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 Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: As Mr. Spock explained, “The needs of the many ... outweigh the
needs of the few ... or the one.”
Synergy at its most basic simply
means "working together."
Synergic science is then the study of "working together."
As science
has progressed in helping us understand the human condition, it is now
clear that we are an INTERdependent species. Sometimes I depend on
others, and sometimes others depend on me.
Another important fact of
being in INTERdependent species is we share the same environment—the
same reality. At home, we share the same living space with friends or
family. If I turn the heater thermostat up, the room will become warmer
for everyone. Control of that reality is shared.
If I start yelling and
screaming, things will get much noisier for everyone. Control of that
reality is shared.
If I make a mess or don't clean up the kitchen, then
we are all living in that mess. This is just as true in the workplace,
our neighborhoods, our communities, and in fact in the whole world. We
live on a single planet, we all share the same water, the same air and
the same resources of the single small planet.
Because control of
reality is shared, if I foul the water or air, I foul your water and
your air. Whatever I do, will effect you. Whatever you do, will effect
me. If we work together and act responsibly, we can minimize the harm
we do each other, and maximize the benefits of solving our problems
together.
Freedom of action in a shared environment is a privilege, not
a right. ...
That bears repeating! Freedom of action in a shared environment is a privlege, not a right!
Which is more important? The individual's right to freedom of action or
community's right to public safety? We can now see that this is a silly
and false argument. Community is simply "many" individuals. My freedom
of action stops at the boundary of another individual's personal space
and safety.
America has long been the champion of the individual's right to freedom
of action. In fact, our American criminal justice system is so
paralyzed by the need to protect the rights of the individual, that our
streets are full of criminals, and our e-mail boxes are full of
unsolicited junk mail and garbage including pornography and fraudulent
offers.
Why do we tolerate this? Isn't it time to grow up? Aren't we
smart enough to create a society that values both an individual's right
to freedom of action and the community's right to public safety. (05/11/08) |
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 Tom Engelhardt of Tom Dispatch.com writes: Already climate change -- in the form of a changing pattern of global
rainfall -- seems to be affecting the planet in significant ways. Take
the massive, almost decade-long drought in Australia's wheat-growing
heartland, which has been a significant factor in sending flour prices, and so bread prices, soaring globally, leading to desperation and food riots across the planet.
A report from the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia makes clear
that, despite recent heavy rains in the eastern Australian breadbasket,
years of above normal rainfall would be needed "to remove the very
long-term [water] deficits" in the region. The report then adds this
ominous note: "The combination of record heat and widespread drought
during the past five to 10 years over large parts of southern and
eastern Australia is without historical precedent and is, at least
partly, a result of climate change."
Think a bit about that phrase -- "without historical precedent."
Except when it comes to technological invention, it hasn't been much
part of our lives these last many centuries. Without historical precedent.
Brace yourselves, it's about to become a commonplace in our vocabulary.
The southeastern United States, for instance, was, for the last couple
of years, locked in a drought -- which is finally easing -- "without historical precedent." In other words, there was nothing (repeat, nothing) in the historical record that provided a guide to what might happen next.
Now, it's true that the industrial revolution, which led to the release
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at historically unprecedented
rates, was also, in a sense, "without historical precedent"; but most
natural events -- unlike, say, the present staggering ice melt
in the Arctic -- have been precedented (if I can manufacture such a
word). They have been part of the historical record. That era -- the
era of history -- is now, however, threatening to give way to a period
capable of outrunning history itself, of outrunning us.
The planet in its long existence may have experienced the extremes to come, but we haven't. The planet, unlike much life on it, may not -- given millions or tens of millions of years to recover -- be in danger, but we are.
When you really think about it, history is humanity. It's
common enough to talk about some historical figure or failed experiment
being swept into the "dustbin of history," but what if all history and
that dustbin, too, go… well, where? What are we, really, without our
records? Once we pass beyond them, beyond all the experience we've
collected, written down, and archived since those first scratches went
on clay tablets in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates -- now being stripped of their cultural patrimony -- at least two unanswerable questions arise. Once history has been left in the dust, where are we? -- and, who are we?
Let the indefatigable environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has a powerful urge to stop us just short of the cliff of the post-historical era, take it from here. (05/11/08) |
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 BBC Ocean Science -- Declining fish stocks could be partly responsible for algal blooms in the oceans, researchers have found.
Scientists found that the fall in cod stocks in the Baltic Sea in
recent decades increased numbers of the tiny marine plants that produce
the blooms.
Algal blooms - sometimes known as "toxic tides" - can be poisonous to
people, fish and other wildlife, and may be on the increase worldwide.
The research is reported in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B.
"In recent years, the frequency of intense blooms (in the Baltic Sea)
seems to have increased, and the level in summer has also been
increasing," said Michele Casini from the Swedish Board of Fisheries in
Lysekil, lead scientist on the new research. ...
The scientific team - which also involved researchers from Germany and
Latvia - assessed three decades of data on the Baltic Sea food web.
Basically, zooplankton (tiny marine animals) eat phytoplankton, and
sprat (small fish) eat zooplankton. Finally, cod eat the sprat.
"Right now, in the last 30 years, cod have been the top predators in
the Baltic, after populations of seals and other marine mammals
declined because of hunting," explained Dr Casini.
The data showed a simple correlation. As the cod population declined
sharply from the early 1980s, the sprat population rose; zooplankton
declined, and phytoplankton increased. (05/11/08) |
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 BBC Science --
Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to
the devastating force of the weekend's cyclone, a top politician
suggests.
ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had
resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms,
being lost.
At least 22,000 people have died in the disaster, say state officials.
A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami found that areas near healthy mangroves suffered less damage and fewer deaths.
