perspective of mind, julian jaynes

Bizcharts | Back in 1976 when he was a professor of psychology at Princeton, Julian Jaynes published a very controversial theory about the emergence of the human mind. Indeed, even today his theory of the "bicameral mind" remains a controversy.

Rather than just harkening to behavioral psychology or brain biology, Jaynes presents his theory from the perspective of psycho-cultural history.

Going back to the the earliest writings and studying particularly the many early civilizations of the Near East, Jaynes came to the conclusion that most of the people in these archaic cultures were *not* subjectively conscious as we understand it today.

Jaynes provides extensive illustrations--ranging from Sumer, Ur, Babylon, Egyptian, Early Mycenean, Hebrew, and even Mayan and Asian cultures--that support his theory of the bicameral mind. But he mainly focuses on Mycenean (Greek) material--and it is this material which we will examine mostly in this post.

Jaynes bluntly declares "There is in general no consciousness in the ILIAD." Analyzing Homer's great epic, Jaynes came to the conclusion that the characters of the Trojan siege did not have conscious minds, no introspection, as we know it in the modern human. [Julian Jaynes, THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976, p. 69]

Whether Achilles or Agamemnon, there was no sense of subjectivity. Rather they were men whom the gods pushed about like robots. The gods sang epics through their lips. Jayne declares that these Iliadic heroes heard "voices," real speech and directions from the gods--as clearly as those diagnosed epileptic or schizophrenic today.

Jaynes stresses that the Iliadic man did not possess subjectivity as we do--rather "he had no awareness of his awareness of the world, no internal mind-space to introspect upon." This mentality of the Myceneans, Jaynes calls the bicameral mind. [Ibid, p. 75]

Now what was this bicameral mind? Jaynes briefly discusses brain biology--in that there are three speech areas, for most located in the left hemisphere. They are: (1) the supplemental motor cortex; (2) Broca's area; and (3) Wernicke's area. Jaynes focuses on Wernicke's area, which is chiefly the posterior part of the left temporal lobe. It is Wernicke's area that is crucial for human speech.

Pursuing the bicameral mind, Jaynes focuses on the corpus callosum, the major inter-connector between the brain's hemispheres. In human brains the corpus callosum can be likened to a small bridge, a band of transverse fibers, only slightly more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter. This bridge "collects from most of the temporal lobe cortex but particularly the middle gyrus of the temporal lobe in Wernicke's area." And it was this bridge that served as the means by which the "gods" who dwelled in one hemisphere of the human brain were able to give "directions" to the other hemisphere. It is like thinking of the "two hemispheres of the brain almost as two individuals." Hence the bicameral mind! [Ibid, p. 117]

Archaic humans were ordered and moved by the gods through both auditory hallucinations and visual hallucinations. The gods mainly "talked" to them--but sometimes "appeared," such as Athene appeared to Achilles. And "when visual hallucinations occur with voices, they are merely shining light or cloudy fog, as Thetis came to Achilles or Yahwey to Moses." [Ibid, p. 93]

Jaynes believes in the mentality of the early Mycenean that volition, planning and initiative were literally organized with no consciousness whatsoever. Rather such volition was "told" to the individual--"sometimes with the visual aura of a familiar friend or authority figure or 'god,' or sometimes as a voice alone." [Ibid, p. 75]

Now Jaynes thinks the great agricultural civilizations that spread over much of the Near East by 5000 b.c.e. reflected the bicameral mind. These civilizations were rigid theocracies! They were reminiscent of the Queen Bee and the bee-hive. These bicameral societies reflected "hierarchies of officials, soldiers, or works, inventory of goods, statements of goods owed to the ruler, and particular to gods." [Ibid, p. 80]

Jaynes contests that such theocracies were the only means for a bicameral civilization to survive. Circumventing chaos, these rigid hierarchies allowed for "lesser men hallucinating the voices of authorities over them, and those authorities hallucinating yet higher ones, and so" to kings and gods. [Ibid, p. 79]

According to Julian Jaynes, "the idols of a bicameral world are the carefully tended centers of social control, with auditory hallucinations instead of pheromones."

finland resists EU bailouts by recent vote

Video - Finnish voters are going to the polls in a general election that could have a direct effect on Portugal's request for an economic bailout from the EU.

