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|This article appears in the April 3, 2009 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
The Principle of Mind
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
March 4, 2009
[PDF version of this article, including graphics]
SYNOPSIS: Academician Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, and his contemporary, Albert Einstein, situated the summation of their greatest scientific achievements within that Riemannian concept of dynamics which is traced, formally, in modern science, from Gottfried Leibniz's 1690s resurrection of that concept of dynamis known to the Classical Greek of the Pythagoreans and Plato. As Einstein emphasized, the relevance of this for the presently known foundations of competent modern science, is expressed in that uniquely original discovery of the general principle of gravitation by Johannes Kepler, as in Kepler's The Harmonies of the World. When our attention is turned to include the subject of certain related, deeper implications concerning the human mind, implications which are prompted from within Vernadsky's treatment of the Noösphere, a certain, implicitly very important, but presently still controversial question is posed.
That subject is to be identified as a topic within the framework of a unified field theory. Albert Einstein posed the question, and Academician Vernadsky, whether one presumes that he knew it, or not, supplied a crucial clue which leads in the direction of the solution. That is the subject here.
Vernadsky & Economics
Our subject in this report is mankind as such, rather than man considered as a product of either an inanimate principle, as the most radical among contemporary leading positivists do, or, those who consider man and his development as essentially contained within a branch of an animal form of existence. The Noösphere, as that conception was developed in a uniquely fresh, and qualitatively distinct way, as by Academician Vernadsky, must be recognized as the containment of the universe, including the actual abiotic domain and "animal kingdom," by the independent, superior universal physical principle expressed as the willfully cognitive, creative powers of the developed human mind.
Therefore, although the present report is a scientific paper, we must recognize that it is man whose actions for development of the planet as a whole, contain the process of development of both the inanimate domain and the Biosphere, the latter treated, like the work of physical science as such, as domains subordinated by the expression, or lack of expression by mankind. Therefore, our subject here must express a departure from those conventions of taught science which have, heretofore, misjudged mankind from either the vantage-point of methods which presumed man to be defined in his development as to have been a subsumed part of an inanimate process, or from the pathetic presumption that mankind is contained as a product of the domain of merely animal natures.
Man dwells within the domains of the abiotic Solar system and the Biosphere, but it is mankind which changes those systems through willful development superimposed by mankind's own development. It is not the environment which determines society, but mankind, which, for better or for worse, induces those changes which define the destiny of the abiotic domain and Biosphere alike. So, in that specific sense, it is human social behavior, as driven by the actions of human individuals, which reigns under the authority of that Creator who has given to mankind the assigned obligation to reign in service to His Likeness.
Therefore, here, where the subject is mankind as it actually exists, a mere devotion to the goal of competence obliges us to employ methods of investigation and related argument, which locate the human species in its actually distinctive form of existence. That is to say, the willfully creative powers unique to mankind as outside, and above all that is merely abiotic, or merely animal.
The practice of physical science is therefore, essentially, a subject of the science of physical economy as I define the essential aspects of the content and outlines of that subject in these pages.
Therefore, the Method:
Johannes Kepler did not exaggerate in affirming his debt to those philosophical foundations for modern European science, which had been provided by the work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, as also by such notable followers of Cusa as Leonardo da Vinci. Cusa's crucial relevance for all modern physical science,[1] is emphasized in the sharpest terms, when attention is focused on the combination of the opening two paragraphs and the relentlessly ironical, concluding sentence of Bernhard Riemann's revolutionary 1854 habilitation dissertation.
The importance of these matters of the fundamentals for all modern science, has been, often, variously ignored, or evaded, because of the hegemonic influence of the empiricism which the followers of Paolo Sarpi have continued to impose on most of modern European scientific dogma, since the savage, usually lying attacks on the work of Gottfried Leibniz by the Liberal followers of Paolo Sarpi. These were the attacks which were concentrated from the beginning of Europe's Eighteenth Century, onward, and have continued until the present day. The importance of that fact is made clearer, by attention to the related details of a sometimes brutal, systemic conflict between the opposing forces.
This, for example, had been the root of the conflict between Albert Einstein and his adversaries from among the modern logical positivists, that since the time of the attack on Max Planck launched by the German-speaking devotees of the mechanistic perversions of Ernst Mach, during the 1914-1917 period of general warfare in Europe. This same conflict was intensified in its echoes in the campaigns energized by the even far more radical forms of aberrations introduced by that faction of Bertrand Russell which has tended to dominate the academic side of the general discussion of scientific method since the 1920s Solvay conferences.
All of these considerations converge on a common topic within the framework of my specialty, which is, unfortunately, the rarely known science of physical economy, as I identify the principal expressions of the relevant, underlying connections in this report.
The relevant features of Academician V.I. Vernadsky's world-outlook in such matters of scientific method, have been best represented, pedagogically, by his method of experimental approach to the ontological definition of the Biosphere which was provided by him, as in his relevant definitions of the relevant matters of physical chemistry since the middle of the 1930s. So, Vernadsky's precise, ontological distinction of living matter from pre-biotic states, that as an expression of a universal physical principle of life, is now accessible to professionals familiar with the relevant method of Bernhard Riemann.
Therein lies the clue to an at least partial, preliminary step in finding an answer to the question of a unified field theory.
The related matter of what Vernadsky addressed, as that is presented by me here, is the comparable, qualitatively more advanced, but relatively less developed distinction, that of human life, the qualitative, functional distinction of the culture of the Noösphere, from the merely living. I approach that distinction, here, from the standpoint of a Riemannian, dynamic comprehension of the nature of those same, specifically human, creative powers, which are expressed by qualitatively progressive development in the medium of certain realized discoveries belonging to the subject of the science of physical economy. The latter are those same discoveries which define the potentiality for the intended increase of the productive powers of labor in societies, per capita and per square kilometer. This is a power qualitatively far beyond the power expressed by the Biosphere.
The exemplary case of current economic practice which I reference for this purpose, here, is what has been, to present date, my own, presently unique success in forecasting not only the timing, but the unique nature of that presently ongoing, global economic-breakdown crisis which erupted during the last days of July 2007.[2]
My emphasis here is on the matter of principle, as the science of physical economy serves to illustrate this point, that the abiotic, the Biosphere, and the Noösphere, must be considered as being, respectively, ontologically distinct categories, but, nonetheless, like a man and his familiar dog, systemically interacting, physical phase-spaces. It is to be emphasized, as Vernadsky did, that as there is a sharp division of the products of the abiotic domain and those of the living, and there is, comparably, a sharp, uncompromisable division of a generality of mankind from the merely animal. From the standpoint of a science of physical economy, my standpoint, all three of these phase-spaces coexist as qualitatively differing, but coherently interacting phase-spaces of a single universe. This situates the subject of this report within the bounds of a notion of a universal principle of harmonics, rather than particles interacting kinematically, as proposed according to the modern reductionists' empty, a-prioristic, Cartesian, or kindred types of what are methodologically both reductionist and a-prioristic misconceptions of space and time.
The presentation submitted here, is also a reflection of the repeatedly demonstrated, unique success of my method of long-range physical-economic forecasting, as demonstrated, most emphatically, in this present time when all my putative professional rivals, and important governments, had either failed to foresee these developments, or had presented opposing policies which were not merely incompetent, but whose effect has already been disastrous for all of the presently existing nations of this planet at large. Even still today, most of the notable figures in government and the economics profession, have not yet acknowledged the very clear, conclusive evidence, of a global, physical-breakdown-crisis (no mere "recession," no mere "depression" like that of both 1929 and October 1987 in the U.S.A.), a crisis which is presently built into the processes which are, still now, immediately threatening the future of the present world physical-economic system, unless the presently operating monetarist systems are scrapped and suitably replaced, very soon.
Therefore, I begin the body of this presentation with a chapter containing a crucially relevant statement respecting the method employed in Kepler's discovery of the general principle of gravitation of our Solar system. That will be the beginning of the questions placed before us here; the answer, bearing on the unified field theory, will come at a later point in this report, when the ground had been prepared, at the close.
I. Sense-perception Vs. Cosmic Conception
Since ancient times in Mediterranean culture, European civilization, in particular, has been dominated by the influence of a piece of sophistry expressed, as by Euclid's Elements, in the form of so-called a-priori presumptions of so-called "self-evident definitions, axioms, and postulates. The essential feature of those viciously silly presumptions, was the view that sense-certainty respecting time, space, and matter, based on blind faith in the senses, defined the real universe. So, on this account, over the span since the opposition to the ancient Pythagoreans and Plato, by such as Aristotle and Euclid, until the work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, only a relatively few, outstanding, Classical opponents of Aristotelean and related a-prioristic forms of reductionist methods, such as Eratosthenes of Cyrenaic origins, and, with certain limitations, the famous Archimedes of Syracuse, had typified a genuine body of physical science.[3]
Although the revival of actual physical science in modern times was accomplished, chiefly, by the initiatives of Filippo Brunelleschi, and Cusa, the actual founding of a practiced modern science was accomplished by the actually original discovery of the great follower of Brunelleschi and Leonardo da Vinci, by Johannes Kepler's discovery of universal gravitation in his The Harmonies of the World. This was the premise employed, as by Gottfried Leibniz, for the still ongoing process of freeing physical science from the later, modern a-prioristic, reductionist Liberalism of Paolo Sarpi follower Rene Descartes and Descartes' empiricist followers of Europe's Eighteenth Century.
