Saint Francis

Today is the Feast of St. Francis.

What have you done lately for the birds and the other creatures of the Earth?

Why Francis is the Patron of Ecology

- listener

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Howard Dean on Bush's SCHIP Veto

This morning, President Bush rejected health care for children. Now it's time for Democrats to reject President Bush.

If we can get 2/3 of Congress to stand up to President Bush, we can overturn his veto on the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- a program that provides health insurance for millions of kids.

We need your help to get those votes.

We've set up a simple tool that will allow you to write a letter and send it to your members of Congress instantly. Send your Senators and Representative a message telling them to stand up to George Bush:

http://www.democrats.org/FightForKids

George Bush made a cold political calculation this morning. He could have signed this bi-partisan bill into law, or he could have pandered to conservatives who didn't want to see the Children's Health Insurance Program get the funding it needs.

He decided to pander -- and millions of kids will suffer for it.

What makes this veto worse is that George Bush will spend billions of dollars in Iraq, some of it on contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton, while denying millions of children needed doctors' visits or medicine here at home.

On top of that, all of the Republican candidates for president support his veto.

Democrats are in the majority for a reason. Send a message to your Senators and Representative and let them know why that is:

http://www.democrats.org/FightForKids

This past week, Graeme Frost, a 12 year old from Baltimore, Maryland, delivered this week's Democratic Radio Address.

Graeme is a brave young man. Three years ago, his family was in a serious car accident. Graeme was in a coma for a week, suffered severe brain trauma, and had to re-learn how to eat and walk.

Graeme is alive today because of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. As he said last weekend:

"My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but the hospital bills were huge. We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program.

"I don't know why President Bush wants to stop kids who really need help from getting CHIP. All I know is I have some really good doctors. They took great care of me when I was sick, and I'm glad I could see them because of the Children's Health Program."

Families like the Frosts need your help. You can hear Graeme talk about his experience and send a message to your Senators and Representative right here:

http://www.democrats.org/FightForKids

As a doctor, I've seen our country's health care crisis first-hand.

I've seen parents that have to wait for their kids to get dangerously sick before they could take them to a doctor. I've seen parents struggle over important medical care decisions because they didn't know how to pay for it. And I've seen parents left in poverty because they had no other choice.

But you don't have to be a doctor to understand the importance of health insurance for our nation's kids. Just ask any mother or father whose child has been sick, and they'll all tell you the same thing: that there's nothing more important to them than making sure their kids are healthy.

As governor of Vermont, 96% of the children in my state had health insurance. That's the sort of commitment our country needs -- and the sort of commitment President Bush doesn't have.

The American people elected a Democratic majority last fall to stand up to President Bush's misguided priorities. Remind your Senators and Representative just what the American people stand for.

http://www.democrats.org/FightForKids

Sincerely,
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

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Just Hanging Out Together, Thinking Green

- Photo by listener

Lucy: Make the scene with green.

Snoopy: Hang loose with chartreuse!

And, in the immortal words of Kermit The Frog: It's not easy being green.

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Open Thread

Talk amongst yourselves...

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Drowning in "sleep debt"

Originally posted at My Left Wing

Well, this is a timely subject for me to be covering with my introductory psychology students.

Each of us has a specific daily sleep requirement. The average sleep requirement for college students is well over eight hours, and the majority of students would fall within the range of this value plus or minus one hour. If this amount is not obtained, a sleep debt is created. All lost sleep accumulates progressively as a larger and larger sleep indebtedness. Furthermore, your sleep debt does not go away or spontaneously decrease. The only way to reduce your individual sleep debt is by obtaining extra sleep over and above your daily requirement.

So, here I am, up to my eyeballs in sleep debt. How am I supposed to get out of debt? By sleeping, one would presume. Except that I get into this ironic-sounding but very real state of "overtired" and I can't. But now, at least I have something new to worry about during those sleepless hours.

Like, if I can't get sleep on my own, and I have to pay off this sleep debt, what options do I have? Go to the sleep bank to take out a loan? Maybe my credit isn't good, and I'd be forced to go to a sleep loan shark. What do they do if you can't pay on time. Instead of breaking your legs, maybe they burn your mattress...

Sleep researcher William Dement--who wrote the article I excerpted above--has said that a large sleep debt "makes you stupid". At very least, as evidenced above, it is making my jokes stupid.

Jokes aside, though, this has been on my mind a lot lately. I think we hear these things about how much sleep we need, and how unhealthy it is to rack up a huge sleep debt, many of us are inclined to nod seriously, but then file that away with all the other "shoulds" that most of us ignore. And I wonder if there's something in the Western, "rugged individualist" mindset that tells us we're supposed to be able to "conquer the natural world", even when it comes to our own biological needs. I can't say exactly where, but I picked up an idea like that somewhere along the line. The idea that I should be able to "overcome" tiredness by sheer force of will. Or the idea that, if my schedule is packed and I can't fit everything in, sleep is an area where I can cut some corners.

