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February 28, 2007
Recipe of the Week - Roasted Beets
This week’s recipe includes beautiful beets. It is best to prepare and eat foods in their natural season. We are very fortunate to have an array of seasonal vegetables and right now the yellow beets are in season and are adorning the farmer’s markets. Yellow beets are a bit sweeter and lighter than the red beets. In the recipe below I have mixed both for contrasting flavors.
You can use this recipe as a side to any entrée or can be served with a mixed green salad. The beet greens can also be sautéed for a side dish. Enjoy
2 bunches of yellow beets
1 bunch red beets
½ lb of carrots, cleaned and sliced diagonal
1 small red onion (optional)
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoon Fresh Rosemary, stemmed and chopped
1 teaspoon Sea Salt
½ teaspoon Black Pepper
First clean the beets by cutting off each end. (Save the green leafy tops for sautéing)
The peels have lots of beneficial fiber so only discard any bad spots.
Steam the cleaned beets in a steam pot for about 10- 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Once cooled cut the beets into quarters. In a roasting pan place the beets, carrots and red onion, olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary. Mix gently and roast in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes or until tender. For extra flavor drizzle 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar on top right after they come out of the oven. Let cool and serve.
Simple Beet Greens Sautéed
Clean and chop the greens from the beets. On medium heat, in a sauté pan place 1 tablespoon of olive oil or ghee, add the chopped greens and place a lid on the pan. Cook for about 10 minutes or until the greens are wilted. Sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper to taste and ¼ ground cumin on top and enjoy.
Posted by Teresa Long at 10:01 PM | Comments (5)
Turbulence in World Financial Markets & China
We are grateful to Dr Harald Malmgren based in Washington DC for his submission to ATCA "Complex Turbulence in World Financial Markets and The China Risk."
Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]
We are grateful to Dr Harald Malmgren based in Washington DC for his submission to ATCA "Complex Turbulence in World Financial Markets and The China Risk."
Dr Harald Malmgren is an internationally recognised expert on world trade and investment flows who has worked for four US Presidents. His extensive personal global network among governments, central banks, financial institutions, and corporations provides a highly informed basis for his assessments of global markets. At Yale University, he was a Scholar of the House and Research Assistant to Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling, graduating BA summa cum laude in 1957. At Oxford University, he studied under Nobel Laureate Sir John Hicks, and wrote several widely referenced scholarly articles while earning a DPhil in Economics in 1961. His theoretical works on information theory and business organization have continued to be cited by academics over the last 45 years. After Oxford, he began his academic career in the Galen Stone Chair in Mathematical Economics at Cornell University.
Dr Malmgren commenced his career in government service under President John F Kennedy, working with the Pentagon in revamping the Defense Department's military and procurement strategies. When President Lyndon B Johnson took office, Dr Malmgren was asked to join the newly organised office of the US Trade Representative in the President's staff, where he had broad negotiating responsibility as the first Assistant US Trade Representative. He left government service in 1969, to direct research at the Overseas Development Council, and to act as trade adviser to the US Senate Finance Committee. At that time, he authored International Economic Peacekeeping, which many trade experts believe provided the blueprint for global trade liberalisation in the Tokyo Round of the 1970s and the Uruguay Round of the 1980s. In 1971-72 he also served as principal adviser to the OECD Wise Men's Group on opening world markets, under the chairmanship of Jean Rey, and he served as a senior adviser to President Richard M Nixon on foreign economic policies. President Nixon then appointed him to be the principal Deputy US Trade Representative, with the rank of Ambassador. In this role he served Presidents Nixon and Ford as the American government's chief trade negotiator in dealing with all nations. While in USTR, he became known in Congress as the father of "fast track" trade negotiating authority, which he first introduced into the historically innovative Trade Act of 1974. He was the first official of any government to call for global negotiations on liberalisation of financial services, and he was the first US official to call for the establishment of an Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation arrangement, known in more recent years as APEC.
In 1975 Dr Malmgren left government service, and was appointed Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. From the late 1970s he managed an international consulting business, providing advice to many corporations, banks, investment banks, and asset management institutions, as well as to Finance Ministers and Prime Ministers of many governments on financial markets, trade, and currencies. He has also been an adviser to subsequent US Presidents, as well as to a number of prominent American politicians of both parties. Over the years, he has continued writing many publications both in economic theory and in public policy and markets. He is Chief Executive of Malmgren Global and also currently the Chairman of the Cordell Hull Institute in Washington, a private, not-for-profit "think tank" which he co-founded with Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State. He writes:
Dear DK and Colleagues
Re: Complex Turbulence in World Financial Markets and The China Risk
Sharp financial market sell-offs began in Shanghai at the start of Tuesday, February 27. The sell-offs in China quickly spread in a wave moving across markets throughout the world in the ensuing hours. News and media commentators rang alarms virtually everywhere. Panic spread, among both big and small investors in Asia, Europe and North America. By the time the wave hit Wall Street, the Dow Jones average fell by more than 400 points, with more selling stopped by the close of the market day. By Tuesday, calm settled in as investors began to reconsider all their assumptions about world markets.
What really happened on the 27th? Was this just an "anomaly," as a White House spokesman suggested, or does this portend a disaster ahead? And for whom?
To put this event in perspective, if we exclude October 19, 1987, the US stock market has experienced declines of more than 3.0 percent on 37 different occasions. Over the following month the indexes rebounded by an average of 3 percent. In almost half of these occasions all of the decline was erased within one month. So we should look not at the lessons for this week, but rather for the lessons in the months and years ahead.
In recent years the financial markets of every country have become fused into a single global marketplace. This has been enabled by huge advances in information technology, which allows investors anywhere to view what is happening in real time in virtually every nook and cranny of world markets. A surge in global economic growth has led to an even stronger surge in the building of collective savings and wealth worldwide, generated not only by savers in Japan, North America, Western Europe and Australia but also by the OPEC countries, Russia, China and its Asian neighbourhood.
The world's rapidly accumulating financial wealth is increasingly managed by professional money managers working in financial institutions, hedge funds, and a variety of other asset management businesses. The stock and bond markets in virtually every country are now dominated by these financial enterprises. Hedge funds alone are estimated to account for over half of the daily trading in US stocks. Institutional investors, including investment banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, public and private pension funds, trusts, foundations, and endowments have a predominant influence on what takes place in markets. The retail market of individual investors is no longer a driver in most markets.
Institutional investors and hedge funds do try to manage their risk exposure, and they increasingly do this by diversifying their investments. Diversification is undertaken geographically; it is accomplished by spreading investments among many classes of assets, including stocks, bonds and various other forms of public and private debt, derivatives based upon measures of various slices or degrees of risk, currencies, real estate, energy and raw materials, and unregistered securities like venture capital and private equity enterprises. Investments are not only made in current assets, they are also made in the form of expectations, through the futures markets.
This growing diversity and complexity of financial markets has spread the risks of market accidents far more widely than ever before in history. For example, most mortgage bankers in America no longer hold on to the mortgage loans they provide for home buyers. Instead, many mortgages are bundled as single securities and sold off to other investors such as pension funds, which are attracted to the relatively higher yields of mortgage debt compared with government bonds. Companies that want to borrow large sums of capital no longer need to rely on bank loans. They can issue complex financial obligations directly to investors, and these debt obligations are then sold and resold to an ever widening array of institutional investors. The ever-widening diversification of risk leaves big banks and investment banks with little direct exposure to business failures or economic downturns. This global diversification also suggests to institutional investors that although there may be some risks within their portfolios, the probability of meaningful damage under most plausible scenarios is minimal.
Many of the hedge funds and proprietary desks of big financial institutions use financial leverage to achieve returns for their investors which beat market averages. In recent years, growing savings accumulated in many countries have spilled into world markets generating rivers of what professional investors call financial liquidity. This river of liquidity is surging through all markets. Much of it managed by professionals in London and New York who, using leverage, spread the continuing flow of new investment capital throughout world markets -- a large portion of it going to the most liquid markets, of which the US financial market is still the biggest.
Some countries, most notably Japan, continue to maintain low domestic interest rates because of underlying domestic economic weaknesses. Japanese and foreign investors alike have seen the opportunity of borrowing in Japanese Yen, selling the Yen, and investing in higher-yielding assets and currencies in far away places like New Zealand, Australia and the US. This practice is called carry trade. Inside Japan, households account for a huge share of the Yen carry trade, as they seek to get better returns on their savings than can be found in miniscule yields on Japanese time deposits or government bonds. Investors in Europe and the US also use Yen borrowing to finance highly leveraged investments in other markets throughout the world.
The flow of liquidity is now so large that central banks have difficulty guiding their own national capital markets. The Federal Reserve can set short term interest rates at a specific level, but global capital flows overwhelm what the Fed tries to do by pouring into longer-term American bonds. In recent months, the inflow of domestic and international capital to the US bond market pushed prices of US bonds up and yields on those bonds down, well below the Federal Reserve's target rate of interest. What happened is that long-term rates have become much lower than short-term rates in the US. In the past, this phenomenon usually signalled a recession to come, but right now it simply signals that global investors believe one of the safest places to hold capital is in the US debt market.
The flow of liquidity and the widespread diversification of risk have lulled most investors into an eerie calmness about what might go wrong. The competitive scramble for enhancing investment performance by every financial manager has led to rapidly increasing use of leverage in investment. Risky investments with higher yields are sought after, driving up their value and down their yields, until the difference between risky and less risky assets has all but disappeared. For months, the "spreads" between risky and non-risky assets have become paper thin, and volatility in financial markets has disappeared. It is as if everyone expects the next days and months will continue to be characterized by mirror-like flat seas and gentle winds into which to sail. Central bankers often worry about this tendency of the markets to "price everything to perfection." Their fear is that small surprises could generate big shocks, particularly because most of the big players in the market are highly leveraged.
However, risks are never eliminated. There are always unanticipated problems that generate shocks. 9-11 brought to financial managers a personal recognition of the challenges posed by terrorism. Continuing terrorism affects diversification strategies. Political volatility in the Middle East keeps energy traders on edge. Climate chaos, as pointed out by ATCA, including weather swings are now a major element in evaluating the outlook for everything from agricultural crops to energy use, and even to energy production in offshore oil rigs and refineries located by seaports.
China has shown such an extraordinary rise in economic strength over recent years that it has become commonplace to project continued straight-line growth to the point that China is expected by many analysts to become the next global superpower. Because China's economy functions under Communist leadership, it is widely assumed that somehow the government will be able to steer the economy away from severe disruptions or collapse.