TheComingDepression | “We won’t allow Finnish cows to be milked by other hands,” European Affairs quoted Timo Soini, the leader of True Finns, himself a veteran member of both the European and Finnish parliaments — but who runs as an anti-establishment candidate.

Tea Party-like politics may be arriving in Europe.

That is how some European political analysts and commentators are interpreting the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in the Scandinavian nation of Finland, where a right-wing populist party made big gains by running against more European Union bailouts for the mostly Mediterranean countries swallowed up by debt.

One veteran analyst, Joseph Fitchett, the editor of the European Affairs blog, called the results “a political tsunami” for the European Union.

While politics across Europe have been drifting rightward since the 2008-09 economic crash, the Finnish elections were the first where a populist party got its boost not just from fighting rising levels of immigration, but from saying “enough” to EU bailouts for Greece, Ireland, and now Portugal.

A party called True Finns vaulted from relative obscurity to gain 19 percent of the vote and boost its representation in the 200-seat parliament from five to 39 seats. That outcome is likely to put the True Finns into a new government coalition, which is expected to take a harder line against Euro bailouts. Source: PBS Newshour (1)

Why are the Finns so resistant to bailing out Europe?

Somebody HAS to say ‘when’; even if the pillars of heaven totter, because the way things are going the ship is going down anyway if we continue like the over-educated clown now running things in Washington wants to do, and simply pretend that everything is fine and let’s just go on borrowing money FOREVER. All we have left now is bubbles of one sort or another. Most of them now deliberately propped up by the ‘leadership’ we are supposed to trust to protect our interests.

The EU won’t survive in its current form and the PIIGS WILL default at some point. Hopefully the Finns and then the Germans later will simply say “No, let the banks and their shareholders bite the bullets.” Let the ‘people’ decide before more assets are pissed down the bottomless well.

what's behind rising crude oil and food prices

Video - Go to 32.5 minutes into this video to see commentary on the cartel, on the record.

MarketOracle | “Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors who profit money from their speculative positions.”

“It’s a scam folks, it’s nothing but a huge scam and it’s destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are ‘only’ stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialized world.”

“It’s the top 0.01% robbing the next 39.99% – the bottom 60% can’t afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs). If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?”

“The great thing about the NYMEX is that the traders don’t have to take delivery on their contracts, they can simply pay to roll them over to the next settlement price, even if no one is actually buying the barrels. That’s how we have developed a massive glut of 677 Million barrels worth of contracts in the front four months on the NYMEX and, come rollover day – that will be the amount of barrels "on order" for the front 3 months, unless a lot barrels get dumped at market prices fast.”

“Keep in mind that the entire United States uses ‘just’ 18M barrels of oil a day, so 677M barrels is a 37-day supply of oil. But, we also make 9M barrels of our own oil and import ‘just’ 9M barrels per day, and 5M barrels of that is from Canada and Mexico who, last I heard, aren’t even having revolutions. So, ignoring North Sea oil Brazil and Venezuela and lumping Africa in with OPEC, we are importing 3Mbd from unreliable sources and there is a 225-day supply under contract for delivery at the current price or cheaper plus we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that holds another 727 Million barrels (full) plus 370M barrels of commercial storage in the US (also full) which is another 365.6 days of marginal oil already here in storage in addition to the 225 days under contract for delivery. “

These contracts for oil outnumber their actual delivery, a sign of speculation and market manipulation, as oil companies win government authorizations for wells but then don’t open them for exploration or exploitation. It’s all a game of manipulating oil supply to keep prices up. And no one seems to be regulating it.

