Timothy Wilken, MD
writes:It’s early in the 1900’s along the East Coast of America and two
young brothers are traveling to their secluded laboratory in an open
motor car. They have recently invented a new vehicle of transport. With
them is a wealthy railroad man, one of the many potential investors to
whom they’ve pitched their invention. The three men talk as they drive
along. Hoping to influence the potential investor, the taller brother
predicts the impact of their newly invented vehicle on society, “Our
invention, will change the way humans travel in this world. We will go
faster, farther, and quicker than ever before. And, people will use our
vehicle to go all over the world. Someday, you will travel to London in
a just a few hours.” “Yes,” added the younger brother, “and travel
won’t be expensive either. Our invention is highly efficient, with very
little mechanical friction compared to all other methods of transport.”By the time they arrive at the laboratory, the railroad man seems
friendly if not a little skeptical of their project. Within a few
minutes the vehicle was ready for a demonstration. They seated the
railroad man comfortably in the center of the vehicle and took up their
operating positions near the front. Soon the motor was warmed up and
running hard. The vehicle vibrated considerably and was also quite
noisy. There were two long spinning devices that made it frightfully
windy. The potential investor began to wonder to himself. “How could
this device be any real improvement over the train or the motorcar?”Then the vehicle began to slide along the ground on what appeared to
the investor to be some type of track. Suddenly, the ride improved, the
sound from the track was gone. “Oh,” thought the railroad man, “this is
much nicer than I thought.” Not even his best railcars rode this
smoothly. And then ,for the first time, the railroad man realized they
were rising into the air. Panic replaced curiosity, and soon his
screams drowned out even the sound of the motors. The younger of the
inventors, noticing the investor’s distress, signaled his brother to
get back on the ground right away. Later, safe on the ground, he asked
his brother what had happened. The older brother replied, “I should
have told him about leaving the ground.” “You didn’t tell him the Flyer
was an aeroplane?” Asked Orville in disbelief. Wilbur replied in
frustration, “So many of these investors won’t even come to the
laboratory if I tell them it’s an aeroplane. So, I told him what it
would do, and let him experience the “how” for himself.  
…  Like the Wright’s
aeroplane, the synergic sciences can solve enormous problems for
humankind. And, like the Wright’s aeroplane, the synergic sciences can
bring many positive and wonderful changes to our lives, but the “how”will be very different from the way things are done today. The synergic
sciences present us with a remarkably new view of humanity and of our
human potential. This new view may challenge many of your current
beliefs and some of your basic values. But this is good news, because
without a major change in beliefs and basic values our human problems
are not solvable. (12/22/04)
more…

Dave Pollard writes: Several of my key solutions to making our world better — Natural Enterprises, True Collaboration and Model Intentional Communities
most notably — rely on the ability of groups of people to self-manage
more effectively than large hierarchical organizations are, or can be,
managed top-down. Derek Woolverton over at Technical Difficulties… 
commented on my post on WL Gore (”no ranks, no titles, no bosses”) that
self-managed organizations, if they don’t have any rules, can be much
worse than badly-managed ones. He sent me a link to a manifesto written
back in 1970 by Jo Freeman called The Tyranny of Structurelessness,
lamenting how the women’s liberation movement of that day had
degenerated into anarchy, cliquishness and petty politics for exactly
that reason. Her article lays out these seven principles of democratic
structuring for self-managed organizations: 1) Delegate specific
authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic
procedures, after they’ve expressed an interest or willingness to do
it. Don’t just let people choose their own jobs. 2) Require all those
to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who
selected them. The group retains the ultimate say over how the power is
exercised. 3) Distribute authority among as many people as is
reasonably possible, to prevent monopoly of power and encourage
learning and consultation.  4) Rotate tasks among individuals
often but not too often, so people learn many jobs adequately and to
avoid turf wars.  5) Allocate tasks using objective criteria:
competency, interest, responsibility, and opportunity to learn new
things with appropriate mentoring.  6) Diffuse information to
everyone in the organization as frequently as possible. The more one
knows about how things work, the more politically effective one can be.
7) Provide equal access to resources (equipment, skills and
information) needed by the group. Freeman’s manifesto is dated, but
these principles make sense when dealing with the proclivity (I think
it’s learned, so I won’t say ‘natural tendency’) of people in groups to
dominate, bully, gang up, hoard, compete, take perverse pleasure in
others’ failure, and do things without adequate consultation. (12/22/04)
more…