Mr Surin, speaking at a high-level meeting of the Association of
South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, said the combination of
more people living in coastal areas and the loss of mangroves had
exacerbated the tragedy. ...
Mangroves have been long considered as "bio-guards" for coastal
settlements. A study published in December 2005 said healthy mangrove
forests helped
save Sri Lankan villagers during the Asian tsunami disaster, which
claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people.
Researchers from IUCN, formerly known as the World Conservation Union,
compared the death toll from two villages in Sri Lanka that were hit by
the devastating giant waves. While two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub
forest, up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a nearby village without
similar vegetation.
"Mangroves are a very dense vegetation type that grows along the
shore," explained Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist for IUCN. Where the
saltwater and freshwater meet, that is where the mangroves
grow; they often extend from several hundred metres to a few kilometers
inland. Especially in river deltas, mangroves prevent waves from
damaging the
more productive land that are further inland from the sea."
A recent global assessment found that 3.6 million hectares of mangrove forests had disappeared since 1980. (05/11/08) |
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 Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Within
this half century, we humans have developed ergometric science to help
us improve our tool-making. Ergometric scientists tell us how to
best design tools to fit the human form. By carefully measuring both
the physiology and psychology of the human body, today's scientists are
seeking to determine the best designs for new tools. They know that the
best tools are those that fit you like a well-tailored glove fits your
hand.
Recently ergometric science has been much advanced by a breakthrough in
our understanding of human intelligence. With the development of the
"dual mind" model of human intelligence it is now possible to design
tools that fit the human "mind-brain". In other words, we can now
ergometrically engineer tools to fit the way we humans think.
We humans are the toolmakers, and in our history we have made many
tools—both simple and complex. The most complex and complicated of all
our tools are our organizations—the corporations, institutions,
militaries, and governments of earth. These are also the most important
tools in all our lives, for they significantly influence both the
quality and quanity of our lives. Of all the tools we might seek to
ergometrically engineer to fit the human "mind-brain", there exists no
greater potential benefit for all mankind then by applying this science
to our most complex tools—the organizations.
One such tool has recently completed development, and is now available
to organizations for immediate application. This first
ergometrically designed tool for human organizations is called the
"organizational tensegrity" or simply ORTEGRITY.
The ORTEGRITY is a "mind-brain" compatible "
system of organizing humans. It can be used by a small group of
individuals or a giant corporation with hundreds of thousands of
employees.
The ORTEGRITY is a "system of human organization that creates a
conflict-free environment for decision making and action
implementation". This is an environment so ergometrically suited to
human thinking that efficiency and productivity are predicted to
increase 10 to 1000 times. Yes, that's 10 to 1000 times more efficient
and productive.
The ORTEGRITY achieves its great power by creating an ideal
psychological environment for human thinking. One important finding of
recent mind-brain research, is "that whenever humans experience
conflict they lose access to their full intelligence". When humans are
confronted with conflict, their mind-brains shift to a very primitive
and highly reactive way of thinking called the survive mode. The
survive mode evolved in the jungle to insure physical survival. Its
primary skills are fighting and fleeing. Its extremes are rage and
terror. All humans thinking in the survive mode will find their
intelligence to be severely limited. Access is lost to the faculties of
reason and intuition. In severe conflict, many of us lose even our
ability to speak. Unfortunately, the survive mode turns on with the
slightest conflict, and instantaneously our intelligence begins to
decrease. It is not simply on or off. It is more like the rheostat
dimmer switch controlling a dinning room light. A little conflict will
produce a little loss of intelligence, while a large conflict will
produce a large loss of intelligence. If we remain in conflict for
weeks, then we will operate at limited intelligence for weeks. And in
full rage or terror, we humans access only a tiny fraction of our
potential intelligence. Conflict is to organizations as friction is to
machinery.
The power of the ORTEGRITY results then from its unique ability
to create a conflict-free state. It is this conflict-free state that
optimizes human intelligence and creativity. It is this conflict-free
state that maximizes efficiency and productivity. It is this
conflict-free state that increases the quality of work-life. It is the
conflict-free state that allows all relationships between all members
to become win-win.
In the difficult political-economic times ahead organizations must
learn to work smarter. Only by optimizing the human factor can they
hope to survive. The ORTEGRITY promises to increase efficiency
and productivity by 10 to 1000 times. It accomplishes this by
increasing the intelligence and creativity of all members in the
system. This is working "smartest". The ORTEGRITY was designed to
fit the human "mind-brain" like a well tailored glove fits your hand,
it could change the way we all work and live in the future. (05/08/08) |
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 David Cohen writes: The disconnect between peak oil concerns and the presidential race
is almost total. As prices at the pump rise, each candidate is now
talking about their so-called solutions to the problem. Despite clear new warning signs from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Nigeria
that peak oil is nigh, the candidates remain unwaveringly oblivious to
the true causes of rising fuel prices, preferring instead to dwell on
irrelevant—actually, counterproductive—measures like suspending the
federal gas tax during the summer months or taxing Big Oil. This is
akin to putting a band-aid on a melanoma.
Our nation's capital is a self-reinforcing bastion of ignorance
about the longer term oil supply issues, Roscoe Bartlett (R, Md) and a
few others excepted. The candidates and their energy advisers are
full-fledged members of the "Washington Insiders" club, a group that
only talks to each other and gets all of its information from inside
the Beltway or pollsters. A brief example suffices to demonstrate the
problem. Everybody in our nation's capital reads the Washington Post. If you want to "know" what's going on, it's in the Post. Here are the results of a Google advanced search survey
of references to the exact phrase "peak oil" in four newspapers — Wall
Street Journal: 3820 Hits, New York Times: 1970 Hits, Houston
Chronicle: 617 Hits, and the Washington Post: 389 Hits.
