- Social Evolution

Dr Michio Kaku - Fukushima and the Future

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:41:18 -0600

Greek Town Develops Bartering System

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:52:19 -0600

Mortgage-Free, In A Tiny Home

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:11:35 -0700

The Jungle Prescription (Film Trailer)

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:05:27 -0700

The jungle Prescription - Film Trailer from The Ayahuasca Project on Vimeo.

"I Am Fishead" Are Corporate Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths ?

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:45:52 -0700

A Glimpse Of The Other Side

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:40:00 -0700

The Economics Of Happiness

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:01:13 -0700

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Occupy Wall Street Our One Demand

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:38:35 -0600

Who Needs 'Aliens' When You Have Psychopaths

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:42:33 -0600

German Village Produces 321% More Energy Than It Needs!

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:37:10 -0600

Source: Inhabitat - August 21, 2011

Ok, those Germans are just showing off now. Not only has the nation announced plans to shut down all of its nuclear power plants and started the construction of 2,800 miles of transmission lines for its new renewable energy initiative, but now the village of Wildpoldsried is producing 321% more energy than it needs! The small agricultural village in the state of Bavaria is generating an impressive $5.7 million in annual revenue from renewable energy.

It’s no surprise that the country that has kicked butt at the Solar Decathlon competition (to produce energy positive solar houses) year after year is the home to such a productive energy-efficient village. The village’s green initiative first started in 1997 when the village council decided that it should build new industries, keep initiatives local, bring in new revenue, and create no debt. Over the past 14 years, the community has equipped nine new community buildings with solar panels, built four biogas digesters (with a fifth in construction now) and installed seven windmills with two more on the way. In the village itself, 190 private households have solar panels while the district also benefits from three small hydro power plants, ecological flood control, and a natural waste water system.

All of these green systems means that despite only having a population of 2,600, Wildpoldsried produces 321 percent more energy than it needs – and it’s generating 4.0 million Euro (US $5.7 million) in annual revenue by selling it back to the national grid. It is no surprise to learn that small businesses have developed in the village specifically to provide services to the renewable energy installations.

Over the years the village’s green goals have been so successful that they have even crafted a mission statement — WIR–2020, Wildpoldsried Innovativ Richtungsweisend (Wildpoldsried Innovative Leadership). The village council hopes that it will inspire citizens to do their part for the environment and create green jobs and businesses for the local area.

As a result of the village’s success, Wildpoldsried has received numerous national and international awards for its conservation and renewable energy initiatives known as Klimaschutz (climate protection). The council even hosts tours for other village councils on how to start their own Klimaschutz program. The Mayor has even been doing global tours ever since the Fukushima disaster.

Mayor Zengerle has gone to Romania, Berlin and the Black Sea Region to speak about how these places can transform their communities and make money in the process. Speaking to Biocycle, Mayor Zengerle said, “The mitigation of climate change in practice can only be implemented with the citizens and with the Village Council behind them 100 percent of the way. This model cannot be forced from only one side. We often spend a lot of time talking to our visitors about how to motivate the village council (and Mayor) to start thinking differently. We show them a best practices model in motion and many see the benefits immediately. From the tour we give, our guests understand how well things can operate when you have the enthusiasm and conviction of the people.”

America’s One and Only Personal Rapid Transit System

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 19:30:00 -0600

Source: Governing.com - July 2011

Morgantown, W.Va., looks like your typical college town in the Northeast, with church towers piercing the skyline and clusters of brick buildings and tree-lined streets abutting a large university. But as you drive down the road and head toward the campus, something unusual emerges: a modest-sized elevated roadway that skirts the Monongahela River and winds its way through West Virginia University (WVU) for several miles. Then a small box-like car, painted in WVU’s blue and yellow school colors, zips overhead and you realize it’s not an elevated road at all, but something very different.

Welcome to America’s one and only personal rapid transit (PRT) system, serving downtown Morgantown and the WVU campus. Though other transit systems may claim they are PRTs, Morgantown’s is the only one in the world where riders can hop into cars and travel directly from point to point without stopping at other stations along the way.

