the chaos of human living, by grounding progressive ideas in practical activity, and seeing them through to perfected expression.

(This I've adapted, from a psychosynthesis group's handouts, which were said to be originally authored by a Michel Robbins. Adaption and integration by Jim Cline, circa 1995)

posted by Jim @ 22:08 0 comments

2004-09-21
For LA ISSS group discussion
ISSS-NATO
2004 09 21 J E D Cline
Ideas for ISSS proposal re Counter-Terrorism to NATO RFP:

Technique for this idea-writing is to use the redundancy technique where each sentence is followed by another sentence which correlates with the first one on the major points communicated.

In school I was taught that correctly & exactly defining a problem, was to have already half solved the problem.

So I explore here factors for defining the problem of "terrorism" so as to enable more optimum approaches for "Counter-Terrorism."

A1. A "rule of thumb" is that any given person of any given competency, is capable of destroying 10 times as much as he/she can construct, using an equal amount of effort for either.
A2. It is usually a lot harder to build something than it is to destroy it.

B1. Since if everybody, or even 1 out of 10, did the destructive mode, we would long ago ceased to exist; therefore, people generally don't do the destructive mode.
B2. Something normally keeps people in the constructive mode.

C1. "Terrorism" has changed operational definitions several times: as a youth a half-century ago, "terrorism" was what the schoolyard bully did in wrath to those who "squealed" on them.
C2. Or sometimes the schoolyard bullies terrorized others just to again prove their ability to instill fear in their neighbors, to elicit compliance with the bully's everyday routine demands, particularly the girls' compliance to submit to the bullies demands.

D1. In more recent decades, the word "terrorism" suddenly re-appeared, being the word used to describe a form of "guerilla warfare" in which a non-strategic target would be destroyed, followed by a group claiming to have done it and demanding compliance with the groups demands, to prevent further "terrorism."
D2. "Guerilla" warfare was a destructive activity as part of political turmoil; "terrorism" was part of that, except involved situations which would not announce violent conflict about to happen to non-combatants.

E1. A characteristic of "terrorism" was that the damage was done to non-strategic, but cherished, parts of the opponent group/nation/gang, was immediately followed by a declaration of responsibility by a specific group and included demands of compliance required to avoid more of the same from happening; the Palestinians vs. Israelis quarrels over ownership of territory for homes was an example.
E2. "Terrorism" was a form of guerilla warfare characterized by assault against opponent's non-strategic parts, often involving the active assaulter to not survive the assault, and that a following message would declare what group did it along with explicit or implied demands for compliance to prevent more of the same from happening.

F1. More insidious were variants where, in a land where peace reigns and the internal guard is down, and all is vulnerable, "accidents" or "mishaps" are done by saboteurs of secretive groups who have political and/or commercial power agendas, so that the opposition only sees a very consistent trend of tragic losses where normally things work fine, yet it is very hard to prove assassination and sabotage by the clever secret group, so as to gradually instill fear only in the target person or group.
F2. "Terrorism" by a group can come from within a country or group, as well as from outside; and it can target the whole opponent group, or even only one targeted individual.

G1. A new variant of "terrorism" began with the "9/11" events, where no one claimed responsibility, nor made demands for some kind of compliance to prevent future occurrences.
G2. Even lacking a demand for compliance about something like handing over territory, such an event as "9/11" is sure to instigate a widespread paranoia-driven security system empowerment, like an immunization response to an infection or vaccination.

H1. "Beware violent destruction when you least expect it" is part of big and little terrorist activity, so as to instill a continual fear and watchfulness, which blocks the target group/nation/individual's higher mental cognitive activity most of the time.
H2. Keeping the target group's members in an internal state of fear, serves the purpose of excessive R-Complex time in main control, making people tend to be be predictably reactive instead of responsible, thus they become easy to predict and easy to control.

I1. "Terrorism" is a form of "bullying", each using deliberately instilled irrational fear to force compliance, and to block higher cognitive processes that might have provided better solutions for coping with the bully.
I2. Therefore, the study of "bullying" and successful ways of counteracting it, is foundational to the study of terrorism and possible ways to counteract it.

J1. Insight into the nature of the "bully" can be found in the archetype: the bull that has the herd of cows to himself, spends all his time attacking other males of his kind and quickly impregnating the cows when in heat, and does not defend the herd but seeks protection in the ring of horned cows, like their calves.
J2. The herd's cows thrive on the food and water of the herd's territory encircled, but the bull depends on protected space and food within the herd's boundaries, thus is predatory on the herd itself so as to propagate his violent genes.

K1. Understanding the archetype and seeking its playout in specific drama, there is a chance of escaping the trap of sparring with the bully; the bully thrives on high drama which is implying his power over others, drawing obedient excited followers.
K2. Avoid playing the bully's game on his terms, so as to deprive the bully of rewards for his abuses done to others, making the game too dull and unrewarding to play anymore.

posted by Jim @ 23:06 0 comments
2004-09-15
Societal Games
In the struggle to find out why I haven't yet gotten the KESTS to GEO project going, I realize that it has to do with my social interactions; even in kindergarden, it was found that I just did not "get it" adequately to be an acceptable player in the schoolyard games like "Rover Red Rover Come Over." Bashing my body against the opposing team line just did not work for me; and quickly I was not allowed to play in team games anymore. I must solve the problem from where I stand, how I really am; so I attempt to understand what goes on with people, they seem to robustly go on prancing along yet won't stop to check out KESTS to GEO. to optimally save their own future and mine. What are the factors?

There are some things that I have found as factors:
1. Innate sense of territory both one's own and that of one's neighbors;
2. Continual exercise of give-and-take, defend-and-aggression, both playful and for-real;
3. A sense of social hierarchy structure, including one's own "place" in it, and the acceptable rules for changing one's position in that social hierarchy;
4. Display for comparison to see whose is bigger than whose, better-than, faster-than, smarter-than, many kinds of whose-betterness.

Team sports teach players (and to some extent teach those in the bleachers) the principles of both cooperation and hostilities, and physical expression of both; both required of by, and restrained in scope by, the rules of the game, each player's worth being determined by how well he/she physically performs and follows the rules of both demanded and prohibited actions, as played out in the ongoing contextual situation, some is static and some is dynamic within the structure.

Why do they spend their time that way? Perhaps it is some instinctual urge to tussle with each other, exercising for strengthening capacity to do certain kinds of things. Perhaps it is part of the societal hierarchy flow process, rewards granted only to "winners" therefore there is much incentive to play and to win.

To make that all work, there must be strict adherence to the hierarchical scheme, from which the goodies of life are meted out: food, homes, attractiveness to potential mates; "wealth" and "social standing" key summary parameters.

Now, the thing I don't notice anywhere in this, is the visionary guidance of the whole for the well-being of the whole. I have been voluntarily attempting to provide some of this, such as with the "KESTS to GEO" and its enabled applications, for robust expansion and survival of civilization, and restoration of nature.

But rule-moderated "bullying" is the actual guide nowadays, instead. This works while nature can continue to provide bounty for the "winners", while man's munching and frolicking about doesn't destroy essential parts of nature, so as to collapse the support system: game over.

I believe mankind can take on the task of visionary guidance for growth and sustenance of both civilization and nature. Perhaps this is more of a prayer, blind faith, than of observation of current reality.

That will involve also finding out how to prevent, contain and perhaps even harness (??) the bully-force that often bursts forth to cause bull-types to launch locking horns in struggle to see who is better than who, trashing out the surrounding environs and destroying others lives and property and indebting the system so that it won't have the resources to create highly constructive large-scale options; the contentious bullies being righteousness-proclaiming on both sides, of course; onlookers getting all excited about the ongoing fracas, instead of using their combined abilities to stop it immediately. This prevention & coping-with is something that I cannot even guess how to do at this point; very ancient problem that it is.

-- Jim Cline

posted by Jim @ 18:53 0 comments
2004-09-13
Comparing Rocketry, Tether Elevators, and KESTS
Comparing Rocketry, Tether Elevators, and KESTS
J E D Cline 20040913

There are various layers of detail and scope by which something can be described. Fields of possible relevance to the reader are significant, too; some people will be interested in one kind of thing, whereas other people interested in a quite different factor. So here is an effort to provide a basic description of the basic principles of rocketry, anchored tether space elevators, and KESTS to GEO spacerails; in basic physics and psychology aspects.