The Wall Street Journal has about 10 times more allusions to "peak oil" than the Post does. Bear in mind that this informal survey includes comments by readers, guest editorials, and assorted other references that are not part of the newspaper's reporting. You will be hard-pressed to find a news article in the Washington Post that uses the term "peak oil." Earth to the Post's Editors, this is Earth calling—"peak oil" is a growing concern outside the Beltway, so it's time to get with the program.
Examining
the "oil dependency" positions of the candidates' energy advisers gives
us little hope our newly elected government will meet the peak oil
challenges head-on in 2009. ...
Mitigating anthropogenic climate change is the imperative driving
the policies of all the presidential candidates, so their primary
energy initiative is a carbon emissions cap & trade system.
Problems arising from our oil dependency take a backseat—these are not
perceived as urgent and thus can be solved gradually. This approach to
our "oil dependency" only makes sense from a climate perspective, which
requires us to change our energy consumption and infrastructure over
several decades.
The soaring oil price and its underlying
causes are the invisible elephant in the room in the presidential race.
While many of the candidates' proposals can be chalked up to pandering
in an election year, there is no evidence that I can find that any of
the candidates gets this "peak oil" problem. For example, Robert Hirsch
and Roger Bezdek briefed two low level Clinton staffers on the dangers
of a dwindling oil supply. No evidence supports the idea that this
briefing has had the slightest effect on thinking in the Clinton
campaign. We are all being sold down the river in this year's
election. As the first DOE secretary James Schlesinger said, "We have
only two modes—complacency and panic." Complacency rules, and panic
awaits. I don't know who the next president will be, but I can foresee
that anxious day when our leader-to-be (or Jason Grumet?) exclaims "Oh,
no! Oil is $161/barrel! The economy is falling apart! What do we do
now?" Don't say we didn't warn you. (05/08/08) |
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 Tom Whipple
writes: With crude oil now above $120 a barrel and threatening to go
higher, it is clear that our preferred and convenient means of going
places, our car, the airplane and the rental car soon are going to be
parked because they will be too expensive to operate.
Like it or not, most of us are going to be riding some form of mass
transit or multiple passenger vehicle – trains, buses, trolleys, car
pools, van pools etc.- while waiting for our cars to be replaced with
electric or higher mileage vehicles. As there are currently about 220
million cars and light trucks registered in the U.S. and 700 million or
so elsewhere, the replacement process is going to be lengthy one.
In America, our accustomed daily transportation needs are so diverse
that it is difficult to foresee how new transportation methods and
patterns will come about. For some simply accepting the inconvenience
of taking public transit to work or joining a car pool will save enough
gasoline each week that much higher prices, shortages and ultimately
rationing can be accommodated without undue hardship.
For others whose livelihood depends on a large vehicle that moves
frequently throughout the work day there is more of a problem for mass
transit as currently configured is unlikely to be of much use. At some
point driving around at 10 mpg to mow lawns will no longer be
economically viable for customers will no longer be willing to pay the
fuel surcharges. Someday there probably will be satisfactory electric
or ultra high mileage vehicles, but it is likely to be a while before
they filter down from better off organizations such UPS, FedEx and the
grocery stores to local maintenance contractors.
One day soon, it will simply be too expensive for electricians,
plumbers and a myriad of other household service providers to drive 50
or 60 miles in large, inefficient vehicles to perform some relatively
minor maintenance task. The very nature of such services will have to
change, be localized, and planned so that travel is minimized. Someday,
your electrician may arrive on a city bus pulling his tools and parts
behind.
The speed with which we have to transition from unlimited, cheap,
personal travel to some form of public or at least multiple passenger
transport will determine how transit works in the coming decades. (05/08/08) |
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 BBC Medical Science --
Scientists have been looking at ways liver disease could be treated
using embryonic stem cells, reducing the need for transplantation.
The
research is one of two projects at Edinburgh University receiving
£3.6m from Scottish Enterprise and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
The second project, which also involves embryonic stem cells, will look
at new ways to repair damaged bone.
Liver disease is the fifth most common cause of death in the UK.
Professor John Iredale, of the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at
the University of Edinburgh, said: "In the first instance, the
successful development of liver cells from embryonic stem cells will
revolutionise and improve the way we are able to test drugs and novel
therapies both for the liver and other organs and ultimately may lead
to a stem-cell based approach to regenerate the liver.
"This would have a significant impact on reducing the need for donated
organs and provide less invasive and traumatic treatment for those
patients for whom transplantation is currently the only option."
Scientists will research how liver cells derived from embryonic stem
cells can be used in therapies for acute and chronic liver disease.
The research will gain greater understanding as to how embryonic stem
cells differentiate to become liver cells, and how these can be made to
repair damaged livers. (05/08/08) |
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 BBC Science -- At least one of Britain's birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food.
Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring
than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of
caterpillars.
Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same birds in
the Netherlands have not managed to adjust. Understanding why some
species in some places are affected more than others by climatic shifts
is vital, they say.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) commented that
other species are likely to fare much worse than great tits as
temperatures rise.
The research uses a long record of great tits in a breeding site at
Wytham Woods near Oxford, where observations began in 1947. ...
The RSPB and other conservation bodies have regularly warned that
climate shifts could have a devastating impact on some species; and
they believe the new research does not change that picture.
"It's great to hear that the great tit is able to keep pace with the
rapid rate of climate change, but then it's probably in the best place
to do that," observed RSPB spokesman Grahame Madge.
"They're abundant birds, they can live in gardens, woodland and open
country, and they churn out large numbers of young in a short space of
time, so they're better able to learn changes in behaviour."