In Johannes Kepler's reaching the essential conclusion of his The Harmonies of the World, his presentation of his own, uniquely original discovery of what is, still today, the only competent, actual general principle of gravitation in circulation in scientific circles, Kepler had focused attention on the crucial irony of efforts to correlate the reductionist's quasi-visual image of physical space-time with that harmonic conception which has been repeatedly proven, since, to be a key to defining a single principle of self-organization of the Solar system as a whole.[4]
It is important to emphasize, that Kepler, inspired by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa's founding of the method of a modern physical science, had come to recognize, implicitly, that, contrary to a-priori presumptions of Sophists such as Euclid, or the modern Rene Descartes, or the empiricists generally, that the mere evidence of the senses does not account directly, in any instance, for the relevant principle of organization of the universe we inhabit. Sense-perception, such as the human faculties of sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell, are to be recognized as being no better authorities than in their serving as sources of important "instrument readings," readings which do not, themselves, contain the principle of action by which the actually perceived physical effects known as sense-perceptions are organized.
The readers should keep those thoughts in mind throughout the unfolding development within this report. This, as will be apparent at the close, is that the crucial point which must become clearly understood, as to what I am now proposing here as a provisional conclusion, is necessary, which will be summarized in the final point to be presented in this report as a whole.
In order that we might be clear, in the matter of the distinction of a human brain, which appears to reflect a more developed outgrowth of the category of animal brains, the noëtic function exhibited by the human brain does not appear specifically in the animal brain as such. What the biological significance of this difference is, as a matter of physical processes, has not been established; but, we are nonetheless obliged to accept the absolutely overwhelming evidence that that systemic distinction exists. The existence of man's knowledge and use of discovered universal physical principles, is sufficiently, persistently conclusive evidence of an absolute, ontological distinction of this function of the human mind from the animal brain.
Thus, contrary to the a-priorist dogma of Euclid's Elements, or that of Rene Descartes, the discovery of true physical principles, is an action specific to the matured, specific cognitive powers of the human mind, not of the senses as such. In fact, all discoveries of universal physical principles, such as Kepler's uniquely original discovery of the presently known universal physical principle of universal gravitation, have been prompted by empirical evidence that there is a vicious, incontrovertible contradiction among two or more types of sense-perceptual evidence. The experimental demonstration of the discovered principle, thus proves the existence of the true knowledge which defies sense-certainty. This systemic quality of distinction of the mind from the senses, which I emphasize here, is the essential clue which prepares the way for what will be presented as this report's conclusion.[5]
The action specific to scientific creativity, occurs, like classical poetical irony, at a certain point in experimental efforts that, at that point in the effort to discover a true principle by sense-experience, at which our way forward appears to be barred by systemic contradictions, such as between two notions of sense, such as those of vision and the contrasting notion of hearing, as for Kepler in the case of his uniquely original discovery of the principle of universal gravitation; so, a systemic contradiction appears ironically among two or more modes of sense-perceptions, as it appeared in the course of Kepler's composition of his The Harmonies of the World.
Examine that crucial-experimental case.
In that work by Kepler, the challenge of finding a possible discovery of a true universal principle, was posed as being the relevant remedy for a crucial kind of "ontological teasing" of the discoverer's mind. That typifies the kind of distinctions which express that irony, which points, as in the discovery of gravitation by Kepler, toward those cognitive powers of the human mind, in which a discovery of a general principle of science is required, outside of sense-perception per se, in order to present a solution for that specific riddle, the riddle which only the creative conceptual powers of the human mind, alone, can and must solve.
Hence, the fundamental contradiction between, on the one side, the ontologically infinitesimal, a concept which underlies the foundation of Leibniz's discovery and development of the principle of the calculus, against, on the other side, the relevant Eighteenth-century devotees of the cult of empiricism's Abraham de Moivre, D'Alembert, Leonhard Euler, Lagrange, and, later, Laplace, Augustin Cauchy, and also those founders of the absurd dogma of "a law of entropy" concocted by such as Rudolf Clausius and the mere mathematician Hermann Grassmann.
The crucial point at this stage in the report, is that the role of human thinking individuals in the universe, is not merely a subject of the Earth we inhabit, or even peculiar to our Solar system. As Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz, Riemann, Vernadsky, and Einstein approached a certain point in succession, rather than consider man as a subject of that environment, as presented, almost "blab school" style, in the customary classrooms' notion of the Solar system, we must accept the evidence that the Solar system is a subject of the human creative power for change, a power which is to be considered as the innate potential of the human individual mind.
From this vantage-point in crucial experimental investigations, as typified by the case of Kepler's uniquely original discovery of gravitation, we are impelled to regard universal physical principles so defined, not as fictional, as did the devotees of positivists such as Bertrand Russell, such as Professor Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, and the followers of the Cambridge school of systems analysis. We must recognize their a-priori notion as a delusion, perhaps as defective, or merely as misguided, as what the radically reductionist followers of Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell implicitly presume, still today.
On this point, again: the ontological paradoxes arising within the domain of sense-perception, as those paradoxes which proved crucial for Kepler's uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, are to be regarded as the useful shadows which must be considered as candidates for being treated as the mere shadows cast by that potency which has been acquired as knowledge, naturally, by the powers of creative insight given to the human individual mind, powers which have been, and are demonstrated to be efficiently real in their experienced effect, but whose essential quality of existence lies beyond immediate direct access by the mere "meter-readings" of sense-certainty as such.
Those notions of reality, as met in the work of both physical science generally, and in the specific science of physical economy, are notions which are distinct, ontologically, from particularized sense-perceptions in themselves. They express the notion of dynamics which Leibniz re-introduced to modern European science, formally, during the 1690s, as in his modern resuscitation, during that decade and later, of the notion of the essential role of a subsuming principle of dynamis associated with that ancient science of Sphaerics adopted by the Pythagoreans. The richer exploration of this notion of dynamics came with the essential discovery by Bernhard Riemann, as outlined in all essentials within his 1854 habilitation dissertation.
This is also the same notion of dynamics featured, summarily, as a true principle of artistic composition and social systems, in that most exciting, concluding paragraph of Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry.[6] The role of dynamics as the characteristic feature of the creative process in Classical artistic composition, warns us that a competent physical science and a competent expression of Classical modalities in Classical artistic work are each subsumed by a common, higher principle. Competent physical science treats man's concentration on forms of existence lower than the human species'; whereas, Classical artistic composition applies the same cognitive prowess to treating mankind itself as the subject.
So, as Albert Einstein emphasized this in his famous Riemannian appreciation of that uniquely original discovery of the principle of gravitation by Kepler, and as Gottfried Leibniz had already defined the infinitesimal of the calculus in a way which was contrary to the Eighteenth Century empiricists; so, Leibniz, Riemann, and Einstein, for example, had treated true universal physical principles, in succession, as not being embodied within the confines of mathematical formulations.[7] Rather, the true principles of physical science are of the type of experimentally validated solutions, properly known as principles according to the method of, typically, Cusa, Leonardo, Kepler, Fermat, and Leibniz, which, once uncovered, have the apparent, initial effect of appearing to bound, rather than simply connecting, as if mathematically, the observed points-in-motion which are phenomena actually generated by a discoverable universal principle.
These essential facts, bearing on matters of universal physical principle, can not be effectively uncovered and demonstrated except from the standpoint of practices specific to the human mind, such as Classical artistic composition, or a science of physical economy. To know what moves the relatively lower domain of physical science, we must proceed from the qualitatively higher standpoint of social processes of mankind, as being the standpoint of discovery of the principles of specifically human knowledge, rather than those mere subjects of human behavior, other than the specifics of human behavior in human history as such.
Man is not a subject of what is customarily regarded, today, as the "physical universe;" all actual knowledge of that universe is a matter of the attempted, conscious mastery of that universe by mankind. It has been the attempt to treat mankind as, axiomatically, a subject of the animal kingdom, or, worse, as today's radical positivists do, as a subject of the abiotic domain, which are standpoints which are premised on the assumed primacy of phase-spaces inferior to what Vernadsky's work defines as the Noösphere. It is the submission to the ideas, whether refined or crude, peculiar to an ontologically lower phase-space than the Noösphere, which characterizes the fundamental error in all which has been generally accepted as "principles of economy" in society thus far.
Thus, if we adopt the radically positivist view of the universe adopted by the followers of Professor Norbert Wiener at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's RLE, or the notion of the computer and the brain, or the more radical of the premises of the idiot-savant devotees of Bertrand Russell, John von Neumann, and "Silicon Valley," we dehumanize mankind, and, thus, not only exclude life as a universal principle, but, similarly, deny the principle which, in fact of practice, places humanity outside both the abiotic domain and also beyond our comprehension of what are merely the lower forms of life.
For the purpose of defining the essentially underlying practical principle of a competent modern science, the notion of principles which I emphasize here, is also to be seen, in retrospect, as typified by the case of Kepler's uniquely original discovery of the universal principle of gravitation. This was the same argument which Gottfried Leibniz had derived from his own consideration of Kepler's work, in his own presentation of the conception of a calculus of the ontologically efficient (rather than merely mathematical), infinitesimal notion of the universal physical principle of the calculus.[8] Hence: that which should have been read by scientists as the startling effect of the already referenced, concluding sentence of Bernhard Riemann's 1854 habilitation dissertation.[9] Hence, we have Einstein's conception of Kepler's uniquely original discovery of the principle of universal gravitation, a conception of gravitation as bounding an intrinsically finite, but not externally bounded universe.