The Chinese Communist Party leadership understands that its economy is characterized by distorted or misplaced investments, corruption, and excessive speculation. The leadership has tried a number of different tactics to rein in what seems to be a runaway economy, with only limited success. Politically, a new danger has emerged as millions upon millions of Chinese households have stepped up borrowing to speculate in stocks and real estate, generating what Westerners would call a big bubble -- ready to burst.
Chinese authorities have been publicly warning for many days now that there is a stock market and real estate market bubble. These public warnings should have awakened foreign investors to growing risks in China -- not only from market forces but from implied government action. The February 27 "correction" in Shanghai was encouraged, perhaps even engineered by Chinese authorities. There will have to be more "corrections" ahead in the Chinese financial market. Many foreign investors in China and its surrounding Asian neighbourhood should not have been surprised on February 27, and they should not be surprised when more such events come in the near future.
In our view, China will experience a number of economic and environmental accidents in the next two or three years. These accidents will stimulate political unrest and heightened strains within the political structure of China, at the national level, and between the national and local levels. Troubles in China will affect China's neighbourhood, the economies of which are inextricably interactive with China. Moreover, for those analysts who confidently state that China's economy is now the "other engine of global growth" besides the US economy, prudence would suggest making the caution that "China will function as the other engine of global growth if the political framework of China can successfully avoid a hard landing, and can sustain itself in a position of national power over a highly decentralised nation." These are big unknowns right now.
What happened on February 27 was that highly leveraged investors throughout the world experienced a big, unanticipated event in China, and out of fear of what else might go wrong rushed to protect themselves by trimming leverage in many other markets. When many investors reduce leverage at the same time, the need for immediate cash puts stress on the global financial system. The easiest, most liquid assets to sell quickly are the blue chip stocks, which resulted in a abrupt, sharp reductions in valuations in Europe and the US in subsequent hours. Yet another unanticipated shock materialized in New York, when the computerized trading systems of Wall Street temporarily froze. Orders were not recorded correctly, and the market appeared to drop another 200 points all at once at 3:00pm. The stock market managers explained this away by saying there were computer "glitches," but this unanticipated event must now be added to the list of possible future risks: If everyone is rushing to the exit doors at the same time, will the doors open? Will the markets actually function? If not, who will end up holding the risk? Investors ask this another way: "Where is the counterparty risk?"
Regulators in London, New York, and elsewhere are now trying to rein in the exponentially growing trading activities which appear to be based on increasing leverage combined with an assumption of endless flows of liquidity. Their task is difficult and challenging, because if they step on the brakes too firmly with tougher rules on leveraging, many investment groups will seize up and crash through the windscreen. If they issue stricter "guidance" and greater direct oversight of what is going on they will need more transparency in the functioning of hedge funds and institutional traders. But these latter groups of investors thrive on secrecy, believing the way they win competitively is by taking positions before other investors know what those positions are.
Thus we expect yet another risk to investors in coming months generated by the growing pressure of regulators to reduce leverage and increase transparency. Many institutions now rely on leverage to increase their performance at a time of gradual economic slowdown, slowing growth of corporate earnings, and thinness of spreads between risky and non-risky assets. Reducing their leverage will weaken their investment performance. One wonders whether central bankers and other regulators, most of whom are officials without direct market experience, can engineer a gentle "adjustment" in the frenetic pursuit of performance by the institutional investors which now dominate world financial markets.
In other words, we should add "regulatory risk" as yet another risk to the list of things about which to be concerned.
As for those who once could count upon the central banks as lenders of last resort, we can only say their ability to stabilize markets now is less than it was only a decade or two ago when market capitalization was smaller and financial complexity much simpler. And for those who argue that central banks will not themselves be caught up in the globalization of markets, we must caution that even their role is changing -- just consider what China is thinking to do with a significant part of its vast foreign currency reserves, by diversifying some of its holdings away from official bonds to market-based assets throughout the world. If China goes ahead with this kind of diversification, the government of China will become a major player in all segments of world financial markets.
In conclusion, it is important to keep in mind terrorism, the Middle East, climate chaos including weather changes and other such risks, but it is also imperative to keep in mind the ability, or lack of ability of governments and central banks to keep order.
Right now, markets are not adequately pricing risk. When trouble comes, the weakest markets and economies will suffer most-- most especially the emerging market economies. And when trouble comes to global markets, capital will tend to flee from risk to "quality." Most likely, the primary beneficiary will be the US economy and the US Dollar, however much many non-US ATCA members may say that would be an unfair or undeserved outcome.
Best wishes
Harald Malmgren
[ENDS]
We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.
Best wishes
For and on behalf of DK Matai
Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)
____________________________________________________________________________
ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos; radical poverty; geo-politics, organised crime & extremism; advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI; demographic skews; pandemics; and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 100 countries: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.
The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
____________________________________________________________________________
Intelligence Unit | mi2g ATCA The Philanthropia Φ
Posted by ATCA at 02:30 PM | Comments (6)
February 27, 2007
Open Thread
Feb. 28. 2007
Posted by Intent at 10:51 PM | Comments (143)
How did your stocks do today?
Alas, it was not a good day for global stock markets.
I have to admit the stock market has always fascinated and totally befuddled me. It is a manifestation of perception that affects our pocket books in a very real way.
The tumbling markets which began yesterday in China, then spread to Europe, the US, and back to Asia, also showed how interconnected our perceptions are around the world. In the NY Times, one economist is quoted saying, “It was sort of one of those days where somebody snaps their fingers, and the market’s hypnotic trance is over." There wasn't one reason, but a collection of many reasons, worldwide, which resulted in the sell off.
The Dow Jones fell as much as 546 points today, before closing over 400 points down, the steepest slide since 9/11. Per an article on Yahoo, "The drop hit every sector across the market, and a total of $632 billion was lost in total in U.S. stocks on Tuesday, according to Standard & Poor's Corp." And, yet investors don't seem to be panicking.
Reading the Yahoo article made my head spin trying to keep in mind how all the dots are connected. Interest rates, housing markets, durable good sales, inflation, bond prices, terrorist attacks -- the "tangled hierarchy", as my father would say, is overwhelming.
Would love for someone to help break it down, simple... Should I be buying or selling tomorrow?
Posted by Mallika Chopra at 07:52 PM | Comments (30)
mi2g marks 11 years by naming Global Big-20
mi2g is honoured to celebrate its eleventh birthday and marks the occasion by naming the Global Big-20 interlinked risks and opportunities of 2007.
The World as One from Outer Space
London, UK -- 28 February 2007, 00:01 GMT: mi2g is honoured to celebrate its eleventh birthday and marks the occasion by naming the Global Big-20 interlinked risks and opportunities of 2007 identified by the mi2g Intelligence Unit from within the following broad categories: climate chaos and environmental degradation; radical poverty; geo-politics, organised crime & extremism; advanced technologies -- genetics, informatics, nanotechnology, robotics & artificial intelligence; demographic skews; pandemics; and financial systems. The likelihood-scenarios, computed on probabilities of key trends for main opportunities and risks for 2007 -- based on mining the Internet and experts' analyses over the last year -- from across the world, show:
1. Preventing the Escalation of the Israel-Palestine/Arab issue from becoming a wider Middle-East conflict = 82%
2. Balancing the Country Risk and Opportunity of China with India = 74%
3. Ethics, Inter-faith Dialogue & Living with Differences across the World = 72%
4. Escalating Rhetoric and Potential Crisis with Iran over Nuclear Proliferation and attendant Global Energy Pricing Instability = 64%
5. Climate Chaos's Impact on Rising number of Hurricanes, Typhoons, Floods and Water shortages worldwide = 58%
6. Ongoing conflict in Iraq with Rising Islamic Sectarian issues = 54%
7. Passenger Aviation & Transportation Crisis within the Civilian Sector with requirement for limited Military Intervention = 54%
8. Energy Security and High Volatility in the Price of Oil, Gold, US Dollar & Euro = 54%
9. Countering Climate Chaos through the Deployment of Alternative Energy Solutions -- Nuclear-, CNG, CHyNG, Hydrogen-, Hydro-, Wind-, Hybrid- Power = 44%
10. Spread of Pandemics including Avian Flu and/or Biosecurity hazards = 36%
11. Rising Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship solutions to counter complex global challenges = 36%
12. Countering Climate Chaos through Environmental Regulation = 32%
13. Behaviour modifying advancements in Search Engines, Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Deployment = 28%
14. Behaviour modifying advancements in Technology -- Biotechnology with Genetics, Informatics and Nanotechnology = 26%
15. Countering Climate Chaos by shifting priority on Sustainability ahead of Profits, & Accounting for Sustainability = 25%
16. Country Risk of a key European Union country suffering prolonged Civil Unrest, Strikes and Paralysis = 24%
17. Countering Climate Chaos by paying heed to IPCC, UNCCC, Kyoto Protocol warnings and directives worldwide = 22%
18. Countering Climate Chaos through Consumer Activism and Carbon Emissions Labelling of Products = 20%
19. Major Disruptive Innovation caused by new technology such as Quantum Computing or Cryptography = 20%
20. Rising Alignment of Philanthropy in Giving and Fiduciary Responsibility in making Ethical Investments = 20%
mi2g takes this opportunity to thank our friends, strategic allies and partners for helping us to evolve and to consolidate our presence in the global risk management arena. We also thank independent supporters and contributors to our philanthropic initiative ATCA -- The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance -- run by the mi2g Intelligence Unit, which conducts collective dialogue on opportunities and threats arising from the Global Big-10 risks and opportunities. ATCA includes members from the House of Lords, House of Commons, European Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide. ATCA reaches over 5,000 key decision makers from over 100 countries as of early 2007.
The Global Big-20 risks and opportunities of 2007, depend on enlightenment and renaissance thinking to address and to begin to resolve some of the seemingly intractable yet interlinked confrontations. As those inherent confrontations accelerate and feed off each other's momentum they possess the capability to damage and to disrupt the delicate global dynamic equilibrium on a number of fronts. Faced with this unpalatable prospect for humanity in the coming two decades or less, it is necessary to rethink strategically, which is the main aim of the global strategic dialogue established by mi2g through ATCA, our disruptive innovations as well as The Philanthropia.
[ENDS]
We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.
With warm wishes to you and family
DK with family
DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net
Posted by DK Matai at 04:53 PM | Comments (27)
2007 US Fruit harvest at risk; CCD endangers Crops
US commercial beekeepers from at least 22 states are now reporting that bees have either mysteriously died or disappeared in huge numbers affecting their livelihood and hampering farmers that count on bees to pollinate their crops.