The organisation believes - as do others - that climate change is one
of the main cuplrits for the abrupt declines in some seabird
populations around UK coasts in recent years.
The Oxford and Heteren groups are now planning to collaborate on a
study to elucidate why some populations apparently adapt well to
climate change, and others do not. (05/08/08) |
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 Timothy Wilken, MD writes: As a synergic scientist I study how systems work together. How the
parts composing a system relate to each other. Those parts that work
against each other produce the weakest whole systems. Those parts that
ignore each other do better, but still are quite limited producing only
average or fair systems. Those parts that work together to mutual
benefit create the post powerful whole systems.
Parts that hurt each other and work against have lose/win or lose/lose relationships. One fox plus one rabbit equals only one fox.
Parts that ignore each other and work independently have draw|draw relationships. We trade things of equal value. We have our anonymous great market. One plus one is always equal to 2 or a little less for our fair profit.
Parts that help each other and work together have win-win relationships. One plus one is always more than two, sometimes many more than two.
Synergic scientists are strongly biased towards win-win engineering. For many years I imagined what would a win-win economic system look like? What kind of money or currency would it use?
Imagine my suprise, to discover that a win-win economy transcends money. (05/06/08) |
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 Timothy Wilken, MD writes: There are three types of humans to be found
in our present world. Which type you are depends on what you believe
about how the world works.
Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand th language of force.
Neutralists believe there is
enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of
yourself. They believe humans are financially independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money.
A new type of human is emerging called synergists. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone, but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent
and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community.
Synergists best understand the language of love.
But, to be successful in our present world,
the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use
them. Synergists must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies—when synergists are seeking to build community—they must speak the language of love.
Synergists are trying to heal the wounds
inflected by those who don't understand how the world could work. This
then is the essential challenge to the synergists.
Can we work together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this planet ?
...
Not without levers! (05/20/05) |
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 James Howard Kunstler writes: As the West's industrial regime sputters toward a
cheap-energy-crackup conclusion, there have been attempts to recast
what our economy is actually about, how to account for whatever wealth
we manage to produce, and project what our society will actually be
organized to do in the years ahead.
For a while in the 1990s,
the idea was a "service economy," kind of like the old fable of the
town whose inhabitants made a living by taking in each other's laundry
-- only in our case it was selling hamburgers to tourists on vacation
from their jobs making hamburgers elsewhere, or something like that.
Then came the idea of the "information economy" in which making
things of value would no longer matter, only the processing and
deployment of information (sometimes misidentified as "knowledge").
This model seemed to suggest a yin-yang of software engineers who made
up games like "Grand Theft Auto" serving the opposite cohort of people
who bought and played the game. If nothing else, it certainly explained
how lifetimes could be frittered away on stupid activities.
That illusion yielded to the housing bubble economy, which
actually did produce a lot of things, but not necessarily of value --
for instance, houses made of particle board and vinyl 38 miles outside
of Sacramento. It was a tragic and manifold waste of resources, as well
as an insult to the landscape. But the darker side of the housing
bubble lay in the world of finance, where a vast empire of swindles was
constructed to support the Potemkin facade of production homebuilding.
Now we are in a strange period when those swindles are unwinding.
The people who run the finance sector -- the Wall Street investment
banks, hedge funds and ratings agencies, the Federal Reserve, and the
US Dept of the Treasury -- in desperately trying to prevent the unwind,
have rapidly ramped up another new economy based entirely on the buying
and selling of risk. Risk, as a pure abstraction unconnected to any
real capital activity, is all that's left to buy and sell after all
other plausibly practical vehicles for finance have failed. (05/06/08) |
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 BBC Social Science -- The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access.
This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.
Crowds
formed at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana, though most had
come just to look. The desktop computers cost almost $800 (£400), in a
country where the average wage is under $20 (£10) a month. But some
Cubans do have access to extra income, much of it from money sent by
relatives living abroad.
Since taking over the presidency in
February, Raul Castro has ended a
range of restrictions and allowed Cubans access to previously banned
consumer goods. In recent weeks thousands of Cubans have snapped up
mobile phones and DVD players. But only now have the first computer
stocks arrived.
Internet
access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and
universities on the island. The government says it is unable to connect
to the giant undersea
fibre-optic cables because of the US trade embargo. All online
connections today are via satellite which has limited bandwidth and is
expensive to use.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, Cuba's ally and a critic of the US, is laying a new cable under the Caribbean. (05/05/08) |
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 BBC Science -- Drug resistant tuberculosis is posing a growing threat in the UK, probably fuelled by immigration, say experts.
A Health Protection Agency team examined 28,620 TB infections in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2005.
They
found the proportion of cases resistant to any of the first-line drugs
rose from 5.6% to 7.9%. The British Medical Journal study also found a
small increase in cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).
However, although the number of people becoming infected with
drug-resistant TB has almost doubled, from 170 in 1998 to 336 in 2005,
they still make up a small proportion of the total number of TB
infections.
The
HPA researchers found a significant increase in resistance to one
particular drug, isoniazid, outside London. Many of these patients came
from sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian
subcontinent, where they may have developed immunity to the drug.
The
researchers said measures to control outbreaks of TB among prisoners
and drug users were not up to scratch. They said the shortcomings of
the current system were illustrated by
the fact that an outbreak of drug resistant TB among prison inmates and
drug users which began in London in 1999 was still producing new cases.
The HPA team, led by Dr Michelle Kruijshaar, concluded: "The observed
increases highlight the need for early case detection, rapid testing of
susceptibility to drugs, and improved treatment completion." (05/05/08) |
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 BBC Science --
Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless
they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists
have said.