In the modern reductionists' view of the universe, it has been sense-certainties, which, for them, bound their choice of an actual, or merely supposed universe which the wretched Rudolf Clausius, Hermann Grassmann, Lord Kelvin, and Maxwell had misconceived as being universally entropic in principle.[10] Contrary to such reductionists as those, we have the alternative of the true science typified by the work of Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz, Riemann, and Einstein; for the latter, as in Leibniz's ontological, rather than empiricists' mathematical notion of the "infinitesimal," it is the adduced, anti-entropic universe, which, ostensibly, "self-bounds" the behavior of the objects of sense-perception dynamically.[11]
What I have just described as the anti-entropic view of these matters, is clearly suggested by the consideration of the record of anti-entropic development of orders and species of living organisms, and, in a parallel, but different modality, in the role of scientific and technological progress in the increase of the potential relative population-density of progressive currents in the self-development of human society. That anti-entropic view of these matters becomes much more interesting, when we will have taken into account the specific quality of difference in modalities of anti-entropic self-development, of living plant and animal species versus mankind, as of the Biosphere as such: when this difference is situated in the contrast of lower forms of life to the evidence of the driving principle expressed by the increase of the potential relative population-density among various cultures of the human species, the Noösphere.
It is the implications of Academician Vernadsky's development of the specifically Riemannian types of ontologically qualitative distinctions of the abiotic, the Biosphere, and the Noösphere, respectively, each and all from the common standpoint of experimental physical chemistry, which then point in the direction of, not a solution for the question posed by the notion of a unified field; but, towards a much needed, working understanding of exactly how we must define that which we have yet to know in that matter, beyond bare essentials: an understanding of the nature of the subject itself, rather than a completed systemic view of the matter.
To find even that partial answer to the question so posed, we must first explore the troubling presumption which has customarily stood in the way of understanding not the answer to the "unified field conception," but the question which points the way out from today's prevalent confusion, into the needed direction.
What Is Human Nature, Really?
From the standpoint which I have just identified, the function fulfilled by the expression of the actually creative, expressed power of the developed mind of the human individual, a mind which is, so developed, to be considered as immortal in principle, relative to the merely mortal, living human body as such. That mind is to be viewed in terms of the qualitative distinction which separates the specific nature of the human individual's relatively immortal mental potential, as that is to be contrasted to the case for individual types of animal life.[12]
This view of the human mind, when examined in light of the mind's power to generate efficient, revolutionary discoveries of physical principle, is mysteriously, but undoubtedly distinct from the heretofore prevalent notion of the mortal body. This crucial distinction of the human mind's characteristic potential, as contrasted with the mere animal mortality of the beasts, confronts us whenever we consider the way in which discoveries of conceptions of efficient principles, of either Classical artistic composition, or physical science, continue to outlive their putative creators in a manifestly efficient way, by efficiently continuing, post-mortal action of the discoverer (such as the modern Filippo Brunelleschi, Nicholas of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, Pierre de Fermat, Gottfried Leibniz, Bernhard Riemann, Max Planck, Academician Vernadsky, and Albert Einstein) of any such principle upon the future, anti-entropic development of the human species.[13] These human figures are justly treated as typical of our species' immortals, in that they define a functional notion of the continuing existence of a physically efficient, spiritual immortality of such an individual, when that person is otherwise deceased.
To restate that point, we must ask ourselves, speaking of the matter of ontology, wherein lies that which is the power of a certain, delimited type of idea which continues efficiently, as the existence of an efficient universal principle, when the mortal body of that once living human minter of that idea has died. What is that willful power of such efficient expressions of human creativity over the universe, which is not found among the individuals of those lower forms of life? What is the principled nature of the systemic difference between, on the one side, those willful acts of human discovery of universal principle, which were forbidden by the truly evil Olympian Zeus and his pro-malthusian followers, as in the account of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, and, in contrast, on the other side, to the unwitting mode in which biological evolution has occurred, efficiently, among orders and species in forms of life other than human?
The ontological paradox so posed becomes, thus: Can there be the effect of a physical change in the universe caused by an action which is not usually to be distinguished as specifically "physical" in its source of efficiency? This question, which arises for modern science only in the setting of contrasting human to both denizens of the domains of animal and inanimate behavior, is the pivotal question underlying this present report as a whole.
Is it not the case, therefore, that the customary notion of physical is at fault here? This does not signify that the idea of an equation of physical to efficient, is wrong. It is a case of a reductionist's notion of efficiency, which leads to a misreading of what we ought to intend to say by use of the term "physical" in what is purportedly a "scientific" way.
Or, should we not state the case as follows: that the opinion of that misguided person who regards sense-perceptual experience as being intrinsically real, is expressing a wrong opinion which is often to be seen as an obstacle to recognizing the true nature of the universe which underlies those mere "meter-readings" of perception which are, in fact, as human knowledge, merely perceptions, merely "data-like" effects of "instrumentation"? What is the singular foot which has produced the perceptible footprint; and, much more relevant, the perhaps, two or four feet which have produced the ontological quality of that succession of footprints of which the experimental, evidentiary trail left by the presently unseen feet, is evidence.
Vernadsky's Universe
Once we have put those questions to ourselves, we are properly impelled to improve our appreciation of the work of Academician V. I. Vernadsky in a very specific way. In the case of the category of the Biosphere, we are treating the principle of anti-entropic currents of biological evolution as a principle of creative change in the physical universe at large. In the case of the Noösphere, the impacts of implicitly anti-entropic ideas of physical principle, assume, in effect, a role comparable to that performed by the universal principle of life in the domain of the evolutionary development of the Biosphere. However, we approach that subject with a crucial, specific quality of difference from what might be considered as conventional opinions. These two conceptions of universal principles among the living processes within our universe, must be examined with respect to the ontological quality of the contrast of human creativity to the specific principle of organization of, respectively, both the Biosphere and the abiotic domain of that same universe. The noëtic quality of mankind, contrasted with that of the Biosphere otherwise, and of the abiotic domain, are, respectively qualitatively different categories of developing types, essentially interacting types of qualitatively distinct qualities of processes. This, I regard, as the most essential of the relevant achievements already realized in the work of Academician V.I. Vernadsky while he was still living among us.
Such are the implications of Albert Einstein's presentation of the implications of the notion of discovery of universal principles of physical science. Such are the indicated issues posed by the crucial evidence supporting Academician Vernadsky's presentation of his conception of the Noösphere.
Without putting the leading accomplishments of those essentially, historically contemporary figures into this perspective, as essentially interactive currents of the advances achieved by that generation in its time, my own, most deeply underlying achievements as uniquely successful work in economic forecasting would not have been possible.
The crucial consideration which is not developed in Einstein's published work, we meet in the way in which Academician Vernadsky employed a true principle of physical chemistry to define three ontologically distinct qualities of the Earth's composition: the abiotic, the Biosphere, and the Noösphere. What is to be emphasized, as I do here, is that we must see the implications of Vernadsky's achievement on that account in the following way.
In the "history" of our planet itself, as Vernadsky's work implies such a history, the crucial experimental evidence, is the progressive change in the composition of the planet as a whole, in terms of changes in the relative total mass of the planet's principled composition, that of abiotic, Biosphere, and Noösphere. The total mass of the planet remains in the same general range, but the shifting division of its proportions into new ratios of abiotic, Biosphere, and Noösphere, shows that the power of the planet to influence the Solar system as a whole, requires study of the evidence to the effect, that the abiotic mass is decreasing relative to the Biosphere as Vernadsky defined it, and that the Biosphere is decreasing relative to the net effects of human creative activity, the Noösphere.
It that sense, life is more powerful than the abiotic, and the creative powers of the individual human mind are a more powerful force within the universe than the principle of the Biosphere.
The obstacle to grasping the crucial implications of such evidence as that, is, chiefly, the presumption, as implied in Aeschylus' portrayal of the evil of the Olympian Zeus and his "malthusian" oligarchical lackeys, the false assumption, as by the depraved Eighteenth-century opponents of Leibniz, and such as the Nineteenth-century hoaxsters Rudolf Clausius and Hermann Grassmann, that the universe is organized according to a general rule of "entropy."
It was the toleration of this fraud of "universal entropy," the fallacy of the so-called "law of energy," which stood in the way of comprehension of the deep implications of Academician V.I. Vernadsky's greatest achievement, that for the benefit of all mankind. Academician Vernadsky's implied, but not explicitly stated achievement on the visible record, on this account, becomes clear when we take into account, that from the standpoint of the uniqueness of my success in forecasting in my practiced speciality, the science of physical economy, the evidentiary implications of the currently onrushing, accelerating general physical breakdown-crisis of the physical economy of our planet as a whole.
What is crucial, to that specific effect, in the achievements of Academician Vernadsky, is that these have coincided precisely with what had been those of President Franklin Roosevelt's commitment to physical-scientific progress in the domain of a science of physical economy, as his policy was later opposed under the leadership provided by the British-led, fascist opinions and policies of such among Roosevelt's vicious, pro-fascist adversaries as John Maynard Keynes and President Harry S Truman.[14] The latter, regressive policies were those pro-fascist commitments of Roosevelt's immediate predecessors in the office of President, and were, once again, the wrecking of his successful reforms, a wrecking unleashed beginning immediately on Roosevelt's death. This regression, which was launched immediately by Truman with President Roosevelt's death, a degeneration, that launched by Truman, which has now been demonstrated in the result shown as the presently onrushing general breakdown-crisis of this planet as a whole. We are on the verge of a threatened, rapid collapse from a world population-level of over six-and-a-half billions human souls, to a rapid descent toward less than two billions, or, perhaps even worse.