Scientists are calling the mystery illness Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) as reported by ATCA last week.
Bee carries out Cross-Pollination
Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]
US commercial beekeepers from at least 22 states are now reporting that bees have either mysteriously died or disappeared in huge numbers affecting their livelihood and hampering farmers that count on bees to pollinate their crops. Scientists are calling the mystery illness Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) as reported by ATCA last week. [Open ATCA Socratic Dialogue]. Michigan's USD 350 million fruit industry is in peril as a result. The Michigan Department of Agriculture has said that with honeybees dying at an alarming rate in 22 US states the 2007 fruit harvest is at risk.
Main-stream media finally catches up with ATCA
According to The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune: David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing. In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation's most profitable. [Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril & Mysterious bee disappearances endanger crops]
[ENDS]
-----Original Message-----
From: Intelligence Unit
Sent: 19 February 2007 20:50
To: 'atca.members@mi2g.com'
Subject: ATCA: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- Mysterious, Massive Death of Bees in the US -- Are bees the Canary in the mineshaft?
Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]
We are grateful to Richard Thomas Gerber, based in Michigan, USA, for his seminal submission to ATCA, "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- Mysterious, Massive Death of Bees in the US -- Are bees the Canary in the mineshaft?"
Richard Thomas Gerber is CEO of Intelegen Inc, a "proof-of-concept" company based in Michigan, USA, now celebrating it's eleventh year; with a current focus on high quality video production, streaming and interactive media development; system development, meta research and predictive analytics derived from data mining the Internet. Richard is also an informatics systems architect with 22 years experience working in the Detroit metropolitan area in the US. He has serviced or acted as an information technology consultant to over 200 clients from a broad range of industries specializing in accounting and finance applications and systems integration and custom development. He has worked for Moore Stephens International and as a consultant for Daimler Chrysler, General Motors and Ford Motor. He also currently hosts and maintains virtual manufacturing environments for several companies with time critical manufacturing operations and multiple physical plant and office locations across the US. He writes:
Dear DK and Colleagues
Re: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- Mysterious, Massive Death of Bees in the US -- Are bees the Canary in the mineshaft?
Albert Einstein made the statement "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live." He was speaking in regard to the symbiotic relationship of all life on the planet. All part of a huge interconnected ecosystem, each element playing a role dependant on many other elements all working in concert creating the symphony of life. Should any part of the global body suffer, so does the whole body.
Many people would be surprised to know that 90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out. Recent studies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down 80 percent in the sites researched, and that "bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain." The studies also revealed that the numbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70 percent. Which came first, the decline in wildflowers or the decline in pollinators, has yet to be determined. If bees continue to die off so would the crops they support and with that would ensue major economic disruption and possibly famine.
In the US, bee keepers are experiencing unprecedented die offs of bees some losing as much as 80% of their colonies. Commercial beekeepers in 22 states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybee colonies. So far the cause remains unexplained and somewhat mysterious. It is being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear and raising worries about crops that need bees for pollination. It's a kind of mass suicide in the bee world. "There have been cases where there have been these die-offs of bees before, but we have never seen it to this level," said Maryann Frazier, a Pennsylvania State University entomologist. "One operation after another is collapsing."
Bees have done quite well for millions of years, in the last 60 years that began to change. In recent years, beekeepers have been losing 25 percent of their hives each winter. Thirty years ago, the rate was 5 percent to 10 percent, said Keith Tignor, the state apiarist for Virginia.
The unusual phenomenon was first noticed by eastern beekeepers starting last fall. Researchers, including some connected with the Penn State University College of Agricultural Sciences, have identified some of the possible contributors, but have not yet found a single cause. Initial studies on bee colonies experiencing the die-offs have revealed a large number of disease organisms, with most being "stress-related" diseases but without any one agent as the culprit. Climate chaos and extreme weather seem to be a major factor.
It is hard to tell if wild honey bee populations have been affected by the CCD disorder because Varroa mites have "pretty much decimated the wild honey bee population over the past years," said Maryann Frazier of The Pennsylvania State University Department of Entomology. "This has become a highly significant, yet poorly understood problem that threatens the pollination industry and the production of commercial honey in the United States... Because the number of managed honeybee colonies is less than half of what it was 25 years ago, states such as Pennsylvania can ill afford these heavy losses."
Dennis van Engelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture said "Every day, you hear of another operator, It's just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling."
Lee Miller, director of the Beaver County extension office, said the deaths appear to be stress-related, but that stress could come from several sources. Dennis van Engelsdorp of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture said that initial studies found a large number of disease organisms present, with no one disease being identified as the culprit. And while studies and surveys have found a few common management factors among beekeepers with affected hives, no common environmental agents or chemicals have been identified.
University of California Davis entomologist Eric Mussen specializes in bees. He thinks the answer lies in last summer's lack of wild flowers, nationwide. Janet Katz, a beekeeper in Chester, NJ, says the weather is having a major impact, "The weather last season was not cooperative," she said. "Over the course of the season it was too wet, too dry, too hot and too cold, all at the wrong times." Bees store honey every autumn -- a hive needs 60 pounds to survive the winter -- but with this year's warm weather, they ate a lot, and beekeepers had to supplement with sugar syrup.
Florida apiarists say citrus growers are compounding the problem by spraying pesticides to kill off a dangerous pest that menaces fruit trees, wiping out bees at the same time. While a combination of problems is putting the bee population in peril, it's the phenomenon of the animals suddenly deserting their hives, never to return, that has observers most baffled.
"There have been cases where there have been these die-offs of bees before, but we have never seen it to this level," said Maryann Frazier, a Pennsylvania State University entomologist. "One operation after another is collapsing."
At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than USD 15 billion worth of US crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, the fourth-largest in the nation, worth USD 45 million, and New Jersey's cranberries and blueberries.
While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind, bees help pollinate more than 90 commercially grown field crops, citrus and other fruit crops, vegetables and nut crops. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically and some tangerines and pecans would cease to exist. Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees."
All of the following are dependant on bees, apples, pears, tangerines, peaches, soybeans, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, carrots, broccoli and avocados. And do we realise bees pollinate almonds? California has the biggest almond groves in the world, supplying 80 percent of the nuts on the market; they currently have to import millions of bees to pollinate the groves.
There are several unusual things about the phenomena and one common factor that cannot be attributed to be the direct cause but may be an "aggravating other conditions" factor and that is temperature fluctuations.
- No single cause drought chemicals/pesticides, mites, bacteria, a fungus or virus seems to be common to all the events or even indicated as a cause in any single event. Extreme weather and temperature fluctuations seem to play a major role stressing the bees and weakening their immune systems.
- There are no bee bodies; they simply all disappear, all adult bees are simply gone, sometimes leaving a queen and a few young hatched workers. This is unheard of, since normally a bee colony will do almost anything to protect its queen.
- The hive is left intact, with capped cells of honey and bee bread.
- Another unusual factor is that bees sensing a dying colony nearby aren't going in right away and killing the other bees and robbing the hive of honey, like they usually do for example when the bees have died of parasites or disease.
- Researchers have also noted few signs of damage from wax moths and small hive beetles taking advantage of dead colonies.
According to David Tarpy, a bee specialist at NC State, "Bees die all the time, although this year seems to be worse than normal." The difference now is that none of the "usual suspects" are to blame, Tarpy said. "That's what makes it problematic." Also, unlike when bees are killed by some other causes (disease, mites), there are no dead bees littering the bottom of a hive. The bees are simply gone, he said, or perhaps a queen and a few younger bees remain, but the adults have disappeared.
Reports of the situation began to come in over the fall and winter, but scientists don't yet have an answer. It might be a disease, a pest or an environmental factor or even a combination of effects making bees vulnerable to an existing problem. Now, the bees have sealed themselves inside the hives to stay warm, and the keepers can't open the structures until spring. Neither entomologists nor growers can say what will happen when the 2007 growing season for most of the country's crops starts. As a result, some people are really worried.
Diana Cox-Foster, a professor of entomology at Penn State University, has been working on the problem for months now. She says the die-off is unprecedented, and she's made some dramatic discoveries. For example, the normally resilient bees she dissected showed traces of not one or two diseases, but nearly every disease known to affect them over the past century. They had all the diseases at once, a sign their immune systems have been compromised. "The bees are immuno-compromised, being stressed somehow," she said. Some could be related to the severe weather swings we've seen over the past few years. But many questions remain unanswered.
She and the other scientists working on the CSI-style case don't think this is just a cyclical thing. It's uncommon, unusual, and frightening to everyone associated with the often-overlooked industry. No one is sure just how bad it will be when the hives are opened in late march.
Where does milk come from? "The bees pollinate the alfalfa, which feeds the cows, which give the milk. Honeybees are one of the main links in our world. They really need to be nurtured." Jerry Hayes of the Florida Department of Agriculture worries the bee is the canary in the mine shaft, "telling us something is happening that will have ramifications for us down the road. "I think the bees are so stressed, they are saying, 'I give up,'" said Hayes, Since the mid-1980s, parasitic mites have been devastating the honey bee population across the country, including the South-eastern US. In North Carolina, the number of kept beehives in the state has dropped by 44 percent, and about 95 percent of wild bees have been wiped out, according to North Carolina State entomologist David Tarpy.
A series of hurricanes in 2004, including Katrina in 2005, destroyed thousands of honey bee colonies, decimating the vital Gulf Coast bee industry. Many of the pollinators for other parts of the country traditionally came from these beekeepers. The economic impact of these storms, especially Katrina is yet to be determined.
"Replacing the Gulf Coast bee colonies, although highly important, is not enough. It is obvious that the huge losses suffered during the past 16 years must be dealt with to provide security for our future honey bee-dependent food supplies. It will take a well-defined series of coordinated efforts by all components of the beekeeping industry and the involvement of local, state and federal governmental entities to solve this potentially disastrous situation," says John Roberts, a beekeeper and President of Nature Technics Corporation.
There has been a sixty-year decline in pollinators. The honeybees and native bees may live in far more harmony than cats and dogs, but the modern world has not been in harmony with them. The last 60 years have been rough on all pollinators. In the 1940s there were over five million managed colonies of honeybees in the United States. Today there are just over two million, and their numbers are declining, both in North America and worldwide.