Researchers led by the University of Washington said insects in the
tropics were much more sensitive to temperature changes than those
elsewhere.
In contrast, higher latitudes could experience an insect population boom.
The scientists said changes in insect numbers could have secondary effects on plant pollination and food supplies.
In the research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, the US scientists studied how temperature changes between
1950 and 2000 had affected 38 species of insects.
Unlike warm-blooded animals, cold-blooded organisms cannot regulate
their body temperatures by growing a coat of fur or shedding it when it
gets warm. They are instead limited to either seek shade when hot or
sun themselves when cool.
The scientists predicted such species would struggle to cope with the 5.4C rise in tropical temperatures expected by 2100.
"In the tropics, many species appear to be living at or near their
thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive," said Joshua
Tewksbury of the University of Washington. "But once temperature gets above the thermal optimum, fitness levels
most likely decline quickly and there may not be much they can do about
it," he added. (05/05/08) |
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 Timothy Wilken, MD explains:
Synergic Science is the study of how systems work together
— physical systems, biological systems and social systems. This
involves a careful study of the relationship of the "parts" of a system
to the "whole" of the system.
“Synergy
means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their
parts taken separately. … Synergy is the only word that means this. The
fact that we humans are unfamiliar with the word means that we do not
think there are behaviors of "wholes" unpredicted by the behavior of
"parts".” —R. Buckminster Fuller
Synergic
Science makes much of the relationships between the "parts" and their
relationships to the "whole". For human beings there can be no other
more important "parts" than Self and Other.
From my
perspective I am self and you are other, but from your point of view
you are self and I am other. This is a very simple way of looking at
things.
Our relationships then are major importance in determining the quality of our lives.
From the point of view of the individual joining in relationship, I can be hurt, I can be ignored, or I can be helped by the relationship—there are only three ways.
Relationships that hurt are adversary.
Relationships that ignore are neutral.
Relationships that help are synergic.
Therefore all human choices and all human relationships can be described as falling on a continuum.
Adversity — • — Neutrality — • — Synergy
We
humans are conditioned by our life experience. The propensity of the
types of relationship we encounter can well determine how we believe
the world works.
Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force.
Neutralists
believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and
take care of yourself. They believe humans are financial independent
and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective.
They best understand the language of money.
And, finally a new type of human is still emerging. Synergists
believe there is enough for everyone but only if we work together and
act responsibly. They believe humans are INTERdependent and can only
obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love. (05/01/08) |
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 Dan Bednarz, PhD, speaking to Nurses and other health professionals, explains: My intent is to give you a
realistic take on the future of your profession by explaining why
healthcare and nursing will be transformed by rising energy costs.
Is
there danger ahead? You bet. It’s going to be difficult, probably
life-changing for all Americans. Here’s why: the scale of our energy
predicament is enormous, unprecedented and grossly misunderstood by
institutional leaders and most of the media.
I know some of you may be wondering, Energy scarcity? That’s someone
else’s problem; put this guy in touch with geologists and politicians.
So let’s step back for the big picture:
The amount of crude oil
pumped out of the ground has been on a bumpy plateau since May of 2005.
Until then oil production was steadily increasing about 2% a year –with
periodic declines - and the world had a daily surplus, or emergency
cushion. That surplus is gone, everything produced, supply, is
immediately purchased, demand. Whether or not the world has reached
“peak oil” –the point at which yearly total worldwide extraction cannot
be increased - this 3 year plateau indicates that the era of cheap
energy is over.
Oil is now over $100.00 a barrel. It was $10.00 a barrel in November 1998.
Oil powers 90% of all transportation and it is essential
to food production and distribution; it is the primary ingredient in
many products –think plastics, petrochemicals, and clothing. It is fair
to say that all our institutions, especially medicine, are dependent
upon oil, the lynchpin resource that keeps the economy humming and
allows it to grow.
And it’s not just oil that’s getting scarce. Natural gas in Pittsburgh went up 30% on April 1st,
to $12.50 per MCF (thousand cubic feet); it was $2.50 in 2001.
Typically, the cost of natural gas drops after the winter but here we
are facing higher prices during the summer.
Coal is becoming scarce in many countries and more expensive
here; its price has about doubled in the past year. It is our main
source of electricity. In about 15 years the world may hit a peak in
its production, and this combined with the fact that natural gas –the
secondary source of electricity generation - simultaneously will be at
or past its peak, poses a threat to our supply of electricity.
To put a human face on this, a polling agency found in
December 2007 that 12% of Americans planned to put their winter energy
bills on their credit card –no wonder Christmas spending was down. An
article in this past Saturday’s New York Times details the rising
number of people unable to pay their winter utility bills and now
facing service cutoffs.
Many hospitals in California are on the verge of bankruptcy; rising
energy costs –in tandem with other increasing costs - could be a
breaking point for them. Further, we are merely at the beginning of
what some of you recognize as Jim Kunstler’s poetic phrase “The Long
Emergency.”
Now let’s look at energy use in hospitals and then use the issue of
record keeping, a biggie for nurses, as one small but significant
example of how energy scarcity will shape the future of healthcare.
Then we’ll close with some comments on where medicine is heading and my
claim that nursing stands to become a force in reforming the healthcare
system.