The difference in direction, which has accounted for all of the progress in productive powers of labor in modern European civilization and its extension, on the one side, and the willful lowering, at an accelerating rate, of the potential population under the conditions introduced by the Truman administration, and, most emphatically, the 1968-2009 interval to date, must be regarded by intelligent and sane leaders of society today, as expressing the brutish lack of morality among the oligarchical and related cults of neo-malthusianism advanced by those depraved creatures known to us as the so-called "globalizers" and "environmentalists."
By witnessing what is precious, but which we are rapidly losing, we know the degraded quality of those outlooks, practices, and policies which we have permitted to occur in implicit defiance of the Creator since the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. That is what we must defend. We must defend that against the unwillingness of those responsible, both leading financier and other ruling circles, to submit to the clear evidence, of the existence of mankind, as built into that design of the human personality, a design which sets mankind apart from the beasts. What we must defend is the miraculous quality of immortality of the individual human personality given to willing mankind. What we must defend, is that which we, especially citizens of our United States, must defend, and make that the world's practiced policy, as the heritage of the two most notable, great U.S. Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, had intended.
Once we have taken that evidence into account, as in examining the successive accomplishments of Riemann and Einstein against the background of the referenced, principled scientific achievements of Academician Vernadsky, the proper meaning of a "unified field" will appear to "the witting" among us. It appears as a suitable outgrowth of the fundamental achievement of a great follower of Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, who prepared the way with his uniquely revolutionary discovery of the principle of universal gravitation, as in his derivation of the general principle of gravitation in the course of his The Harmonies of the World. Might we not say, on that account, that the followers of the cult of that silly plagiarist Sir Isaac Newton, on this account, are virtually satanic, at the relative best, implicitly so?
At this point, we must shift our attention, temporarily, to some important indications to consider from within the work of pre-Sophist, Classical Greek scientific and related thinking. Term these features of the following chapter of this report, the "moral implications" of our subject in this report as a whole. If we were tempted to doubt that, then consider the awful effect on the fate of all mankind on this planet today, the threat to human life in the mass presently represented by the reductionist argument of the followers of a Sir Isaac Newton who, in fact, discovered nothing at all. When Newton was challenged to explain how he had happened to "re-discover" exactly the formulation for a law of gravitation which had been presented in Kepler's The Harmonies of the World, Newton could only attempt to conceal his fraudulent claims by uttering sullenly, his silly "I don't make hypotheses."[15]
II. The Moral Implications
Since the appearance of the subject of the human species, as a species qualitatively distinct from all other living species, the subject of the identity of creativity and morality, which I have posed afresh in the preceding chapter, defines the essential characteristics which distinguish the Noösphere from all other known forms of existence. Among all living creatures, the actual subject of morality exists systemically only for the human species. It has been the prevalent failure to take this aspect of scientific creativity (per se) duly into account, as being essential for science, which has been the chief reason for the prevalent incompetence shown by the relevant governments and other institutions which have brought this planet as a whole to the present condition, a condition of the worst danger to mankind since Europe's exemplary experience with what was called the Fourteenth Century's New Dark Age.[16]
A crucial aspect of this presently menacing failure, has been a widespread disregard, by both governments and also the majority of the governed, generally, of the consequences of the failure to recognize the essential interdependency between, on the one side, successful national economy, and, on the other, an efficient passion for truths of that quality typified by the indispensable role of morality in valid discoveries of universal physical principle. I mean a universal physical principle such as by means of the morality expressed by Johannes Kepler's uniquely original discovery of the principle of universal gravitation in physical science.
Human creativity, as I have already identified it, on the one side, as in the preceding portions of this report and, on the other side, morality, properly conceived, are to be considered as uniquely, and essentially associated, as integral features of the expression of what is actually a principle of human goodness, a principle which is explicitly contrary to the damnably empiricist immorality expressed, typically, by Adam Smith in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments. In the matters of human behavior, including scientific behavior, competent science is never morally neutral.[17]
Morality is located essentially in the mustering of the potential creative powers of the human intellect, as in physical science and Classical modes of artistic development, to increase the power which is located within the individual human personality, the power to continue the anti-entropic form of fruitful and ever more abundant physical-scientific and related progress of mankind, within and over the universe.
The root of that distinction is to be located in the way in which morality is defined by the essential distinction between man and beast, in the distinction of the specifically human implications of fundamental scientific and Classical artistic creativity, as Johannes Kepler's uniquely original discovery of the principle of human creativity exemplifies creativity.
Without the affirmation of that assigned role of creativity, there is no true creativity, and no truthful and efficient expression of public morality. Without that affirmation, the relevant society lacks both true morality and its correlative, the correlative which is a wont for true creativity. It is this function of true creativity which must be recognized, if the idea of the principle of creativity itself is to be understood with scientific competence.
Such are the implied moral, and also scientific distinctions of the manner in which Academician V.I. Vernadsky introduced the concepts of Biosphere and Noösphere to modern physical science.
Thus, some lack a sense of happiness as Gottfried Leibniz's definition, of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," was made central to the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That definition is to be read as expressing a quality of passion required in all scientific work. What we might call "work," otherwise, is no better than poor in essential quality, and certainly lacks the true quality of human creativity. Herein lies the essential fault of so-called Anglo-Dutch Liberalism, a fault which is tantamount to evil, as the U.S. Declaration of Independence implicitly recognized the policy of John Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith as being evil. Evil is the exclusion of, or merely indifference to the good; morality, so defined, is essential, on the condition that its appropriate passion is competently defined scientifically. Dostoyevsky's richly ironical portrait of the evil inherent in the character of the Grand Inquisitor, is a relevant, and also penetrating insight in defining this connection.[18]
There can be no competence in science, when science, treated in its function as human behavior, does not take this matter of morality identified by Leibniz, as being in explicit opposition to that which is expressed by the evil of the pro-slavery dogma of John Locke, prominently into consideration, as I do here.
The following, personalized comments are therefore relevant to the account of the subject of science as addressed in this report.
At my age, and with my experience in life, I can testify to the relevant fact, that I have come to know the relevant associations toward which I have just pointed here. I know this both sweetly and bitterly, as relevant, wise old men and women do, and, I can say this, confidently, of both the bitter and sweet experiences of my life to date. The evidence to be considered on this account, is abundant; we live amid a rich experience of the fact, that the world in which we have recently lived, especially during the recent four, or more decades, until now, has been predominantly mean-spirited, and has been even actually wicked most of the time.
The goodness which one may experience in the presence of known works of Academician V.I. Vernadsky, is a sample of a case which points to happy exceptions. True goodness, as in the work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, or his follower Johannes Kepler, or the experience of the mind of Gottfried Leibniz, Bernhard Riemann, of Albert Einstein, or works of Academician Vernadsky, is made clear to us when we do recognize it, often with something akin to tears of joy, as the experiencing of some exceptional moment of the goodness associated with a true discovery of principle.
It is of material relevance here, as distinct from mere illustration, that I have often referenced English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defense of Poetry on this matter of such a congruence of science and morality, as reflected in matters of politics, law, and Classical poetry and drama. This is especially the case, in the summation of that work of his, in its concluding, rather long, scientifically crucial paragraph, during which Shelley summarizes the conception of the relationship between human goodness and the power of the human creative imagination. Here, in good physical science, as in great Classical poetry, we encounter a certain quality of passion, as this is associated with great Classical artistic and scientific compositions, compositions which show themselves, by their expression of creativity, as being inseparable qualities of passion for good.[19]
That is to say, in a different choice of words, that without the association of that certain feeling of goodness associated with what the Classical Greek of the Christian Apostle Paul adopts by the name of agap , there probably never was a creative conception which was not engendered by a concomitant experience of that presence of agap which the Christian Apostle Paul, and, later, Johannes Brahms, famously portrays in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and in J.S. Bach's Jesu, meine Freude.
We may be certain, that if this quality of experience is not experienced, a truly creative scientific, or Classical-artistic act had not occurred.
So, to recapitulate that point, it is of proper relevance to the subject of this report, that creativity, as I have illustrated that principle in the previous chapter of this report, can not be separated from a specific quality of human goodness which is rooted in a compelling, and impelling, passion of the individual creative human intellect. Such was the difference between the creative Leibniz and the Eighteenth-century followers of the intrinsically evil Abbé Antonio Conti, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Leonard Euler, Joseph Lagrange, et al. So, the quality of creativity can be readily identified in the known creative work of Academician V.I. Vernadsky, as in poet Shelley's A Defense of Poetry, or Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, as distinct from the Romantics. In my own experience, it is impossible to place goodness and creativity in separate categories of motive and experience.
This principled kinship of creative scientific impulses and true morality, is no coincidence. This relationship is illustrated by reference to widely known, ancient Classical Greek works of outstanding significance. This relationship is, as I indicate here, not only an essential correlative of actual scientific creativity, but the passions expressed in true artistic and scientific creativity are essentially of the same quality, and this can be demonstrated from the artistic beauty expressed in the generally known creative-scientific work of Academician V.I. Vernadsky.
