Vacant lot by the bluff

The day was beautiful so I took some time to walk around the corner to the vacant lot, with my camera.

The lot, showing bluff, apartment buildings, grass, trees and flowers.

California poppies are the first to catch the eye…

…shown sharing the field with alyssum.

Their orange flowers are unmistakeable.

The small trees are alders.

A wild daisy makes the perfect landing pad…

Last year’s teasel stands tall.

They thrive in disturbed soil.

The cliff beneath the bluff is man-made.

A dandelion flower survives in the cliff’s shade.

What If: Students were paid to go to school?

I just heard a story on NPR about how Los Angeles Public Schools decided to no longer suspend students for intentionally violating rules.
Also, TED recently did an event on education and has been publishing those presentations on their site.
So, it all came together for me:

Going to school for a kid is like going to work for an adult.

So, why shouldn’t they get paid?

For a long time, schools were seen as services available to families who could afford them. Then some governments decided that “an education” should be available to every child, and free of direct cost to the families. Eventually, many governments made going to school for children below a certain age compulsory. We can only assume that this was to help make the parents (both) available to work in the factories. Politically, it was sold to Americans in the 1920s as a way to “Americanize” recent waves of foreign immigrants. Today, the US compulsory education movement is seen as having anti-Catholic motivations.

Like adults have to work to make enough money to really live, if children have to go to school, that makes it like a job for a kid, doesn’t it? Most kids don’t think of it as a service. Some parents do. Who was really behind compulsory education? It’s hard to say. But due to its cost, I think it must have been someone pretty powerful.

Since the 1970s, I have personally questioned the implied equivalence of education with schooling. In fact, there are many ways to get an education, and only one of those ways is to go to schools, much less public schools. Children are seen as unwilling participants in the process, but that is not really true. They just don’t like being told they have to do something when they don’t see anything in it for them. Some would say that’s part of being a kid, part of getting “socialized.” But that’s a lie, too. It’s just how things are set up here on earth, in most “modern” countries.

Children are just people with small bodies who are encouraged to pretend that they are “stupid” so that they can be “educated.” The whole paradigm is actually quite ridiculous. It serves certain interests, so it has support in some important places. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If kids could demand to be paid to “work” at school, or choose not to go at all, social life on earth would be a different game. A game, I think, that would have more respect for kids and what they really know.

A view from the bluff

The view from where I live, looking roughly north.

I live on a bluff. Opposite are the buildings owned by the company where I work. In this photo, you can see the route I take each weekday morning on my way to work.

In the valley is a little creek. It is one of the few protected areas in this region. On the communications tower live two hawks; their domain is inhabited by rabbits, geese, ducks, a variety of other birds, snakes, and at least one coyote (I’ve seen it).

On another day I may go with my camera down there – there is a bike/exercise path that goes through – and take some photos for you.

This weekend marked the grand opening of a totally renovated Church of Scientology building in Portland. I helped a bit on its “files project,” as I did at Seattle while its building was being renovated. I would have liked to go, but the time and expense involved in getting there was more than I could confront. That does not mean the occasion was not momentous. In the grand scheme of things, our churches do very important work. I doubt it will ever be officially recognized.

So I stayed home and worked on setting up my work area. Below is what it looks like so far.

I don’t need it excessively fancy. Part of my experiment now is to re-purpose mass-manufactured electronic goods for personal use, and some of the results of that experiment are illustrated in this photo.

As I have mentioned previously, we have an amazing thrift shop in Pullman (Palouse Treasures) not far from where I live, and it has helped me to stock my work bench with power supplies, tools, and organizing bins.

Though I do miss re-PC and the huge Goodwill Outlet in Seattle, Palouse Treasures always has something interesting for the discerning shopper!

My electronics work bench, as of this date.

Larry visits Idaho

Pullman entrance to the Chipman Trail

Idaho is only about 6 miles from Pullman, so it wasn’t that long a trip!

The area was experiencing an inversion. Warm air pushing down from the east. Temperatures around 80°F and dry. I couldn’t resist going out for a bike ride. I didn’t pack water because I didn’t think I would stay out long. But after an interesting visit to Palouse Treasures thrift shop, I set out to see if the North end of the Pullman bike trail connected to the Chipman Trail. And sure enough, it did!