The entire world now faces a decline of native pollinators. Over 100 species of birds and more than 80 mammals that pollinate are considered threatened or extinct by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), a network that includes scientists, experts, government agencies and non-governmental organizations from around the world. Each country has its own tale to tell. In southern India, nearly all of the native bees died in the 1990s when they became infected with an imported virus. In Iraq, smoke from the burning oil wells during the Gulf War decimated most of the country's bee colonies.
In summary plants and animals remote in the scale of nature are bound together by a web of complex relations resulting from dependencies we have yet to fully understand. Every creature seems to play a role even, parasites serve a purpose. We are just beginning to understand the beneficial symbiotic relationship between the human body and certain bacteria. We are dependant on many other species and any failure of one part of the ecosystem can create a domino effect causing disruption throughout the entire chain of life. All plants and animals are vulnerable to climate chaos which seem to be having a major impact. Whether or not we are responsible for climate chaos is not as important an issue as to how humanity will adapt. It could also be that our methods centred on mass production and factory farming are in conflict with nature, as we can see in the case of avian flu, we may be creating a world of pestilence having forgotten that we are part of nature and there is a natural order, balance and harmony that needs to be maintained in the dance of life. Like any species in nature that gets out of hand, nature has a way to keep it in check, and humankind may be the next species in line for severe adjustment or even step-by-step eradication.
All the best
Richard Thomas Gerber
[ENDS]
We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.
Best wishes
For and on behalf of DK Matai
Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)
____________________________________________________________________________
ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos; radical poverty; geo-politics, organised crime & extremism; advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI; demographic skews; pandemics; and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 100 countries: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.
The views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. Please do not forward or use the material circulated without permission and full attribution.
____________________________________________________________________________
Intelligence Unit | mi2g ATCA The Philanthropia Φ
Posted by ATCA at 04:50 AM | Comments (11)
Health Tip of the Week - Back Pain
Back Pain
Q: I been having back pain off and on for years, and lately it seems to be getting worse. My doctor prescribed a pain killer that just makes me feel loopy. What else is there – does yoga really help?
A: As human beings we have probably been having problems with our backs ever since we first stood up on two legs a few million years ago. Chronic back pain is one of our most common health problems, resulting in substantial physical, emotional and financial distress. The costs associated with acute low back injuries have been estimated at over 50 billion dollars annually when you add up the expense of diagnosis, treatment and missed work. Although there are specific indications for surgical treatment, most back pain is best managed conservatively. Improved muscle strength and flexibility are the keys to a healthy back. At the Chopra Center for Well Being, we have had great success with yoga therapy. Using a consciousness-based program designed to enhance mind body integration, many of our patients with chronic pain experience increased flexibility and comfort. A recent study from the University of Washington found that yoga was more effective than conventional therapeutic exercises and standard back care procedures in reducing back pain (Annals Internal Medicine 143:849-56, 2005). I would strongly encourage you to find an experienced yoga instructor in your area and take a few private sessions to see if your pain can be lessened.
Chiropractic care is the most frequently used alternative treatment for chronic back pain. Although there has been a long-standing rivalry between chiropractors and medical doctors, recent studies have suggested that chiropractic care can be evaluated scientifically. A recent review of thirty-six studies on spinal manipulation (Spine 21:2860-2871, 1996) found that slightly over half showed some benefit from manipulation, mostly in patients with acute pain. A recent report from Sweden (Spine 22:2167-2177, 1977) found that chiropractic and physiotherapy treatment provided equal benefit at a similar cost.
Acupuncture treatments for chronic pain have recently been approved by an NIH committee. Although the pain relieving mechanisms behind this ancient system of medicine are not fully understood from a Western perspective, it is clear that this mode of treatment can be very effective in some people. A recent report found that acupuncture that used electrostimulation may be more effective than acupuncture alone.
There has been recent interest in the anti-arthritic potential of “chondroprotective” substances such as glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate. These agents may support the development of healthier joints and are worth trying when facing a degenerative spine condition. A recent report could not demonstrate overall value in people with chronic knee pain, but suggested that the combination may improve symptoms in those with moderate to severe pain. The usual daily dose is 1000 to 1500 milligrams for glucosamine and 800 to 1200 milligrams a day for chondroitin sulfate divided into two to four doses during the day.
It’s often the simple things that can provide the greatest relief. Find a good chair that provides back support while you are working. Get a lumbar support pillow to use in the car. Make certain that you have a good mattress. The small additional cost of buying ergonomically designed furniture will save you money and suffering in the long run. Techniques such as Feldenkreis and Alexander that focus on improving posture can also be of value.
Whenever there is chronic physical pain, there is emotional pain. Learn a simple meditation technique to relieve stress, develop healthy relationships and create a future for yourself that inspires you.
Posted by David Simon at 01:13 AM | Comments (9)
February 26, 2007
Oops... i'm doing it... again!
In the previous post that i wrote "Art in a body part" I was trying to understand the world around me and express myself.
Understand myself as i stand alone and in the context of the outside world. It was provoked by my previous days experience on the chat on a television channel that explored the dynamic between the male and female.
This morning i find myself in the front page of the Bombay Times.
The headline is"dude-wanna pose nude? Suchitra Krishnamoorthi is looking for hot bodied, young men to pose nude for her canvas"
I'm loving the reactions from my family and well wishers
from "are you okay chotu? " to 'what happened baby? why are you suddenly talking such rubbish?"
"great photograph-but did you really mean that?" 'why dont you take a holiday & come spend some time with us in Chennai?" "Is kaveri okay -how is she coping?" to "go for it girl-I am with you !" to "how refreshing-i preceived you quite differently" "what will shekhar say when he reads this?"etc etc
I am amused -i have been inundated by calls all morning since Gayatri's article appeared in this mornings newspaper. Ofcourse the article sticks to discussing the last part of my previous post where i talk about finding my male muse-aged between 18-25. Dosent touch upon any of the other points i wrote about-fair enough. Everybody's gotta do what they gotta go. A story is a story is a story-just this time around it happens to be mine
I am being bombarded-Calls and emails from model co-ordinators and bollywood/televison agents and secretaries who want me to meet up with potential candidates who want to pose in the nude for me. Most of the offers are very sincere and very hopeful. "Please madam-just take a look" ."ek baar bas mil lo aap"
I'm touched-I was just trying to let my head wander and push artistic boundaries-never intented to make a mockery of anyones ambitions and hopes.
Also fascinated-my thought provoking experiment seems to have worked.
Just goes to show that power is power and is absolute-nothing to do with male or female-and our perceptions of power are invariably what operates within our own heads and so translates to the world we create around us.
& confused....
all over again... :-)
So how real is really real?
Or is the world around us just "maaya" then?- an illusion?
So till my next post
"adios amigos"
Posted by Suchitra Krishnamoorthi at 09:48 PM | Comments (29)
Meeting Salman Rushdie
So this weekend was spent talking and listening to Salman Rushdie and
his lovely wife Padma Lakshmi, first at a dinner for a small group of people and then a talk he gave.
I must say I have enjoyed reading his books and found him to be very warm and accessible. Both Padma and he went out of their way to get to know everyone present there, and wished each and every person before they left after dinner.
But some conversations I had with people gathered at the sold out lecture, the next day and even at the dinner itself, which comprised of highly learned faculty members from Emory University here, top notch business people and media personalities like CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, made me wonder. There were some people who went into raptures-others who said they didn’t understand a word of what he wrote, and a lot of Indians said they don’t like him-because they don’t like his writing.
For the lecture there were only a handful of Indians who showed up-the rest were all non Indians, and the editor of the largest south Asian mag here in the South east, asked if I would interview him, for them, because none of his staff or Indians he know are into Rushdie.
So I decided to do a survey and would love to get your feedback.
What do you think of Salman Rushdie’s writings? It will really help me formulate some of the questions I intend asking him in the interview.
Posted by Kavita Chhibber at 09:41 AM | Comments (10)
Why Robots Love Music (Part 1)
The media have been eagerly reporting on advances in brain research and genetics, in part because everyone is hungry for scraps of good news. In a larger sense these areas of science are also immensely confident and hopeful. They are the finger posts to a future without disease, a time when age-old mysteries about human nature will be explained once and for all. I recently saw a television report on neurologists investigating the mystery of music, why it exists and how we respond to it.
My reaction to this report came in two parts: fascination at the ingenuity of the research and frustration that it's taking knowledge down the wrong path. Let me fill in both.
Researchers at McGill University in Toronto have been hooking up subjects as they listen to music. As one would predict, various parts of the brain light up in response to music, and through MRIs and other forms of brain imaging, it's been determined that music creates its own pattern of response. Raw input that reaches the auditory center in the cortex, responsible for interpreting all sounds, gets scattered to specific locations where rhythm, tempo, melody, timbre, etc. are separately processed in a matter of milliseconds. The prefrontal cortex even compares the music you are hearing now to music you expect to hear from past experience. By comparing the two, your brain can be surprised by something it never expected to hear, and further this can be a delightful surprise or a distasteful one.
All of this extremely complex communication between tiny areas of the brain goes on unconsciously, but without it, music would be just random noise. You may claim that your feel music in your soul, your heart, your gut. In fact, your total response is neurological. The research also shows that the brain gets "hard wired" in childhood according to what system of music you are exposed to. A Chinese baby's brain develops specific connections that respond to Chinese harmony, thus leading to its enjoyment. A baby born in the East, exposed to Western harmonies, is hard wired to enjoy that system but not the Chinese, and vice versa. Finally, the researchers could take a musical performance and gradually change it via computer software to see if the brain notices any difference. As the music became more mechanical and less personal, for example, the brain often didn't notice any difference until the change was glaringly obvious. This might explain "tin ears" and other, subtler abilities to detect the finer points of musical style.
All of this is moderately fascinating. It mostly corroborates things known to common sense and ordinary observation already. A million-dollar MRI machine wasn't needed to tell us that our brains respond in various ways to music, or that one person's response isn't the same as another's, or that Chinese music generally grates on Western ears. But the promissory note is a big one. As with so much brain research, we are told that these are early days. Give the scientists time and they will unravel everything about music. In particular, they will answer why music developed in the evolutionary scheme of things to become encoded in our genes. Apparently every age, going back as far as history is measured, has contained some form of music. Why did evolutionary forces favor this behavior as a survival mechanism? Between them, brain researchers, geneticists, and evolutionary biologists will provide a definitive answer in the foreseeable future.
