Thursday, December 5, 2013

Electronic devices distract most students

Don't expect US students to come anywhere near the top in science or math: they are wedded to their social media and the specious 'friends'  We interviewed 22 students from Amherst High School and were shocked to learn that 16 of those students, reported a daily cell-phone and Ipad use of 4 hours or more. Obviously, something has to give. What gives is education: the careful examination and logical analysis, and exposure to entire new domains and fields of inquiry. Loss of these capabilities just confirms what the economy bears: just 3% of Americans are minimally competent in any discipline. The big masquerades is the corporate-loving economists. The government has made sure that all those foolish investors in subprime mortgages were paid back, while cutting unemployment benefits, foodstamps/SNAP, Medicare.

Our research into ancient Anatolia, Palestine and Mesopotamia must necessarily focus on the temple. That structure was usually open to all. It was the center of re-distribution of products, and workers. In ancient Sumeria, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, and the Land of Hatti, the temple provided rations.

The modern dopes say this is socialism, not capitalism. But evidence shows that providing everyone with basic necessities, allowed small investors to save and invest, without worrying about meeting basic needs. This re-distribution also kept folks from falling into debt. It also allowed companies to form without paying high salaries and commissions even before one starts.

As a result of the 2008-10 great recession, millions lost jobs, homes, but the government in Washington has increased benefits. Now it routine to see workers at Walmart and many other places, make so little money that they cannot live. In this case, the US government must return to the roots of polity and economy - the re-distribution of surpluses.

There will be those business people who warp ideological, loudly decrying any hint of socialism, but the redistribution of wealth is actually very good for the economy at large. At certain times in history, ordinary people could hold shares, save and invest, becoming capitalist. So those who descry helping the poor forget the poor would buy things, even to save and invest. That is prosperity, and not the enrichment of a few at the top. Such monopolization of wealth, power, metals, knowledge and information by urban magnates and landlords, had grave consequences, even for polities ringed with brutal troops and cavalry.


Friday, June 22, 2012

Since the Human Preservation was founded in 2009, a severe economic unraveling has stunned analysts globally. The bloated housing bubble got pricked by new, higher energy costs, which then impacted squarely on the banks. The big banks managed to recoup their windfall profits, thanks to all the TARP money from taxpayers, but are still engaged in speculative activity in the way of seedy gamblers. Can the world afford the casino-style capitalism? Any move to rationalize the world's financial edifice is and will be seen as an assault of the free market. So we are doomed to repeat again all the stupid errors. Since 2008, some $35 trillion has just evaporated. Alas, the nature of money,  that it should just evaporate. But that lost $35 trillion is nearly half the world's available liquid funds.

Of course, if they had read David Ricardo they would have quickly realized that sinking your wealth into real estate, is not the best way to use it, to grow it, to win big while helping society by creating jobs. Why on earth do rich people get the jitters? Why do they seek the security of landed property? The USA will generate only one third the jobs required, that everyone able to work, can. That of course is the Republican 'wet dream' but rendered impossible because of the big business bent on ever higher quarterly profits, which they believe is the only way capitalism can work. How limiting! A little economic history would quickly show some 20 different kinds of capitalism.

The main feature to observe is the way the arrogance and greed of the very rich, have impoverished nearly hundred million citizens. The stupid errors of the gambling speculators now leads to destitution, experienced broadly. Have these vulnerabilities been isolated and addressed? Not in your life. The real estate market has not recovered. The stock market is teetering. The financial research 'experts' of course never did much social science work. They have learned that petroleum is important - it's energy, they say - and they have learned that the Middle East has most of the oil and gas. So they get the jitters - another failure of trust. So millions are further impoverished.

Listening to the Republicans one sees how they hate Islam. That they do not know bout it, makes little difference in their demonization. Of course, this warring against the Muslims is very much the tradition of Medieval European feudalities. A militant Christianity also evolved the aggressive Tzars of Muscovy. After a thousand years of such foolishness, we are still confronted with the perpetuation of religious bigotry. (log onto to http://ancientneareasternlaw.blogspot.com and http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com, and http://speculumuse.blogspot.com.)

Curiously, it is the Muslims who have best perfected the kind of capitalism which puts everyone to work and distributes money. The banks don't lend money, hoping for a little interest, but boldly join entrepreneurs (usually individuals or families) as partners in investment. Islamic societies create a range of institutions for social welfare and cheap business maintenance without any state assistance.

Maybe you can tell us how to proceed.          -JPM, Amherst, Massachusetts USA

The author is, amongst other things, the moderator/instructor of the online discussion group 'Islamic Civilization,' hosted the the FAS graduate alumni office, Harvard University.


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Confirming all we suspected...

The list here is a partial one, noting some of the investigations underway in some seven countries. You can communicate your reactions at tulku7@verizon.net. There are about one thousand research projects commissioned by The Human Preservation Project.
We appreciate your questions and input. - Thank you
John Paul Maynard Amherst, Massachusetts 01002 USA

Thursday, August 21, 2008

HUMAN PRESERVATION PROJECT
A LIST WITH CODES OF RESEARCH OBJECTIVES


01.3 TELEVISION AND SOCIETY
01.4 Brains and Television: Why and How the Stupor Takes Over
01.5 Babysitting young children with television or video
School kids with Television On: A Social Failure of Communications
01.6 Teenagers Who Watch TV: What it Means Statistically
01.62 Television in minority households: Close look at the BET net and the Spanish soaps
01.7The Cost of Television: A Degraded Artificial Culture featuring Violence and Sex
01.8 Children Who Act Out: How Television Prompts Aggression
01.9 American Television: Can They Dumb it Down Anymore?