ROCKETRY:

Rocketry utilizes the physical principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction; useful operating in a field of gravity. The force on the propellant mass being expelled out of the rocket engine is equal in amplitude and opposite in direction to the force on the rocket itself. That action, or force is equal to the product of the mass and its acceleration, the mass of the expelled propellant being small and its acceleration very high, whereas the opposite-direction acceleration on the rocket of much vaster mass, is small. If the force of gravity on the mass of the rocket is less that the upward force generated by the downward thrust against the expelled propellant, the rocket moves up away from the earth. The energy that accelerates the propellant, and thus the rocket, comes from the combustion reaction between the propellant fuel and oxidizer carried by the rocket. Nearly all the energy consumed is used to lift the fuel itself and its support structure, only a tiny fraction of the energy gets given to the lifted payload. But this is the best way we now have for getting up into space, and most importantly, it works. And the psychological factors of the sight and rumble of a spectacular rocket launch inspires excitement in people, psychologically evocative. Rocketry business provides much power and wealth and high profile presence to a lot of people, inspiring its continuance even though useful mostly for emplacement of lower orbital satellites, LEO Space Station service, small GEO com and survelliance satellites, and future rare high profile manned space exploration adventures following unmanned ones. Worthy goals; but surely by far not the best ones.

ANCHORED EARTH TETHER SPACE ELEVATORS:

A vertical elevator tensile structure supported by the outward centrifugal force on mass of the tether beyond the balance point GEO, upon which elevator vehicles climb up and down. Made of a tether material that has a suffiecently high strength to mass ratio and is sufficiently durable, a tether anchored to the earth surface equator and extending vertical so high that its counterweight mass beyond GEO exerts sufficient outward centrifugal force due to the Earth's rotation, to offset the gravitational force on the mass of the tether material below GEO, appears atractive for building a Space Elevator. Power to run the motors of the climbers that bring payload up and down the tether would be sent by high powered laser beams aimed at the vehicle as it rises up from ground to space and back; avoidance of toasting the tether material with the laser is a requirement, as well as precisely tracking position of the rectenna on the climbers on the tether. Pairs of such tethers side by side would allow two-way traffic. Tether material with a tensile strength to mass ratio sufficient for a constant crossection makes for much easier construction and reproduction techniques. The tether Space Elevator concept is getting much attention since 2002, with the prospect of carbon nanotube matrix material hopefully becoming available soon.

KESTS to GEO:

KESTS to GEO (acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit") would be of a complexity level about par with one's CD player, though of such huge perimeter that it would totally encircle the planet, eccentrically connecting between ground level at the equator, around and up to GEO on the other side of the planet, in a huge loop. It would use the centrifugal force from high velocity mass circulating within the structure to press outward just enough to balance the force of gravity on the structure with its loads. Electromagnetically coupling some of the momentum of the upward-bound portions of that high velocity circulating mass stream, inductively drags vehicles with their payloads up between ground and GEO; and gently returns them back to the ground. Electrical power is input at the ground terminal accelerators to restore energy consumed by the transporation system.

It would utilize the physical principles of electromagnetism and centrifugal force within the gravitational field of a planet. Electromagnetism utilizes the principles that opposite polarities of magnetic fields cause a pull toward each other, whereas polarities that are the same shove away from each other, and that current flow creates a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field creates a current flow. Centrifugal force occurs when a moving object has a lateral force applied toward a central point, in this case the lateral force is a combination of gravitational pull on mass and lateral thrust against a curved track. Much like a combination rotary and linear electrical motor stretched very thinly all the way around the Earth into an eccentric loop between ground and GEo above the opposite side of the planet. Electrical power, initially from conventional electrical power sources, is applied to electromagnetically thrust the motor's armature segment mass stream, thrusting against the mass of the earth, accelerating the motor's armature mass stream, transferring kinetic energy to the high velocity armature mass streams. The mass streams experience lateral thrust both from the earth's gravity as they travel around the earth, and by lateral thrust in the same direction as they are deflected by the curved track of the motor's stationary structure. The armature's thrust against the curved track reaction force, is set to exactly balance the force of gravity on the mass of the stationary structure with its loads, supporting its weight thusly by energy instead of primarily by strength of its materials. This enables the existence of such an immensely high structure.

The high velocity armature mass streams share some of their upward-moving momentum, via electromagnetic coupling, to lift spacecraft up along other sets of maglev tracks on the structure. Thus the spacecraft need lift no fuel mass for the journey between ground and GEO, making it inherently highly efficient transportation, as compared to rocketry between the two locations.

So overall, electrical energy is input to the motor system at the ground, the energy is stored in the structure and supports the structures weight and lifts spacecraft along the structure between ground and GEO. GEO is selected as the destination site because it is motionless relative to the earth surface, thus the transportation structure can maintain a solid link between ground and facilities in GEO without use of intermediary free-flying spacecraft with their propulsion and connections factors. The psychological factors include the lack of high profile persons in the field, just one impoverished older man fairly invisible to the public, stifled by the establishment; few dare to side with him.

Both tether space elevators and KESTS to GEO would severly compete with conventional satellites and rocketry, for exclusive right to use the space below GEO, since collision of an orbiting object with a stationary structure would be catastrophic for both. With easy and efficent electric transportation to GEO, most if not all of the functions now served by objects below GEO, would be relocated up to GEO. Space Station would be a special case; in GEO manned habitation would need more passive shielding, particularly until the charged particles are soaked up out of the radiation belt there by large quantities of mass placed there. Probably we would just build an initial 1976-designed Stanford Torus there in GEO instead, particularly utilizing KESTS transporation capacity.

LONG TERM ENERGY SOURCES FOR TRANSPORTATION

The long term sources of energy for rocketry come from remaining fossil fuel sources, although electrolysis of water electrically from nuclear reactor electrical power could expensively generate some fuel in the future. Use of rocketry to lift people to space seems limited to a chosen few, now and in the future, because of this.

Anchored tether Space Elevators would utilize energy from ground conventional resources at first. When used to build solar power sources, some could be used to generate laser power to follow the vehicles, like from ground lasers, but instead from lasers located in GEO.

The long term sources of energy to sustain and power the KESTS to GEO come from the solar powerplants it enables built in GEO, so it will provide its own transportation energy, as well as provide clean electrical power for civilization on the planet below. Since it will not be limited by energy from ground sources, and can be scaled to whatever capacity desired, and that it can have continuous rail traffic, it seems reasonable it can handle the commute traffic of a modern metro rail system: a million people a day. To space.... This might come in handy if we have to make a temporary exodus to cities built in GEO if the ecosystem has catastrophic collapse and drastic measures are needed to boot it back up again to working program, before comming back. The temporary exodus seems much more humane to me than the alternative. Even without such an incentive, a large civilization presence in GEO cities makes sense, and allows healing of the ecosystem of a few decades hence.

Of course, we have got to get our act together as Humanity for this, or any other scenario, to work long term. This seems a much more challenging part of the task, compared the technological challenges involved, since we clearly enjoy having a conflict fracas, far more than taking on mutually beneficial construction projects together. Can wisdom be taught in school, along with the 3 R's? How? When? Soon enough?

posted by Jim @ 07:22 0 comments
2004-09-12
Solving Headaches
Solving Headaches-a
20040912 J E D Cline

In the news lately are declarations that the health care system is costing the economy too much. An old saying is that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", although this is not heard much anymore, probably because there is much more profit to be made from the pound of cure. One would think that the "customer" would select the "ounce of prevention" instead, it being much more economical and very much less painful and inconvenient.

However, only in the "health food" and alternative health" arenas, do people seem to explore this option. General population, I think, lives in a "fighting brush fires" mode most of the time, just treading water to stay afloat, no energy or attention remaining for the "ounce of prevention." Some part of the cause of this is that the "pound of cure" providers (and very welcome they are in time of real need) are the ones with the big advertising budgets to hog the attention of the population, and to use leverage on governmental agencies to block viable alternatives from being accepted widespread.

The principle of "efficiacy" seems to provide a solution to this problem, in case people really want to solve the problem. Perhaps analogous to court of law arbitration, the various interests involved would need to be willing to accept the results of valid reality-testing appropriate to the situation overall. Such efficiacy reality testing can often be done even by oneself (examples shown below); it does not take millions of dollars to perform such reality testing.

"Efficiacy" measurements would be different for different people and situations, I suspect. For example, some people might find it more efficient to rid themselves of a headache by swallowing pills on demand, like aspirin etc; while others would find it more efficient to apply a few moments of rubbing their neurolymphatic appropriate points to deal with headaches, while others might use a battery operated electrical device set to headache-source healing frequencies, to prevent the headaches. It would depend on how busy the person is, what knowledge and materials and equipment are at hand for the person, then decisions made by the person with the headache.