In the next post I'd like to argue why this whole scheme of looking at music is wrong-headed and will yield no answers that get near the truth. The current connection between music and the brain is useful only if the listener is a robot with a robotic brain. That's exactly the model being used here, and no amount of passing fascination makes it anything but what it is: inhuman to the core.
Posted by Deepak Chopra at 08:56 AM | Comments (35)
Weekly Yoga Session with Claire!
Rocking Butterfly
Instructions:
Sitting upright. Clasp your hands underneath the sides of your feet. Breathe in and out 3-5 times.
Inhaling rock to the right.
Exhaling rock to the left.
Relax all the muscles in your face and enjoy (relax your head,neck and shoulders). Breathe in and out rocking right and left 6-9 times.
Come back to center. Breathe deeply 6-9 breaths.
Benefits
Massages the buttocks muscles.
Massages the tips of the sit bones an energy point which strengthens the systems of the body.
Lenghtens the inner thigh muscles (abductors).
Increases blood flow around the lower back and hips.
Safety Tips
If your knees bother you move you feet away from your body.
Avoid this pose if you have had recent knee surgery.
This Week’s Mantra
Om Varunam Namah
Pronunciation: Om Vahr-U-Nahm Nah-Mah
“My life is in harmony with the Universe.”
This week:
Be gentle with yourself and others.
Remember in every situation there is a seed of opportunity for personal and spiritual growth.
If You Have Any Questions or to Order Claire’s DVD’s and Books Contact Me
Have a Wonderful Week!
Namaste!
Posted by Claire Diab at 07:52 AM | Comments (3)
February 25, 2007
Painting and Meditating
This last Saturday, Youthreach, an NGO I work with organised a painting and meditating afternoon in Lodhi gardens. This was organised under the Youthreach spirit programme, which facilitates processes that create deeper reflection on the self, social reality and change.
So in the midst of these beautiful gardens, scattered with monuments, magnificient trees, undulating pathways and the glorious chiriping of birdsong, we assembled, about 50 of us grownups and kids. We started with a walking meditation..this is the part where a lot of people, not comfortable with meditation and sharing...tend to get uncomfortable :-)....I understand the feeling, as I was one of them, a few years ago! We walked, absorbing replendent nature around us..the squirrels, that blossom tree, those beautiful flowers. Many of us walked barefoot...the feel of grass under ones feet is truly a lovely feeling. The person who was leading us, rang a bell...and we stopped, internalising what we saw and felt. This went on for 20 mns..after which we shared what this walk made us think and feel. The children, aged 6 to 15 had the most beautiful things to say about harmony, about nature. Many grown ups admitted that caught up in the whirl of everyday life, while they pass the gardens a couple of times a week..they had never actually been in. One mother said it was a bonding experiance for her with her young daughter - experiencing nature together. For me I felt...in the bliss of natures solitude..with the only sound being birdsong.
Then we settled ourselves onto the rugs and began drawing the trees, as we saw them. There was a nature artist who assisted us and with an array of painting mediums..much fun was had by us all.
The session ended with Youthreach sharing the rampant problems that Delhi and in this instance, the trees of Delhi face..with rampant urbanistion and so called development. We distributed information leaflets that we had put together on a number of Delhi 's environmental and ecolgical problems, urging everyone..to get involved...in whatever way...they can.
Posted by Nandita Kathpalia Baig at 07:40 PM | Comments (5)
HQR: Quantum Computer, Einstein's Spooky Action
D-Wave's Quantum Computing Technology
Within Holistic Quantum Relativity lies the realm of the human mind and the observable universe running like Quantum Computers: this technological synthesis offers the possibility of solving what computer science calls "NP-complete" problems. Last week D-Wave Systems, a privately-held Canadian firm HQ'd near Vancouver, BC, demonstrated what it calls the world's first commercially viable Quantum Computer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
These are problems which are impossible or nearly impossible to calculate on a classical digital computer. Picking out a single pattern from a collection of patterns, such as one's mother, father, or child, from a photo of people, is easy for the human mind, but beyond the reach of a conventional desk-top computer!
The key step in quantum computing is to harness the entanglement of different particles -- what Albert Einstein called the "spooky action at a distance" -- that allows one particle to affect another somewhere else. Orion of D-Wave Systems does this by using rings of current flowing through superconductors. The current can flow clockwise, counterclockwise or, significantly, both directions at once, allowing it to hold two values simultaneously due to quantum mechanical strangeness.
Last week, Canadian company D-Wave Systems demonstrated a 16-qubit, specific-purpose quantum computer to a room packed with observers and thick with doubt and awe. Reporters watched as the machine solved a Sudoku puzzle and a seating arrangements problem, and, most impressively, searched for molecules similar to the drug Prilosec from a database of molecules.
The machine is programmed by changing the magnetic conditions around quantum bits, or "qubits," creating relationships between them that model the physical embodiment of the equation the programmer is trying to solve. The results are read by detecting the direction of the current within the qubit when the calculations are complete.
But significant challenges confront D-Wave in building a useful quantum computer. A key part of making a practical machine will be error correction -- something Orion doesn't do yet, and which requires many more qubits than are currently feasible. Right now, Orion runs its calculations multiple times and determines which answer has the highest probability of being right.
Moreover, scaling up a quantum computer might cause it to lose "coherence," ie the entanglement of a distant particle might fail when you introduce too many qubits. Nobody's certain. Finally, engineering the whole system to be fast enough for practical use and modular enough to deploy at a customer's site remain daunting problems, even if the laws of Quantuam Mechanics decide to play along.
Quantum computing offers the potential to create value in areas where problems or requirements exceed the capability of digital computing. But D-Wave notes that its new device is intended as a complement to conventional computers, not as a replacement for them. The demo aimed to show how the machine can run commercial applications and solve problems that severely challenge conventional (digital) computers.
Although many scientists believe that quantum computing may be many years from reality, D-Wave intends to offer its technology for sale next year. It's no surprise, then, that D-Wave's event caused quite a stir and caught the attention of journalists from a wide range of media outlets.
Primer on Quantum Computing
Quantum computers (QCs) use quantum mechanics (QM), the rules that underlie the behavior of matter and energy in the physical world and observable universe, to accelerate computation. It has been known for some time that once some simple features of QM are harnessed, machines will be built capable of outperforming any conceivable conventional supercomputer.
QCs are not just faster than conventional computers. They change what computer scientists call the computational scaling of many problems.
In 1936, mathematician Alan Turing published a famous paper that addressed the problem of computability. His thesis was that all computers were equivalent, and could all be simulated by each other. By extension, a problem was either computable or not, regardless of what computer it was run on. This paper led to the concept of the Universal Turing Machine, an idealized model of a computer to which all computers are equivalent.
We now know that Turing was only partially correct. Not all computers are equivalent. His work was based on an assumption — that computation and information were abstract entities, divorced from the rules of physics governing the behavior of the computer itself.
One of the most important developments in modern science is the realization that information (and computation) can never exist in the abstract. Information is always tied to the physical stuff upon which it is written. What is possible to compute is completely determined by the rules of physics.
Turing's work, and conventional computer science, are only valid if a computer obeys the rules of Newtonian physics — the set of rules that apply to large and hot things, like baseballs and humans. If elements of a computer behave according to different rules, such as the rules of QM, this assumption fails and many very interesting possibilities emerge.
As an example, consider the modeling of a nanosized structure, such as a drug molecule, using conventional (ie, non-quantum) computers. Solving the Schrodinger Equation (SE), the fundamental description of matter at the QM level, more than doubles in difficulty for every electron in the molecule. This is called exponential scaling, and prohibits solution of the SE for systems greater than about 30 electrons. A single caffeine molecule has more than 100 electrons, making it roughly 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000 times harder to solve than a 30-electron system, which itself makes even high-end supercomputers choke.
This restriction makes first-principles modeling of molecular structures impossible, and has historically defined the boundary between physics (where the SE can be solved by brute force) and chemistry (where it cannot, and empirical modeling and human creativity must take over).
Quantum computers are capable of solving the SE with linear scaling exponentially faster and with exponentially less hardware than conventional computers. For a QC, the difficulty in solving the SE increases by a small, fixed amount for every electron in a system. Even very primitive QCs will be able to outperform supercomputers in simulating nature.
Even more significant, as QC technology matures, systems containing hundreds, thousands, even millions of electrons will be able to be modeled by the direct, brute force solution of the SE. This means that the fundamental equations of nature will be solvable for all nanoscale systems, with no approximations and no fudge factors. Results of these virtual reality simulations will be indistinguishable from what is seen in the real world, assuming that QM is an accurate picture of nature.
This type of simulation, by direct solution of the fundamental laws of nature, will become the backbone of engineering design in the nanotech regime where quantum mechanics reigns.
Does Quantum Computing have a future?
Excerpts of Interview with Prof David Deutsch, Father of QC, by Wired News
To cut through the fog, Wired News sought out the father of Quantum Computing, Oxford University theoretical physicist Prof David Deutsch. Prof Deutsch is a leading proponent of the theory of Quantum Computing. Wired News pulled him away from dinner to talk about what a quantum computer really is, what it's good for and what D-Wave's announcement might mean for the future.
Wired News (WN): D-Wave announced 16 qubits, and they want people to play with them, so they're talking about having a web API where people can try to port their own applications and see how it works. Do you think that's a good approach to gaining some acceptability and mind share for the idea of quantum computing?
David Deutsch: I think the field doesn't need acceptability. The idea will either be valid, or not. The claim will either be true, or not. I think that the normal processes of scientific criticism, peer review and just general discussion in the scientific community is going to test this idea -- provided enough information is given of what this idea is. That will be quite independent of what kind of access they provide to the public.
However, I think the idea of providing an interface such as you describe is a very good one. I think it's a wonderful idea....
WN: Can you give a couple of examples of what kind of things can be done with quantum computing that either can't be done, or can't be done practically, with classical computing?
Deutsch: The most important application of quantum computing in the future is likely to be a computer simulation of quantum systems, because that's an application where we know for sure that quantum systems in general cannot be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. This is an application where the quantum computer is ideally suited.
Perhaps in the long run, as nanotechnology becomes quantum technology, that will be a very important generic application.
Another thing I should say is, that application is the only one of the major applications -- apart from quantum cryptography, by the way, which is already implemented and is really in a different category -- that might be amenable to a non-general purpose quantum computer. That is to say, a special-purpose quantum computer.
WN: Can you talk a little about the importance of simulating quantum systems, and give an example?
Deutsch: Yes. Whenever we design a complex piece of technology we need to simulate it, either in theory by working out the equations that govern it, or as a computer simulation, by running a program on the computer whose motion mimics that of the real system.