On a typical fall and spring semester day, 15,000 passengers will travel between the five stations along an 8.7-mile track, riding in 71 self-propelled cars that travel at speeds of up to 30 mph. It’s easy to see why the people mover, as it is sometimes called, is so popular. With a wait time of just five minutes or less, as many as 20 passengers at a time pass the traffic congestion on the narrow streets below.

In fact, the PRT is part of the reason why WVU went from a student enrollment of approximately 10,000 in the late 1960s to nearly 30,000 today, according to Haven Sions, a mechanic supervisor who has been working on the system for 34 years. “In the pre-PRT days, we relied on shuttle buses to move students,” he recalls. “Because of traffic, the university had to schedule classes as much as two hours apart so the students wouldn’t be late.” Once the PRT was built, schedules tightened up considerably, making it possible to schedule more classes, which meant enrolling more students.

The Morgantown PRT began in 1975 as a transportation research project funded by the federal government and developed by Boeing. The project cost $120 million and relied on computer technology that can be described as primitive by today’s standards. However, virtually every aspect of the PRT was original when it was built. Consider the four-wheel steering system for each vehicle (the cars run on rubber tires), or the special heating system, powered by four boiler plants that pumps a mixture of chemicals and hot water through pipes to clear the guideway of snow and ice during the winter.

Boeing got out of the transit business a long time ago, so the iconic people mover basically has to fend for itself in terms of maintenance and repairs, says Arlie Foreman, WVU’s associate director of transportation. A crew of 55 keeps the system operating six days a week, working constantly to repair the aging cars and guideway, scrounging for hard-to-find parts. According to Foreman, the university spends $5 million annually to operate it.

In 1995, the computer control system was upgraded and now work is under way to modernize the individual control and propulsion systems in each of the 71 cars that remain in service. The PRT maintenance crew is proud of the fact that of the 80 million passengers who have ridden on the PRT since its start, no serious injuries or fatalities have occurred.

As afternoon traffic builds on the local streets, slowing movement to a crawl, the PRT vehicles continue to glide past quietly and efficiently. “The Morgantown PRT stands as an example of how cities can better cope with pollution, traffic and environmental demands,” Foreman says.

The Perennial Plate: Brothers

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:39:54 -0600

The Perennial Plate Episode 61: Brothers from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

The People Who Feed Us: Joel Salatin

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:29:23 -0600

We Are Not Alone

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:13:57 -0600

This is NOT standard fare for the CBC, I was stunned by this piece, I'm still actually a little in shock at how the published interview finished, I was expecting the usual insertion of derision on the part of the CBC, but it just wasn't there. Something to think about maybe....

Source: CBC - June 30, 2011

Canadian Stanton Friedman is a superstar in the UFO world, a man who can walk into a conference about aliens and be recognized the way that golf fans recognize Tiger Woods prowling the fairways of the Masters.

Roswell, Area 51, UFOs, aliens — the New Brunswick resident can cite fine details about each.

A nuclear physicist by training, Friedman keeps busy writing books, doing interviews and attending numerous conferences (he's lectured in 18 countries so far), as well as appearing in documentaries, all geared to one of the great mysteries of the human experience: do aliens exist and have they visited Earth?

Friedman will quickly tell you they have, and he will quickly tell you it is being covered up on a grand scale. Doubters beware: he will also tell you he has not lost a debate yet about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

"I have had only 11 hecklers of whom two were drunk. In addition, I have appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows, been involved in five books, numerous documentaries and won several debates, and lost none," Friedman responded in an emailed answer to questions from CBCNews.ca.

One of the main lecturers this year at the annual UFO conference in Roswell, which starts July 1, he clearly doesn't shrink from defending his great quest, more than 40 years in the making, as you can see in this interview with CBCNews.ca.

Do you remember the moment, or moments, that you looked at the skies and thought, 'There's life out there?'