What Phil sees is a giant but intricate game of market manipulation and rigging by a cartel—not just an industry—that actually has loaded tankers criss-crossing the oceans but only landing when the price is right.

“There is nothing that the conga-line of tankers between here and OPEC would like to do more than unload an extra 277 Million barrels of crude at $112.79 per barrel (Friday’s close on open contracts and price) but, unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, Cushing, Oklahoma (Where oil is stored) is already packed to the gills with oil and can only handle 45M barrels if it started out empty so it is, very simply, physically impossible for those barrels to be delivered. This did not, however, stop 287M barrels worth of May contracts from trading on Friday and GAINING $2.49 on the day. “

He asks, “Who is buying 287,494 contracts (1,000 barrels per contract) for May delivery that can’t possibly be delivered for $2.49 more than they were priced the day before? These are the kind of questions that you would think regulators would be asking – if we had any.”

what's your gameplan as corn prices skyrocket?

TheContraryFarmer | Forgive me for returning to this topic again, but history is being made in the corn market and the mainstream press isn’t paying attention. Corn prices hit an all time high last week. As you pull on your boots and head for the garden or fields for spring planting, what are your plans? Are you ready for some seismic changes in food prices? Do you feel too helpless to do anything much but keep on hoeing? Am I overreacting?

Corn recently made it well into the $7.00 plus per bushel range, to an historic high, and a rise of about a dollar a bushel from the week before, indicating how eradicate the market has become. As I write this, the market is bobbing up and down around $7.50 like a basketball during March Madness. The USDA just came out with a report in which it said, much to the surprise of nearly everyone, that corn stocks remain unchanged. But then the experts came on with a litany of “it depends” about how one should interpret the meaning of “unchanged.”

We’ve heard for months now that corn was in short supply. There are a number of reasons, supposedly. The demand for ethanol was going up, supposedly. The ethanol plants were buying more corn, supposedly. Other countries were importing more corn, supposedly. Weather outlooks are iffy, supposedly. I can write more sentences ending with the word ‘supposedly’, but what’s the use. Even the grain traders are saying they don’t know what’s happening.

You can read all this stuff in the farm news yourself. I don’t really care to hear any more ‘supposedlies’. I just want to know the what of it, not the how or why. At the livestock auctions in eastern Ohio last week, buyers and sellers were talking glibly of ten dollar corn by this summer, lamb prices over four dollars, and heaven help the cattle market. If you happen to be raising your own calves for meat right now, you could not have a better investment IF you aren’t feeding them seven dollar corn.

Others at the auctions were convinced there is going to be crash. Even farmers who still have last year’s corn to sell (not many), looked at me and said: “this is not good.”

The National Corn Growers Association and food wholesalers and retailers are at each other’s throats over the way ethanol appears to be driving up the price of food. The chairman of Nestle’s has been particularly strident in his criticism, really ripping the corn growers and the ethanol suppliers and especially the government’s generous subsidies to the ethanol plants, insisting that the world needs all its tillable land for human food, not car fuel. I think he’s right, but the corn growers are lashing right back, declaring that the food industry’s attacks are inaccurate, unwarranted, etc. etc.

This much I know from history. During the Irish famine, the landlord farmers of Ireland continued to sell their oats to England where they could get a better price for it than from the starving Irish, until the government stopped them. I am way too pessimistic to think that could not happen again. There are plenty of people who would choose to use corn to feed their cars, boats and airplanes rather than starving people. Fist tap Dale.

the new normal: revolt, migrate, or die...,

FinancialSense | This week wheat and soybeans are up 8 per cent and corn hit a record high of US$7.73 a bushel.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) farmers in the US expect to plant one of the largest corn and soybean crops in history. Wheat production is up in China, Russia and the Ukraine - India is enjoying strong rice harvests. Growers in Brazil and Argentina have reaped bumper harvests. But production is barely keeping up with demand.