So I went out on it. My basic purpose after getting under way was to reach someplace where I could get some water. This happened just across the Idaho border, at the Moscow (weird name for a Western town!) Walmart. That’s about six miles out on the trail; I skipped the last mile and came back.

There were quite a few people using the trail. A few walkers and runners. A lot of bikers. And a group of student-age people riding bikes, skateboards, roller skates (a church group?). The trail follows the creek, so is somewhat scenic, unlike much of the surrounding area, except on a grand scale (the rolling hills). If you slow down and watch you’ll see lots of birds. And a few butterflies and insects were out.

The ride “up” to Idaho is indeed uphill (though very slight gradient – maybe 100 feet in 7 miles) but was also against the odd east wind. But as I glided back down towards Pullman I thought: What a joy this is! The greenery, the birds, the rustling grass. The sun twinkling in the moving water of the creek. What a simple pleasure!

I wish everyone on the planet could enjoy such things!

Info sign at Pullman entrance to the Chipman Trail.

Earth Day

According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, the first “Earth Day” held on 22 April 1970 was an environmental “teach in” scheduled during Spring break so more students could attend. The mastermind behind it was apparently US Senator Gaylord Nelson.

However, six months earlier, an Earth Day to be observed on the Spring Equinox was proposed to UNESCO by Christian peace activist John McConnell. The idea was supported by U Thant and subsequent UN Secretaries General, and March 20th is still the official date for the UN’s version of Earth Day.

In the United States, the April 22 observation date persists.

Steven Greer

Steven Greer is a medical doctor from North Carolina (licensed to practice in Virginia) who for some reason got involved in the subject of visitors from outer space. He had at least two childhood experiences along this line.

Greer has been working for quite some time to establish some sort of sensible dialog between the various persons or groups who might actually know something about this subject. He has had marginal success. But last year he raised money from several hundred private donors and made a documentary about these issues which he calls “Sirius” after the closest star to the sun (and the most likely source of external visitors).

This film was released to the public at a showing on US Earth Day in Santa Monica. I purchased a copy on DVD via the internet. Greer is concerned that various government-connected groups may be hoarding ET technologies for military use that could help us solve the energy crisis and other technology-related situations. He also follows a meditation practice and would like to see the planet get a little more hip to the spiritual truth.

Stephen Bassett

Academically, Mr. Bassett is a physicist. Professionally, he was a business consultant. He got involved with the subject of ET in 1995 via Dr. John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist who studied “alien abduction” experiences. He went on to establish his own organization, Paradigm Research Group.

Considered by some to be more commercially-motivated than Greer, Bassett yet seems earnest about this subject. Bassett scheduled a set of public “hearings” in Washington DC to start a week after Greer’s release of Sirius. They have to do with supposed official contacts with ET representatives, and why officials remain dismissive on the issue.

Not surprisingly, these events have not received much coverage by news organizations.

Dream House

When I am not working, thinking about work, working on my own projects, or trying to follow the news that NPR does not want to touch but which I think is important, I am probably trying to rest.

When I rest I often experience light dreams. These often involve buildings, and recent dreams have been no exception. It could be that one reason I don’t much like to sleep is that I don’t much enjoy this type of dreaming. The images or thoughts can be disturbing or scary. They sometimes swarm in, but in a gentler way than when I am sick or passing out. Have you ever had a fever or passed out, and experienced a kind of mental noise that can seem like a rather large chattering crowd?

But like when I have been sick, these dreams often carry with them the suggestion that there is some important problem to be figured out. Yet the data or images that arise make no real sense and are basically just confusing. It is a very interesting experience, and basically mimics the experience of being suppressed by a criminal.

I have had dreams that were quite tolerable. But these odder and more confusing episodes are more common. Many have involved rather large inside spaces that seem to go on forever and tend to present odd surprises and changes. After a recent one, I resolved to write a bit about this, and call the section “dream house,” a play on words connected with my occasional interest in designing architectural spaces.