However, the following qualifying observation must be added, that in order that morality not be attributed to the slovenly emotions of Romanticism, or to the likeness of arbitrary rules or conventions either of law or custom. The passion for the kind of truthfulness expressed in the form of what are actually creative impulses, as I have identified creative impulses in the preceding chapter of this report, is, as I know this, an integral part of any truly creative action, whether in art or physical science.
Whenever morality, defined as I have just indicated, leaves the premises of scientific practice, there is a bad smell throughout the premises.
Therefore, in concluding this present interim chapter, I must now emphasize that connection to be made here in approaching the subject of the principal object of this report in the following terms.
The Prometheus Principle
For the sake of such needed emphasis, consider a few relevant pages from Classical Greek history. Note, first, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. However, also note, that the great Classical tragedian Aeschylus gets to the heart of the matter, through the implicit contrast between the quality of optimism expressed in the Prometheus Trilogy, when that work is viewed with reference to that contrast provided by contrasting the tragic stink of the Homeric Iliad and the humanist optimism of the Odyssey.
The genius expressed in the composition of the Iliad is its great, ugly, but truthful paradigm of tragedy per se: The most evil gods and demi-gods whisper into the ears of their playthings, the human characters of the drama, and those foolish people then act under control of a consequent impulsion to destroy themselves and one another, accordingly, as in the tragic case of a world which tolerates British imperialism, still today: most notably, the Fabian variety of what is virtually imperial fascism, of today.
Those predominantly evil gods, especially the followers of the fictional Zeus, express a principle of evil per se. To the extent that the whisperings of such "gods" and "demi-gods" shape the judgment of their lawful prey, the people of that culture are, in general, controlled by that influence upon them. That is the only true principle of all Classical tragedy. Just, so, Shelley, in the concluding paragraph of his A Defence of Poetry, identifies the ruling dynamic as the determinant of a good or evil outcome of the behavior of the great majority of the population generally.
Thus, when our subject of discussion has shifted from the abiotic and animal domains, where there is neither guilt nor innocence, to the domain of the Noösphere, science and morality appear in their essential parts as differing facets of the same subject-matter. That specificity is lodged in those powers of human individual creativity which are the categorical distinction of our species, the human species, from all other creatures.
It is therefore important to recognize, that Bernhard Riemann's 1854 habilitation dissertation, especially respecting its opening two paragraphs and the concluding sentence, is both a most rigorous expression of the fundamental principles of physical science, and also a statement of the true morality located in its expression as the creative aspects of the human practice of physical science.
When those principles are adopted, in opposition to both empiricism and reductionism generally, those principles come to represent a force (a dynamic) which influences the behavior of a society to an effect which is counter to the influence of such "Olympian" powers of evil as Sophistry in particular, and reductionism in general.
It is essential to recognize, that, contrary to the silly opinion of our modern romantics and kindred varieties of so-called experts, a true tragedy is never an exhibition of the personal failure of one or several characters on stage. A true tragedy is the failure of a culture in which an element of evil grips a people so strongly that those people are rendered unable to resist self-inflicted suffering and ruin by their own willful choice, that not so much because of anything as much as their currently adopted own customs, such as the terribly tragic influence of the irrationalist cult of so-called "environmentalism" today. The shackles which are the acquired customs of a people, prevent such fools from breaking free of the evil influence of either the imagined pagan gods, or, the equivalent expressed in the form of a reigning culture of an entire reigning class of people, who say, in effect, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, "If I do this, it will destroy me and my society; but, I must do it, because my people's reigning culture demands it of me." He is saying, "I must honor our pagan gods, lest the faithful worshipers of those idols destroy me, as punishment for my disobedience to the will of their gods!"
So, since the so-called Seven Years War, from which the Anglo-Dutch Liberals' private empire emerged victorious as an imperial tyrant over Europe and beyond, in February 1763. It has remained so, ever since, to the present day, in the form of the British monarchy and Commonwealth as being such an imperial tyrant of financier-oligarchical power over money and over the living human bodies which money or comparable temptations could buy, that during most of world history from then to the present moment in A.D. 2009.
There was a relatively brief interval, with the U.S.A.'s joining Britain as an "uncomfortable ally," during the period of that war-time alliance, and until U.S. President Nixon's 1971 destruction of the fixed-exchange-rate system, in which the U.S.A. was nominally "top dog" in the Anglo-American arrangement of 1941-1971, but that vanished, essentially, in the ruins caused by the Anglo-Saudi oil-price swindle of the 1970s, and the continuing ruin of the U.S.A., to the present day, by implementation, under U.S. Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, of policies launched by David Rockefeller's and Zbigniew Brzezinski's Trilateral Commission.
That form of empire reigned so, through the whispers from the imagined evil gods and demi-gods in the likeness of the tragedy of the Iliad. So, in the later tragedies crafted by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Friedrich Schiller, mankind has often made a great fool of itself, as this is shown in the Wallenstein Trilogy, through the folly of its status as the prey of a commitment to evil expressed in the form of the compulsions of prevailing, ruinous, national or comparable customs, customs modeled on the legendary banning of human creativity by the Olympian Zeus of Prometheus Bound.
Thus, as Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, advised his master, the British Empire's Lord Shelburne, to emulate the practice of the Roman Emperor known as Julian the Apostate, by such means as playing the religions of a virtual imperial-British Pantheon against one another. In this manner, the nations of Europe, as elsewhere, have repeatedly ruined one another in wars among themselves, the virtual victim-members of a British-run Pantheon, in virtual Roman-arena-style gladiatorial battles fought for the sadistic amusement and greater glory of their common oppressor, the so-called British empire. They fought as fools, as in the Napoleonic wars fought for the glory of the British empire, or the Twentieth Century's so-called "World Wars" and "Cold War," always to ensure that the British Empire, so called, remained the Venice-style financier-imperial power of inherently predatory, Sarpian Anglo-Dutch Liberal power. There, in that and kindred examples, we encounter the true, spiritual origins of all great tragedies.
It is that type of tragedy, the typification of all true Classical tragedy, including the Homeric Iliad, that it is the foolish collective passions of cultures which induce those cultures to ruin themselves, or to put themselves, again and yet again, at the feet of a tyrant who has ruined them by his, or her manipulation of their devotion to silly, habituated passions.
Such was the case of the joint actions designed to crush Germany, initiated by Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with support of U.S. President George H.W. Bush and France's President Francois Mitterrand, in the Fall of that Wall which had divided Germany. Germany was ordered to destroy its economy, piece by piece, for the convenience of that British empire which has remained the dominant, actually imperial force in shaping world policy ever since.
To destroy people is already a crime; to induce a people to destroy themselves, as the influence of the British empire has done, in case after case, over recent centuries, as by such tricks as promoting the British drug traffic, is among the greatest crimes, as in the exemplary, British-steered pushing the Nazi Adolf Hitler into power in Germany, and supporting Hitler, in fact, until Britain's French fascist ally of the moment had assisted the relatively weaker military force, the Wehrmacht, in overrunning an actually superior French national military force.[20]
It is that type of induced, habitual moral self-degradation of peoples and nations, which has been the greatest curse of humanity throughout historical times, the habitual self-degradation which has permitted the habit of empire to dominate known history in such a fashion, from ancient to present times..
It is the same in the domain of modern science, where the pure evil epitomized by the influence of Paolo Sarpi on the modern perception of science, religion, and politics, has brought European civilization repeatedly into a mire largely of self-inflicted degradation, through service to wicked passions such as those which orchestrated the evil reported in the Iliad's accounts. It is that corruption, typified by the authorship of Paolo Sarpi, and typified in practice by the examples of the origins and continued influence of what has come to be called "The British Empire," which has made a great fool of European and other civilization during most of modern history leading into and beyond the February 1763 Peace of Paris.
It is by the lack of adherence to those passions which are the expression of true creativity, that nations acting according to the injunction of the Olympian Zeus of Prometheus Bound, bring suffering upon themselves. What, and where, then, are those passions, speaking ontologically?
III. The Model Case of the Historical Dynamics


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Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless
Here's a sample of our volunteer opportunities:VIEW AS
Mission Statement
In recognition of the dignity and value of every human life, the mission of Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless is to provide emergency shelter, services and advocacy for homeless people to maximize their self-sufficiency, foster their empowerment and promote their reintegration into the community.
Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless (IPH) is located in Albany, New York, and provides services to homeless individuals and families since its founding in 1984. Interfaith's Emergency Shelter provides dormitory-style emergency shelter for 30 residents. Meals, showers, laundry, phone, fax, and transportation are basic necessities provided to all guests. Interfaith empowers people to become self-sufficient, to reduce dependence upon public assistance, teach life skills, and to eliminate homeless recidivism. Additional programs include the Sheridan Hollow Drop in Center which offers case management and a safe haven during the daytime hours. Life skills programs, assistance with job and affordable housing searches as well as showers, meals, storage lockers, phone and fax services are provided.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
think about how poweful a simple thing can be
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
wordless wednesday?
Posted by PeregrineBlue at 9:50 AM
Creative Work a day in the country, crochet and words, hand embroidery, m OK, wordless wednesdat, Words to Live By, you're OK
3 comments:
- Marcela para Colorin Colorado said...
El poder de la palabra y las posibilidades que nos brinda...
- June 22, 2011 at 10:48 AM
- Mar said...
Que linda!!!
- June 22, 2011 at 4:55 PM
- audrey said...
Hello Constanza!
Thank you for the visit and the uplifting message.