The USDA says inventories of corn and soybeans are plummeting. The supply of corn is at a 15-year low and soybean inventories are at record lows. Canola inventories are also down.

“World agricultural markets have become so finely balanced between supply and demand that local disruptions can have a major impact on the global prices of the affected commodities and then reverberate throughout the entire food chain.” A recent report from HSBC

Living on the edge - US grain production filled critical shortages in world supply three times in the last five years:

* 2007-08 drought hit Australian wheat
* 2009 drought hit Argentine soybeans
* 2010 drought hit Russian wheat

“This has been a demand-driven bull market. I do not think we can see a big enough increase in U.S. acreage to rebuild inventories back to a comfortable cushion in one year. It is going to take two years of good weather and good yields. There is absolutely no room for any weather problems anywhere in the world this year.” Jim Farrell, chief executive officer of Omaha-based Farmers National Co.

Good weather, and good yields for two years in a row just to get back to comfortable levels?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said, in a recent report:

“Over time, supply growth can be expected to respond to higher prices, as it has in previous decades, easing pressure on food markets, but this will take time counted in years, rather than months.”

It is estimated that the population of the world reached:

* One billion in 1804
* Two billion in 1927
* Three billion in 1960
* Four billion in 1974
* Five billion in 1987
* Six billion in 1999
* Projected to reach seven billion by early 2012
* Eight billion by 2030
* By 2050, the world's population is expected to reach around nine billion - minimum and maximum projections range from 7.4 billion to 10.6 billion
* By the mid 2060s it’s possible that 11.4 billion people will inhabit this planet

Over the next fifty years, as we add another 4.5 billion people to the world’s population, global demand for food will increase almost 70% if population growth predictions are correct.
Already approximately 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night. Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds - most are children under the age of five.

“Rising food prices are a threat to global growth and social stability and the world is just one poor harvest away from chaos.” Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank

We have to realize that higher food prices and the resulting civil unrest are not a temporary condition but a New Normal and adjust ourselves accordingly.

Is a New Normal, the coming Harsh Times, on your radar screen?

beached white males

Video - Falling Down I want breakfast.

Newsweek | Capitalism has always been cruel to its castoffs, but those blessed with a college degree and blue-chip résumé have traditionally escaped the worst of it. In recessions past, they’ve kept their jobs or found new ones as easily as they might hail a cab or board the 5:15 to White Plains. But not this time.
Can Manhood Survive the Recession?

The suits are “doing worse than they have at any time since the Great Depression,” says Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. And while economists don’t have fine-grain data on the number of these men who are jobless—many, being men, would rather not admit to it—by all indications this hitherto privileged demo isn’t just on its knees, it’s flat on its face. Maybe permanently. Once college-educated workers hit 45, notes a post on the professional-finance blog Calculated Risk, “if they lose their job, they are toast.”

The same guys who once drove BMWs, in other words, have now been downsized to BWMs: Beached White Males.

Through the first quarter of 2011, nearly 600,000 college-educated white men ages 35 to 64 were unemployed, according to previously unpublished Labor Department stats. That’s more than 5 percent jobless—double the group’s pre-recession rate. That might not sound bad compared with the plight of younger, less-educated workers and minorities, but it’s a historic change from the last recession, when about half as many lost their oxford shirts. The number of college-educated men unemployed for at least a year is five times higher today than after the dotcom bubble. In New York City, men in the 35-to-54 kill zone have lost jobs faster than any other group, including teenage girls, according to new data from the Fiscal Policy Institute.
manhood-INTRO Matt Sayles / AP

As if middle age isn’t bad enough. The moribund metabolism. The purple pill that keeps your food down. The blue pill that keeps another part of your anatomy up. Now you can’t get an effing job? Stuck in your own personal Detroit of the soul, with the grinding stress of enforced idleness. The wife who doesn’t look at you quite the same way. The poignantly forgiving sons. The stain on your masculinity for becoming the bread-loser. The night sweats and dark refuge of Internet porn. The gnawing fear that this may be the beginning of a slow, shaming crawl to early Social Security.