I'm coming to realize that I can't, and that I need to listen to what my body is telling me.

Anyway, as I said in a comment that's attached to the My Left Wing essay, the upshot of all of this of all of this is that, when I take a realistic look at where I have to "cut corners", I realize that blogging is one area where I need to do that. Along with following political and news stories and getting outraged about them. Hopefully I can work some of that back into my life once I regain some "balance".

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Talk Like a Quaker Day is October 24

Via jeanne_d_arc's Livejournal

In the same vein as International Talk Like a Pirate Day and National Quaker Week in the UK, I have decided to declare October (Tenth Month) 24 (which just so happens to be United Nations Day and William Penn's birthday) as International Talk Like a Quaker Day.

Participants can use such sentences as:
"Mind the Light!"
"Friend, I'm afraid I must elder thee for what thee said on First Day."
"Today is the 24th day of Tenth Month, 2007."
"Walk cheerfully all over the Earth."
"George, thy foreign policy is not in keeping with the Peace Testimony."

If you are thinking that most modern-day Quakers don't talk like that, just keep in mind that most modern-day pirates don't talk the way a celebrant of International Talk Like a Pirate Day would. Indeed, most pirates today sail the waters near Indonesia (and may not even speak English) or create bootleg software and illegal copies of movies (and therefore use techno jargon).

Please spread the word! If someone feels Led to create a website for the day, so much the better.

Okay, the blog isn't much to look at so far, but I can purty it up later. :) Maybe I can persuade Demetrius to create a graphic for it.

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Updated Shared Items

I've added a number of stories to my shared items.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Update from Renee--I just changed the image that accompanies this thread. It's still the same thread as yesterday. Will get something new up later today.

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Another open thread

Greetings from my zombie alter ego...




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Open Thread

Seen in the international foods aisle at a local grocery store...

By the way, Demetrius has been working on some new designs. And "Stephen Colbear" has a few things to say...

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The Maharishi Effect

The Maharishi Effect is the phenomenon of the rise of coherence in the collective consciousness of any community. Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that when one per cent of the population of a city or town practices Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation Programme, the crime rate significantly decreases. Similarly, when groups of individuals practicing Maharishi’s TM-Sidhi programme with Yogic Flying equal at least the square root of one per cent of a population, there is a significant reduction of crime and accidents, as well as an increase in stock prices, decreased pollution, decreased unemployment, and decreased hostilities between nations.

When I first signed on with The Heart Coherence Team, I was wondering how we were going to get 10% of the world's population hooked up to Gizmo. That's about 700 million units, and a daunting task for any relatively unknown corporate venture, and an impossibly lofty goal for a humble street musician. However, the square root of 1% of Earth's population is about 7000. Now THAT'S a manageable short term goal!

One of the things that Gizmo does, is it quantifies the meditation process in individual and group settings. Meditation produces internal coherence and, according to scientific studies of the Maharishi Effect, also tends bring coherence to surrounding systems, including the collective consciousness. Excerpt:

Just as a radio transmitter can create waves in the electromagnetic field, individuals constantly create influences on all parts of creation simply because consciousness permeates every aspect of the material universe. To illustrate, if a stone is thrown into a pond, waves are produced that travel throughout the pond. Each wave produces some effect in every part of the pond. Similarly, the wave of individual life, through its activity, produces an influence in all parts of the cosmos.

On the basis of this same principle, the direct experience of self-referral consciousness influences every aspect of the universe, enlivening it with the perfect order and harmony inherent within self-referral consciousness. For this reason, groups of individuals can create very powerful effects in the environment...through their self-referral practice, they enliven every aspect of the universe by stimulating its most fundamental constituent, consciousness, and they especially enliven the collective consciousness of the city or province or nation in which they are located.

I found this Iowa experiment very interesting:

Another researcher found in 1990 that a significant decline in crime rate, traffic fatality rate, and unemployment (also combined in an index) in the state of Iowa, USA, as a result of the coherence creating group at Maharishi International University (p’s < .05 for each variable). This researcher employed Box-Jenkins time series transfer function analysis of the effect of group size on quality of life.

Effects on National Life

A number of studies have demonstrated significant effects on the quality of life in an entire nation from a coherence creating group. These include decreased crime and accident rates in Holland during three intervention periods (all p’s < .025); increase in the British stock market index (1983); using Box-Jenkins time series impact assessment analysis, researchers in the U.S.A. found a decrease (p = .005) in traffic fatalities when a coherence creating group in Iowa exceeded the square root of one per cent of the nation’s population (1984).