I believe it is good for us to pause and evaluate what our goals are and why. You are a sweet, kind, and creative soul. You will find answers.
♥ audrey
- June 28, 2011 at 9:07 PM
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text:
April 2001
The averaging period used for the following assessment was 1961-1990.
UK overview
Changeable and wet overall. Average temperatures were close to normal, being warmest at the start of the month. Cold northerly winds prevailed mid month with some wintry showers and overnight frosts. Thundery showers towards the end with some sunny periods.
Although wet in most places, the Hebrides and Western Highlands recorded only half their long term average. Tiree had its driest March since 1969.
England and Wales diary of highlights
Changeable and very wet overall. A wet start with some thundery rain at times, followed by a short dry sunny spell. A cold third week with northerly winds and wintry showers. Frequent outbreaks of rain, thundery showers and hail featured for the remainder of the month.
1st to 10th This was a wet unsettled period as a series of depressions passed to the north of Scotland or traversed eastwards across northern England. Although warm or very warm and dry at first (London reached 21.5 °C on the 2nd), periods of rain and showers, some thundery and heavy affected many places soon after. Capel Curig/Gwynedd recorded a gust of 57 kn on the 5th. Some places in North Wales received from two to three inches of rain during the 5th and 6th. It became chilly later with some overnight frost in the north. There was some hill and coastal fog in the west at first on the 9th.
11th to 13th It was mainly dry and sunny but rather cold under transient high pressure, allowing some overnight frost. Patchy rain and drizzle affected Wales and south-west England during the 12th and 13th.
14th to 20th Cold northerly or north-westerly winds prevailed as pressure rose to the west and depressions tracked southeast from the Iceland area to Denmark. There were showers, some thundery, from time to time, these showers became distinctly wintry during the 18th to the 20th with hail, sleet, and snow mixed in. North Wales and counties adjacent to the North Sea were especially affected. There was widespread overnight frost, Sennybridge in Powys fell to -4.4 °C early on the 19th.
21st to 28th Rather cold, wet and unsettled as a complex area of low pressure encroached upon and established itself over the region from the North Atlantic. Bands of rain and showers often heavy with thunder and hail mixed in, were the prevailing feature of the weather, however most places had some sunny periods. The 22nd was very cold and wet as fronts became slow moving over western areas, Cynwyd in Denbighshire only just rose above 4 °C. Bristol reported a heavy thunderstorm on the 24th and there was some damaging hail in Norfolk on the 25th. A funnel cloud was observed off the Norfolk coast on the 26th. The remaining days to the 28th saw more thundery showers in many areas.
29th to 30th A drier finish to the month as rain and some scattered thundery showers over southern England slowly petered out. There were good sunny spells in remaining areas of England and Wales.
Scotland diary of highlights
Quiet month with few extremes.
April was a fairly quiet month, with a period of northerly winds being sandwiched between unsettled spells with slack low pressure systems. Most of the month was spent in polar air, with the snow on the hills retreating only slowly up the slopes. Despite the predominance of air of northerly origin, temperatures for the month were close to average.
The warmest days were experienced at the beginning of April as southerly winds advanced across the country. It was fairly cloudy in the south, but sun in the north enabled the temperature to reach 16.5 °C at Kinloss on the 2nd.
The mild southerly was soon followed by a cool westerly with sunny periods and showers for a couple of days. More unsettled weather followed for a week as two depressions passed close to the country, bringing a mixture of rain and showers.
High pressure built across Scotland in the wake of the lows, with many southern and western parts enjoying a brilliant day on the 11th. The high pressure stayed for a few days, but slow moving fronts gave rather cloudy weather in the southwest. Cold air persisted in the north and east, with temperatures falling to -4 °C at Lybster and Altnaharra on the 12th and 13th respectively.
The anticyclone was pushed westwards by a strong surge of northerly winds from the 15th to the 20th. There was much sunshine in the south-west but more in the way of cloud and wintry showers in the north and east. The temperature rose to only 1.9 °C at Corgarff on the 18th and fell to -5.7 °C at Loch Glascarnoch on the 20th.
More unsettled weather returned from the 21st to the 26th as slack low pressure areas and slow moving fronts brought areas of cloud and slight rain, mostly to the south. Shallow low pressure continued to dominate the weather until the end of the month, but the fronts cleared away to give most places bright and showery weather.
Northern Ireland diary of highlights
This was another very disappointing April month. Four of the five previous April months have been very wet across Northern Ireland. April 1997 was actually quite dry but it was also very dull. April 2001 has been quite wet across most areas, with only some central lowland areas recording slightly below average rainfall. The south-west was wettest, where rainfall totals locally exceeded 100 mm, or almost 175 % of average. It was a persistently cool month, with the month's highest temperature of only 15 °C recorded on the 2nd, otherwise temperatures struggled to reach 13 °C.
1st to 4th Largely dry and sunny, but rather cloudy on 1st, and with scattered showers on 3rd/4th.
5th to 9th Cloudy and quite wet, particularly on 5th and 6th. Mostly dry on 7th, but rain or showers on 8th and 9th.
10th to 11th Largely dry and bright or sunny.
12th to 20th Largely dry, although some heavy rain in far west on 14th. Some quite sunny days, especially on 15th, 16th, 19th and 20th, but also quite cold with wintry showers during Easter week and with widespread overnight frosts.
21st to 24th Generally dull and wet, particularly on 21st, but dry and very sunny on 23rd.
25th to 30th Cloudy but largely dry on 25th and 26th. Heavy showers on 27th and 28th, but showers becoming more scattered to allow more prolonged sunshine on 29th and 30th.
Last updated:


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Now open and fully refurbished. Perfect for e-commerce and distribution.
Tulfra Real Estate proudly announces that 65 Industrial Street South is now available for lease. Formerly the iconic Glaxo Building in Clifton, New Jersey, this premier Class A industrial property is an exceptional opportunity for a single tenant. Featuring over $10 million in upgrades including a 27' ceiling height, ESFR sprinkler, coveted Route 3 location, tremendous space and a full range of contemporary amenities, 65 Industrial Street South truly stands alone.


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News story
Government doubles funding for pothole repairs
More money is to be given to English highway authorities to repair potholes.
Councils have today (24 March 2011) been told how they will benefit from the doubling of funding available for repairing potholes as announced in yesterday's Budget.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has written to all English local highway authorities to inform them of their share of £200 million.
Last month the Department for Transport announced that it was making available £100 million as an exceptional payment to help with much needed road repairs following the severe weather at the end of last year. This extra funding was made possible because of savings the Department made earlier in the financial year.
However, further savings have now been identified and so more money has been made available for this vital programme.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said:
Potholes are a menace to all road users and I want councils to make fixing them a priority.
That is why, when more funding became available, I agreed with the Chancellor that we would double the amount of money we are providing for repairs to be carried out.
This represents a significant investment in road maintenance at a time of severe fiscal restraint, demonstrating the Government's commitment to maintain our infrastructure to support motorists and businesses.
The funding is in addition to the £831 million already provided to councils for road maintenance this year and the £3 billion the Government has committed over the next four years.
All 153 local highway authorities in England, including those in London, will receive a share of the funding. To ensure the money can be distributed over the next few days, the funds will be automatically distributed to English local authorities according to the formula used to distribute road maintenance funding rather than councils needing to apply for it.
To promote greater transparency and accountability, all local highway authorities have agreed to publish information on their website by 30 September 2011 showing where this extra money has been spent.
Further information
The Department for Transport announced in a press release on 23rd February that councils in England would be given more than £100 million of extra funding to spend on repairing potholes.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced in yesterday's Budget that the total funding being made available is now £200 million, which will be shared across all local highway authorities in England including London (please see allocations below).
As the damage caused by severe weather was widespread across the country and to minimise administrative burdens for all concerned, the funds will be distributed formulaically based on the Department's existing highways maintenance capital funding formula (which takes into account road length and condition).
As part of this additional funding, the Department requires local highway authorities to publish a brief note on their website by 30 September 2011 for local communities to be able to see how this extra funding has been spent. In order to qualify for the funding, councils were required to confirm they accepted these conditions by 16 March 2011 and all 153 Local Transport Authorities agreed to do so.
This funding is being provided on an exceptional basis. It remains the responsibility of local councils to plan and manage their road maintenance programmes throughout the year, including appropriate winter resilience measures.
Potholes are formed when water freezes in small cracks in the road, expanding and forming a larger cavity.
To see how the money will be allocated consult the pothole repair table
Roads media enquiries
Media enquiries 020 7944 3021
Out of hours media enquiries 020 7944 4292
Switchboard 0300 330 3000


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Brand Label: Rococo Sand
ITEM MOVED TO ARCHIVE: On December 29, 2017 11:36 pm, Fashion Stylist Online noted this item may be out of stock at Shopbop because it was not referenced in their latest online catalog. If this item is out of stock at Shopbop, you may be able to find similar fashions sold there or elsewhere on our Rococo Sand Designer Brand Directory.
Available for Purchase Online at Shopbop for $585.00Pin It
You'll look like you're headed to the beach in this ROCOCO SAND dress. This boho-chic maxi features a romantic silhouette and beautiful floral prints. Wear with espadrilles and a sun hat to complete the look. Fabric: Silk crepe Beaded embroidery Floral print Cover-up dress A-line silhouette Maxi dress cut V neck Long sleeves Button at front Lined Shell: 100% silk Lining: 100% viscose Dry clean Imported, India Measurements Measurements from size S Length: 55.5in / 141cm, from shoulder.
