Monday, September 27, 2010

Human Ecology: A Richness of Human Capacity

Sugata Mitra said: "Education is a self organising system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon."

CNN have profiled a recent TED Talk that, in my view, is the educational way ahead for all societies around the world. Sugata Mitra's self organising educational experiment shows children naturally have the capacity and intelligence to teach themselves, and to learn for themselves, when given the chance.

Watch Sugata Mitra's: The Hole In The Wall Experiment

Self Organising Systems: "A self-organising system is one where the system structure appears without explicit intervention from outside the system."

Self Organising Systems also always show Emergence: "The appearance of a property not previously observed as a functional characteristic of the system."

During a Ted Talk in 2006, Ken Robinson said:
"Intelligence is wonderfuly interactive, it is not divided into departments."

"The education system has mined our minds in the same way we strip mine the Earth .. for a particular commodity .. and for the future it wont serve us .. We have to re-thing the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children." - Ted Talks: Ken Robinson

Human Communities Depend Upon A Diversity of Talent

Human beings have an incredible unused capacity to affect their environment in a profound and beautiful way, but that power has restrictions when the species is self-destructive, arrogant and selfish. We have to change, to change our environment.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

No Digging for Oil On Florida's Beaches

As the media have been ramping up government environmental claims of 'no oil pollution' in the Gulf of Mexico (apparently the oil has gone), and there are claims of almost no oil on the beaches .. the question is have microbes digested the oil, or is the oil lying at the bottom of the ocean and buried under the sandy Gulf beaches?

Well! Folks! If the oil is under the sand YOU are not allowed to dig it up!

Feds to reporter: No digging for oil on Florida's beaches .. Videos on CNN and reports across the Internet have been complaining about BP and the Feds stopping reporters from digging under the sand to find oil. "A Florida reporter looking for oil and tar balls in the Gulf Islands National Seashore last week was told by federal authorities that it was illegal to dig in the sand -- you know, on the beach." Onearth Report

Obviously, if the oil is not under the sand BP and the Feds would not be telling reporters it is illegal to dig in the sand looking for oil .. right! °>)

Even better is the story of BP's missing $500 million 'Research' funding of the effects of the spill on the Gulf .. apparently the money is just not going anywhere fast in terms of funding scientific research. "Thanks to these delays, key research opportunities in the wake of the spill could be missed." BP's missing research money

Read Onearth: Beyond Oil

Don't Dig Here Video

Friday, September 17, 2010

Wilderness Survival - Ray Mears

One of the things everyone should learn is how to light a wilderness fire and how to build an emergency wilderness shelter. In a real emergency, where there is no immediate sign of rescue, the difference between giving up and intelligent survival is the ability to create resources out of whatever is around you.

If you stop to think about the basics of your in-house resources .. they are WATER, shelter, heat (energy) and food. Water is pumped through pipes to your home, where if you are fortunate all you have to do is turn on the tap and clean fresh potable water flows out.

Shelter: bricks, stone, concrete or wood forms the walls of your home - sheltering you from the elements of heat, cold, wind, rain and snow .. but what would you do if that were not the case?

As a young child I had vivid dreams of 'the future' .. of towns and cities without power, floods destroying homes, earthquakes destroying homes, tidal waves, winds so strong they blew down houses .. and whether you want to believe it or not .. the ability to organize basic tools becomes the essential need of 'survival'.

I feel that people like Ray Mears are here to teach people - and connect people - with basic skills every human being should know .. no matter how technologically advanced they think they are.

I am vegetarian - I do not eat fish, meat nor seafood .. I was like this from early childhood .. it is just one of those things. However, I feel people should know how to survive in an emergency situation no matter what the circumstance.

Just stop to consider the fragile line your daily life requires for you to exist. You rely on electricity to heat or cool your home. You rely on water being pumped through pipes to your home (electricity). You rely on food provisions being delivered to your local store or supermarket. You rely on petrol to fill the gas tank of you vehicle.

No one teaches you how to build a basic wilderness shelter. No one teaches you how to build or light a fire in the wilderness. How many people know how to find food? How many people know how to survive an emergency without destroying the environment?

In a highly advanced society this kind of knowledge is also an essential part of the education of the people living in society. It is wrong to rely on a system so totally that should the system break down the majority of people die .. from lack of clean water, lack of food, lack of shelter and lack of fire!

I was taught the basics of living in the wilderness .. how to respect the environment .. where to build and where not to build a fire. How to build a fire. How to fish. I did not like to fish, but that is how I personally feel. Few people know how to skin and gut a rabbit. Most meat eaters do not know or cannot prepare food from an animal they have killed themselves. For example, do not eat the spinal intestine of a cooked lobster .. it may kill you '-)

In my own experience, eleven years of conventional schooling left me with next to no practical knowledge that can be applied to the real world. I was taught practical skills from unconventional sources or I learned and taught myself.

As we live in an increasingly volatile world, where nature can unleash catastrophic deluge, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, blackouts, earthquakes, hurricanes or flooding .. it makes sense that humans learn the basics of elementary survival.

Ray Mears In Sweden: Part 1

I like ray Mears, because he also teaches people to respect the Earth.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Water, Fire and Ice

Major floods in China, North Korea and Pakistan - mudslides in Guatemala, Mexico and Central America. Fires raging across Russia, the most recent fires destroying towns in Siberia .. and ice? In the last two years isolated communities in Peru have experienced such severe cold that young children cannot be protected - they get sick and they die.