secret memos expose link between oil firms and iraq invasion

Independent | Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

nah, the banksters need to be tried and expunged...,

Video - Dr. Joseph Tainter, Nicole Foss, and David Korowicz serve on a panel to answer questions about risk and collapse. This is part 1 of 2 of a 30-minute Q and A session at the 2010 International Conference on Sustainability organized by Local Future nonprofit and directed by Aaron Wissner.

gas in 6 states tops $4.00/gallon

Video - The Future of Oil: Peak Prices, Peak Production, Piqued Consumers - Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - 2008-06-11

AP | Add New York to the growing list of states where gas prices are topping $4 per gallon.

On Sunday, the Empire State became the sixth state to top $4 for the average price of a gallon of gas, joining Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii and Illinois, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge. The average price of gas also rose to more than $4 per gallon in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

The next states to join the list could be Michigan, which has gas for $3.95 per gallon on average, and Indiana, where the average price is $3.94. Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin are close behind.

Hawaii has the highest price in the U.S. at $4.48 per gallon. Wyoming has the lowest, at $3.54.

The national average for gas has increased for 26 straight days, and is now at $3.83 per gallon. That's up 29 cents from a month ago. Retail surveys suggest motorists are reacting to higher prices now by buying less fuel. Still, the government expects pump prices to keep climbing this summer as vacationers take to the highways.

For American drivers, the $4 mark harkens back to the summer of 2008, when oil rose to $147 per barrel and gas prices topped out at $4.11 per gallon before the economy went into a tailspin.

The rapid increase at the pump follows a parallel rise in oil. Since Labor Day, oil has risen 48 percent and U.S. gas prices have gone up 42 percent. The increases gained momentum in mid-February when a popular rebellion in Libya turned violent and shut down the country's exports. Crude has jumped 30 percent since then, with gas prices gaining 22 percent.

pricier gas and food pinch consumers

Video - The demolition work's almost 75% done now. The price of a gallon of gas at the adjacent Mobil station has gone up 10 cents a gallon since Friday. Horse and buggy, anyone?

DailyFinance | Americans are paying more for food and gas, a trend that threatens to slow the economy at a crucial time.

So far, the spike in such necessities hasn't stopped businesses from stepping up hiring or slowed factory production, which rose in March for the ninth straight month. Still, higher gas prices have led some economists to lower their forecasts for growth for the January-March quarter.

Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent last month, the Labor Department said Friday. Nearly all of the gains came from pricier gas and food.

When taking out those two volatile categories, core inflation was relatively flat. But at the same time, employees are only seeing small, if any, pay increases.

"People have less money to spend on goods other than food and energy and that is going to cause the expansion to slow," said economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.

The spike in prices is hitting most Americans just as the economy is gaining momentum. Businesses added more than 200,000 jobs in March and February, the best two-month hiring stretch in four years. And the unemployment rate has fallen to a two-year low of 8.8 percent.

Consumers also have a little more money to spend this year, thanks to a one-year cut in Social Security taxes.

But most of the extra $1,000 to $2,000 per person is filling the gas tank. The national average for a gallon was $3.82 on Friday — nearly $1 more than a year ago. In five states, the average price is exceeding $4 a gallon.

How big the economic impact will be is the critical question. Many analysts expect food prices will come down and oil prices will stabilize by summer. If companies continue to create jobs, consumer spending will rise faster. That would give the economy a boost by fall.

U.S. manufacturers are seeing more business, according to a separate report on Friday from the Federal Reserve. Factory output rose in March, bolstered in part by a jump in auto production.

One concern is automakers are bracing for some disruptions in the supply of parts from Japan, which is recovering from a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that caused widespread damage.

Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, predicts the economy will grow only 1.8 percent in the January-March period, down from an earlier estimate of above 3 percent. Rising inflation will likely cut consumer spending growth to half its pace in the previous quarter.

hole in the head: a life revealed

Video - Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed

Vertus Hardiman hid a shocking secret under a wig & beanie for over 80 years. He was experimented on at age of 5 by a county hospital in Indiana during 1927. Vertus was one of ten children, all experimented on with radiation that day. Fist tap Bro. Makheru.

the power of faith is what'll drive man back to the abiotic reservoirs...,

Video - Peak Oil myth scientifically disproved (there is no oil shortage)

In response to some viewer critiques, this updated video takes a purely scientific approach to the Peak Oil myth. It exposes the eco-zealot conspiracy to deny big-bore engines to working Americans and tax them into smaller cars and homes.

If the Peak Oil doomsayers aren't stopped, economic growth may end by 2024, halting Man's productive use of nature and putting millions out of work. Americans will be forced to live "sustainably" in cedar bark huts, eating "locally grown" rhubarbs and pine nuts. The whole hippie agenda seeks to take away our pride.

Help stop this creeping socialism by spreading the word about this educational video and demanding that Congress investigate abiotic oil. Never vote for RINO Roscoe Bartlett if he runs for President, and don't believe Barack Hussein Obama when he claims that America only has 2% of the world's oil. Think independently and The Truth will come to you.

pop music, social mood, markets...,

Video - Cee Lo Green hit single off The LadyKiller.

TheDeflationTimes | Although there's lots of upbeat music in the air now, we can assume that after this current bear market rally, we will hear angrier music on the airwaves as the market turns down. It might be a good time, then, to pay attention to what the markets were doing the last time punk rock blasted the airwaves. Here's an excerpt from "Popular Culture and the Stock Market," which is the first chapter of Prechter's Pioneering Studies in Socionomics.

The most extreme musical development of the mid-1970s was the emergence of punk rock. The lyrics of these bands' compositions, as pointed out by Tom Landess, associate editor of The Southern Partisan, resemble T.S. Eliot's classic poem "The Waste Land," which was written during the 'teens, when the last Cycle wave IV correction was in force (a time when the worldwide negative mood allowed the communists to take power in Russia). The attendant music was as anti-.musical. (i.e., non-melodic, relying on one or two chords and two or three melody notes, screaming vocals, no vocal harmony, dissonance and noise), as were Bartok's compositions from the 1930s.

It wasn't just that the performers of punk rock would suffer a heart attack if called upon to change chords or sing more than two notes on the musical scale, it was that they made it a point to be non-musical minimalists and to create ugliness, as artists. The early punk rockers from England and Canada conveyed an even more threatening image than did the heavy metal bands because they abandoned all the trappings of theatre and presented their message as reality, preaching violence and anarchy while brandishing swastikas.

Their names (Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Nazi Dog, The Damned, The Viletones, etc.) and their song titles and lyrics ("Anarchy in the U.K.," "Auschwitz Jerk," "The Blitzkrieg Bop," "You say you've solved all our problems? You're the problem! You're the problem!" and "There's no future! no future! no future!") were reactionary lashings out at the stultifying welfare statism of England and their doom to life on the dole, similar to the Nazis backlash answer to a situation of unrest in 1920s and 1930s Germany.

Actually, of course, it didn't matter what conditions were attacked. The most negative mood since the 1930s (as implied by stock market action) required release, period. These bands took bad-natured sentiment to the same extreme that the pop groups of the mid-1960s had taken good-natured sentiment. The public at that time felt joy, benevolence, fearlessness and love, and they demanded it on the airwaves. The public in the late 1970s felt misery, anger, fear and hate, and they got exactly what they wanted to hear. (Luckily, the hate that punk rockers. reflected was not institutionalized, but then, this was only a Cycle wave low, not a Supercycle wave low as in 1932.)

