[p2p-research] Fwd: New at SynEarth, on human neutrality, open source space satellite's and more

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Timothy Wilken, MD <timothy.wilken at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 12:05 AM
Subject: New at SynEarth
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>




News of the Best of Times and the Worst of Times - Living in Paradox


 Human Neutrality

*Future Positive*<http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2010/11/front-page-599/> —
Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Today human life is not synergic. Most of
humanity are ignorant of the natural law of Synergy. Most humans ignore or
hurt each other. Most humans ignore or hurt the environment. This is the
source of nearly all our current problems.

In the free world, we have created a system of human Neutrality as a
mechanism to avoid the loss of Adversity. This is the system that brought us
capitalism and the great market.

Remember that the neutral relationship originates in the plant world.
Sunlight provides unlimited energy for the plants. And so each individual
plant needs only the sun, and adequate water and minerals to survive. Plants
are solar energy collectors. They use the sun’s radiant energy in
photosynthesis to manufacture glucose, carbohydrates and other plant cells.
Individual plants do not relate to each other. They relate only to the earth
and the sun.

No plant will deliberately hurt another plant, its success or failure
depends solely on its own efforts. Individual plants have no relationship
with each other. Plants have no awareness of each other, they ignore each
other. To survive as a plant, you must be self-sufficient. Plants are the
truly independent. They need no other life form to survive. Each plant lives
or dies on its own. If it sits luckily in the Sun with an abundance of solar
energy, it does not assist its brother in the shade. The motto of plants
could be to live and let live.

The values of human Neutrality parallel the laws of plant neutrality. Free
and independent citizens relate to each other as equals. They are prohibited
from hurting another free and independent citizen, but that are not required
to help another citizen.

The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market
with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price.

*FAIR TRADE –def–> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair – to
insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither
party loses.*

Human Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe
place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be
injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold
at a fair price. All citizens are guaranteed freedom from loss.

In the free market of Neutrality, our identities and personal relationships
are unimportant. We purchase products anonymously, usually without knowing
the seller’s name, or he ours. When I enter McDonalds to purchase my lunch,
I see only the product, the hamburger stacked in the warmer. I ignore the
clerk. I don’t know her name or her story. I see the hamburger, that’s what
I want. The clerk behind the counter ignores me. She doesn’t know my name or
my story. She sees my five dollars, that’s what she wants.

The store is clean and I feel safe. I expect the kitchen is clean and I will
get a good product for a fair price. We will trade. We will speak the
neutral words of the trading ritual. I never knowing her name, she never
knowing mine. “May I help you?” “Thank you and have a nice day.” We trade.
(11/29/10)

more… <http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2010/11/front-page-599/>


 What’s Really Behind QE2?

*CommUnity of Minds*<http://solutions.synearth.net/2010/11/working-together-1095/>
—
Ellen Brown writes: In QE1, the Fed bought $1.2 trillion in toxic
mortgage-backed securities off the books of the banks. QE1 mirrored TARP,
the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, except that TARP was funded
by the government with $700 billion in taxpayer money. QE1 was funded by the
Federal Reservewith computer
keystrokes<http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/26/129451895/how-to-spend-1-25-trillion>,
simply by crediting the banks’ reserve accounts at the Fed.

Pundits were predicting that QE2 would be more of the same, but it turned
out to be something quite different. Immediately after the election,
Bernanke announced that the Fed would be using its power to purchase assets
to buy federal securities on the secondary market — from banks, bond
investors and hedge funds. (In the EU, the European Central Bank began a
similar policy when it bought Greek bonds on the secondary market.) The bond
dealers would then be likely to use the money to buy more Treasuries,
increasing overall Treasury sales.

The bankers who applauded QE1 were generally critical of QE2, probably
because they would get nothing out of it. They would have to give up their
interest-bearing bonds for additional cash reserves, something they already
have more of than they can use. Unlike QE1, QE2 was designed, not to help
the banks, but to relieve the pressure on the federal budget.

Bernanke said the Fed would buy $600 billion in long-term government bonds
at the rate of $75 billion per month, filling the hole left by China. An
estimated $275 billion would also be rolled over into Treasuries from the
mortgage-backed securities the Fed bought during QE1, which are now reaching
maturity. More QE was possible, he said, if unemployment stayed high and
inflation stayed low (measured by the core Consumer Price Index).