There were no epiphany moment. I read a lot of science-fiction stories when I was young and pretty much assumed there was other life out there. I read my first serious book, The Report On UFOs by air force captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former head of United States Air Force project Blue Book, in 1958.

I was a 24-year-old nuclear physicist working at the General Electric Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Department in Cincinnati. The USAF was co-sponsor with the Atomic Energy Commission and we spent $100 million that year and employed 3,500 people of which 1,100 were engineers or scientists. In the next three years I read about a dozen other books, some of which were trash.

Then, to my surprise, in about 1961, at the library of the University of California, Berkeley, I found a copy of a privately published version of the largest study ever done for the U.S. government — Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14.

It hadn't been mentioned in any of the books I had read and had over 200 charts, tables, graphs and maps about the more than 3,200 UFO cases studied.

Most astonishing was the widely distributed press release of Oct. 25, 1955, in which the secretary of the air force, Donald Quarles, flat out lied when he said: "Even the unknown three per cent could have been identified as conventional phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been available."

In reality, 21.5 per cent of the cases couldn't be explained, completely separate from the 9.3 per cent listed as "insufficient Information." Thus began my crusade in the early 1960s.

How do people react to you in a social setting when they find out what you do?

No, I don't get taken to be a nut. Many people have seen me on TV and heard me on radio. Some have even read one of my books. Most people agree with me once they hear the evidence.

Fewer than two per cent have read any of the five large-scale scientific studies on which I focus. I raise the objections of the debunkers and then demolish them. It is a complete myth that most people, especially professionals, think the subject is nonsense.

I have spoken to many professional groups. There is an entire chapter in my 2008 book Flying Saucers and Science about the actual opinion poll results.

Despite the false claims of a small group of nasty, noisy negativists, most people accept ET reality even though they think most others don't. I check my audiences and find at the end of my lecture that about 10 per cent of the attendees have had a sighting. But 90 per cent didn't report it because of a fear of ridicule.

I am trying to lift the laughter curtain.

What will happen to the Earth when we discover for certain that aliens exist? And will the aliens be friendly or will they do harm to us?

I have no idea how the world will respond. I believe it will depend entirely on how the information is presented.

If we are told the visitors are evil and plan to destroy us, that would give a very different reaction from what would happen if we find out they are here primarily to make sure that we don't go out there until we learn to behave in a civilized fashion.

Clearly, from an alien viewpoint, we are a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare. In the Second World War, we earthlings killed 50 million of our own kind and destroyed 1,700 cities. This year we will spend $1 trillion on things military, while more than 25,000 children die needlessly of preventable disease or starvation every day.

Roswell, Area 51 and other U.S. locations play a big role in what you and others are investigating. Are there any Canadian connections to the UFO mystery?

I am the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident and will once again be there in early July for the annual festival.

Area 51 is not a primary focus at all despite a new book with an outlandish explanation for Roswell. [The book suggests the Russians were behind UFO sightings.]

There is real evidence from all over the world including more than 4,000 physical trace cases from more than 70 countries. The Mutual UFO Network receives more than 300 reports per month.

Some interesting (Canadian) cases include the Shag Harbor, N.S., crash, in October 1967. I will be there in early August for their conference. The Stephen Michalak case of Falcon Lake, Man., was an excellent case. Chris Rutkowski of Winnipeg collects reports from all over the country.

Seek and ye shall find.

When people doubt that there are aliens and doubt they have visited here, what do they say is needed to convince them?

There aren't many doubters. The four primary rules for the debunkers are: (A) Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up. (B) What the public doesn't know, I won't tell them. (C) If one can't attack the data, attack the people. (D) Do one's research by proclamation, because investigation is too much trouble. All together the attitude is to put down what one is not up on.

I deal with such silly objections as governments can't keep secrets, or one can't get here from there in Flying Saucers and Science and also in Science Was Wrong, co-authored by Kathleen Marden. We also wrote Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Marden is Betty's niece. Again, the skeptics haven't done their homework. Their disbelief is primarily a result of ignorance of the evidence.

There are some who insist that religion teaches there are no aliens. I refer them to Dr. Barry Downing's excellent book The Bible and Flying Saucers.