Springtime “snow” falls

“Snow” melting on the ground.

I was on my way home after finding a great used FM tuner at Palouse Treasures and forgetting to buy more solder at Radio Shack. It was about 1pm. And as I rode my bike that last half mile back home, the skies opened up! But what fell down from those dark clouds on this cool Spring day? Rain, right? And I came home all wet and had to change my clothes…Nope. As pictured above, it was something more like snow. Riding through it, it felt sort of like little bits of styrofoam. It was little icy pellets, but they weren’t hard. They bounced on the ground like popcorn.

“I want to get a picture of this!” I thought, and after parking my bike on the tarp I have for it just inside the door, I went and got my camera and stepped back outside. The “stuff” had been falling in sheets! But now it was mostly gone. I walked up the hill a bit and found some still visible on the grass beside the driveway. And then I noticed more lodged in the junipers that serve as our landscaping here. And so I got a few more photos of the stuff before it all turned back into liquid water.

Our “snow” caught in the juniper just before melting.

Cope and Organize

This is a famous LRH Policy Letter which I think of all the time these days.

Most of us spend too much time coping and never organize for increased efficiency or expansion. Others do nothing but “organize” and get no real work done. You have to cope with the real scene and also make some time to organize towards the ideal scene. The game is to achieve the ideal scene. We seldom ever get there. That’s what makes it a game, of course. But if you don’t even try, it’s for sure you’ll never get there. And one way of saying “working towards a more ideal scene” is “ORGANIZE.”

We do far too little of it at work. Production Troubleshooting is a study in the perfection of COPE.

At home I get some chance to indulge myself. And though I still feel miles away from any scene one could consider “ideal,” at least now I can see some movement in that direction. Like the nice new (used) FM tuner I got today for $13 (I bought it because it had a power connector on it that I needed for another project; that it works it just gravy!).

Short list of projects

For the sake of trivia, I will list some of the organize efforts going on at home:

• Make several real tables using IKEA table legs. These are my favorite table legs because they work and they are also easily removable. I finally got around to ordering a dozen (they cost $3 each plus shipping) so now have a second real table (in the bedroom, where I am now) and legs for two more 2-foot by 4-foot wood tops which have yet to materialize.
• Put heavier projects (power supplies with transformers) in boxes on the floor, while most projects are closer to table height, to make the front panels accessible. I found some cool aluminum enclosures on eBay and got two. Perfect for this purpose. Recently some parts needed to complete them came in, so they are becoming useable.
• More furnishings (for my living room). My plan is to make the living room into a study area with three sections. One for the arts, one for science and electronics, and one for Scientology. The area needs tables (above), shelves, and chairs. But I didn’t want heavy furniture, and one night I thought: “I wonder if they make inflatable furniture?” And they do! So I am going to try some.
• Electronics projects sort-out. These were in some disarray, as I was coping for so long with either too little time or too little finances. Now they can begin to move forward in a more orderly manner. My box of manual controllers (called “faders” in the business) is now ready, and the old circular display has been upgraded so it’s easier to use. It will eventually be joined by other displays that operate in different modes, and one will be very video-like.
• Computers sort-out. I no longer feel the need to access the internet on a different computer from the one I store all my files on. So that older computer is being re-purposed into an experimental computer for the “learning room.” My under-used little netbox will now serve as my electronics bench computer, and my two portables will eventually be deployed at the other learning stations. My “main” computer was recently upgraded from 1GB of RAM (Random Access Memory) to nearly 4GB and the difference is really noticeable. Besides the fact that my phone line is quite noisy, the DSL connection to the internet works well, so for the time being, that’s all good.

Yes, these are the results of letting an electronics hobbyist with an income loose in a 2-room apartment!

Don’t talk to strangers

The tiny flowers that look like snow

The edges of the sidewalk up at the northern end of Grand Ave. have recently become speckled with sprinkles of white. It looks like a little bit of snow hanging on in the last cold days of spring, or the salt sometimes used to make such snow melt at a lower temperature.