Addison Wiggin noted in his November 4 Five Minute
Forecast<http://5minforecast.agorafinancial.com/category/agora-five-minute-forecast/>
that
this essentially meant the Fed planned to monetize the whole deficit for the
next eight months. He quoted Agora Financial’s Bill Bonner:

If this were Greece or Ireland, the government would be forced to cut back.
With quantitative easing ready, there is no need to face the music.

That was meant as a criticism, but you could also see it as a very good
deal. Why pay interest to foreign central banks when you can get the money
nearly interest-free from your own central bank? In eight months, the Fed
will own more Treasuries than China and Japan
combined<http://www.zerohedge.com/article/m2-update-first-decline-after-16-consecutive-increases>,
making it the largest holder of government securities outside the government
itself. (11/28/10)

more… <http://solutions.synearth.net/2010/11/working-together-1095/>


 The ‘open source’ Path to Space

*BBC Science and
Technology*<http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jonathanamos/2010/11/uk-takes-open-source-route-int.shtml>
—
The fundamental barrier to greater space activity is the cost of access. If
people didn’t have to part with squillions to get up there, far more
spacecraft would go into orbit than is currently the case. And it’s a
problem that amplifies itself as well.

High launch prices drive the need for big, rigorously tested spacecraft.
They have to be that way because when you’ve paid so much to launch, you
have to make damn sure your bird works. In-orbit failure is simply
unthinkable. Add in insurance premiums and licences and the costs spiral
still further. It works against innovation, too. Taking risks is, well,
risky. So doing space is a process that is necessarily conservative. If only
we could lower launch costs, the spiral might unwind; there would be more
opportunity and hopefully even greater innovation.

So while we wait for the truly reusable, low-cost launch vehicle, what’s to
be done?

Well, some have gone down the CubeSat route - the roughly 1kg, 10cm-square
boxes that come in standard form and can be launched en-masse as secondary
passengers on rockets. It’s an approach that can dramatically reduce a
mission bill. We’re talking tens to a few hundred thousand pounds as opposed
to tens to a few hundred million pounds. The compact boxes are proper
spacecraft, just in miniature. They have a structure, solar panels, onboard
processing, attitude control, comms and - increasingly - very capable
payloads. It’s a challenge of course to do missions where the available
power is measured in the odd watt, but we know from our mobile phones just
how much function can be packed into a very small space.

And in CubeSats now, teams are trying to do many of the same things that
have always been done in space - astronomy, Earth observation, space weather
studies, microgravity and biology experiments, technology demonstration,
etc. CubeSats will never be a match for their multi-tonne cousins, but they
do represent a more inclusive kind of space activity where far more people
could realistically get involved in a project. (11/28/10)

more…<http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jonathanamos/2010/11/uk-takes-open-source-route-int.shtml>


 A Great Opportunity for the Mammals

*BBC Science* <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11820961> —
Writing in the journal Science, researchers say mammals rapidly filled the
“large animal” void left by the dinosaurs’ demise 65 million years ago. They
then went from creatures weighing between 3g and 15kg to a hugely diverse
group including 17-tonne beasts. Further growth was capped by temperature
and land availability, the scientists believe.

Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, US, and
colleagues looked at the fossil record of mammals to plot their course
through the ages. They concluded that the rise of the mammals was by no
means inevitable, and owes most to the chance obliteration of the dinosaurs,
be it by comet, asteroid or another event.

“Mammals actually evolved almost around the same time as dinosaurs, about
210 million years ago,” she told BBC News. “And for the first 140 million
years, we were basically vermin scurrying around the feet of the dinosaurs
and not really doing much of anything. A comet came and hit the Earth and
killed off all dinosaurs… and mammals as a class probably had
characteristics that helped them survive that impact.”