So over the course of a still undetermined amount of time, "Team Gizmo" will place 7000 units worldwide and gather them into the Global Heartlink. (We are currently at about the square root of 1% of the population of Holland.) My guess is that along the way we will be conducting experiments in what the focused intent of a group is capable of in real time. That should be fascinating!

The Astral Technician

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Open Thread

Last swim of the season--with doggies.

Here's a picture of our golden retriever mix, Winnie, meeting a new friend.

This event was actually supposed to take place two weeks earlier, but was cancelled due to rain early in the afternoon. Once the rain had cleared, Daughter and I put Winnie in the car and headed up to the pool. When we arrived, there had only been a few cars there--belonging to other disappointed dog owners who were discovering that the "Doggie Paddle" had been cancelled.

The next week, I was pleased to learn that the event had been rescheduled, and as we pulled up to the pool yesterday, we were met with a decidedly full parking lot. And a quick look inside the park revealed lots of dogs having a good time. I couldn't help thinking of the scene at the end of Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman (who Daughter in Ohio used to call A. B. Beastman).

A dog party!
A big dog party!
Big dogs, little dogs,
red dogs, blue dogs,
yellow dogs, green dogs,
black dogs, and white dogs
are all at a dog party!
What a dog party!

Of course, the dogs at the pool were just the ordinary dog colors, and they weren't partying at the top of a tree, but it was definitely a dog party. And a good, wet, time was had by all.

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By Their Fruits

This week the Senate voted on an amendment popularly known as the MoveOn Amendment. It's statement of purpose reads:

To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

It passed with a vote of 72 to 25 (3 senators not voting). Below is a list of the Democrats who voted for the amendment:

Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea

Both Massachusetts senators voted against.

I am disappointed, more that the Senate wasted time on this silly, symbolic vote than on the results. They have more important things to do. Yet, this amendment hardly comes as a surprise. The Republicans take every oppertunity - manufacture oppertunities - to flont their support for the troops. I don't understand why the Democrats listed above went along with this cheap bit of windowdressing, but that they did shouldn't distract us from the facts.

In every vote in recent years that has actually mattered, such as appropriations for the VA (to provide for those troops who have been wounded and must go through the remainder of their lives with devastating physical and/or psychological injuries), the Republicans form a solid bloc voting "No," while the Democrats form a solid bloc voting "Yes."

Our Lord said, "By their fruits shall ye know them." The MoveOn vote is a silly, childish distraction. Yes, the numver of Democrats who voted in favor annoys any sensible person. But, it is a distraction. Is it more important that these senators voted for this amendment or that they consistently vote for measures that actually support the troops, as well as the rest of the American populus?

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The Jena Six

You'll note that I've added a new banner to the left sidebar. I added it after seeing this post by field negro at My Left Wing. Apparently the big blogs are ignoring this story. Posting the link here doesn't exactly compensate for that, nor can I write much of a stirring entreaty, since I have just barely begun to learn the details of the story myself. But I figured I should at least give it what small bit of additional exposure I can offer.

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Friday Open Thread

Today is the International Day of Peace



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Thursday Open Thread

Dale Chihuly, born September 20, 1941

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Wednesday Open Thread

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Are ye ready t' celebrate?

Ye can find more pirate fun here, includin' th' translator I used t' write this post!

'n look--Stephen Colbear has even gotten into th' holiday spirit!

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Tuesday Open Thread

Lance Armstrong, born September 18, 1971:

"At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."

Oh, and on this date in 1895, Daniel David Palmer gave the first chiropractic adjustment.

Shared items here.

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Monday Open Thread

Hildegard of Bingen, died September 17, 1179

Read more about her here.

Today is also Constitution Day.

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A Gathering of Gizmos

This week I begin a new challenge. I will attempt to locate all of the Gizmos in the world and do a follow up on what is currently being done with them. Starting with their Yahoo User Group, and then seeking further information from the inventor. I want to seek out individual stories, but I also want to locate folks who are using Gizmo in clinical research, and gather their work into a database that all the users can learn from.

From there, I'll begin to gather those who own these units into the Harmonic Module chat room to conduct real time experiments on linking hearts in various locations around the world.A member of the team named Marc will be tweaking the Module controls (which make my eyes glaze over) so that there will be push button sign up similar to Yahoo Messenger, and he's even talking about adding a "Second Life" type of game platform in the future.

This all should keep me busy well into October, as I prepare for my final Holiday Extravaganza. My life is changing so quickly, and I'm really looking forward to what's on the other side of the changes.

Namaste,

The Astral Technician

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Headline: Spy Master Admits Error

From the comments last night, Demetrius posted this link:

Spy Master Admits Error

Intel czar Mike McConnell told Congress a new law helped bring down a terror plot. The facts say otherwise.

Sept. 12, 2007 - In a new embarrassment for the Bush administration's top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany.

More here.

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