But it’s neither of those things; it’s a white-flowered ground cover. I picked one of the flowers the other day and brought it home and looked at it under the microscope. It’s a four-petaled flower only 5mm across (that’s about 3/16 of an inch). There seem to be more than 4 stamens, though. The foliage is dark and looks a little like a succulent, or like bedstraw (a wildflower used as ground cover). I haven’t figured out for sure yet what it is. Walking along, you can’t really tell it’s a flower. Just something white sprinkled on the ground.

Our tiny roadside spring flower.

Don’t talk to strangers

A few days ago I saw a girl walking up Grand as I was walking down Grand after work. She looked a little worried or something. Then I saw, up Terre View to the west, a little boy – her little boy. She waited for him at the corner then walked home with him.

The next day (or the day after) I saw him again. He was walking home himself this time, and he took the “shortcut” up to the first level parking lot of my building. Did he live in the Glendimer?

And not soon after that I saw him again. He looked at me like he kind of recognized me, and climbed up the rock at the mini-park at the corner and said, “king of the mountain!” and smiled at me. We walked together for a while, then I asked him if he lived up there in those buildings and he said yes. I told him I lived there, too. I said something else – forget what – and he answered but said, “but you’re a stranger, and I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” “It’s good they’re teaching you that,” I said, thinking that probably wasn’t exactly true. Then I walked ahead of him and crossed the street. But as I was getting across, he ran to the corner, and I waited for him to cross, and we walked up to his “shortcut.” “I like to go this way,” he said. “I know you do,” I said, “I go around the other way.” When I got up the driveway, he crossed my path again, then took another “shortcut” up through the juniper bushes that cover the hill between the lower parking lot and the next higher one.

Not advice for a lifetime

I wondered later if people were getting stuck with this advice that they were taught as children. I wasn’t taught this. And for good reason: It doesn’t work. Even for a child it doesn’t work. What if you’re hurt and need help? What about your first day in school when everybody is a stranger? How do you make friends? It just totally doesn’t work.

Adults do it, I figured, because they feel like children are too trusting. They haven’t developed adult discernment skills yet, so can’t tell a slime ball from someone who might be a valuable friend. But then, lots of adults can’t tell the difference, either!

The lessons they never taught me

When I was a teenager, I developed quite an upset over the fact that there was no place that taught me about people. How to understand them, how to help them, how to live with them. My parents didn’t seem to know much about this. The only real advice I got along this line was from my mother who told me once that if I got attacked by a bully I should fight back. They’d leave me alone after that. Pretty good advice.

I desperately wanted answers to why people were the way they are, and what to do about it. But just as my parents seemed a bit clueless along this line, so my schools didn’t seem to want to touch this subject with a ten foot pole.

Now they teach psychology in school. But these days, psychology isn’t really about people, either. It’s about behavior and how to control it. That’s what the people who pay psychologists have always been interested in. I don’t know if that’s what most psychologists are actually interested in, though.

A teacher who tried

Hubbard was the first adult I found out about who seemed truly interested in teaching this subject. I have only begun to learn a full set of real professional-level communication skills. Every adult should have them. But nobody except LRH and maybe a few others here and there teach it!

What we should tell our kids, and what they deserve to be told, is that we don’t want them to make friends with adults until their parent or parents have met the person. That’s because adults have the skills to be able to tell slime balls from good people. And when they are grown up, they’ll know too, because it’s taught in school.

In fact, being able to talk to “strangers” is one of the higher of adult social skills. And a person who can turn strangers into friends can have a good, full life. One who can’t will still feel like that little boy walking home from school, not sure it’s okay to talk to that somewhat interesting old man.

Pullman is at 2,300 feet

Lewiston Idaho is just 25 miles south of Pullman. SEL has a plant there.

Lewiston is on the Snake River, at about 750 feet elevation.

Pullman is on the hills above the Snake, at about 2,300 feet elevation.

A bunch of folks who work at SEL in Pullman live in Lewiston. One was telling us how last week it was 70 degrees (F) in Lewiston. Now that’s Spring! We haven’t seen those temperatures in Pullman yet.

This time of year, the difference in elevation keeps Pullman about 10 degrees (F) colder than Lewiston.