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This item was published for sale online by Shopbop on December 29, 2017 10:32 pm and last updated by us December 29, 2017 11:36 pm.
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Former Rocket Lucas makes bid for coaching job
Lucas tries to complete lengthy circle
Rocket draftee in 1977 makes bid for coaching job
Nearly 34 years since he came to the Rockets as the first pick of the 1977 draft, John Lucas met with general manager Daryl Morey on Wednesday to discuss returning to the team as coach.
Lucas, who returned to coaching for the 2009-10 season as a Clippers assistant, has had stints as the head coach of the Spurs, 76ers and Cavaliers. He had a 174-258 record in six seasons.
"It was a great opportunity to get to sit down and get to know Daryl," Lucas said. "He's an interesting guy. I feel like it was more to get acquainted. You really want to know who you work for. I really got a great feel for that. I think it's a great opportunity. This is a team that I believe is really on the verge."
Lucas, 57, played 14 NBA seasons, including three stints with the Rockets. He has run a nationally recognized life skills and after care program to help athletes overcome the substance abuse problems that derailed his career and works on skill development with athletes ranging from young children to professionals.
He is the fourth former Rockets player to interview for the position vacated by Rick Adelman. Mario Elie and Mike Woodson meet with Morey last week and Sam Cassell had an interview on Tuesday.
Rockets assistant Jack Sikma and Bucks assistant Kelvin Sampson also have interviewed for the position, with Kevin McHale also expected to meet with Morey. Morey met with former Nets coach Lawrence Frank on Monday.
For Lucas, the job would be a chance to come full circle.
"I started out with the Rockets and I've never left," Lucas said. "But I've been in the game for more than 30 years, working on all levels, high school, college, player development. I wanted to see if my skill set might be right for this."


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Mexico City
Bosque de Duraznos 47 – 4
Col. Bosques de las Lomas C.P. 11700
Miguel Hidalgo, CDMX, Mexico
+52 55 5246 5800
Marta Ruiz-Cuevas, CEO of Starcom Spain, joined Starcom at the global headquarters in Chicago as group strategy director and member of the group's multicultural division, Tapestry.
Marta is also responsible for Publicis Media Mexico, overseeing all of the brands (Starcom, Zenith, MediaVest/Spark, Blue 449 and Performics). She has had the opportunity to work with clients including Kraft, Samsung, Carrefour, Heineken, Burger King, Bankinter and Securitas Direct, among others. Under her leadership, SMG Spain achieved over 30 awards and recognitions in national and international festivals within two years, garnering its title as Spain's Most Awarded Agency in 2006 (El Publicista) and Agency of the Year (Anuncios).
She is also an active member of Starcom's Global Product Committee and involved in international awards and festivals as a juror. She was recognized as a "2016 Women to Watch in Mexico" by Ad Age & AdLatina.


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World powers are hoping to reach agreement over Iran's nuclear program on Monday -- in spite of analysts and officials involved in negotiations voicing their pessimism that an agreement can be found by then.
Talks between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 group, which comprises the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, Russia, France, the U.K. and the U.S.) plus Germany are ongoing in Vienna.
The countries aim to have assurances from Iran that it will not enrich uranium in order to create a nuclear bomb, in return for the relaxation of international sanctions, an accusation Iran denies.
Just days before the deadline, however, little progress appears to have been made. Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that "excessive demands" by the West could mean there is no deal at the end of long-running talks.
The deadline could be extended from Monday until March because of sharp disagreements between Tehran and world powers, officials close to the talks said on Thursday, according to a Reuters report.
Although both Iran and the West are keen to strike a deal, Firas Abi Ali, senior manager of Middle East and North Africa Country Risk at IHS told CNBC that there wouldn't be a deal at any cost.
Read MoreIran's economy moving from bad to less bad
"There's political will on both sides not to make these talks into a failure," Abi Ali told CNBC Thursday, "[Iranian President] Hassan Rouhani has staked a lot on his ability to stimulate the economy and open up investment to the West so he's not keen to let these talks fail completely. Similarly with President Obama there are expectations on him not to fail…but that doesn't mean the West will accept a bad deal."
"I think there will be some very carefully worded diplomatic language from both sides to make it not look like talks have failed anyway."
Talks with Iran have been intermittent since January. As the deadline approaches, significant differences remain between the parties over Iran's uranium enrichment allowance and how fast – and in what order --sanctions by the West would be lifted.
Other officials involved in the talks have also shown reservations over the outcome, with Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond saying on Wednesday that he was not optimistic a deal could be struck by the deadline. He told reporters in London: "But I think if we make some significant movement we maybe able to find a way of extending the deadline to allow us to get to the final deal."
IHS' Abi Ali also believed that rather than a conclusive deal, a framework or "an agreement to reach an agreement" would be the outcome. "The November 24 deadline was a self-imposed one from the start so I think they have some leeway. They will want to exhaust that."


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(Psychological / emotional perspective)
In dreams, if we see footprints going in opposite directions, we need to consider carefully what has happened in the past and what is going to happen in the future. We are standing in the here and now and must consider the confusion of the present, how it may affect our future and what choices we must make. We also need to consider what actions we have initiated in the past that will enable us to move into the future.


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CRC Press
360 pages
The long-held belief that acquired aphasia in children is primarily of the non-fluent type has been challenged in recent years. This book discusses language problems arising from cerebro-vascular accidents occurring in childhood, and from other
Acquired childhood aphasia - neuro-pathology, linguistic characteristics and diagnosis; assessment and treatment of acquired childhood aphasia; speech and language disorders following childhood closed head injury; communicative disorders in childhood infectious diseases; linguistic status following acute cerebral anoxia in children; linguistic problems associated with childhood metabolic disorders; communicative impairments in neural tube disorders; speech and language disorders in childhood brain tumours; effect of CNS prophylaxis on speech and language function in children; acquired childhood speech disorders dysarthria and dyspraxia.
From being an area primarily on the periphery of mainstream behavioural and cognitive science, neuropsychology has developed in recent years into an area of central concern for a range of disciplines.
We are witnessing not only a revolution in the way in which brain-behaviour-cognition relationships are viewed, but also a widening of interest concerning developments in neuropsychology on the part of a range of workers in a variety of fields.
Major advances in brain-imaging techniques and the cognitive modelling of the impairments following brain injury promise a wider understanding of the nature of the representation of cognition and behaviour in the damaged and undamaged brain.
Neuropsychology is now centrally important for those working with brain-damaged people, but the very rate of expansion in the area makes it difficult to keep with findings from the current research.
The aim of the Brain, Behaviour and Cognition series is to publish a wide range of books that present comprehensive and up-to-date overviews of current developments in specific areas of interest.
These books will be of particular interest to those working with the brain-damaged. It is the editors' intention that undergraduates, postgraduates, clinicians and researchers in psychology, speech pathology, and medicine will find this series a useful source of information on important current developments.
The authors and editors of the books in the series are experts in their respective fields, working at the forefront of contemporary research. They have produced texts that are accessible and scholarly. We thank them for their contribution and their hard work in fulfilling the aims of the series.


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Patients can take omeprazole delayed release capsules with applesauce, according to Mayo Clinic. Those who cannot swallow the delayed-release capsule can open it and sprinkle the pellets inside the capsule on one tablespoon of applesauce.
Swallow the omeprazole pellet and applesauce mixture immediately, and follow it with a glass of cool water, advises Mayo Clinic. Use soft applesauce that is not hot and is easy to swallow without chewing. Do not chew or crush the omeprazole pellets. Patients can also take other omeprazole capsules or tablets that are not delayed-release with food, but should swallow them whole without crushing, breaking or chewing.


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Sande Alessi doesn't have any movies playing in theaters.
If you feel like heading out, check out other movies in theaters.
Some Kind of Beautiful
Guarding Eddy
Peaceful Warrior
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
I Heart Huckabees
The Terminal
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
All Sande Alessi films
Movies.com, the ultimate source for everything movies, is your destination for new movie trailers, reviews, photos, times, tickets + more! Stay in the know with the latest movie news and cast interviews at Movies.com.
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The Advance Tabco wall mounted hand sink is great for any commercial business. Never run out of hand space with this 20" wide x 16" front-to-back x 8" deep bowl size and deep drawn design. This waqll mounted hand sink is also equipped with a 4" splash mounted gooseneck faucet that is chrome plated and furnished with aerator. Constructed from one sheet of TIG welded stainless steel with a die formed countertop edge, this wall mounted hand sink is extremely durable and easy to clean. Due to its design, this stainless steel hand sink also comes with two support brackets and a galvanized keyhole wall mount bracket.
Standard Features:
- 20"W x 16" front-to-back x 8"D bowl size
- 18 gauge stainless steel body with die formed countertop edge
- Splash mounted gooseneck faucet
- Galvanized steel wall bracket
- 2 support brackets
Hand Sink, wall model, 20" wide x 16" front-to-back x 8" deep bowl, 18 gauge 304 series stainless steel, splash mounted gooseneck faucet, basket drain, wall bracket, NSF, cCSAus
*The warranty will not be honored for residential or non-commercial use of any Commercial Equipment.
Important Prop 65 information for California residents.