She believes most were burrowers that lived through the ensuing
environmental mayhem largely underground, feeding on whatever food they
could find, be it plant or meat. “What came out of that impact at the end of
the Cretaceous period was a bunch of really small mammals that were not
particularly diverse, probably not much more than a kilo,” said Professor
Smith. (11/28/10)

more… <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11820961>


 Goldilocks Planet just right for Life

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11444022>*BBC
Science<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11444022>
* — Astronomers have detected an Earth-like exoplanet that may have just the
right kind of conditions to support life. Gliese 581g lies some 20
light-years away in its star’s “Goldilocks zone” - a region surface
temperatures would allow the presence of liquid water. Scientists say that
the newly found world could also potentially have an atmosphere.

Their findings, made with the Keck telescope in Hawaii, appear in the
Astrophysical Journal. The researchers, from the University of California at
Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, have been
studying the movement of the planet’s parent star, a red dwarf called Gliese
581, for 11 years. Their observations have revealed a number of exoplanets
spinning around the star. Possibility of life

Recently they discovered two new alien worlds, so together with the previous
findings, this brings the number of planets orbiting Gliese 581 to six. But
the most important new revelation is that one of those worlds might be the
most Earth-like planet yet identified.

“Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable
planet,” said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at UCSC. “The fact that we were
able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets
like this must be really common.”

Gliese 581g has a mass about three to four times that of Earth. It orbits
its sun in 37 days and is thought to be a rocky world. It has enough gravity
to possibly have an atmosphere. Gliese 581g is located in its star’s
“Goldilocks zone” - a zone in space where temperatures are neither too hot
nor too cold for liquid water.

Such a zone defines the region in a star-centered orbit where an Earth-like
planet could sustain that water on its surface - and therefore life. “We had
planets on both sides of the habitable zone - one too hot and one too cold -
and now we have one in the middle that’s just right,” said Dr Vogt. The
planet’s average surface temperature is estimated to be between -12C and
-31C. (11-19-10)

more… <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11444022>


 Ireland: Skin in the Game

*The Automatic Earth*<http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-17-2010-ireland-skin-in-game.html>
 — *Ilargi: *Let’s start off with what Tom McGurk wrote in Ireland’s Sunday
Business Post:

Time to reclaim the land that is rightfully
ours<http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/time-to-reclaim-the-land-that-is-rightfully-ours-52816.html>

“Last Thursday, a group of ten leading economists wrote to the Irish Times,
arguing that some form of mortgage debt forgiveness was not only essential
for our society, but also for the economy.

“The group argued that, were mortgage debt forgiveness not introduced - and
radical reform not introduced to our debt and bankruptcy laws - then our
financial crisis would only deepen. At the core of their argument was the
following assertion: ‘‘As there are three parties to the problem - the
banks, the regulator (ie the state) and the individual - these three must
also be part of the solution.”

“With the government having insisted on a year’s grace for home
repossessions by the banks, we are currently in some sort of unreal
financial hiatus. It means that the full dimensions of the crisis to come
are still hidden.

“But late next year, when property and water taxes have been introduced -
and when interest rates begin to rise, as they surely must - then the
personal debt crisis has the potential to become the most serious crisis in
the history of the state.

“If the banks attempt a process of mass repossession next year, then they
must be met by organized citizens’ action. Boycotting was invented in 19th
century Ireland, and the time to use it again may be now.”

The problem here is that, if we restrict ourselves to looking at recent
events, operations like QE2 and the impending bail-out of Ireland all play
out against a backdrop that hasn’t changed one iota from that of earlier
bailouts in the past three years, even if the media and public attention
have shifted away from it. That is to say, while these measures are being
presented as being beneficial for ‘the people’, they’re in actual fact the
exact opposite.

If there’s one common theme in all of this, it’s that the one and only
haircuts involved involve taxpayers; they conveniently get to pay the entire
bill.

Financial restructurings of bankrupt and failed institutions have routinely
always, and should, involve and hurt everyone with “skin in the game”.
Hence, bondholders, stockholders, taxpayers et al should divide losses among
them. And that’s what usually happens, or at least should happen. In the
present situation, however, it does not.

Now we can argue that this has a lot to do with the fact that financial
institutions have dramatically increased their level of political power in
recent years, and that argument would most certainly be valid. (11/19/10)

more…<http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-17-2010-ireland-skin-in-game.html>




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