For example, this week temperatures in Lewiston are expected to climb back up to near 70, lows in the 40s. While here in Pullman, the temperatures are only expected to get up to the low 60s, with lows near freezing. Right now, air temperatures in Pullman are bottoming out down in the 20s at around 5AM every morning (about when I get up to go to work).

A new microscope

Now that I have a bicycle, I am more willing to get out and around town. So middle of last week I headed out to buy some groceries and hunt for cool stuff in the local thrift store (Palouse Treasures).

I found a great used Dell monitor for $20, but I also spied – tucked away on an inconspicuous shelf behind the stereo equipment – a student microscope. I couldn’t carry both home at the same time, so I came back the next day and the microscope was still there. It was in extremely good condition, so I made the lady charge me $49.99 for it instead of the $29.99 they were asking.

I had a little “toy” microscope when I was a kid. It was fun. The book I got told me to put a lettuce leaf in some water and let it sit around for a few days. So I did, then looked at a little drop under the microscope. And there were all kinds of little things swimming around in there! I also got prepared slides with little insects and so forth. Very interesting to look at them magnified.

This scope is a classic American Optical “Spencer” made around 1965 (according to a list of serial number ranges I found on the internet). They don’t make them any more, though other companies make others very similar. It has a 10X eyepiece and 3 objectives – 4X, 10X and 43X – and a built-in light. It’s a big, well-built thing and it works great. How neat to have a microscope again after all these years! Will probably mostly look at electronics stuff with it. And will try to find a camera that can take digital photos through it.

I couldn’t find any of my own drawings of things under a microscope, but here’s something from a biology handout I got for a summer class I took in the 1960s:

Drawings of microscopic pond water creatures.

A Musician and A Spy

The Musician

Chie Ayado (courtesy Asia Wiki)

My friend Patrick, who has been living in Bali, recently sent out to his friends some short articles he wrote about Western popular music in Japan. He concentrated on the Yellow Magic Orchestra, but also mentioned various different acts and linked to some videos. YouTube has this thing of showing “related” videos in the player window after you play a video. And one of the “related” videos I ran across showed a performance of Chie Ayado (in Japanese).

This girl is strong. She was born in 1957 in Osaka. And that’s all I know about her! She is a famous Japanese entertainer and there is no data about her available through Google! But she has been singing Western pop tunes (and also doing some very funny stuff) for Japanese audiences for at least 20 years, probably more like 30 years. There are a LOT of YouTube videos of her. That’s the only way I know her. Her communication is relaxed, direct, and very impinging. One of many stars on this planet.

The Spy

I was looking though my Facebook “wall” (or whatever it’s called) recently, and one of my Scientologist friends had posted a petition drive notice from a group called Global Zero. This is one strange group. They are going for zero nuclear weapons on planet earth by 2030. Now, this is not only a laudable goal, but it is very necessary for a variety of reasons. LRH has always been in favor of such a plan. But these guys seem to be running on nothing but marketing. I try to look under the hood, and I don’t see any engine. Just a bunch of young and not-so-young idealistic people who all look like they could be CIA operatives, like the whole Kony fiasco seemed to be.

And the weird thing is: One of their most active spokeswomen IS an ex-CIA operative.

Valerie Plame

Plame is short for a fancier European name. Her father was Jewish, apparently, but she never knew that while she was growing up. She was a “military brat” and, in her father’s footsteps, chose to serve her country. In the CIA.

I didn’t hear about this when it happened. On Bastille Day of 2003 (a meaningful date to me for other reasons) Valerie’s CIA cover was blown by a reporter for the Washington Post who was given the information by Richard Armitage in the State Department. After that, she could no longer work under cover, and in 2005, she left the CIA and started writing and speaking about her work there.

Look at this girl:

Valerie Plame Wilson (courtesy Huffington Post)

This is the classic good-looking, very smart, very dedicated college-educated person that the CIA actively recruits, and has always actively recruited. But this one got away. Now she’s a peace activist (apparently).

So what is Global Zero really? And what do they actually intend to accomplish? Like Ed Schweitzer always says, selling is basically an education job. My church also believes very strongly in that approach. But we have technologies to teach! What does Global Zero have to teach?