But when we come to designing quantum systems, we're going to have to simulate the behavior of quantum super positions, which is, in Many Universes terms, when an object is doing different things in different universes. On a classical computer you'd have to work out what every single one of those was, and then combine them in the end with the equations governing quantum interference.
WN: And that becomes computationally impossible?
Deutsch: That becomes infeasible very, very quickly, once you've got more than three, four, five particles involved, whereas a quantum computer could mimic such a process directly by itself doing that number of computations simultaneously in different universes. So it is naturally adapted to that kind of simulation, if we wanted to work out, let's say, the exactly properties of a given molecule.
Some people have suggested this might be useful for designing new drugs, but we don't know if that's the case or not. Although quantum processes are needed in general for atomic and molecular scale properties, not all of them (need quantum processes). An example of that is we've been able to do a lot of biotechnology without having any quantum simulators.
WN: Do you think a quantum computer could eventually build a slightly more macro simulation, something like an immune system, in order to see how it interacts with a drug?
Deutsch: No, that's not what it would be used for. It would be used for smaller things, not things on a larger scale than a molecule, but things on a smaller scale. Small molecules and interactions within an atom, subtle differences between different isotopes, that sort of thing. And of course things on an even smaller scale than that. Nuclear physics, and also artificial, atomic-sized things which will be used in nanotechnology.
Of which at the moment the only ones planned are quantum computers. Of course quantum computer designing other quantum computers is undoubtedly going to be one of the applications.
WN: The other field I can see ... this revolutionizing is materials science.
Deutsch: Yes, yes. Again we don't know how revolutionary it will be, but certainly on the small scale, it will be indispensable.
WN: What would you like to see the field trying to do?
Deutsch: I'm probably the wrong person to ask that because my own interest in this field is not really technological. To me quantum computation is a new and deeper and better way to understand the laws of physics, and hence understanding physical reality as a whole. We are really only scratching the surface of what it is telling us about the nature of the laws of physics. That's the kind of direction that I'm pursuing.
The pleasant thing about that is that can be done before one even makes a quantum computer. The theoretical conclusions are already there, and we can work on them already. It's not that I don't think technological applications are important, but I watch them as an eager spectator rather than participant.
WN: For your purposes, the importance of quantum computing is in the general case more than in the specific-use case.
Deutsch: Yes. The fact that the laws of physics permit themselves to be simulated by a quantum computer is a deep fact about the nature of the universe that we will have to understand more deeply in the future.
WN: How do you think using quantum computers will change how people think about computing, and consequently the universe and nature?
Deutsch: "How they will think about it" is the relevant phrase here. This is a philosophical and psychological question you're asking. You're not asking a question about the physics or the logic of the situation.
I think that when universal quantum computers are finally achieved technologically, and when they are routinely performing computations where there is simply more going on there than a classical computer or even the whole universe acting as a computer could possibly achieve, then people will get very impatient and bored, I think, with attempts to say that those computations don't really happen, and that the equations of quantum mechanics are merely ways of expressing what the answer would be but not how it was obtained.
The programmers will know perfectly well how it was obtained, and they will have programmed the steps that will have obtained it. The fact that answers are obtained from a quantum computer that couldn't be obtained any other way will make people take seriously that the process that obtained them was objectively real.
Nothing more than that is needed to lead to the conclusion that there are parallel universes, because that is specifically how quantum computers work.
WN: So what prompted you to start thinking about quantum computing?
Deutsch: This goes back a long way before I even thought of general purpose quantum computing. I was thinking about the relationship between computing and physics.... This was back in the 1970s....
It had been said, ever since the parallel universes theory had been invented by Everett in the 1950s, that there's no experimental difference between it and the various (theories), like the Copenhagen interpretation, that try to deny that all but one of the universes exist.
Although it had been taken for granted that there was no experimental difference, in fact, there is -- provided the observer can be analyzed as part of the quantum system. But you can only do that if the observer is implemented on quantum hardware, so I postulated this quantum hardware that was running an artificial intelligence program, and as a result was able to concoct an experiment which would give one output from an observer's point of view if the parallel universes theory was true, and a different outcome if only a single universe existed.
This device that I postulated is what we would now call a quantum computer, but because I wasn't particularly thinking about computers, I didn't call it that, and I didn't really start thinking about quantum computation as a process until several years later. That lead to my suggesting the universal quantum computer and proving its properties in the mid-'80s.
WN: How many qubits (does it take) to make the general-purpose quantum computer useful?
Deutsch: I think the watershed moment with quantum computer technology will be when a quantum computer -- a universal quantum computer -- exceeds about 100 to 200 qubits.
Now when I say qubits, I have to stress that the term qubit hasn't got a very precise definition at the moment, and I've been arguing for a long time that the physics community ought to get together and decide on some criteria for different senses for the word qubit. What I mean here is a qubit which is capable of being in any quantum state, and is capable of undergoing any kind of entanglement with another qubit of the same technology, and all those conditions are actually necessary to make a fully fledged quantum computer.
If you relax any one of the those conditions it's much easier to implement in physics. For instance, if you call something a qubit but it can only be entangled with qubits of a different technology, then it's much easier to build. But of course a thing like that can't be made part of a computer memory. (With) computer memory you need lots of identical ones.
There's also the question of error correction. The one physical qubit is probably not enough to act as a qubit in genuine quantum computation, because of the problem of errors and decoherence. So you need to implement quantum error correction, and quantum error correction is going to require several physical qubits for every logical qubit of the computer. When I said you need 100 to 200, that probably means several hundred, or perhaps 1,000 or more, physical qubits.
WN: To get an effective 100 or 200 qubits.
Deutsch: Yes, and that is what would have to count as the watershed for quantum computation, for being a distinctive new technology with its own genuine uses.
WN: That's actually D-Wave's stated goal as well: essentially 1,000 qubits in two years. Do you think engineering-wise, and this is not completely within your realm, they will be able to maintain enough coherence at that level to create a practical computer.
Deutsch: As you said that really isn't my field. Maintaining coherence itself isn't quite enough. They've got to maintain coherence in the operation that I spoke of; that is, the arbitrary superposition, the arbitrary entanglement, and so on....
I don't know. The technologies I've seen so far have got way fewer than 1,000. They've got way fewer than 16. I always have to ask whether the claimed number of qubits are qubits that I would count as qubits by these stringent criteria, or whether it's merely two-state systems that can in some sense act in a quantum way. Because that's a much more lenient criterion.
WN: I don't have the sophistication to answer that, for D-Wave at least. If I were to ask you to cast your mind forward, saying everything goes well, what does a world that combines ubiquitous quantum computing and classical computing look like? And you've said that quantum computing would never replace classical computing.
Deutsch: It's not anywhere near as big a revolution as, say, the internet, or the introduction of computers in the first place. The practical application, from a ordinary consumer's point of view, are just quantitative.
One field that will be revolutionized is cryptography. All, or nearly all, existing cryptographic systems will be rendered insecure, and even retrospectively insecure, in that messages sent today, if somebody keeps them, will be possible to decipher ... with a quantum computer as soon as one is built.
Most fields won't be revolutionized in that way.
Fortunately, the already existing technology of quantum cryptography is not only more secure than any existing classical system, but it's invulnerable to attack by a quantum computer. Anyone who cares sufficiently much about security ought to be instituting quantum cryptography wherever it's technically feasible.
Apart from that, as I said, mathematical operations will become easier. Algorithmic search is the most important one, I think. Computers will become a little bit faster, especially in certain applications. Simulating quantum systems will become important because quantum technology will become important generally, in the form of nanotechnology.
WN: If we have practical nanotechnology, I imagine that's a huge change.
Deutsch: Nanotechnology has the potential of making a huge change. But the only involvement of quantum computers is that it will make it easier to design nanotechnological devices. Apart from that I don't think it's a big technological revolution.
What it is though, philosophically, is taking a quantum world view. That is rather a revolution, but that could happen today and the only reason it has been sluggish in happening is psychological, and maybe quantum computers will help with this psychological process. That's a very indirect phenomenon.
WN: It does allow people to play with it, and they often get things better when they play with them.
Deutsch: That's true.
WN: I wanted to ask you to describe your book a bit.
Deutsch: You'll remember I said for me the most important thing about quantum computation is the way it shows us the deep connections between physics on the one hand and computation on the other, which were previously suspected by only a few pioneers like Rolf Landauer of IBM.
My book (The Fabric of Reality) is about this connection between computation and fundamental physics, between those two apparently unconnected fields.... To me, (that connection is) part of a wider thing, where there are also two other strands, the theory of knowledge and the theory of evolution.
The Fabric of Reality is my attempt to say that a world view formed out of those four strands is the deepest knowledge that we currently have about the world.
[ENDS]
Sceptics point out, though, that D-Wave has not published its work in peer-reviewed journals yet. So doubts abound concerning whether the company is demonstrating true quantum computing. Perhaps that is why, D-Wave's CEO Herb Martin has emphasized that the Orion machine is "not a true quantum computer and is instead a kind of special-purpose machine that uses some quantum mechanics to solve problems." Meantime D-Wave plans to answer doubters by offering a Web-based interface that allows people to try out the technology on their own applications.
Holistic Quantum Relativity Background
For those who wish to understand the genesis of this Socratic Dialogue on IntentBlog, which has led to the preliminary efforts towards Holistic Quantum Relativity (HQR), please visit the following strings in sequence:
1. Maulana Rumi: 2007 is his 800th Anniversary!
2. Unified Force, Sub-nuclear Physics & Love of Rumi
3. Holistics: Embracing Science, Art and Spirituality!
4. Complex Holistics: Hegel's Logic, Spirit and Mind
5. Simple Holistics: Hegel Triangles & Unified Pyramid
6. Holistic Pyramid, Sahasrara, Sri Yantra, Creation
7. Holistic Relativity: Spiritual Planes & Consciousness
8. Holistic Quantum Relativity: Spirituality and Science
9. Holistic Quantum Relativity Project: Glossary
10. Holistic Quantum Relativity Evolution on IntentBlog
11. HQR: Tagore Einstein: Science, Spirituality & Music
12. HQR: Albert Einstein Quotes on Spirituality
13. HQR: HH Master Kirpal -- Nature of Thought
14. HQR: HH Master Kirpal -- Indira Gandhi & Quotes
15. HQR: Quantum Physics -- The Holotropic State
16. HQR: Bringing All Together & Another Perspective
Similar information in a more accessible format is available from The Alliance for a New Humanity's Global Wiki Project
This is presented as an amalgam from a number of sources with attendant errors and omissions. Please forgive the same and we welcome your submissions, thoughts, observations and views.