02.3 CELL PHONES WORLDWIDE – SOCIAL AFFECTS AND EFFECTS
02.4 New communications – the nature of the dialogue(s)
02.5 Statistics on Fatal Accidents: A Rash of Cell Phone Tragedies
02.6 The Seven Kinds of Interpersonal Styles in Cell Phone Conversations
02.7 Differences in Cell Usage amongst the Six Continentals
02.8 Life in the Post Modern Playground: Can We Dumb It Down Anymore?
02.9 Cell Phones in Crime and War
02.10 Notes on the Global Future of the Telecom Industry

03.10 MUSIC IN THE ELECTRONIC MEDIUM
02.11 How a few big corporations dictate what you hear
02.12 The Great Dumbing Down of American Music: 1980-2007
02.13 Musical Exposures amongst Teenagers: Can Education Help?
02.14 Lyric Traditions amongst the Continentals
02.15 Application of Harmonic Laws and Intervals
02.16 Notes on the Early History of Music: How the Turks gave China and Europe the 7 tone scale

04.0 SPATIAL DISORIENTATION AMONGST AMERICANS
04.1 Losing Touch with Nature and One’s Surroundings
04.2 The Big Dumbing Down: of the Humans
04.3 Finding nature as one’s body, one’s self
04.4 Why Americans Fail Overseas
04.5 The Scandal of Geographic Ignorance
04.6 Stay in the Pain Factory – or Explore
04.7 Speech and the Brain: the False Intimacy of Chitchat
04.8 The Neurophysics of the Brain- Addled.
04.9 Using Speech as a Dynamic Expression

05.0 LESSONS OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

0.5.1 Conditions of Prehistoric Life as Compared to Today
0.5.2 Human Dimorphism and the Bicameral Brain
0.5.3 Unexplored Powers: Lessons from the Upper Paleolithic
0.5.4 Fashioning a Behavioral Prescription Based on the Lessons of Prehistory
0.5.5 Music and the Destiny of the Humans

06.0 THE ADULTERATION OF FOODS IN THE UNITED STATES

07.0 THE RATIONALIZATION OF TOXINS AND POISONS
A society will hurt itself grievously if it does not pay close attention to poisons.
0.7.1 Some Notes on the Human Stomach and Liver
0.7.2 An American Idol: Specialty Poisons in the Environment and Medicines
0.7.2 The Challenges of Microbial Resistance: MRSA and C Difficile Microbes: Who Will Win?
0.7.3 So You Want to Protect Yourself…

08.0 HUMAN ECONOMIC HISTORY
09.0
10.0 HUMAN POLITICAL ECONOMY
11.0 A REGIONAL APPROACH
12.0 GROWTH REDEFINED: LESS IS MUCH MUCH MORE
13.0 POLICY PRIORITIES AND IMPERATIVES
14.0 SOME MYTHS OF HUMAN CULTURAL ORIGINS, AND HISTORY
14.1 The Epic of Africa Sketched in Brief
14.12 The Great Escape: Tracking Migration Out of Africa
14.2 The Glacial Epochs as Finishing Schools
14.3 Notes on Chatal Huyuk, the first Town
14.4.Jericho: The Earliest City
14.5 Palestine and the Negev before the Hebrews
14.6 The Ancient Origins of Moral Sensibilities
14.7 The ‘Judaeao-Christian’ as a Label and a Conundrum
So You Think the Bible is Your Way

15.0 ORIGIN OF THE MODERN WORLD SYSTEM
15.1 Asking the Right Questions in History, or, Defining the Anthropocene Epoch
15.2 The Neolithic Achievement
15.3 We are All Sumerians
15.32 Legal Codes in Babylon, Assyria and Ugarit
15.4 The Eastern Mediterranean in 500 BC: The Shared Culture of the Greeks and the Hebrews
15.5 Hebrew as a Canaanite Hill Language, with Notes on Ugaritic Mythology
15.55 Genocide and Monotheism: Are the Scriptures a ‘Just’ Record?
Rome’s Dept to the Etruscans
15.67 The Fatal Wrench in the Works: Why Rome Never Flowered
God as a Genocidal Maniac: The Old Testament and the Law
15.8 The 53 Wars for Christ, from Constantine and Charlemagne to the Crusades and Taiping
15.82 Debts to the ‘Barbarians’: Clothes, Grammar and Art
Classical Arabic Styles and Sciences: A Brief Survey
15.85 What Western Science Owes to Arab-Judaeo Civilization: A Brief List and Summary
15.95 When the British Isles were just a Province of Denmark - some notes on Nordic vocab and syntax in English.

16.0 SCIENCES OF PROSPERITY
Ibn al Kaldum: The First Social Scientist
Some Lines from Rumi Translated.
Medical Specialities amongst the Arabs and Jews
Medieval Art and Modern Graphic Design
Anglo-Saxon Tribal Law and England’s Common Law Tradition
The Roots of Contemporary Morals: Ancient Germanic Tribal Law
The Miracle of the Netherlands: War and the Peace
Golden Tentacles: The Business Strategies of the Amsterdamers, 1347 to 1550
War and Peace as Hammer and Anvil in the Forging the Modern World System

16.0 THE SCIENCES OF PROSPERITY
17.0

List of Research Areas