Advance Tabco 7-PS-45 SpecificationsPDF Spec Sheet
|Advance Tabco
|Specialty Options
|Includes Gooseneck Faucet
|Specialty Options
|Basket Drain
|Faucet Mount
|Wall Mount
|Overall Length (in)
|Bowl Width (in)
|Bowl Length (in)
|Height (in)
|Bowl Depth (in)


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|"Calling Disciple" by He Qi
Scripture can be found here...
At first, it feels like people realizing there's a celebrity in their midst. Or maybe, this is high school, and the nerdy kids finally have a brush with the really cool kid. But there is more, much more.
As today's passage begins, John the Baptist sees Jesus again, and he calls out: "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" And for just a minute, he does sound a bit like the captain of the math club who sees the varsity football star and wants to be a part, even in a small way, of his glory. And even though life as we know it has taken its toll on that biblical metaphor, and most of us are far more likely to associate that word, "Lamb," with something we enjoy occasionally for dinner, the fact remains that the name John has assigned to Jesus has incredibly troubling overtones. In its first appearances in scripture, the word "lamb" is associated with wealth—barter, purchase. After that, the lamb appears as a sacrifice to be offered to God to atone for sin. To call Jesus the Lamb of God this early in the gospel is to make an entirely anachronistic claim about him—how could John know? How could he guess? How could he imagine? That in Jesus would be the capacity to purchase something. That through Jesus a sacrifice would be enacted.
But I am getting way ahead of myself
Two of John's disciples (a word that really means, "learners"—the people who have been learning from John) see Jesus, and they hear John call him "Lamb," and decide to investigate. And so they start following him around, and Jesus—who is not, in fact, playing the "cool kid," he is far too welcoming for that—turns to them and absolutely cuts to the chase. "What are you looking for?" He asks. They respond with a question that sounds kind of bizarre, the sort of thing you say when you don't have the nerve to say what you really want to say. At first, they use the title of respect given to teachers of holy law. "Rabbi," they ask, "Where are you staying?" Jesus answers, "Come and see." And then they go and hang out together, all afternoon.
What if they could have really heard the full implication of Jesus' question: What are you looking for? What if they could have asked what they truly wanted to ask?
What if they could have said, "We want someone to guide us."
Or, "We want someone to serve as a still point and sure foundation in a frightening and changing world."
Or maybe, "We want someone to be with us, someone we can lean on when life gets hard."
Or even, "We want someone to help us see the big picture, to give us a sense of where we are in the grand scheme of things."
But are not able to ask for what they really want, and so instead they have a tour of the place Jesus is staying—my money's on Bethany, he really likes this one family there. And whatever happens that afternoon, whatever words are exchanged between them—we don't know, it all happens offstage—whatever Jesus shows them, or tells them, or awakens in them, it's as if a match is lit. One of the two, Andrew, hurries to see his brother Simon. He tells him, "We have found the Messiah."
And in that moment we know. They entered trepidatious. They entered wary. They were respectful—they called him Rabbi. But now they call him Messiah—Anointed one. Leader. Savior.
And then we get a taste of what it might have been like for Andrew and the other one, the one whose name we never learn, hanging out that afternoon.
Jesus meets Simon, and says, "Hello, nice to meet you, I'm going to give you a new name now. I think I'll call you Rocky."
Then he meets Philip, and tells him, simply "Follow me."
And then there's Nathanael. Nathanael, who sits under a fig tree—symbolic of his interest in holy things, the knowledge of good and evil—and whose interest in all these things has given him the heart of a skeptic, and also some geographically-based prejudices. Nathanael, who hears about Jesus and all but rolls his eyes, saying, "He's from WHERE?" Until Jesus claps eyes on him, and reads him like a book, and he all but falls to his knees, stammering, "You are the Son of God!"
It is all very unsettling. No one leaves an encounter with Jesus unchanged. No one comes away from his searching gaze without being stirred up, read-like-a-book, re-named, and issued an invitation: Come and see.
It is unsettling, because these people who have suddenly found themselves in Jesus' orbit have received answers to longings they didn't even verbalize—they have received THE answer.
They wanted someone to guide them.
They wanted someone to serve as a still point and sure foundation in a frightening and changing world.
They wanted someone to be with them, someone they could lean on when life got hard.
They wanted someone to help them see the big picture.
They found all this in Jesus. And more.
Except that guy (or gal?) in verse 39 whose name we don't know. Who is that unnamed disciple, that anonymous learner?
Actually, it's you. One of the beautiful and haunting features of this telling of Jesus' story is the way in which it leaves a space for us, the readers of generations to come. Through the unnamed disciple we too are invited to see how an encounter with Jesus can stir us up, leave us feeling we've been read-like-a-book, re-named, and issued an invitation. As you read along in the gospel of John and find traces of the unnamed disciple, go ahead. Insert your own name in there. Take the ride. Go and see.
Yesterday, eighteen Jesus-followers, all called by this church to be deacons and elders, gathered together for a retreat. In that time of learning, we shared what our faith in Jesus has meant to us.
Our faith is a guide, shows us a path.
Our faith is a sure foundation in a sometimes frightening and ever-changing world.
Our faith is a source of strength and consolation when life gets hard.
Our faith gives us a sense where we are in the grand scheme of things.
And now, eight of the eighteen will come forward to see how service in his church will surprise them, transform them, and challenge them. Get ready, R, M, J, C, C, B, M and J, because Jesus will stir you up. He will read you like a book. He will give you a new name. He will keep issuing this persistent invitation into deeper relationship with God: come, and see. Come and see! Thanks be to God. Amen.


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The Mirror interviews an ISIS jihadi -- believed to be connected to those who killed photographer James Foley -- and reminds us all of the appeal of Fleet Street newpapers. The article also shows the risks of ignoring religious statements.
First, the achievement. The Mirror took an audacious step in publishing the interview -- apparently a text-based conversation via an "obscure messaging app" -- with an avowed jihadi inside Syria. If true -- and it would be tough for others to verify -- the story is a 1,000-plus-word look into the mind of a man who would chop off another's head.
He is named as Abu Abduallah al-Britani, one of the so-called "Beatles," a trio of British men who left the U.K. to join the terrorist army in Iraq and Syria. And The Mirror gets max mileage out of it -- right from the headline, " 'I'm ready to behead next enemy': Chilling message from Briton willing to kill for jihad."
In true Fleet Street style, the article is peppered with sensational adjectives like "fanatic," "warped," "horrific" and ...
Speaking a day after the sickening video emerged of American James, 40, being beheaded, al-Britani said he had no fears about carrying out similar atrocities in Syria.
Repeatedly calling our man "akhi" – or brother – al-Britani started the disturbing conversation by laughing at James' horrific death.
Our investigator then asked what he had to do to join the IS terrorists' vile cause.
The Mirror's "investigator" is an anonymous source who posed as an eager recruit. He probes not only the thoughts of a man who would wield a blade for God, but also intriguing details on how anyone can join and train for jihad.
Al-Britani advises the Mirror interviewer to fly from the U.K. to Turkey, take a bus to the Syrian border, then dash across before he's seen by patrols. Once with ISIS, he could expect military-style training like squats, runs, situps and "army crawls."
Besides Abu Abduallah al-Britani, the Mirror names the other two "Beatles" as Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary and Abu Hussain al-Britani. Other media report that Bary, a former rapper, is being investigated for Foley's murder as well.
Fair warning, BTW: If you have an older computer as I do, be patient in reading the article. The Java-heavy webpage stalled my machine several times.
The Mirror interviewer presses Abu Abduallah al-Britani on how jihadis could behead a man. Al-Britani first tosses it off with "Allah made it easy"; he later hints at a motive in complaining that "A brother severed (sic) one body part and the world went nuts. A drone severes (sic) a body into a hundred peices (sic) but no one says nothing."
Adds the newspaper:
He also said he wanted to "establish Allah's empire". But he told how he was "a revert" to the religion – meaning he was previously not a Muslim.
He also revealed he used to disagree with jihad. It is unclear what changed his mind, but he hinted he was angered by years of American drone attacks on Muslims.
There's one of the few gaffes in this article: that business about being a "revert." It doesn't merely mean a new Muslim; it's shorthand for a widespread Muslim belief that Islam is the original and natural religion. Therefore, everyone is born into the faith and converts out of it. And anyone who accepts Islam doesn't convert, but simply reverts to his/her born faith. That's a can o' worms, I suggest, that The Mirror didn't mean to open.
As the story ends, al-Britani says he doesn't keep in touch with his family because "they don't understand his cause." The good folks at The Mirror should set two goals: awareness not only of al-Britani's motivations but how he spins words. That shouldn't be too hard for a Fleet Street newspaper.


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Local school boards, because they are the decision-making body closest to the classroom, play a central role in setting a new course. It is they who have the ultimate responsibility to bring high quality teaching in mathematics and science to our schools. It is their job (within some state imposed guidelines) to set local instructional priorities and policy, to determine budgets, and to set salary scales. Perhaps most important of all, it is school boards that are accountable—to citizens, parents, and taxpayers alike—for the education our children receive. Whether elected or appointed, school board members serve at the sufferance of the public. But to be accountable, school boards must be held accountable. They must be called on to interpret their actions and justify their decisions. And in America, making them responsive is the people's job.Parents, let's all do our jobs so that the school boards do theirs.
Quoted from:
Before It's Too Late
A Report to the Nation from The National Commission
on Mathematics and Science Teachingfor the 21st Century, p. 36