With warm wishes to you and family
DK with family
DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net
Posted by DK Matai at 03:53 PM | Comments (104)
February 24, 2007
Weekly Intent - Avtar Singh
Mysteries of the Universe Revealed, Part II: Potential Answers to Some Ultimate Questions.
This post is a follow on to the earlier post - “Mysteries of the Universe Revealed, Part I: Did the Universe Have a Beginning?"
Here are some answers in short and simple words to the ultimate questions that humanity is searching answers to. These questions were crafted by Navin during responses to the Feb. 10 post. The answers below are based on the Holistic Relativity theory unifying science & spirituality discussed under another main entry post on the intentblog: http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/02/holistic_relati.html
The theory is also presented in my book- “The Hidden Factor: An Approach for Resolving Paradoxes of Science, Cosmology, and Universal Reality
Since many of the answers may be counterintuitive and different from the mainstream thinking, they may raise more questions or disbelief. Hence, I request the reader to keep an open mind keeping away from the most commonly prevailing mindset of the mainstream thinking to allow a fresh approach to understand the universe. The reader should be aware that in spite of the commonly known acceptance of the Big Bang theory, it is marred with serious unexplained and unresolved paradoxes listed below, which may have diminished its credibility hindering the consensus acceptance of the theory:
- quantum gravity,
- dark energy
- dark matter
- anti-matter, symmetry, virtual particles, strings (where is the predicted trillions and trillions of tons of anti-matter expected to exist in equal amounts of the actual observed matter in the universe, so far the claims of the observed anti-matter is extremely limited and not even a nanogram of anti-matter in a stable mode existence has been observed)
- The observer’s or measurement paradox on which the whole validity of quantum observations hang.
- Big Bang or black hole singularity
- Unseen or inexperienced multiple universe and multi-dimensions beyond 4 space-time dimensions
- Cosmological constant magnitude being off by 120 orders of magnitude
- Others (observed presence of large galaxies in the early universe, accelerating expansion of the universe, absence of mechanistic understanding of the inner workings of quantum mechanics etc etc…..)
As and when the above paradoxes are resolved, the Big Bang theory may not exist in its current form. It is argued in my book that the root cause of these paradoxes is the missing physics of consciousness in the prevailing theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics. The proposed Holistic Relativity theory is founded on the essence of teachings of the spiritual masters and integrates the missing physics of consciousness into the current theory of relativity. It seems to not only resolve the paradoxes of current theories but it also predicts and explains the spiritual experiences bridging science and spirituality.
The short answers below based on the general relativity theory are further elaborated in my book – “The Hidden Factor”. You can also read further details in my paper – “In Search of Universal Reality & Purpose – A Scientific Investigation” at link below: http://www.metanexus.net/conference2005/pdf/avtar_singh.pdf
Questions & Answers:
1. Did the Universe Have a Beginning?
The universe as a whole has no unique time or clock, which is only a relative entity within and only within the frame of reference of the matter in the universe, which is shown to be only 4% of the contents of the universe. Rest significant 96% is dark energy or dark matter.
So there is no absolute or unique time of beginning, ending, or the evolution of the universe as a wholesome entity.
2. When and from where it all came into being?
Since the universe has no one clock or time as such, it just exists eternally without coming or going out of existence. The questions of when and from where arise only for an observer within the frame of reference of matter (4%). The observer in the frame of reference (96%) of dark energy or dark matter is not even aware of such a question.
3. How far it extends?
Just as time, space or distance is a relative entity and not absolute as far as the universe as a whole is concerned. The fixed space and time exist only relative to the observer in the frame of reference of the matter. Just as the universe exists eternally, it also exists omnipresently (or infinitely as some would call it).
4. What is its future?
Again, time and evolution are relative to the matter only in the universe, which is only 4%. The one wholesome universe has no beginning, past or future. As Einstein said- “Time is an illusion.”
5. What is its purpose?
The purpose of the 4% material or visible or measurable universe is to provide objective evidence for humans to use as a clue or stepping stone to facilitate their search for the ultimate or wholesome reality about the rest 96% of the universe. This would allow a complete understanding of the 100% of the universe and answers to your questions below.
6. Who are we and why are we here?
We are a small replica of the whole universe with all its features including matter, mind, and consciousness.
We are here so as to allow the wholesome truth about the universe and its existence to become manifested. The universe is manifested thru us – our bodies, minds, and consciousness. If we were not here, such manifestation may not be possible.
7. Is there a creator – God?
The universe exists at its own as a wholesome eternal existence representing an all inclusive creator, creation, and creativity, and what ever else one can perceive and beyond. Fragmenting the wholesome universe into a distinct creator separate from the rest is again an illusion in the frame of reference of the matter (separated from the whole) having fixed space and time. The concepts of separate creator and creation have no wholesome universal meaning or existence.
8. What can we learn about our own lives from the universe?
All the above. When we realize the above realities, it provides meaning and purpose of the eternal existence of the universe and us within it. We come to the realization of the true self – who we are, that except for our bodies we are eternal and one wholesome existence. That realization liberates us from the threat of bodily death, mental suffering, and meaninglessness. In a nutshell, the realization fulfills our lives.
The mainstream science is just beginning to define what consciousness is and so far has limited its investigations primarily to the neurobiological consciousness. The proposed concept of the universal consciousness may be a viable consideration by the mainstream science to provide new intuitive solutions to the paradoxes of the current theories to understand and explain the wholesome universe beyond the observed material universe alone.
Posted by Intent at 09:28 PM | Comments (36)
HQR: Bringing All Together & Another Perspective
Heather Quinn from NY has suggested that we reproduce #77 of the Socratic Dialogue "HQR: Quantum Physics and The Holotropic State" because "it expresses the essentials of this project with passionate clarity..." Another perspective follows:
Holistic Reality, Quantum Illusion and Relativity
1. Present Relativity = Grand Macro Design and Certainty. "Herr Gott wuerfelt nicht" or God does not throw dice [Einstein]. Supra Universe with constants like Speed of Light or "c" with Beyond Universe, True Abode and other indestructible planes.
2. Present Quantum Mechanics = Small Micro Design and Probabilistics. Carries Randomness and Uncertainty at observation until hidden variables/connections are known. QM may explain aspects of the universe vis-a-vis Causal, Astral and Physical planes, which are part of the grand dissolution and creation cycle, with variable packets of energy in which the light constant's square c^2 attaches and detaches to m or mass constantly, which itself is spontaneously decaying and forming albeit at varying half-lives.
3. The manifestation of the Holy Trinity as One is Holistic. In truth, Supra Universe, the Universe and a Human Observer are all a Pyramid in a pyramid (Ovoid in ovoid), with the observer an inverted pyramid. All are one and the same. Holistic Quantum Relativity is about the union of all in one and one in all.
If we look at Maya (Matter / Illusion) also known as Shakti (Energy) [E = m.c^2], the one who has been deployed by Kal Niranjan (Time Invisible) to create the universe from the causal plane downwards including astal and physical planes. The characteristic is restlessness and constant transformation of energy and resultant volatilities. The Great Spiritual Masters have said that Maya or Shakti has the habit of decreasing and increasing continuously. Maya's most abstract form is money and look how it wobbles up and down in stock market pricing of equities and commodities. The behaviour of Maya, the manifestation of energy in matter, an illusion, is fundamentally responsible for giving rise to the uncertainty principle etc at the micro-level.
However, the Supra Universe, which is beyond the entanglement of the four forces and is effectively the fifth force of unifying love, there the increase and decrease -- constant volatility -- does not exist and there is a sea of calm made up of infinite light without curvature owing to mass.
What appears to be probabilistic in time and space is not so when time and space are eliminated or tend towards infinity.
Relativity is the glue that binds all: supra universe, universe and observer... Holistically. Where as, Quantum Mechanics is a small scale phenomenon explaining the entanglement of forces at the universe's micro level. In measurement it reveals the true nature of the illusion with its attendant volatilities.
The Fascination of Quantum Illusion imbued Relatively within Holistic Reality
If Holistic Quantum Relativity were to be a gourmet dish at the end of the galaxy Italian restaurant, it could be desribed as:
Holistic con Relatività sans Quanta. OR Holistics with Relativity without Quanta.
From earth on the physical plane though, HQR is the way it would appear and from beyond universe HR-Q would be more appropriate.
I am reminded of an insightful poem written by the Indian Poet Laureate Padamshree Gopal Das 'Neeraj' -- winner of the Indian Presidential Award:
Kehta hai joker sara zamana
The whole world calls me a clown
[Energy moves playfully here and there]
Aadhi Hakikat, Aadha Fasana
Half truth, half a story or illusion
[Light component is true, mass is an illusion]
Chashma utaro, fir dekho yaaro
Remove your glasses, and then see
[Remove your measurement devices, and then see]
Kya hai hakeekat, kya hai Fasana.
What is true, what is an illusion."
[Unified Force of Love is true, the Four Forces are an illusion]
-: From "Mera Naam Joker" or My Name's Joker by Raj Kapoor :-
As Guru Arjan Dev wrote in the Gurubani's hymn Jis Ke Sir Upar Tum Swami (On whose Head is Your Grace Master):
Gyan dhyan kich karam na jana
We are not congnescent of knowledge, contemplation or deeds
Sar na jana teri
We are not congnescent of Your Greatness and Totality
Sabte vada Satguru Nanak
Nanak says "Satguru" is Greatest of All
[Satguru = True Master or Supra-Universal Consciousness]
Jin kal rakhi meri
He has preserved my honour
[Honour = Honour of the Spirit of the Observer, ie, the Truth].
In a nutshell, Holistic Quantum Relativity -- HQR, describes the relativity between the Whole creation and its quantum subset, ie, the physical world.
Our minds are Quantum Computers, hence the volatilites in our thoughts. Humble apologies for countless errors and omissions...