In summary, an "I feel good and I love you" sentiment in music paralleled a bull market in stocks, while an amorphous, euphoric "Oh, wow, I feel great and I love everybody" sentiment (such as in the late '60s) was a major sell signal for mood and therefore for stocks. Conversely, an "I'm depressed and I hate you" sentiment in music reflected a bear market, while an amorphous tortured "Aargh! I'm in agony and I hate everybody" sentiment (such as in the late '70s) was a major buy signal.

what IS going on in bologna?

NyTeknik | In a detailed report, two Swedish physicists exclude chemical reactions as the energy source in the Italian ‘energy catalyzer’. The two physicists recently supervised a new test of the device in Bologna, Italy.
Swedish physicists on the E-cat: “It’s a nuclear reaction”

“In some way a new kind of physics is taking place. It’s enigmatic, but probably no new laws of nature are involved. We believe it is possible to explain the process with known laws of nature,” said Hanno Essén, associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and chairman member of the board (chairman until April 2) of the Swedish Skeptics Society.

Essén and Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University Sven Kullander, also chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Energy Committee, both participated on 29 March as observers at a new trial in Bologna of the so-called ‘energy catalyzer’, which could be based on cold fusion, or LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction.

Participants included the inventor of the device, Andrea Rossi, his scientific advisor Professor Sergio Focardi, and physicists Dr. David Bianchini and Dr. Giuseppe Levi from Bologna University who both supervised the first public demonstration of the E-cat on 14 January 2011 in Bologna, Italy.

The new trial was conducted in much the same way as the trial in January, and lasted for nearly six hours. According to observations by Kullander and Essén, a total energy of about 25 kWh was generated.

In a detailed report (download here), they write:

“Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.”

The power output was estimated to about 4.4 kW. It’s barely half the power compared with the two previous documented experiments in January and February 2011, because the trial was made with a new and smaller version of the energy catalyzer.

The new trial was the first officially documented with the smaller version which, according to Rossi, is more stable.

“With the smaller version we avoid the power peaks that occurred at ignition and switching off,” Andrea Rossi told Ny Teknik.

He also stated that the smaller version will be used for the planned installation of about one megawatt for the pilot customer Defkalion Green Technologies in Greece.

According to Rossi, a total of 300 reactors connected in series and parallel, will be used in the installation. Originally 100 reactors of the version that delivered 10 kW of power during earlier trials, were supposedly planned for the one-megawatt installation. Rossi still expects the inauguration to take place in October 2011.

post-peak's integrally interwoven enthusiasms

(Biopunk - Fist tap Dale)

post-peak's indispensible necessities

Farmer Scrub | We've just completed one full year of weighing and recording everything we harvest from the yard. I've uploaded a snapshot of the one year harvest so it's archived even as I update the regular harvest log. We harvested on average each day two pounds of food, providing 675 calories. As far as our goal of self sufficiency is concerned, that means we could choose between feeding less than half of Tulsi (who requires 1500 calories per day) or barely feed one third of me (2000 per day).

I last blogged about the harvest log in September.

wood at the cemetary...,

Video - In the Heat of the Night "cool, cool, marble...,"

magical thinking at the pump

Video - "pastor" Marshall Mabry clowning on CNN

AJC | Members of a central Georgia church plan to gather at gas pumps to pray for lower prices.
Related

WMAZ-TV reports the Beacon of Light Christian Center is planning the Saturday prayer gathering at gas pumps outside a Kroger grocery store in Dublin.

Pastor Marshall Mabry said he believes that if church members come together and pray as a community, they can make something happen.

Mabry said that with prices reaching almost $4, he says he plans to ask God for help.

He said it's the third time members of his congregation have met at gas pumps to pray.

Mabry said he wants to start a movement which spreads from the small town of Dublin to the rest of the nation.

Dublin is about 130 miles southeast of Atlanta.

socionomics - liminal perspectives or clever marketing?

the u.s.-saudi libya deal

Video - Gaddafi blasts Saudi King Abdullah.

Asia Times | You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".

There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.