Currently, the makers of analgesics have the money and influence to toot their horn loudly and most people thus know only of that option to deal with headaches.

Having personally done some "efficiacy" reality-testing on the subject to myself during the past decade, I've found the electric microcurrent devices do an efficient job of preventing the headaches formerly a frequent problem for me (and their use has clarified my thinking and memory to a significant extent and so is another plus); the self-neurolymphatic rubbing works wonders for me too and has general stress-relief as a side effect (although I can't do it in public as it looks too weird.) And yet it is nice to have that bottle of analgesics handy for the times I have been too busy and frazzled coping with life's dramas to have done the preventive modes.

Each of the "headache-fixing" modes have their own special side effects on myself: the analgesics may drop inflamation-related damage elsewhere too; the self-neurolymphatics may stress-relieve enough to be able to see other options in the situation ongoing; the small electrical device may prevent other problems besides headaches. Another modality, that of intensive nutritional intake focus, also may be "efficiacy" found to prevent some headaches, and have its own side effects such as weight control and better life energy and so forth. Yet not everybody can equally utilize all of those modes; for example, I as a lonely bachelor grieving over lack of normal close relationship with a woman in the present time, have little facility for the adequate nutritional modality.

A mere headache may seem an automatic call to grab the analgesic bottle and pop a pill, get on with life while it takes effect. Forget the neuro-rubbing and the electrical gizmos, not needed. Yet, like other aches and painful sensations, headaches are the body's way of saying that help is needed down here in the physical self, and needed right now! Pill-popping may be analogous to hitting the alarm clock's off-button, when it sounds wake-up in the workday morning, and then going back to sleep, instead of getting awake and seeing what needs to be done and going for it.

posted by Jim @ 11:36 0 comments
2004-09-10
My rambling thoughts about How to Save the Nation
My rambling thoughts about How to Save the Nation
Start 2004 09 10 James E D Cline

I've had fleeting ideas about how to turn the trends around. As well as thoughts as to the deeper problems behind the trends that look dismal to me. At this point I am just jotting down the rather unintegrated pieces. Maybe later do what I can to assemble the pieces, like those of a jigsaw puzzle.

1. It seems reasonable that some Intellectuals, many decades ago, learned about Malthusian Theory, of the exponential rise in populations of mice and men. Their learn-ed calculations urged that people ought to stop having so many children, etc, etc. Some groups may have decided to take action to lower the population, well-meaning people that saw the devastation man wreaks on the earth and sea. Indeed, such may have powered some of the forces now rampaging. And those highly esteemed, well-meaning folk, having seen much resulting loss of life and happiness that came forth (all in the banner of lowering the population), believing they did the right things that were hard decisions, do not want to hear a message that says they were wrong, that right now a high quality mankind needs to intensely expand civilization with a path for cities in space right now ... that mankind's potential is truly above that of the animals. Not a message they would like to hear; and much worse, they do not want others to hear. Understandable. But does that mean man has to continue to pull the plug, just to save face? Can we learn from our mistakes and move on?

2. I have always lived lightly on this earth. Even now, though a "senior", I struggle to get around by walking and public mass transportation systems, even though I could drive my car. The need to conserve petrochemical reserves is widely known, yet the average size of the vehicles that pull up at the stoplight as I wait for the light on the sidewalk, on foot, seems to have about doubled. If I look over at the people in those mammoth vehicles, I see one or a couple looking back at me, they rather suspiciously at me, before the light changes and the parade of behemoths surges forward. Somehow, it does not make sense to me, why are those young people racing to consume the resources they and their children will desperately need, not long hence? Are these people well educated? If so, what are they being taught? Maybe it is "survival of the fittest, rip out as big a chunk as you can while there is still something to rip out." Or maybe simply the guy proclaims "I am a winner" and the gal sees the winner and says that surely he will provide for her and her children, and so she will ride with him. Maybe they simply don't think further than that, due their particular temperament and need to just tread water, nowhere really to go. Or so they think, and act upon.

3. Three years ago tomorrow, some strange things happened: something enabled a bunch of planes to be hijacked and slammed into some buildings, and ushered in the age we now live in. Among other things, we are warring in the middle-east, Afghanistan then Iraq; yet, would we not be in civil war were it not for turning our attention outward? As I wander the streets and marketplaces, even workplaces, I see a lot of angry people. Often I see an angry glaring thug right behind me at the checkout line, like at KMart today; I can't adequately evaluate what is going on, but something is. Reminded by recent news, I remember all the assault weapons stockpiled since the 1960's, and the people who focus on that mode, preparing for something, Patriots, many claim. Back in the 1960's it was to dispose of enemy spies in the country, the government was not doing a good job of eradicating them, they thought. Most, surely were well-meaning folk; some were adventurers needing some group backing for their destructive exploits. On both sides. So, who is their enemy now? Without an enemy they have no rallying theme, and they would dissolve, maybe. In the 1960's, the women solved the problem with the motto "make love not war" and it worked: things moved toward peace and prosperity (probably most men find that lots of really real lovemaking with a woman is very much better than slugging it out with the guys), but population grew and energy consumption increased faster than population, along with accumulation of civilization's wastes that nature does not know how to recycle without our knowledgeable help. Horrid disease created since then has now blocked that "make love, not war" option; that door is now sadly shut. Stresses mount higher, suppressed angers fume and strive to find a target. Tranquilizing the public with drugs might help if they could get to the tough thugs, which is unlikely to happen; besides, a stupefied population is not competent to take on the challenges of life. Much needs to be done; and the glazed eyes and vacant smiles walking down the street don't seem to me to be able to get the job done well and on time, and probably they won't even see the problems anyway. And the way of the ruminant herd bull haunts me: ramming headfirst into the broadside of the interloper, as works for bulls in the field, is an image far to close a match for image of planes ramming headfirst into Twin Towers, to down the presumed opposition, so as to claim the herd's future.

4. There has to be a way or ways. The manipulation of "Group Think" seems to be the main force operant nowadays; even I, afflicted with the social handicap of Asperger Syndrome, am not totally immune to the so-subtle advise of Group Think, at the moment of quick decision. Making "boo-boo's" is no stranger to me either; I've "been there done that" too. Most likely there are a bunch of forces which think they are going to "win big" during the turmoil and lack of accountability going on. No good guys and no bad guys, just boys... playing with matches sometimes. Free-Enterprise is proclaimed, yet "nobody is watching the store" except security staff through TV cameras looking for images resembling pre-labeled bad guys; meantime everything is getting sold-out. So, Big Problems in River City. Are we humans great at solving problems? Yes! OK, like the Chicken Pox, we have got it.

5. Assuming there is some future for our nation possible other than being divvied up into feudal lordship corporate kingdoms, within an isolationist nation created through deliberately poking the other nations with a sharp stick; I look for those kind of options. Technology change needs to be handled by other than "the new product company trashes the old product company", if only because it is too easy for the old product company to squash the upcoming new product company in its infant stages. This deprives everybody from the benefits of the new products that might have been. Some of those new products may be life saving; some even civilization and environment saving. Would be nice to have them there in time of need. Perhaps some 3rd party arbitrator kind of thing could arrange for the folk and stockholders of the old company to be welcomed in as adequate partners in the new company, for example; education and training for comparable level employment in the new technology corporation being a mandatory part of the deal. Does this seem of interest to anyone but me?

posted by Jim @ 20:04 0 comments
2004-09-08
Exercise - Imaginary Press Release
Learning more creative writing tools at a recent writer's workshop (perhaps more adaptable to poetry than technical papers) included efforts to bring smiles from my writing, it was suggested that I put the following on my blog. Background is that we had just experienced a meditation tool in which one imagines self inside a black box, which for me seemed to isolate me from the rest of the universe, just me and the black box. Then we were asked to write an imaginary Press Release in which oneself was the subject.

So here is what I wrote for that exercise, and reading it to the workshop group provided lots of mirth for everybody....

"Press Release -

Jim Cline went into an odd shaped black box and disappeared from the universe.

He was that older man who rode around on the buses from Sunland to Exposition Park 4 or 5 hours a day, carrying a backpack everywhere , worrying people with his oddities and lack of talking with people and looking wistfully at the cute young women; he clearly did not know his place.

He volunteered at the Natural History Museum 3 or 4 days a week, helping several marine biology research projects ongoing there.