The EPA estimates that hospitals use twice as much energy per square
foot as do office buildings. Until recently hospital administrators
have not paid attention to the cost of energy because they think
–mistakenly - that it represents less than 2% of their operating
expenses. Therefore, they have considered rising energy costs a
nuisance, not a threat. However, a few weeks ago a former AMA (American
Medical Association) official told me hospital administrators are
getting worried about energy costs because sharp increases are eating
into profits. For example, all energy costs in the US rose 17% in 2007,
with the cost of oil climbing 57%. The first quarter of 2008 shows no
change in this trend. How many years can our society –and hospitals -
absorb these increases? (05/01/08) |
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 John Michael Greer writes: You know that things are beginning to heat up when both sides of a
controversy declare victory at the same time. Over the last week or so,
that’s happened in the peak oil scene. On the one hand, quite a number
of cornucopians – those enthusiastic souls who believe that we can get
ourselves out of the hole we’re in by digging faster and paying less
attention to where the dirt lands – have trumpeted the discovery of a
few new oil fields as proof that peak oil is a myth.
The Bakken shale,
a geological formation down in the basement of the northern Great
Plains, has attracted the bulk of this cheerleading in the last few
weeks. Mind you, the Bakken’s a significant discovery; there’s
apparently a fair amount of oil down there, though the technical
challenges involved in extracting more than a tiny fraction of it are
immense, and nobody’s yet sure if the energy that can be extracted from
it will be more or less than the energy cost needed to extract it. Even
if it turns out to be the oil find of the decade, though, and North
Dakota oil millionaires start showing up as a recognized type in
American popular culture, the most the Bakken can do is make up some of
the production losses from older oil fields and slow, for a time, our
descent from Hubbert’s peak.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, the number of voices
proclaiming the imminence of total collapse has skyrocketed. Typical is
a recent post
in Sharon Astyk’s useful peak oil blog. Astyk claims that recent events
have decisively settled the debate between the fast-crash and
slow-grind models of post-peak oil reality, in favor of the fast crash
– and we’re already in it. Her argument is basically that the drastic
spikes in food and energy costs over the last few months have outrun
the limits of the slow-grind scenario; ergo, the fast crash is here.
I’ve commented several times in these essays about the way that linear
thinking distorts our view of the future, and Astyk’s prediction makes
a good example. The drastic price spikes in many commodities over the
last few months offer a warning that shouldn’t be ignored, but treating
them as evidence that industrial society is about to implode imposes a
linear model onto the complex realities of socioeconomic change. The
fact that change is happening quickly right now does not mean that it
will continue to happen at the same pace, or even in the same direction. ...
The end of the global economy may make life a good deal harder for
those of us in the United States and those other industrial nations,
such as Canada and Australia, that have become used to the absurdly
lavish energy and resource expenditures of the recent past. It bears
remembering, though, that people in Europe maintain a standard of
living in many ways higher ours on roughly one-third the energy per
capita Americans seem to think is necessary for civilized life. We can
get by, and get by tolerably well, on much less energy and many fewer
resources than we think.
This is likely to be a crucial point to keep in mind as the present
crisis unfolds. It’s not the end of the world, or even the end of
industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could
be in for a couple of very rough decades. (05/01/08) |
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 Buckminster Fuller coined the term Dymaxion to mean "More for Less" or producing the most benefit with the least action.
BBC Science -- Details
of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips
smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists. The
new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known
as "memristors".
The devices were proposed 40 years ago but have only recently been fabricated, the team wrote in the journal Nature. ...
Memristors were first proposed in 1971 by Professor Leon Chua, a
scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the
"fourth" basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors
and inductors.
"I never thought I'd live long enough to see this happen," Professor
Chua told the Associated Press. "I'm thrilled because it's almost like
vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it's
fundamental."
The memristors are so called because they have the ability to
"remember" the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the
power has been switched off.
This could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would would not require powering up.
Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses
data when the power is turned off. But a computer built with memristors
could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions
after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks
without needing a charge.
"If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off," Professor Williams told Reuters. (05/01/08) |
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 BBC Science -- The
Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural
climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.
See how modelled temperatures may develop
The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean
temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which
is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the
tropics to the shores of Europe.
The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years. ...
The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists,
though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that
the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent
phenomenon.
"We've always known that the climate varies naturally from year to year
and decade to decade," said Richard Wood from the UK's Hadley Centre,
who reviewed the new research for Nature.
"We expect man-made global warming to be superimposed on those natural
variations; and this kind of research is important to make sure we
don't get distracted from the longer term changes that will happen in
the climate (as a result of greenhouse gas emissions)."(05/01/08) |
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 Timothy Wilken, MD writes: The Ortegrity is a system
for organizing two or more humans. It produces win-win relationships
between all individuals within the organization.
This results in a
conflict free environment which optimizes the two processes of human
behavior — decision and action. The resultant is that efficiency,
productivity, and quality of work-life are optimized. ...
All relationships between all individuals within
the system are win-win. This is a design characteristic of the system.
It is veto power that forces the third alternative — the win-win
solution. It is synergic relationship that unlocks human potential.
This is the relationship that elimates all conflict. ...
The D-A Tensegrity is a group of between two and twenty
humans. The size of a D-A Tensegrity is limited by the complexity of
decision making. In a complex area such as in research &
development, the ideal size may be six or seven members. In a system
with simpler decison making as many as 16 to 20 individuals may form a
production D-A Tensegrity.
During decision making the D-A Tensegrity uses the
heterarchical form. A heterarchy with seven members is a base seven
tensegrity. A two member heterarchy would be called a base two. A three
member heterarchy is a base three and so on. The illustration is of a base seven D-A Tensegrity
represents the heterarchical relationship on the perimeter and the
hierarchical relationships with direct lines of communication.
All
individuals have a dual idenity. Their heterarchical role in decision
and their hierarchical role in action. ...
A level 12
Ortegrity would be adequate for organizing the entire humans species
within a single organization.
Recalling that the larger a tensegrity
the more powerful it will is. Synergic science predicts this will also
be true for human organizations structured as Ortegrities. Therefore, I
would expect a trend towards very large organizations.