In Mongolia nomadic herdsmen have lost most of their animals due to the extreme cold. The polar ice caps seem to be melting fast, and then not so fast .. sea passages are opening up in regions once covered in thick ice - but in some areas ice is building up while ice in other polar regions is melting ..

Water, fire and ice in our dramatically changing world are all part of one phenomenon. In my view this phenomenon is 'magnetic'. I have observed nature all my life since I was a little kid. I pay attention to everything I see .. watching the temperature, how the trees and plants react .. watching the clouds or a clear sky, the rain, rainbows, the small and tiny plants growing unseen in the cracks of the road. I do not think when I am observing the macro and the micro world of nature, I simply look and I do not analyse what I see.

Since my earliest childhood I have known that nature has its own language, and that out of that language humans pluck ideas - like ripe fruit from a tree. However, the language of nature is silent and non-linear .. it just is .. and the human mind has the encoding to listen to, be aware of and understand that language in a unique way.

The way I understand nature is through the flux and ebb of magnetism. The polar caps are not simply thinning and melting away, in some areas they are increasing in thickness. The heat waves are not consistent, they hit an area and then recede, next year they hit another area while at the same time other areas of the world are experiencing the most extreme rains in living memory.

In South Germany I observed two years of extreme heat, where dark black fungi ate away at the leaves of the forest trees. Everything growing seemed covered in a powdery grey fungus, even the hedge leaves, dandelion leaves, silver weed, acacia, sweet cherry and beech. All growth was stunted, only common grass seemed immune to the heat and this dusty fungal growth. The bark of the acacia trees were clearly covered in this heat related substance .. but they survived.

This is why you have to observe and pay attention as your ancestors did. I watched the plants, fruit trees, forest trees and the dandelions over the following two years where everything recovered, grew strong and either formed an immunity .. or adapted. The black fungus receded, the hot weather also receded (it moved to Russia). I put that down to Eyjafjallajökul issuing forth the Iceland Volcanic eruption in April 2010.

Volcanic ash is a conductor of electrical current and magnetic current, and these ionic particles energize or re-energize the living atmosphere. There is the potential for intense electrical storms, and the way I see it for weather stimulation. I may be wrong, but this is what comes to mind. Increased electrical charge, multiplication of ions, alteration of ionic charge due to the volcanic activity brings powerfully charged electrical storms and powerful rain storms.

Just imagine that, you (we/all of us) are spirit-energy inhabiting physical matter, and the human brain inside the skull is born of nature, is born of the Earth .. so you brain grows like a mushroom or a tree. It is born of nature .. which means you have the codes of knowledge born of the source of nature - just like an animal has, or a tree or a rock. You have natural information and you have natural understanding. You are an undivided part of nature.

If you pay attention you may become aware that there are ongoing local as well as worldwide magnetic flux changes, and these changes are affecting the weather. If you access the ancestral knowing you will discover that these changes are totally normal. This is the bio-pulse of the planet(s). In 2010 we are getting answers to mysteries. What affected Egypt? What caused the decline of great civilizations across India, China and Tibet? What caused the demise of the mysterious stone-builders in the Highlands of Scotland, across South England and in Ireland? What happened to the Toltek civilizations or the Anasazi Pueblo people?

Look at what is happening in Pakistan! Today's 'false science' teaches that rivers and galaciers gradually change over millions of years, slowly grinding down rocks and slowly shifting silt. Stop and look at what is happening in China and Pakistan. Incredible, massive movements of water are reshaping the landscape - and this is what happened to our ancestors.

You have the 'memory' inside you .. this is nothing new .. encoded ancestral information of the cycles are there inside the human genes, inside the brain, inside the human mind for anyone to access.

Every so many thousand years the Earth goes through radical cleansing and a renewal process. Mass flooding, fires, ice melting, ice growing, volcanic activity, earthquakes, tidal fluctuations, mud slides .. are all part of the way the basic ground of the planet renews itself. In relation to these natural changes we humans are like ants. This process of land and river renewal alters the environment over hundreds of years. We have to adapt to those changes ..

People are born and people die .. we humans are also a renewable resource. Part of the Earth ..

Monday, September 06, 2010

Amazing Outdoor Oven Bread

Okay! Continuing my bread baking series .. I think I have become a 'bread geek' on top of being a computer geek .. and here is an interesting YouTube video of a guy baking his own bread in a 'primitive' outdoor oven of stones.

Pretty neat style!

Video: Making and Baking Bread in a little earth oven

If you have never baked your own bread .. it does not always turn out as the best bread in the world .. because  baking bread is a living science. There are good days and there are bad days. Atmosphere, air moisture, moon cycles and air pressure all play their part in the activation of and behavior of yeast cells.

So, this outdoor oven bread (in the video) is even more amazing, because when you bake outdoors you have to know and understand the temperature of the stone oven and the effect, plus the way you work with the stone oven to be able to make a really good bread!

In addition I also found a nice site on the secrets of Italian Bread, with recipes and pretty good guidance on how to bake a variety of Italian style breads.

A special thank you also to the millions of yeast cells .. °°° .. ;-)