Back in his tiny studio apartment in Sunland, he wrote endlessly on his computer and internet, raving on and on about how people could make this weird electric motor thing encircling the earth from ground up to GEO and that could enable constructions in GEO that could provide all the electric power the world needs, clean and free of the greenhouse gas problem, abundant energy for the whole world; ability to recycle toxic wastes back into their pure elements for re-use, and people could live in cities built up there in orbit, crazy things like that, raving on and on.

He made everyone feel uneasy with his strange ideas, and we can all breathe easier now that he is gone into that black box.

Another Press Release will be issued to warn you if he re-appears."

2004-08-29
Data and Subjectivity
One's writings in a blog surely needs to be considered as highly subjective data, yet that does not preclude it from being considered useful and meaningful. In experimentation, it is sometimes difficult to eliminate all "subjectivity", such as in "placebo effect" and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. One seeks to deliver only data that could be independently observed by all others as the same.

Yet, it seems to me that, to any individual person, everything is 100% subjective. So the "elimination of subjectivity" perhaps is to select out only that which all observers would perceive, leaving out the parts of ongoing experience that is a function of the individual's variables, unique characteristics. (Similarly leaving out all data that is a function of the situation setup, experimental setup, attempting only to pass thru the data that would be perceivable by all people anywhere anytime.) "Temperament", Jungian psychology psychetypes, show some such "variables" yet also show they occur in clusters and that every person is typed in one of the clusters, e.g., the "Idealist, Behind-the-Scenes" cluster in which I personally fit best.

So that part of "subjectivity" is definable, therefore it seems to me that if included along with the observer's observations, such observational factors as modifiers of the data, would allow more of the data to be "valid."
Analogy is in physical instrumentation, therefore one has to understand the sensitivity range of the instrument, for example an Infrared (IR) optical telescope, and define its data produced as being that which can be perceived by the particular IR sensor, and not attempt to "eliminate subjectivity", because it would be wasteful to claim an X-ray sensor telescope would see same data. They might both perceive some object, or they might not, but what they individually perceive is not the same thing, regardless. They merely perceive different aspects of the perceived object, and the individual data sets produced are equally valid; yet neither data set is very useful if not associated with the "bias" of the particular type of sensor, perceiver, used for the data set.

Thus a data set of a person's perception of some experience, without accompaniment of description of the person's nature including Temperament type, is going to provide accurate data only to others who happen to be the same Temperament as that of the original observer; and to require other people of different Temperaments to consider the data equally valid for them, would produce erroneous results.

Possibly many people subconsciously estimate the individual's temperament and automatically do some error-correction for themselves to some extent thereby, using context, language, (e.g., factual instead of colorful and colloquial) and behaviors. Yet in human affairs, much data is not accompanied by definition of the "instrument" (person) who perceived the described experience; so when this data is received by an individual person (and seems reasonable to assume we each are individual persons) of a specific Temperament type and Interaction Style, the presence of data will "thump and ring" (or "trigger") the individual receiver's nature, instead of fully accurately copying over the data. Individual people, analogous to the IR and X-Ray telescopes, if "chatting" re some astronomical location, will have some disagreement about what is found there. If one is dominant, the data of the less dominant one is disregarded in decisions.

Therefore, defining the characteristics of the perceiver and including as part of each data set, would enable a wider range of data to be utilizable. Defining the perceiver's nature, therefore could bypass the need to "eliminate subjectivity" in the research's produced primary data set. Later, when comparing data sets of different individual observers, aspects common to all could be sifted out, yet inclusion of the modifiers (e.g. Temperament Type) could also provide a larger valid data set from which more useful aspects of the sum data set as useful to the receivers' Temperament.

In fact, tossing out all data that is unique to some specific Temperament type person, has thus lost that kind of data, which would have been valuable and useful even though mostly to people of same Temperament.

Particularly for "holistic" experimentation, instead of attempts to "eliminate subjectivity", far more useful data would be saved if the characteristics of the individual perceiver were attached to the data set of perceptions of experimental setup and results observed. Some parts of resulting data would be useful only to people of same temperament of original perceiver, but that does not make it invalid data.

To avoid loss of useful experimental result data, therefore, typology category of perceiver needs to accompany the produced data. For me, that would be "Idealist Temperament, Behind-the-Scenes" adult male human, later mid life crisis stage, single, heterosexual, currently in need of a woman, otherwise fairly self-sufficient, etc. The closer match with those particular qualities, the more accurate the meaningfulness to the reader; yet meaningful data is also there for those of other characteristics. Maybe it would be helpful to define such characteristics in the intro of one's blog.

To make such data sets more conveniently useful, converters/sifters could be derived, such that the data set is pre-sifted and languaged for maximum accurate data availability to each of the different Temperament types.

posted by Jim @ 11:26 0 comments
2004-08-26
Handwriting
Handwriting

Writing here,

leaves a trail of hand gestures,

a record of the path traversed.

Black marks on what had been

pristine white faceless world,

now forever changed

by my passage across it

via my emissary pen.

Making my mark on the world,

something to remain

after I passed by,

something left of me,

after all.


"Pasa por aqui, en el ano..."

I recall seeing scratched

into desolate red sandstone in New Mexico,

all that remains

of a Spanish Conquistador's march

past that very spot hundreds of years before,

the winds of time

having erased the other tracks.


The time-perseverance of writings,

accumulating in the presence of mankind,

as an ever-growing parental spirit

offering to emboss the wisdoms,

the tracks left by those

who passed by here before,

into the minds

of the fresh,

that they may have a head start in life,

going arm in arm

with a humanity not quite bygone.

James E. D. Cline 2004/04/07

posted by Jim @ 05:50 0 comments
2004-08-25
Bullying
“Bullying” is one of the most obnoxious subjects I can think of; yet if one is to deal with something proven unavoidable, then it is important to explore the subject for understanding.

I as a youth, usually the smallest boy in the class, newest kid on the block, and with Asperger’s Syndrome’s need for companionship yet socially unable to comprehend goings-on, occasionally I suffered from being attacked by some boy for no reason I could see. It got my attention enough to find out those attacking me were called “bullies”. That did not explain bullying to me, however. Those bullies were highly esteemed by their peers, seemed very healthy, were not loners, and the girls adored them, gathering around and laughing while the bully assaulted me.

Apparently the bully’s behavior of pushing others around and starting fights, putting others down and making fun of them, and spreading nasty rumors about others, made the girls love them, and gathered admiring persons around them.

Teachers’ frowns on the behavior did not change it, and the bullys’ threats to terrorize any who might “squeel” on him, made it difficult for teachers to do anything about the problem. Bully’s aggressive abusive behavior brought rewards to them, and continued into adulthood, in more refined forms. The abuse has usually become less physical and more of the “putting others down, and spreading nasty rumors about others” varieties, demonstrating the bully’s cleverness.

The national information networks being established, including those used by store and business security national networks, surely is enticing to be used by bullies to “spread those nasty rumors about others”; because once gotten into the national database somehow by the cunning bully, the victim cannot counteract it. Buying & selling becomes very difficult for the targeted victim, reminiscent of the biblical prediction but without the tatoo numbers on forehead yet.

In a wider view, no doubt the eyes of all the nations have watched to see if the American Democracy really is self-balancing enough to prevent abuse of leftover extreme military might, would the temptation to be a bully be overwhelming, given some seeming excuse? It seems unlikely that bullies will stop, while peers admire it and women love the bullies, and disdain their victims.

From the Asperger’s viewpoint, intellectually understanding it only helps intellectually. Understanding that the bullying phenomenon can be considered merely that some guy having an “alpha-male-itis” fit: the guy (or group) is having a temporary behavioral fit caused by genetic memory of a reproductively successful but species parasitical nature, not helping species survival, when some male ancestor of his discovered he did not have to be a better person to be chosen as mate by the females, it was far easier to just dispose of the other males by driving them out of the safety of the herd so as to quickly convert them into meat for the herd's predators, leaving the females no choice in mating season, a reproductively successful behavior thus propagating itself down through time. And so the alpha-male-itis syndrome is expressing in the bullying fit going on. I remind myself that despite such shortcomings, man is still the best monkey that God has built. Look at the great bridges he has created, the complex computer innards he has crafted, clearly there is more to man than mere freaking-out monkey.

Perhaps understanding of the phenomenon is not just to be found among animal behavior, but also in the human system of interpersonal competition and the rewards society provides to the “winners.” Perhaps the social systems are a best-attempt to tame the alpha-male-itis gene-driven behavior found in many, by taming it into a system of competitive rivalry, instead of striving for a system of achieving to help the species best survive in all ways responsibly. Is polished-up bullying to continue to be effectively our highest standard? If so, surely we will get more of it.