Imagine, what
could be possible if the entire human species were a single
organization. No conflict, no wars, no crimes. Is there anything we
could not accomplish? (04/25/08) |
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 David W. Straight writes: This is a finely-written view of a post-collapse America. Cormac Mccarthy's novel Road was an altogether darker vision: James Howard Kunstler's book World Made by Hand
is neither as dark or foreboding. Society functions, but only
locally--there are no national or even regional governments, as far as
is known. We've gone from Friedman's The World is Flat to a world where
communication and trade resembles that of, say, 800AD. "Here be
Dragons" might as well appear on maps. The number of people in Union
Grove in upstate New York who have travelled more than 50 miles from
home is small, at least until a flock of The New Faith arrive from
Virginia.
The amenities are gone: no gasoline, no bicycles (for want of rubber
tires), no antibiotics, no anaesthesia, roads and bridges crumbling
into complete disrepair. Yet life goes on, as America in 1700 got by
without bicycles and antibiotics. Robert Earle, the central fugure in
the novel, works as a carpenter--his former life in computing is gone
forever. Lack of oil, nuclear explosions, and the Mexican Flu all
contributed to the collapse. The Flu took most of Earle's family except
for his son, who left on his own many years before and never heard from
again. Earle takes things philosophically and with grace, and is more
at ease with his world than most of us could be. In Earle, Kunstler has
provided a rock about which life swirls: he provides a foundation of
normality, insofar as normality can exist, and his character prevents a
doom-and-gloom view type book from prevailing.
Kunstler presents a well-drawn picture of a world where there are no
chain saws and power tools, no refrigeration, very little electric
power anywhere. Paper money is disappearing, bartering is returning,
work is done by hand. Horses are great assets. You will probably find
yourself asking some questions: some of these are answered, some are
not. After 20 or 30 years of life in places such as Union Grove, where
are the clothes coming from? How many people could weave a shirt? There
do not seem to be many sheep around for wool, and you get the
impression from the book that everything isn't animal skins. What about
glassmaking for storage jars and windows? There should perhaps be a
cottage industry for saltpeter to make gunpowder. But these are
relatively minor. The primary thing is the wonderfully detailed, finely
crafted view of a world where people have had to return to the
amenities of colonial times, or even long before that. This is a novel
that's creative and well thought out: very worth reading. (04/25/08) |
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 John Nichols of The Nation
writes: The current global food system, which was designed by US-based
agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced
into place by the US government and its allies at the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, has
planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to
produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow
healthy food for local consumption and regional stability. The only
smart short-term response is to throw money at the problem. George W.
Bush’s release of $200 million in emergency aid to the UN’s World Food
Program was appropriate, but Washington must do more. Rising food
prices may not be causing riots in the United States, but food banks
here are struggling to meet demand as joblessness grows. Congress
should answer Senator Sherrod Brown’s call to allocate $100 million
more to domestic food programs and make sure, as Representative Jim
McGovern urges, that an overdue farm bill expands programs for getting
fresh food from local farms to local consumers.
Beyond humanitarian responses, the cure for what ails the global food
system — and an unsteady US farm economy — is not more of the same
globalization and genetic gimmickry. That way has left thirty-seven
nations with food crises while global grain giant Cargill harvests an
86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from its
herbicides and seeds. For years, corporations have promised farmers
that problems would be solved by trade deals and technology —
especially GM seeds, which University of Kansas research now suggests
reduce food production and the International Assessment of Agricultural
Science and Technology for Development says won’t end global hunger.
The “market,” at least as defined by agribusiness, isn’t working. We
“have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who
have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror,”
says Jean Ziegler, the UN’s right-to-food advocate. But try telling
that to the Bush Administration or to World Bank president (and former
White House trade rep) Robert Zoellick, who’s busy exploiting tragedy
to promote trade liberalization. “If ever there is a time to cut
distorting agricultural subsidies and open markets for food imports, it
must be now,” says Zoellick. “Wait a second,” replies Dani Rodrik, a
Harvard political economist who tracks trade policy. “Wouldn’t the
removal of these distorting policies raise world prices in agriculture
even further?” Yes. World Bank studies confirm that wheat and rice
prices will rise if Zoellick gets his way.
Instead of listening to the White House or the World Bank, Congress
should recognize — as a handful of visionary members like Ohio
Representative Marcy Kaptur have — that current trends confirm the
wisdom of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s call for “an
urgent rethink of the respective roles of markets and governments.” (04/25/08) |
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 BBC Science --
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for the
elimination of malaria deaths by the end of 2010 as he marked the first
World Malaria Day.
The disease causes over a million deaths a year, with 90% of all cases occurring in Africa.
Mr Ban wants all of Africa to have access to basic measures to control the disease such as bed nets and sprays.
"We have the resources and the know-how but we have less than 1,000 days before the end of 2010," he said of the goal.
More than half a billion people are infected with malaria each year.
Despite this, it is preventable and treatable. ...
Previous efforts to control malaria have proved less than successful.
In 1998 the Roll Back Malaria initiative aimed to halve malaria deaths
by 2010 - but halfway through the programme deaths had actually risen.
Reversing the trend of increase in malaria and other diseases is one of
the UN's Millennium Development Goals, aimed at reducing poverty and
improving the quality of life by 2015. (04/25/08) |
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 BBC Science -- Research has cast new doubt on the wisdom of using Sun-blocking sulphate particles to cool the planet.
Sulphate injections are one of several "geo-engineering" solutions to climate change being discussed by scientists.
But data published in Science journal suggests the strategy would lead to drastic thinning of the ozone layer.
This would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by decades,
and cause significant ozone loss over the Arctic, say US researchers.