It seems more people believe these days that life is out there in the stars. Are they getting sucked in by the hype of popular movies or is it something more?

I think most people have come to realize that we live in an enormous universe, which is not only huge but billions of years old and there seems to be nothing special about Earth that would lead us to believe our situation is unique.

It is easy to forget that it was less than 90 years ago that we realized that there is more than one galaxy. It is less than 20 years since we discovered many exoplanets.

The Kepler spacecraft in just a short part of its life seems to have found more than 1,200 exoplanets in a relatively tiny portion of the heavens. Many more will follow. We didn't realize until less than 75 years ago that nuclear fusion provides 10 million times as much energy per reaction as does chemical combustion. I worked on a study of fusion rockets.

We are slowly beginning to realize that technological progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way and the future is not an extrapolation of the past.

Until Copernicus, we thought we were at the centre of the universe and all the heavenly bodies including the sun revolved around the Earth. Now we know the sun isn't in the centre either, and we are clearly not the big shots we would like to think we are.

People aren't being sucked in by science fiction, but a growing awareness of our relative unimportance in the larger scheme of things.

Some say the world will change more than we can understand if aliens reveal themselves to us. Do you think this is true? How might things change?

Again I can't predict how people will react since it will depend upon how information about alien reality is presented and what facts are given.

It is easy to forget that from the viewpoint of many governments of alien visitation, there is a strong national security concern. Namely how can we duplicate the alien technology for military benefit and not permit our "enemies" to know what we have learned.

I talk about this in my paper to be presented at the 42nd annual Mutual UFO Network symposium in Irvine, Calif., on July 31.

'It is time for a wake-up call. We are not alone.'
—Stanton Friedman, UFO hunter

The biggest problem is with nationalism. No government wants its citizens to owe their allegiance to the planet instead of that individual government.

People in power want to stay in power. Governments have a past history of often not taking courageous steps for the benefit of their people, but rather looking out for themselves first. The wave of unrest in the Middle East suggests some things are changing and more freedom is being sought.

One more thing that certainly needs to change is for the press to do its job and dig out the facts. One of a dozen PhD theses about UFOs (By Dr. Herbert Strentz) has some strong comments to make about the inadequacy of the press efforts. For example, how could the New York Times blindly accept the crazy notion that crash test dummies dropped in New Mexico were the explanation for bodies supposedly seen in Roswell in 1947.

In fact, none were dropped until at least six years later and all were the size and weight of pilots (175 pounds and six feet tall) and were in pilot uniforms. Witnesses talked of short skinny guys with big heads. Hardly the same thing.

It is time for a wake-up call. We are not alone.

Canada, Have We Lost Our Moral Compass?

nospam@example.com (Harvest Dream) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:32:52 -0600

Source: The Vancouver Sun - June 24, 2011

It has become obvious that it was not just outsiders and anarchists taking part in the riots after Game 7

As the evidence, apologies, threats and counter threats are now playing out on Facebook and Twitter can we put to rest the claims by our politicians that the Vancouver riot was constituted by a small number of troublemakers and anarchists? As we see the faces of middle class children with potentially bright futures splashed across the media doing horrific damage and mayhem is there any doubt that there is a lot more to this than pointing blame at a few? What is it, even hours before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup, that made young men in $100 Canucks sweaters express their attitude to "The Best Place on Earth" (B.C.'s official motto) and the self-described most livable, most beautiful, most sustainable place on Earth by spitting on it?

Of course, we know from studies, that when one person spits or litters it makes it far more likely that other people will follow along. And, when people start to smash windows and burn and damage cars, and loot, that too makes it more likely that other people will follow along - especially when their inhibitions have been lowered by hours of drinking to take their minds off the fact that in the land of $1.3-million "starter" bungalows, $400,000 one-bedroom condos and $750,000 two-bedroom condos, their prospects for a middle-class lifestyle with a family of two or three children are dim indeed.