-- Jim Cline 20040825

posted by Jim @ 23:35 0 comments
2004-08-22
Asperger's Syndrome sees Group Think
When I read an article candidly concluding that "Group Think" was why we went to war in Iraq, I wondered, what is "Group Think"? Pursuing that question has produced some of those aha! feelings, and I recognize my prior ignorance is probably due to my having Asperger's Syndrome, and the addition of awareness of its existence has become one of the key discoveries to help me understand the world around me and my place in it.
At least in my case, Asperger's Syndrome enables me to achieve near-genius concepts; but at the cost of having to endure being utterly stupid socially nearly all times (particularly when attempting to introduce myself to a potential woman mate); and the lack of comprehending heirarchy, people with urges to bully go on the assault such as by letting me "hold the bag" when I attempt to join in; getting framed up is another repeating mode bullys use against those who miss the point of bully's superiority over others.
The cause of Aspergers' is likely to have been too much mercury in childhood Thimerosol-disinfected innoculations, and swabbed on scrapes as Merthiolate and Mercurichrome, doing a litle something to brain development. In some ways, helpfully.
So now "Group Think" gets added to the list of keys to mysteries I experience much too unpleasantly at times. So here are some of the new understandings, perhaps to help those who have, or deal with, Asperger's Syndrome (and maybe other things, like figuring out the why of wars and street mob action startups.)
So again I ask, what is "group think"? Perhaps it has something to do with the passing around of gossip until so many people have heard and said it that it is held as "the truth" and can be used as basis for action when something unusual happens.
I sometimes discovered that I was the one last to hear what was on "the grapevine"; it seemed that for something to be secret at least one person had to not be told it ... and that person was most often me, apparently. Not that it mattered much to me, most of people's groupie compulsive turmoil was beyond my comprehension, all I needed to know is how to keep from being sucked into it.
Someone proclaiming "everybody knows that ..." and "it is common knowledge that ..." seemed to preclude any thoughts that something needed validating, the individual hearer assuming he/she must have missed something that everybody else knew: so, don't show ignorance by making contrary observations or stupid questions.
Putting a Reward Poster up, in the Old West anyway, somebody's picture and name and "Wanted Dead or Alive", one just knew the person was guilty of awful crime, no questions asked; and if you were enraged about whatever kind of crime mentioned, you were ready to go out and help kill the fingered person, no questions asked, so angry about such things going on. Deliberate use of gossip, about something not easily verifiable, yet not implausable, could be used to stir up a group about something until they could become a hangman's vigilante group, disposing of an unsuspecting innocent, the instigator using the wave of stimulated anger to support a peak of violence of his/hers, then the whole group feels implicated and does a group hushup of the crime, lest all be to blame. Better yet, tell around the horrid deeds of the dead man and brag about how you all were heros saving people from horrid other doings he might have done to them, continue building Group-Think cleverly.
Group-think could also be some unifying common belief system too, a way to identify who belongs through query re some otherwise innocous information re person or place: a true group member quickly responds with the Group Think response.
Yet group think would seem harmlessly idle chat passing the time, or stiring up some adrenaline in an otherwise boring Neighborhood Watch group or political meeting. But also it could be deliberately whipped up to a fervor, like Old West Indians doing a War Dance whooping along as they hop around a blazing fire in the night brandishing their weapons imaginatively at some foe, repeating some statement until they believe it and are ready to go do violence to fix the problem as a group. Then, somehow, they become transformed into a violent, lethal destructive force, perhaps totally amazing to an otherwise innocent and unsuspecting foe that is assaulted by those otherwise peaceable people.
Spreading around enough implications of someone being a dangerous person, get people to watch him and report, do it long enough and what would have been questions, eventually becomes truth, to an excited people; a deliberately seeded and whipped-up social energy dark storm gathers and eventually lightening strikes.
So "Group Think" has potential to be deliberately used, or evolve somehow on its own maybe, from idle gossip to "everybody knows that ..." to a war dance whoop event to a group assault on something. Like Iraq, like maybe the neighbor ... who will be next?
It also seems that there has to be some sustaining energy, something that persists long enough to pump up a group into some false belief about something enough to get it to become "common knowledge", otherwise there would be little reason to do more than some brief idle prattle, soon forgotten if not reinforced somehow. I've read that it was hunger for oil for energy that was a factor, one of many, including some of psychological origin, in the case of Iraq. Did we really believe we were going to be welcomed by a people liberated from a tyrant rulership, did Group Think blind us... probably so, expecting a grateful "freed" nation to shower us with oil favors forever after. We too have our hidden armed fundamentalist-minded militamen; are such the real problem in today's Iraq?
Is there some practical way that all people be embraced into welcoming belonging, productive for the whole? Much of all religions strive for this, I believe; yet obviously it does not work 100%.
On a smaller scale, how many Asperger's genius loners had the product of their genius absorbed by waiting businessmen when they were mowed down in some clever way by whipping up fervor against him/her using Group Think techniques?
Asperger's hunger to be part of the group, otherwise they could protect themselves better, but their naive nature and need for companionship are forces that can be used by the greedy and mere bullys thrashing around. I well know. And I wonder: my own creative product, KESTS to GEO (ref. http://www.kestsgeo.com ), could bring fortunes to manipulators, eventually vastly more than all the oil in the world... would this provide the energy to Group-Think me out of existence, stiffling its public awareness until the Group-Think-powered dirty deed done, leaving my life's creative product abandoned to the ready grabbers?
Ah, paranoia, must be. But, paranoia is the only thing that helps caution this natually very naive man.
Another "aha!" I got from this thinking, was that "other people" (the 250/1 people who do not have Asperger's Syndrome) are quick to conclude that when there is any problem, the solution is to get rid of some person. that is, it is a person who is the cause of what is going wrong, no matter if it is global warming effects from CO2 buildup, lack of electric power to power the air conditioners, nuclear wastes that nobody wants, or starvation in Africa. Attack some person, solves these problems, that entrenched belief seems to proclaim instantly to "normal" people. This response is apparently because they are "people" oriented, 100%.
Well, I've heard that it is important for each person to not be part of the problem, but instead be part of the solution.

posted by Jim @ 12:13 0 comments
2004-08-12
Natural History Museum
Sitting back taking a break to scribble down something for my blog later at home, here at the NHMLAC, where I’ve been doing specimen processing of microscopic sized foraminifera from ocean floor core samples, previously gathered by remotely operated submersible vehicles; now down in the processing facility in the bottom of the 1910 museum structure with a ground level view of the Rose Garden, I recall that many of the high points of my life growing up were family visits to natural history museums. Buildings filled with objects enticingly placed for view to evoke meaningfulness tantalizingly gathered in the images, each a bit of history pulled out of some now-unseen place, time, and context to be seen here and now, imagination now activated to evoke the long-gone context in which each almost magical thing was produced by nature. Those museum visits stimulated me to collect things too, such as insects and mineral specimens I found along the way, each a reminder of its piece of the world. History is the lineage as the past brings to play out in the here and now, headed somewhere into the future. People’s history is woven out of natural history; the wooden chair and table so re-shaped as to almost forget the trees which originally made that wood during their slowly busy life in the sunshined forest rains. Above my head, above the old concrete ceiling, is the floor which now houses the exhibits from American Indian life ways much simpler and closer to the natural world, than that I encountered this morning riding the city buses on asphalt streets for two hours to get here, some trees and the sky all that remain visibly unshaped by the hand of mankind along the way. As we gather the stuff to make our comfy nests, seeming by changing it from natural history, to human civilization history, the place is no longer the same, for the next go-around. The earth with vast oceans had seemed an endless source of materials and room to dump our wastes. But it seems now to have been territorailized, marked off in real estate for buying and selling, each parcel of land built upon with homes or stores, no heed to the original inhabitants there, the trees and birds and insects who had found homes there, but no more. Years ago, before the associated Page Museum was built, the museum floor above where I sit writing this on my breaktime, held skeletons of mastodons and sabre tooth tigers found at the La Brea Tar Pits some miles from here, reminders of the creatures that claimed this very spot as their territory, mere thousands of years ago. Their tusks and sabre teeth carved at this world, as surely as do our shovels and laser beams. The separation between natural history and civilization history blurs, maybe there really is only “Natural History” as seen in the overall context of the flows upon this planet. Am I, are we, going to like the tomorrow’s world which infills out of today’s? What are we doing anyway, what is going on? Seeing the history, best as can be determined, can see the flight path of the arrow, better to guess its impact. Heads up, time to make our nests to make peace with the future.