Laura Sayre
writes: Mara and Spencer Welton know how to focus. This farming couple
grows a wide variety of lettuces and other greens, baby vegetables,
herbs and cut flowers on less than an acre of Intervale land, selling
at three Burlington farmers’ markets and to local restaurants. They
have no employees and use almost no heavy equipment. From the
beginning, Mara explains, their farm business strategy has been “to
stay small and work it ourselves.” Even so, after two years at the
Intervale, Half Pint Farm has expanded dramatically in terms of
turnover and profitability, Mara and Spencer report. With a few small
shelters in the field in addition to Intervale farm program greenhouse
space, the couple stretch their growing season from the last week of
March to the last week of October. In the off season, Mara takes on
temp work and Spencer teaches part-time at the local community college.
Overall, they’re making a living doing work they love. … Today, one
of Half Pint’s signature crops, an ultra-microgreens mix of fennel,
red-leaf amaranth and other leafy greens, is grown with those chefs in
mind. “Chefs love it,” says Mara. “It looks stunning as a garnish, but
it also packs a lot of flavor.” The delicate, colorful crop takes just
two weeks from seeding to harvest and sells for $24 a pound. This year,
it was also the earliest marketable product to come out of an Intervale
farm. As the farm’s name implies, most of the rest of Half Pint’s crops
also emphasize concentrated value—big flavors in small packages. They
sell new potatoes, baby eggplant, tender zucchini, diminutive
brassicas, cherry tomatoes, and more. The baby vegetable theme really
works well at farmers’ markets, Mara and Spencer say: people are
initially attracted by the novelty factor, but keep coming back because
the veggies are so young and fresh many of them can be eaten raw. In
addition, the Weltons put a lot of thought and effort into making their
farmers’ market display distinctive and engaging, which is essential in
competitive markets like Burlington’s. “We must have had 30 people per
market take pictures of our stand this year,” says Spencer. And when
people are done snapping photos, they buy. (12/22/04)
more…

BBC Science — Being
fluent in two languages may help to keep the brain sharper for longer,
a study suggests. Researchers from York University in Canada carried
out tests on 104 people between the ages of 30 and 88. They found that
those who were fluent in two languages rather than just one were
sharper mentally. Writing in the journal of Psychology and Ageing, they
said being bilingual may protect against mental decline in old age.
Previous studies have shown that keeping the brain active can protect
against senile dementia.  Research has shown that people who play
musical instruments, dance or read regularly may be less likely to
develop the condition. Other activities like doing crosswords or
playing board games may also help. This latest study appears to back up
the theory that language skills also have a protective effect. Dr Ellen
Bialystok and colleagues at York University assessed the cognitive
skills of all those involved in the study using a variety of widely
recognised tests. They tested their vocabulary skills, their non-verbal
reasoning ability and their reaction time. Half of the volunteers came
from Canada and spoke only English. The other half came from India and
were fluent in both English and Tamil. The volunteers had similar
backgrounds in the sense that they were all educated to degree level
and were all middle class. The researchers found that the people who
were fluent in English and Tamil responded faster than those who were
fluent in just English. This applied to all age groups. The researchers
also found that the bilingual volunteers were much less likely to
suffer from the mental decline associated with old age. “The bilinguals
were more efficient at all ages tested and showed a slower rate of
decline for some processes with aging,” they said. “It appears…that
bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses.” (12/22/04)
more…

BBC Science –
Scientists have uncovered clues about how the brain learns from
watching the actions of others. The University College London team told
the journal Cerebral Cortex the work may help the rehabilitation of
stroke patients whose movement is impaired. The brain activity of
dancers and non-dancers was measured using an MRI scanner as they
watched dancing videos. They found the brain reacts differently when
watching a move the individual was already skilled at performing. They
said the study also suggests that athletes and dancers could continue
to mentally train while they are physically injured.  In the
study, dancers from the Royal Ballet and experts in capoeira - a
Brazilian martial arts form - were asked to watch videos of ballet and
capoeira movements being performed while their brain activity was
measured in a MRI scanner. The same videos were also shown to other
volunteers without specialist knowledge while their brains were
scanned. The researchers found greater activity in areas of the brain
collectively known as the “mirror system” when the experts viewed
movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements
they had not. Volunteers skilled in neither discipline showed the same
pattern of brain activity whether they watched ballet or capoeira.
Previous studies have found that the mirror system contains brain cells
which fire up both when we perform an action and when we observe it.
However, the new study suggests this system is fine-tuned to each
person’s own particular range of skills. Researcher Professor Patrick
Haggard said: “A professional ballet dancer’s brain will understand a
ballet move in a way that a capoeira expert’s brain will not. Our
findings suggest that once the brain has learned a skill, it may
simulate the skill without even moving, through simple observation. An
injured dancer might be able to maintain their skill despite being
temporarily unable to move, simply by watching others dance. This
concept could be used both during sports training and in maintaining
and restoring movement ability in people who are injured.” (12/22/04)
more…