I haven’t found out yet.

If you’re curious about those technologies vis-a-vis global peace, see my posts under the heading “Handling Suppression on Earth.”

13 March

By the way, LRH’s birthday just passed. He was born in Tilden Nebraska in 1911. Happy Birthday, sir! We’re still working for your goal of a world without war, crime or insanity.

Government as insurance company

What I consider fact

Modern government, certainly on the federal level in the US, is acting like an insurance company.

The hypothesis

Proposition 1: People experience violations of their basic human rights.
Proposition 2: An armed force has been considered the best protection against such violations.
Conclusion A: People considered they needed armed forces to protect their basic rights, and thus the need for armed governments arose.

Proposition 3: Real criminals act through people who are willing to use violence to get their way.
Proposition 4: Since real criminals are unable to operate as honest citizens, they survive by stirring up trouble between groups that are willing to use violence to get their way, pretending to advise one or the other side on what the other side might do next.
Conclusion B: The whole “civilized” pattern of warring states was basically created by real criminals for their own personal purposes.

Proposition 5: Most forms of insurance exist to protect the insured from various types of criminal violence.
Proposition 6: It is in the interest of those who offer insurance protection of this type to be able to secretly control the amount of violence that actually takes place.
Conclusion C: This makes any form of paid “protection” against losses due to violence actually a criminal protection racket.

Proposition 7: Most forms of insurance, going back to early times, consisted of pools of funds or resources that were contributed to roughly in proportion to an individual’s or group’s productiveness, and paid out according to who suffered the most “bad luck”.
Proposition 8: This fits the Marxist model of a “scientific” society, and also the philosophy (to the extent that there is one) that justifies such abominations as income tax.
Conclusion D: A government funded by income tax is about the same as an insurance company funded by premium payments. And both are basically protection rackets.

Ramifications

Naturally, people who are “lucky” and never need insurance payments can feel a bit cheated by this system. From my viewpoint this is totally true. They are in fact being suckered or leaned on into supporting criminals. The real criminals are not usually the ones getting the payments. They are the ones running the racket (the crime syndicate, the insurance company, or the government).

The perception that insurance is widely necessary because “shit happens” feeds a fatalism in society that can become widespread. And it enriches those who are working hardest (to the extent that you can call this work) to give people the impression that there are some things that they just can’t control.

This idea is basically a lie. Although in the physical universe it seems very logical, in the spiritual universe it is totally specious.

Since our universe is a mixture of the spiritual and the physical (the sublime and the ridiculous, the divine and the despoiled) we should take a better-informed and more balanced approach to this whole issue.

Physical health

Here is a realm in which the spiritual and the physical often violently clash.

My teacher (Hubbard) has demonstrated that treating a person in a totally spiritual way can affect his health in a variety of ways.

This gets into the whole topic of predisposition. In modern medical jargon, the only recognized predisposition to disease besides “genetic” is called “stress.”

“Stress” is psycho-babble for the mechanism of reactive restimulation. Hubbard first proposed this mechanism in 1950 in his book Dianetics. He later expanded on this mechanism considerably, as his work exposed the extent to which a being is unaware of its own complicity in its bodily undoing.

Hubbard later introduced the concept of the “potential trouble source” (PTS) who is prone to get sick or hurt himself due to his connection to a suppressive personality. This comes up in the field of ethics because it turns out that there are steps a person (as a spiritual being) can take to disconnect himself from the influence of such personalities. Knowing this, and being educated in the general theory of this mechanism, it then becomes an ethical violation to fail to take steps to protect oneself if one finds oneself in a PTS situation.

The way out of a violent society

The way out of this cycle of violence, a growth in criminal influence, and the subsequent decay of organized societies is the knowledge of its root cause (or real why, as Hubbard would term it).

With this knowledge, one can help individuals and groups who want to improve conditions to rise above the influence of suppressive criminals who are trying to keep them fighting, unhealthy and confused.

We can have any form of government, taxation and insurance that we want. But without a better knowledge of the spiritual aspects of these human activities, they can easily be used to destroy what is good and decent in life.