It is telling that Mayor Gregor Robertson and others interviewed about this event described it as hooligans "smearing the name of the city," who "by no means represent(ed) the city of Vancouver." Even the heroes in the event, those isolated people who tried to stop the mayhem, at great personal risk, said nothing about the morality but emphasized that they did it because they didn't want Vancouver's name besmirched.

And, the next day everyone was relieved the real Vancouver emerged, when the right kind of people came downtown and volunteered in the clean up.

The only problem, of course, is that social media soon showed that Mayor Robertson was wrong. Thousands of young Vancouverites either participated or cheered on looters and property vandals and arsonists. They raised their arms in victory with each smash and burn. Perhaps even more shocking were the young people with their latest versions of iPhones standing in the middle of a riot, or within a few feet of a burning car, about to have its gas tank blow up in a fireball, snapping photos.

More bizarre still was the willingness of most to give media interviews. In this world, obsessed with celebrities and politicians behaving badly, these young people relish the chance to appear on old-style media or new social media, as if publicity for any reason is their raison d'être. One young woman asked why as she carried away a designer purse from a looted store stated the obvious: "Because I wanted it."

What if these young people do represent what Vancouver is and what it shall be? What if they are in fact dedicated to wanting to smear the reputation of the Best Place on Earth? What if the children of those who were hippies in 1970 and moved to Vancouver as part of their cultural revolution, have themselves decided to take part in their own, very different, cultural revolution?

Has anyone considered that the youth in a city where the average income is $56,000 and the average house price is $750,000 and who have no hope of entering the middle class, no hope of getting out of their parents' basements, and who occupy their time with toys (often violent video games), tweeting short inanities to their similarly situated friends, watching ultimate fighting championships and hockey "enforcers" and drinking and smoking dope, might really want to spit all over this city and smash it and boast about it to their friends by sending the photos out on Facebook?

What if what we see being reflected are the cultural consequences of a post-religious society with no clear moral compass and no overarching guiding values?

Vancouver has adopted a Lotus Land ideology of cultural relativism in which we tell our children that there are no good cultures and bad cultures and no good versus evil (nowhere in Canada is traditional religion more passé than in Vancouver). Moreover Vancouver is the place where there is the least stigma in Canada against getting high, using illegal drugs, stock fraud, drug dealing, and a whole variety of bad behaviours.

Vancouverites like to say that their high housing prices are the result of it being such a wonderful place to live and because of our high rate of immigration. This is only a small part of the story. A series of urban planning policies and programs have resulted in increased cost of new housing, all the better to benefit those lucky enough to have already purchased their fast appreciating huts in Lotus Land.

A vast number of people in Vancouver view themselves as "secular but spiritual." Too often it means a worship of nature and the absence of discussion of values and morality. If they are raised without any clear values, is it any wonder that young people use what spare cash they have to get tattooed with fetish-like body art? There is no point saving their money for a down payment on a house if the house requires a down payment of $300,000 and a mortgage of $700,000.

The largest single business in B.C., estimated to be in the order of $7 billion dollars per year, is the cultivation and distribution of marijuana and other illegal drugs. The Vancouver stock market is rife with stock fraud and white collar crime. Vancouverites had endless money to spend on the Olympics, but not enough for proper psychiatric care for the legions of homeless wandering around the Downtown Eastside or spending their days collecting bottles and cans in the alleys to redeem at seven to 10 cents each.

The enemy is not some hooligans, some anarchists, some out-of-towners, some criminal types at all. The enemy is us and what we are bequeathing to our children in terms of moral values, of understanding right from wrong, that celebrity misconduct should be pitied not emulated, and that justice and the respect for it is a hallmark of a civilized western society. Add to that moral confusion the extended adolescence of these young adults, and we have a recipe for just the kind of behaviour we witnessed in Downtown Vancouver in the Stanley Cup Riots of 2011.

They have not smeared our reputation. We have no reputation to smear. Much of our society is behaving badly. The riots are reflective of a loss of hope and a deep seated anger that we have created in our own children.

We all need to act better and then maybe our children will follow us.