Holistic Quantum Relativity Background
For those who wish to understand the genesis of this Socratic Dialogue on IntentBlog, which has led to the preliminary efforts towards Holistic Quantum Relativity (HQR), please visit the following strings in sequence:
1. Maulana Rumi: 2007 is his 800th Anniversary!
2. Unified Force, Sub-nuclear Physics & Love of Rumi
3. Holistics: Embracing Science, Art and Spirituality!
4. Complex Holistics: Hegel's Logic, Spirit and Mind
5. Simple Holistics: Hegel Triangles & Unified Pyramid
6. Holistic Pyramid, Sahasrara, Sri Yantra, Creation
7. Holistic Relativity: Spiritual Planes & Consciousness
8. Holistic Quantum Relativity: Spirituality and Science
9. Holistic Quantum Relativity Project: Glossary
10. Holistic Quantum Relativity Evolution on IntentBlog
11. HQR: Tagore Einstein: Science, Spirituality & Music
12. HQR: Albert Einstein Quotes on Spirituality
13. HQR: HH Master Kirpal -- Nature of Thought
14. HQR: HH Master Kirpal -- Indira Gandhi & Quotes
15. HQR: Quantum Physics -- The Holotropic State
Similar information in a more accessible format is available from The Alliance for a New Humanity's Global Wiki Project
This is presented as an amalgam from a number of sources with attendant errors and omissions. Please forgive the same and we welcome your submissions, thoughts, observations and views.
With warm wishes to you and family
DK with family
DK Matai
The Philanthropia, ATCA, mi2g.net
Posted by DK Matai at 05:29 AM | Comments (56)
February 23, 2007
AIDS - What's that?
The enormous challenge of AIDS education in India is highlighted by a study that indicates that more than 40% of women in India have not heard of AIDS. 80% of Indian men are aware of the disease. With 5.7 Million people living with AIDS in India,
the lack of awareness of the disease, let alone measures to prevent or treat it, is a mamoth problem.
Per the attached article by Reuters, "Only 54 percent of Indian women are literate compared with 76 percent for men....
Many women in villages do not have television in their homes and miss out on anti-AIDS advertisements, say activists, calling for a broad-based effort to educate and empower women."
On so many different levels, empowering and educating women seems to be the key to health -- of individuals, children, society. The lack of awareness of AIDS in India is just one more example of the dire need for grassroots education, literacy, basic health awareness.
Politics and government are crucial here, but how can a society take responsibility to ensure awareness and education spread? What models work, and why? How does a society overcome it's cultural inhibitions to create awareness, enhance discusion, empower action?
Posted by Mallika Chopra at 02:47 PM | Comments (12)
Whose going to be President in 2008?
They’re off! The 2008 democratic contenders for president have hit the road and are running full steam, coming soon to a meeting hall or a town center near you. I have serious penchant for politics and a couple of night ago I got my first look at the democratic field, as they took questions from George Stephanopoulos this Tuesday night in Las Vegas on CSpan. Here are some initial thoughts:
Tom Vilsack – Apparently Vilsack is quitting today, so I won’t say much about the man. He was impressive in a folksy sort of way Tuesday night.
John Edwards – Edwards is taking an interesting tack. He’s making his campaign largely about poverty and he spoke a great deal about labor (They were speaking to a union gathering, so I’m sure there was extra emphasis). Poverty of course, is a crucial issue, but the themes that Edwards is sounding all feel a bit old leftist, in contrast with his personal image, which is sort of young, flashy, and fresh. I just don’t think they’re going to work beyond a narrow base of the party. We need someone with either real forward-looking vision or tremendous gravitas, capability, and competence. Right now Obama has the former and Clinton the latter, and that will make for an interesting match up in the days to come.
Joe Biden – I know few politicians who come across as flat out smart and even brilliant as Biden does. I know he has a tendency to misspeak, and he may not be able to make the impression he needs to in order to win the nomination. But he is an impressive figure.
Hillary Clinton – What can you say--she’s such a known quantity. But there is something about a presidential campaign that shines a unique and often harsh light on people. She’s far from charismatic and comes across fairly scripted, but like Gore in 2000, you get the sense she’d prefer to be using her formidable intellect to solve problems rather than campaigning. And who can blame her. Both of them, I think, would probably make much better presidents than they do presidential candidates.
Bill Richardson – I like Bill, always have. And he was impressive—folksy, charming, authentic. He comes across as serious about being a politician, a hard-working governor. I don’t know enough to judge, but could he be a VP candidate? Probably not, but it’d be cool to have a Hispanic VP.
Dennis Kucinich – He looks a little older this time around. Don’t know if he’s wiser as well. He’s long been the darling of the spiritual progressives with his peace dept. plans and his consistent opposition to the war. I’ve met him and I like him. Any politician who reads Sri Aurobindo impresses me, and I’m told he does. However, he also strikes me as a little too far on the ideal side of the street, not balanced enough by the real. But he adds something to the debate, no question.
The press is already painting his campaign as a Clinton/Obama match-up. And they’re probably right. But several of the others are still impressive figures. I’m particularly struck by Biden and Richardson. But it's hard to see either of them beating out the front runners. Biden’s presence, at least, should seriously up-level the debates.
Posted by Carter Phipps at 12:08 PM | Comments (20)
Why Did I Do That?
People don't know why they do the things they do, yet they never lose their hunger for explanations. We obsess over behaviors as far flung as suicide bombers and saintly surrender, often being confused about what distinguishes one from the other. Presidents loathe being called mass murderers ('Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?'), yet no mass murderer has come within miles of ending as many lives as a wartime President does.
One could argue that civilization itself has been one long quest to answer the question "Why did I do that?" How we explain ourselves to ourselves becomes the very root of our belief system. Let's say that I do something extreme like steal your crops and burn your house down. Why did I do that? At various times in history the following explanations were sufficient:
--My people are stronger than yours. We take what we want.
--My God told me I belong to the chosen people, and you don't.
--I am part of a growing empire, out to conquer the world.
--I'm on a crusade to make the world Christian (or Muslim, Communist, Nazi, Maoist, etc.)
--I'm a patriot doing my patriotic duty.
These answers are all, in their way, positive. They have a certainty behind them, a strong sense of purpose. When asking "Why did I do that?" the answer could be that I don't know, or that I'm sick, neurotic, anxious, full of self-doubt. Those are very modern answers, children of the twentieth century. I could even be brain-washed like the citizens of North Korea. Recently, in light of research in neurology, I could be hard-wired for certain behaviors, or genetically predisposed. I could be a puppet of evolution. This hardly exhausts the list of possibilities, for there is always fantasy, delusion, romance, emotion, and true inspiration to take into account. God told me to do it. Love made me do it. I live only for art. It's altogether amazing that we know the reasons for anything we do, or that history provides enough space to explore half the possibilities.
If you can see your own complexity in this description, it's good to realize that the same tangled mesh encloses people you don't know, like child suicide bombers in Iraq, conscientious objectors in WW II, Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive in protest to the war in Vietnam, as well as equally inexplicable benign figures like Jesus and Mother Theresa. Because we can't fully know why we do things, we keep searching for new answers, and at the same time we try out the weirdest and most glorious possibilities.
Wisdom lies in being tolerant of your own complexity and then extending that tolerance to everyone else. At the present moment two kinds of intolerance exist that are both based on oversimplified answers to the question, "Why did I do that?" One oversimplification is science, which tries to reduce any behavior to a mechanistic, materialistic model. The other false answer holds that religious fanaticism is an all-powerful, utterly blind motivation. Neither is true. "Why did I do that?" remains one of the great mysteries of human existence, and we all should respect it.
Posted by Deepak Chopra at 08:06 AM | Comments (126)
The Oscars
Anyone have favorite movies they are rooting for to win an Oscar this Sunday? I have only seen
Dreamgirls and Little Miss Sunshine. I thought Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy were amazing. And Little Miss Sunshine was funny... Not sure if it would make my list for an Oscar though.
It wasn't a big movie year for me in 2006. I do want to see The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond. Any other must sees?
Posted by Mallika Chopra at 07:48 AM | Comments (29)
February 22, 2007
Massage of the Week - DIY Nasya Treatment
Nasya, in Ayurveda, is a nasal application of medication (usually herbal). It’s generally prescribed to open and clear the sinuses, balance kapha dosha, and to affect the function of the brain and nervous system. Here’s a simple do-it-yourself nasya treatment you can do at home to clean and lubricate the nose as well as release stress and tension.
Supplies needed:
¼ to ½ cup massage oil
Small saucepan of boiling water
Bath towel
Neti pot
2 pinches of sea salt
Ghee or Super Nasya Oil
Procedure:
1. Put the small saucepan of water on the stove and heat on high until boiling.
2. While the water is heating, massage the scalp and face with oil. Really scrub and move the scalp. Work the oil deeply into the tissues to loosen the muscles of the head. Also try pulling the hair (from the roots) a little bit to release tension – this should feel really good. When you massage the face, do lots of repetitive strokes. Circles over the temples, the forehead, the cheeks and jaw muscles. Do some deep strokes just under the cheekbones. Massage the sides of the nose, do a few strokes over the eyebrows, etc. The massage will help loosen everything up to be eliminated during your neti wash in step #4.
3. Once the water begins to boil, remove the pot from the heat. Have a seat at your dining table with the pan of steaming water in front of you on a pot holder or trivet. Drape the bath towel over both your head and the pot of steaming water to create a steam tent. Close your eyes and breathe in and out through your nose for three to five minutes, allowing the steam to penetrate into the nose and lungs. This will help to loosen mucous, open the pores in the skin, and allow the oils on the face and scalp to penetrate deeply into the tissues.
4. Fill your neti pot with luke-warm water, and add two pinches of sea salt. Once the salt has dissolved, use your neti pot (per the package directions) to wash out the nose.
5. Put 3 or 4 drops of warm ghee or Super Nasya Oil into the palm of one hand, and using the pinky finger of the other, apply the oil to the insides of each nostril. Go as deeply as you can without discomfort. Immediately lie down on your back for several minutes to allow the oil to penetrate into the nasal tissues. (You will probably want to put the bath towel under your head to keep the oil off your floor/furniture).
This DIY nasya treatment can be done daily before your morning shower or bath.
Posted by Grace Wilson at 09:30 PM | Comments (3)
HQR: Quantum Physics -- The Holotropic State
The key findings of Quantum Physics point towards Holistic Quantum Relativity and the Holotropic State, especially: 1. Dr David Bohm's work about the universe being made up of an "interconnected unbroken wholeness"; 2. The Non-Locality phenomena, ie, Bell's Theorem; and 3. The 'Observer Effect' implying that consciousness underlies all reality.
The Holotropic State
Points 1, 2 and 3 -- taken together -- have striking parallels with the timeless spiritual concepts that all reality is the manifestation of an Infinite Singularity -- Creative Principle -- which we may choose to name Self-Designing Source, Supra-Universal Consciousness