Jim Cline

posted by Jim @ 22:37 0 comments
2004-08-09
Pondering pearls and swine and today's world
A biblical phrase which I ponder once again is the one "Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them beneath their feet and turn to rend you," one of Jesus' wisdoms. Seeking its messages for myself, it is clear that it intensively pertains to my efforts re my ideas for improving life in so many ways, often through special applications of technology. Along the way, there have been some expressions of acknowledgment and appreciation of my creative ideas (as one co-author of a US Patent; and once by getting made a full Electronics Design/Development Engineer even though non-degreed) but the vast majority of responses have been much to my discouragement. Returning to the wording of the "... pearls before swine...," seeking more understanding for my real-world experiences, gradually I saw that swine would be hoping for feed, maybe some tidbits of corn grains distributed by my hand in front of them, yet pearls would seem like mere pebbles to them, and become infuriated at one's mischief at them, giving pebbles instead of tasty corn. That I knew the pebbles were precious pearls of great potential worth, gets lost in the interpretations by the hungry swine even though I think they could trade a few pearls for great heaps of their desired edible corn. So, pulling this teaching into the world I have found in my walk some 2,000 years later, first re-defining the problem as observed, then offering some solution idea, several thoughts appear:
1) The world does not beat a path to one's door to buy your creative goodie from you, although you might return home some day and find it gone and erased from your files. People nowadays seem to require advertising sales pitches and some store to buy at, otherwise, there is nothing of interest to them. And, potentially competitive concepts must be hidden and destroyed, apparently they think.
2) Working in some lowly position (such as an engineering technician) for a corporation so as to have the opportunity to show them one's creative ability through ideas for new products for them so as to make things better for everybody, amazingly got automatically virtually destroyed when walking in through their door, when the "Employment Agreement" had to be signed as a condition of employment, a legal document that declares that all of the employee's ideas and inventions freely belong to the employer (and the employer had no responsibility toward the creative ideas.) Sign it or don't work; no work thus no way to pay bills or buy groceries. So, sign and hope they have better sense in reality. Nope; it generally was pearls before swine result. Lots of my concepts and ideas got ignored or rejected, and rarely did they later acknowledge that many years later the very thing I had earlier offered, was made into working reality by someone else, who additionally gave no credit to me. The company people were totally absorbed on the track on which they started, and to them the "employment agreement document" was just to ensure no one stole their pre-loaded company goodies. It all maintained the illusion that the company personnel, particularly management, were the only ones capable of improving the company's output, thus guaranteeing security in their jobs. Don't rock the boat, it is hard enough for them to keep all their ducks in a row.
3) So I began to put my ideas out on a computer network (GEnie, Space and Science library) and then when internet access came to me, I put my ideas online, Earthlink starting in 1996, then eventually my own domain too. I found that people out there either considered my ideas as potentially upsetting to their delightful life, and/or implied that I was attempting to horn in on their paycheck-producing job field, particularly to my amazement the Space Station field; filibustering loaded the chats I attempted to get going re my ideas, even back in the late Eighties.
4) So I thought that writing technical papers for conferences which were proclaiming interest in fields that my ideas and conceptual designs pertained to, would get interest from those who functioned on the idea level. Several conferences would accept abstracts even from those not of the field professionally, the papers concepts would be judged on their content, not the prior visibility of the author. So I learned to write my ideas in the form of a professional technical paper, and with minimal resources, even had to use a poster shareware software to prepare my first published paper in "camera ready" form, each page was a two-column poster (Wet Launch of Prefab Habitat Modules, SSI, 1995). Previously, in 1985 I had attempted to get Aerospace focused on the great potentials of new transportation concepts, not just mine but those of Loftstrom and Hyde among others, by giving testimony before the National Commission on Space, and found interest by Commissioner Dr Paul Coleman of LANL; yet it all vanished by the time the report was published by the NCS. I then processed those ideas and digested them and built anew to form a new concept which seemed cohesive enough to give industry a place to look for great new things to do, and eventually called it KESTS to GEO. I wrote of it on GEnie, then on my internet freebie earthlink website, then submitted it to the RAND system, told it to various groups like the SSI team here in LA and the ISSS LA chapter. Polite noticing then they went on their prior way. Presenting it to the SSI in 1997 at Princeton resulted in the strangest response, and their failure to publish my paper on KESTS, in 1997, additionally embarrassing me there and subsequently to my mother who in her ailing last years had given me the $3,000 it took to do the conference paper effort, sadness all around. Not until 2000 did I get a technical paper formally published and presented at a related technical conference, that of ASCE's Space 2000 conference. Another paper published in ASCE's Space 2002 conference, this time as the 2nd paper in the proceedings, labeled an emerging technology ("Kinetically Supported Bridge Vehicle Lift To GEO", ASCE Space 2002 Robotics 2002) and I began to guess that it was some knowledgeable personnel at LANL that were of some help to me. Then the news began to have reports of some mudslinging at LANL, stuff any company would have if intensively "investigated", but LANL was being targeted. ASCE deigned to allow me to have published another paper in their space conference at Houston in 2004, however, the conference management had changed and corporate political interests seemed supreme; by that time, "Space Elevators" had branched off and were focused on the anchored tether variety as if it were the only way, and not inviting me or my papers there, even though my unpublished 1972 paper "The Mooncable: A Profitable Space Transportation System" (which showed the feasibility of a constant stress anchored lunar tether through L-1 made of fiberglass) had many of the concepts now applied to anchored earth tether designs now that eminent availability of tether material strong enough for an earth anchored tether space access elevator appears on the technological horizon.
So, where were the present-day manifestations of the "pearl trampling and turning to rend you" phenomenon, I ponder. My ineptitude at public speaking made me an unimpressive presenter; my lack of a degree made those who depended on their high academic achievements for status, resented my attempts to do what they had not done; implications that I must be crazy or have stolen the ideas from someone, me a mere electronics engineering technician sometimes unemployed even, perhaps even through some security breach at some big corporation or government facility, since I had referred to a Hyde document by title, at the 1997 SSI conference paper (the unclassified Hyde document was not understandable by me in my brief look at it as provided by a retired Huges engineer also a futurist, but the document appeared related to Hyde's "Starbridge" presentation I had attended in the mid-1980s at an L5 Society meeting, thus a reference for my 1997 KESTS paper) and apparently it was preferable to some authorities to infer that I had stolen the ideas than to let it be known that it was not they who created the conceptual design ... maybe they would lose their credibility and their great jobs? Worse yet, KESTS to GEO would displace existing aerospace launch vehicles and many of their functions for access to space from the ground, big upset to big jobs, out of their control: no way will they let that happen, Control is what they do best, leverage. My Asperger's Syndrome problem made it easy for frame-ups and mudslinging to keep me looking like the "bad guy" in incredibly diverse ways, while my KESTS to GEO with Applications Enabled was kept stifled and hidden, waiting for this older man to get dead or worse ... yes, "trampling with their feet and turning to rend you" fits very well to the observed phenomena. Reaching out through 2,000 years via the Bible, Jesus helps me comprehend the problem. And it is said that correctly defining the problem is half the solution.
"Pearls" I have had abundantly, ones which could enormously help civilization quickly and make fortunes for those who implement them: enabling transportation to build facilities that would provide abundant clean electrical power worldwide, huge reduction in greenhouse effect, ability to totally recycle the worst of toxic industrial wastes, and permanently opening the doorway to space for the masses, not just for energy and resources but also for building vast cities orbiting the Earth, easy commute between there and the ground... all just too very unordinary to be noticed and adequately checked out for feasibility, it seems, by a population being scared by threats and thus unable to rationally build their future.
Is it good enough for me to proclaim to the empty air: "I tried", don't blame me when the lights go out permanently, or first you stifle in your own terminally fouled nests? I wonder if the wise teacher Jesus thought of doing the "I tried" thing, too. Not good enough, got to keep going, do one's best; the world will provide the stops.
An answer appears to be in the understanding of the various basic temperaments with which people experience their lives; and to encourage educational processes that give equal time to both sides of the brain (big-picture vs detail oriented sides) and seeking the context that links them.
Good Luck from Jim Cline. Thanks and Cheers....