The idea of pumping sulphur into the upper atmosphere ito counteract global warming comes from nature.
Major volcanic eruptions emit vast quantities of sulphur particles that can cool the planet significantly. ...
Dr Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCar)
in Boulder, Colorado, and colleagues used a combination of measurements
and computer simulations to estimate future ozone loss if sulphate
injections were carried out.
Quantities capable of mitigating climate change would destroy as much
as three-quarters of the ozone layer over the Arctic, if carried out in
the next few decades, they said.
This would also delay the expected recovery of the ozone layer over the Antarctic by about 30 to 70 years, they concluded. (04/25/08) |
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 BBC Science -- Ancient
humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species
before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.
The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived
in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.
This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa.
Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
It would be the longest period for which modern human populations have been isolated from one another. ...
The latest conclusions are based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA in
present-day African populations. This type of DNA is the genetic
material stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells.
It is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.
"We don't know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into
separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long
time," said Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.
"They came back together again during the Late Stone Age - driven by population expansion." (04/25/08) |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Today, I define the ORTEGRITY, this is the third in the series that started with the Discovery in North Carolina of the Organizational Tensegrity, and was followed by my discussion of Heterarchy—The Secret of Japan, Inc.. Life’s pattern of organization is the tensegrity,
it has been in use on earth for over three and one half billion years.
The tensegrity is the basis of organizing all living systems including
our own bodies. Up until now we humans have not understood the
mechanism and therefore could not use this pattern to organize our
marriages, our businesses, our organizations and institutions, our
communities, or even the entire human species. Humans who organize
themselves using the pattern of tensegrity will find themselves orders
of magnitude more efficient, more productive, more creative, more
intelligent. More importantly they will be much more successful in
pursuing their goals and desires. Within this half century, we humans
have developed ergometric science to help us improve our tool-making.
Ergometric scientists tell us how to best design tools to fit the human
form. By carefully measuring both the physiology and psychology of the
human body, today’s scientists are seeking to determine the best
designs for new tools. They know that the best tools are those that fit
you like a well-tailored glove fits your hand. Recently ergometric
science has been much advanced by a breakthrough in our understanding
of human intelligence. With the development of the “dual mind” model of
human intelligence it is now possible to design tools that fit the
human “mind-brain”. In other words, we can now ergometrically engineer
tools to fit the way we humans think. ...The Ortegrity is a “system of
human organization that creates a conflict-free environment for
decision making and action implementation”. This is an environment so
ergometrically suited to human thinking that efficiency and
productivity are predicted to increase 10 to 1000 times. Yes, that is
10 to 1000 times more efficient and productive. (04/18/08) |
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 James Howard Kunstler writes: Barack Obama caught hell last week for daring to tell the truth
about the ragged thing that the American spirit has become. He said
that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic
circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who
aren’t like them” to work out their negative emotions. He might have
added that the Pope wears a funny hat (see for yourself this week), and
that bears shit in the woods (something rural Pennsylvanians probably
know). Nevertheless, in the manner lately prescribed for those who slip
up and speak truthfully in public (and in contradiction to the reigning
delusions), Obama was pressured to apologize for his statements.
The evermore loathsome and odious Hillary Clinton, co-owner of a
$100 million personal wealth portfolio, seized the moment to remind
voters what a normal, everyday gal she is -- who would never look down
on the small-town folk of Pennsylvania the way her "elitist" opponent
had -- forgetting, apparently, that the Clinton family's consigliere,
James Carville, famously described the Keystone State as a kind of
redneck sandwich with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as the bread, and
Alabama as the lunch meat in between.
As I mull over all this,
I begin to think that Hillary is exactly what the USA deserves and,
that should she manage to winkle away the nomination and get elected
president, the outcome would be instructive and salutary. For one
thing, she will be buried under an avalanche of political woe,
beginning with the basic financial insolvency of everything in the
nation except the Clinton family. Then she would proceed straight into
an oil-and-gas clusterfuck that could take this society back to the
eighteenth century economically.
This would have the positive effect of forcing the American
public to look elsewhere for governance than the usual parties in
Washington, D.C. It's time for a national purgative, anyway. In fact,
it's way overdue. Are the Democratic and Republican parties anymore
necessary than the Whigs? Neither of them can really articulate the
problems we face (and when their honchos slip up and come close to the
truth, they're persecuted for it). (04/18/08) |
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The DailyGood is a free, daily email service that delivers a little bit of inspiring goodness to 81,470
people without any costs, advertising or agendas. Simply to spread the
good. You can view the Daily Good at the website or subscribe for daily
email delivery. See today's Daily Good below:
April 18, 2008
The simple act of caring is heroic.
--Edward Albert
A 9-Year-Old Walks For The Homeless:
Younger than most of the people in the crowd, 9-year-old Zach Bonner
stepped to the side of the lectern so that people could see him. He
thanked sponsors of his 250-mile walk for the homeless, which was about
to start. "What bothers me is what homeless kids go through," Zach
said. "What happens when they go to sleep? What happens when they wake
up?" His family doesn't know why Zach works so hard organizing charity
drives for hurricane victims, underprivileged children and the
homeless. Even Zach has a hard time explaining it. "You know how some
kids like football, and they will eat and breathe and sleep football?"
Zach's mother says. "Well, he's really into this. This is what makes
him happy." [more]
Be The Change:
This week, care for someone who is down on their luck. |
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 BBC Science -- A tree said to be the oldest on the planet - thought to be nearly 10,000 years old - has been found in Sweden.
Scientists from Umeaa University discovered the spruce on Fulu Mountain
in Dalarna province while carrying out a census of tree species there
in 2004.
The age of its genetic material was recently calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.
Scientists had believed the world's oldest trees wer | | | |