2004-07-25
Baby alligators
As a young child my favorite reading materials were comic books and Mechanix Illustrated. Even the ads in the latter were fascinating, for example each month there was an ad, for $2 one could have a baby alligator mailed to you as a pet. Seemed that would be fun, but mere fantasy for me. Having since seen what a grown alligator does to a grown wildebeast attempting to cross a river, I consider the situations people found themselves in, those who bought the baby alligators for $2, and had them grow up to be big alligators. A similar stuation seems to be now with the country's nuke arsenal, in the news intensely recently. Why would the Dept of Defense give their nukes to the Dept of Energy? Maybe like large alligators being turned into shoes and purses before eating the family dog, or worse. The fissionables might be useable to power a new era of nuclear electric power plants, when petrochemicals start running out for good. I suppose Russia had the same problem years ago. The whole nuke secrecy thing got my attention when, for the 4th time coincidentally LANL was under some kind of attack following some of its people being interested in my KESTS to GEO concept, as a way to massively put up solar power satellites etc, conceivably seen as rival to nuke power plants on the ground yet also far more useful for other things. This time it is when the SE2005 Space Elevator conference accepted abstract from me on a paper; LANL was not harrassed in the years when my KESTS type papers were not invited for presentation. So.... I recall not too many years ago I was working as a tech at a small firm run by its two owners, making car alarms (it paid my rent and groceries, when other companies would not hire a super tech who had previously worked up to be a non-degreed EE, apparently perceived as sneaking past the college degree requirement.) There was a big shakeup when a box of product could not be accounted for. Accusations flared, tempers flared, accounting personnel quit. Everybody sweated, how could they prove they had not stolen the box? Weeks went by, then my boss, a no-nonsense man of Armenian decent, got courage to go into the boss' office, and look around, and there he found the missing box of product stashed in hiding. And that stopped the tensions. The motivations of those who crave and wield power, can be complex indeed; essential shakers & movers they may be, but sometimes I wonder what is up, they probably not being saints.

posted by Jim @ 11:02 0 comments
2004-07-24
Behind rock in Keams Canyon
As a teenager in the Southwest before the cliff dwellings were fenced off, I got to climb around in some of the great cliff dwellings, and see a lot of other interesting things. One thing that particularly impressed me, was while we were exploring Keams Canyon in Arizona. The place was known as a place where some soldiers were pined down by the Indians for a long time. Their fate was not known to me. Wandering around in the place, now quiet, I found a few words scratched in a slab of red sandstone jutting out of the desert floor. A soldier had clearly been trapped behind that rock for a long time; his name and rank was carefully engraved into the upper part of the rock. It was easy to imagine him preparing this tombstone for himself, perhaps all that would be left of him when the savages (to his viewpoint, trying to stay alive a while longer) were done. No one to talk with, no one to help, and some unfriendlies nearby did not like him.
Sometimes writing in this blog I flash on such a feeling. No one posts a comment. No one seems to know I'm here. A voice crying in the wilderness. Yet, like a friendly hunk of red sandstone in the desert, upon the blog I write. And the writings are indication of a difference between not being here, and of being here.

posted by Jim @ 17:17 0 comments
2004-07-19
Clustering: Responsibility to the Nation
Responsibility to the Nation

Responsibility has many facets, and there is a human individual (or group) tendency to focus on only part of them. For example, the creation and potential implementation of my KESTS to GEO project seems one of, or perhaps the only one of, ways to supply the country and civilization itself with adequate clean energy and environment, via lifting SSPS into GEO and total recycling mass-spec type facilities into GEO, when petrochemicals become severely uneconomical in the near future; so it seems there is high responsibility to make KESTS to GEO, and also probably anchored tether space elevators, happen as soon as possible, getting started ASAP due to the long lead time needed for unfamiliar technology configurations, despite its poor fit with existing space enterprises. I've pointed the finger of blame at businessmen and politicos that have apparently been stifling KESTS to GEO, including interference with my technical paper publications and with the few people who are knowledgeable enough and wise enough to be supportive of KESTS to GEO. Yet there are indications "responsibility" definition is a variable per one's Temperament type. As an Idealist Temperament type man, I focus on responsibility to the future of the nation, of civilization; yet a Guardian Temperament type person might consider "responsibility" be to the past, to maintaining traditions, all else being "irresponsible fluff" to them. Artisan Temperament people might focus "responsibility" to the correctness and efficiency of getting something done, but not particularly focused on exactly what is being done, however; the "doing" being the only major responsibility. Rational Temperament types might consider responsibility to focus on credibility issues, interlock fitness with the existing accepted knowledge base. As a whole people functions optimally with all the Temperaments doing their thing continually and with some harmony, I too would do well to wisely consider the viewpoint focus of other Temperaments other than my own, and integrate the wisdom found in those other Temperament focus viewpoint aspects of "responsibility".

posted by Jim @ 10:02 0 comments
2004-07-18
cluster vignette: words
WORDS

Words are symbols, representing something more physical; placeholders.

These representations of physical-world things can be more compactly stored, transported and reproduced, than their more physically real counterparts.

A requirement is that the words represent the same thing (more or less) to each person interacting with them.

Words can be combined into packets, self contained groups like sentences, paragraphs or stories. The grouped words enable ever more precisely defining a specific something.

Redundancy of words, saying the same thing two or more ways, as is done in the biblical Psalms, increases the likelihood of accuracy between intent of transmitter as compared to impression it produces in the receiver.

The Bible states “In the beginning was the Word...” which suggests to me now that those beginning Words were blueprint symbols, shaped empty spaces into which physical reality pours into where the two fit; thus electrons, atoms and stars were cast into physicality.

Like a blueprint guiding the making of a physical something, a symbolic model more mallable than physical reality, words define materials and process, including that of the songs of life,

Life’s placeholder patterns are made out of charactersets: the four of DNA’s double helix, the twenty-six of English, and how many are those of the minstrel’s songs of life?

-- James E. D. Cline 2004/04/09-13

posted by Jim @ 10:29 0 comments
2004-07-16
URLs of my web pages and brief content descriptions
These are all "works in progress".

http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/

The above is my original Earthlink.net freebie website, online since 1996 so it "just grew", has info on a wider range of stuff, such as advanced transportation ideas, holistic info, technological poetry, personal info re life achievements, etc. Also has copies of some of my GEnie network files posted starting in 1988, (but vanished when internet became publically available.)

http://www.kestsgeo.com

Above URL is for my website mostly dedicated to my hobby of designing a space transportation system adequate for the upcoming petrochemical energy starving world, could lift construction materials for building satellite solar power stations into high earth orbit, lift materials for large scale total recycling mass-spectrometer-type facilities in GEO, make GEO the primary spaceport with cheap electrical lift of spacecraft from ground up to GEO, eventual build large scale cities there in GEO, opening the high frontier truly for all who want to go there. Best: when SSPS up and running in GEO, they can power the transportation system to space even when petrochemical fuel is running out, making continuing space access possible even with no chemical fuel for conventional launches is available. I urge get started now before things get too distractingly tough. Unfortunately, KESTS to GEO is being heavily stiffled, presumably by rival businessmen and politicos, irresponsible to the future of humanity, waiting for this older man to dissappear. (Over the years, most -- but not all -- of my many innovative sparks for people's projects have been forgoten or ignored, no credit given to me.) And lots of jobs, fortunes to be made, can make the good life for people IF done correctly: it would have a better chance at success if I am involved adequately in implementation. Since most of my employed career was as a top level Sr Engineering Technician in R&D in electronics, I have a good sense of what will or will not work, and skill at approaches to how to change them so as to make them work. The integrated conceptual design I have been developing and talking about since 1988 and have named "KESTS to GEO," has a good fit with technological principles.

http://www.kestsgeo.com/pages/tstnhm/indextst.html

Writing a tutorial on making thin sections at Natural History Museum Invertebrate Paleontology facilities (a volunteer task).

posted by Jim @ 13:58 0 comments
Some URLS & books on Temperament; work styles
URLs re Temperament theory per Linda Berens; with close corellates to Jungian psychetying, this seems more widely anchored and suited for individual or group use, helps understand people (including oneself) to enable better functioning:

http://www.telospublications.com/
http://www.tri-network.com
http://www.16types.com

Also see (especially for those who have journaled at some time):

"The Artists Way At Work" by Julia Cameron"

posted by Jim @ 13:49 0 comments
2004-07-15
typing vs handwriting
I wonder if some widespread sociopsychological effect will happen regarding changeover from handwriting to typing, brought on by computers and email especially. Given that writing began as a gestural communication leaving tracks as cuniform then other scratches on something, a more long lasting expression than vocalization, then "writing" is an extension of the mind. The manner and channel then would shape that process. Like changing the flow of water in a riverbed, the river then changes where the river goes.

posted by Jim @ 20:56 0 comments
20040715 the poem, Magnetic Footprints
JEDC's Technological Poetry
MAGNETIC FOOTPRINTS
by James Edward David Cline

Here is a poem written about the inner workings of a disk drive, written using the INSCRIBE cognitive engine.

by J E D CLINE 6/13/84

Shining like a mechanical jewel
The tortured metal and plastic shapes
Were bound unwillingly together
By man and machine. And now, the
Conscripted shapes silently await,
Like a statue frozen, the
Awakening pulse of electric life
To throb in it's copper veins,
Energizing mechanical muscles....
Then, TURN-ON!

A twirling whirl goes to a filmy disk
Of micromagnets, sending them hurtling
Past a special place: a read/write head
With magnetic maw that sometimes
Shouts and sometimes listens
To the concensus of the
Scurrying horde of magnetic domains.


The gaping maw jumps back and forth,
Then lies in wait for the call of
The one it seeks.

Here they come! The earthquake rattle
Of ten thousand dancing domains in a
Chorus line, all spread their energy
To the hungry ferrite eye, then take it
Back again, escaping.

Their rock-and-roll dance is
Patiently watched over,
Then finally the familiar notes
Of the sought sector comes on scene.

The throbbing beat is announced,
And its repeating rhythm forms a
Trellis of time supporting the
Melodious string of data notes.

Stronger now and square, the
Marching line of ones and zeros
Triumphantly emerge as information,
Reborn to live in the halls of
Mankind's busyness.

But there comes a time in the life of bits,
When the world tires of them, and
Prepares to send their progenitive essence
To ferrite crypts. The chosen ones, the
Lucky bits, herd into groups, then file
Courageously singley into the iron maiden.

The ferrite's searching eye,
Having found the assigned shelf
In the filmy store, grabs each
Brave bit in turn, transforming
It in an instant into a torrent

Of current, rushing first one way
Then the other. This river of
Excitement pours through copper swirls,
And their waves of motion stir concerted
Flux in flying ferrite glider.

The flux strikes a barrier!
A gap to be crossed in an
Exhuberant flurry and shout,
And leaves magnetic footprints by
Overturnings in the domains below,
In the filmy land of time's sleep.

Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline

posted by Jim @ 20:15 0 comments
2004-07-14
cluster: Inscribe
INSCRIBE

The Inscribe process is a walk-the-path device, for exploring and building along the walked path to create something new, led by what is interesting at the time. It provides guidance for a process that shuffles between one’s logic mind and one’s design mind, as one also shuffles between the world of physical action and the world of imagination and intuition. My first test run of the process produced a “technological poem” titled “Magnetic Footprints” which has gotten positive comments from a wide variety of people over the years. Subsequent uses did not produce as acclaimed results, however, probably since the factors of each step were clear in my mind during the first test run, but that which was evoked by the Inscribe diagram thereafter was not quite the same. This suggests the need for revision of the diagram so as to more completely identify that which is to be evoked by each step along the path, redundancy and/or clarification. Yet there is a need for simplicity and compactness in the overall diagram, easy to look at as a whole. Another function is to imaginatively record into appearant physical reality, a newly chosen meaning for the physicality rather than merely the initial appearant significances. Thinking back to 1984 when “Magnetic Footprints” was written, I had an old disk drive in my view, and imaginatively inscribing new significant imagery into the disk drive as I saw it. Then, in something like this clustering process of Gabrille Ricco, suddenly the poem began to congeal in my mind, like condensation of specific words floating out of a 3 dimensional sea of widely separated words. I then wrote down the composed short phrases, an unfolding in my language mind as some other part of my mind was concurrently somehow exploring the overall pattern into a sequential flow of events. And there it was, a written composition that I later named “Magnetic Footprints” (from an initial name of “the Shugart ....??disk drive”) and gave the classification of “technological poetry”. The Inscribe process is a blueprint for building something out of what is physically found, imaginatively decorating it and reworking the physical initial meaningfulness to amplify that which is especially attractive about it and lacing evocative morphological equivalents together while walking the inscribe path diagram, impulsively choosing which fork in the road to take when a fork is encountered.in the shuffle from design mind to sign mind (using Ricco’s terminology for left and right brain, or wide view to narrow focus), directed by the pathway to pick a function to notice and then to describe. Each interesting part of the physical object blossoms out with a lacework of broader significances, producing a writing that is full of energy, a composition which appears to also be attractive to other people who read it.
James E. D. Cline 2001 12 12, 1342 hrs.

posted by Jim @ 11:39 0 comments
clustering: visionary
Blog looks like a place to store some of my cluster-written vignettes, as taught by Gabrielle Ricco in "writing the natural way":

VISIONARY

The vision of a project provides the imaged blueprint to be filled in throughout the creation and implementation of a project. It ensures the harmony among the many parts when finished, an optimistic image map in which the trailblazers create the pathways which prepare the subsequent activities. The vision needs to foresee the final product fully having fulfilled its best purposes throughout its useful lifespan.

Jim Cline

posted by Jim @ 11:34 0 comments
200407#4 re morning pages
The "morning Pages" of Julia Cameron's "artists way at work" book has been a companion for me for many lonely years. Handwriting in a notebook is not the same as typing, so I wonder what will happen if I go to an electronic, computer input, form of Morning Pages or journal. Blog in that catagory too.

The involvement of handwriting's gestural physical activiy surely is part of the process of Morning Pages, which have the primary function of finishing up the processing of the night's sleep. Sometimes useful data gets written, as well as good ideas for subsequent folow-up use; but mostly it is foggy un-losing-it babble, getting oneself together mentally analogous to taking a bath, shaving, and putting clothes on for the day, only mentally.

posted by Jim @ 11:01 0 comments
20040714#3 acronym meaning of "KESTS to GEO"
The acronym, initials, of "KESTS to GEO" stands for Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structures to Geostationary Earth Orbit. This is a conceptual design for a space rail elevator integrated with the applications it would enable, powered by the Sun, to continue our high-energy, high population civilization, ever more harmonious with the interconnected web of all life on Earth. It is intended that you will be inspired to seek and achieve ever greater works with a sense of its place and potential function in the wider picture of existence. What you do (and what you don't do) are partly your responsibility. Live lessening reactivity and increasingly on-purpose with your greatest possible wisdom of the moment. Living on purpose with wisdom.

The idea of building a spacerail encircling the earth elliptically between ground and GEO seems preposterous to almost everybody. Nonetheless, no one has yet to give reason why it won't work; and after putting the concept out via GEnie network in 1988 and then on internet starting in 1996, (earthlink freebie site) I now have versions of it formally published in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, ASCE finally acknowledges it to some extent, and it is more a civil engineering project concept than simply aerospace.

Using excess velocity in an OTT path to create centrifugal force slightly greater than that needed to offset force of gravity on stator mass with its loads, and using the same stored kinetic energy inductively drag tapped to lift spacecraft between ground up to GEO and gently back.

Jim Cline

posted by Jim @ 10:33 0 comments
20040714 #2 living on-purpose: prepare future spacerail
Inspiring living on-purpose with wisdom, as mankind the great builder, amplifying the great process of life: www.kestsgeo.com

A space rail elevator economical full access between the ground up to high earth synchronous orbit so as to build in GEO great works for powering all humanity with abundant electrical power cleanly, to purify toxic materials made in civilization's processes and make the materials available for new purposes, to build new living space in GEO, and to build ports of economical access to the vast material resources of the solar system, all solar of this being powered.

This comes at a time when most people are "too busy" to think about it; Survivalists stuff their rural stronghold nests, Sustainable-living folk learn to scratch an existence also rurally; others hack at the civilization, thinking the problem is "too many people"; others grab for whatever remaining petrochemical fuel resources can be found; and rising panic in the population is quelled by drugging the population. Is this a worthy application of mankind? Does this have to be a time of "grab all you can while the energy-built civilization starves for fuel and is in collapse? Note that unless a launched satellite is completely given energy and direction to fully achieve an orbit, it will come crashing back down; civilization now is analogous to that. The KESTS to GEO conceptual designs offer direction to fully achieve sustainable orbit for civilization.

posted by Jim @ 10:30 0 comments
20040714 starting blog
Initial entry blog, on July 14, 2004. Am on vacation today, up in Pacific Northwest forest land, greenery dense here.

I look forward to exploring what this blog thing is about.