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digest 2003-11-23 #001.txt
litsci-l-digest Sunday, November 23 2003 Volume 01 : Number
049
In this issue:
REMINDER: call for papers Medicine and Media, March 2004
Fallout from Tim Ferris's Austin SLS Talk
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Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:30:45 +0000
From: "Carol Colatrella"
Subject: REMINDER: call for papers Medicine and Media, March 2004
CALL FOR PAPERS
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF BIOETHICS AND HUMANITIES
SPRING 2004 MEETING
TOPIC: ?¨Medicine and Media: The Delicate Balance?Æ
PLACE: University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
DATES: March 12 ?± 14
CO-CHAIRS: Therese Jones, PhD
Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics
University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio
(jonest2@uthscsa.edu)
Lester D. Friedman, PhD
Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program
Northwestern University
(l-friedman@northwestern.edu)
DESCRIPTION: The worlds of medicine and media exist in a unique
symbiosis.
The media not only cannibalize the medical world for their news stories
and
fictional plotlines, but health care institutions, medical researchers
and
academic physicians themselves manipulate the media, inviting the
spotlight
to shine on their successes and deflecting the glare away from the less
savory aspects of their work. The delicate balance between using the
media
as an outlet for legitimate stories and exploiting it for particular
agendas
raises a host of ethical issues. Dr Timothy Johnson, himself a medical
television journalist, articulates several such troubling problems: the
difficulties of identifying, processing and reporting legitimate medical
problems; the competitive pressures on medical establishments to gain
market
shares and increase funding for research; the spiraling
commercialization of
medical research by business interests; the organization of scientific
meetings as public relations events; the controversial role of medical
journals; and the differences between reporting general news and medical
news. To Johnson??s list, we would add the morality of cameras in the
hospital; the broadcasting of medical procedures; the distinction
between
informed consent for medical care and release forms for film and
television
appearances; the lack of adequate checks and balances on the internet;
the
coverage by news media; and the problems with how research is
disseminated.
This conference will interrogate and reflect upon the complex and
complicated relationship between the media and medical researchers,
practitioners, ethicists and educators. Whether we are using an episode
of
E.R. in our courses or answering questions about cloning for the local
television station, medical humanists and ethicists are constantly
engaged
in a dynamic process of affecting and being affected by the media, a
process
that demands and deserves critical analysis. We look forward to
proposals
addressing a range of relevant issues from a variety of disciplinary
perspectives. The conference will be co-sponsored by the Center for
Medical
Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center
San
Antonio, a culturally exciting and pleasantly warm city in mid-March.
GUIDELINES FOR PROPOSALS: Mail or e-mail a 300 ?± 400 word abstract of
the
proposed paper, a short bibliography (10 item maximum) related to the
subject, and a brief biographical note which includes your phone number,
e-mail address and mailing address to Lester D. Friedman PhD, Medical
Ethics
& Humanities Program, Northwestern U, 750 Lake Shore Drive (ABA 627),
Chicago IL 60611 or l-friedman@northwestern.edu.
DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 31, 2003.
VISIT THE ASBH WEBSITE FOR FURTHER DETAILS
http://www.asbh.org/
_________________________________________________________________
Groove on the latest from the hot new rock groups! Get downloads,
videos,
and more here. http://special.msn.com/entertainment/wiredformusic.armx
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Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
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http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
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Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:01:30 -0800
From: Jack Sarfatti
Subject: Fallout from Tim Ferris's Austin SLS Talk
re: http://qedcorp.com/APS/StarGate1.mov
Copyright 2003 by Jack Sarfatti, All Rights Reserved. May be quoted
with proper citation of identity of author.
This is an excerpt from the book "Super Cosmos" I am writing now, the
third in the Space-Time and Beyond Series.
The Physical Principles of Metric Engineering
The term "metric engineering" was coined by Dr. Harold Puthoff. Hal,
as he prefers to be called, was a US Naval Officer who then worked for
the National Security Agency before going to the Stanford Research
Institute where he conducted the famous "Remote Viewing" experiments
with Russell Targ testing Uri Geller, Ingo Swann, Pat Price and other
psychics in a project paid for by the CIA and Department of Defense
Intelligence Agencies. I first met Hal and Russell at SRI in 1973 and
that story is told in my book "Destiny Matrix." Hal has held very high
USG security clearances and it is well known that he is obsessed with
the UFO mystery. Hal, like his co-worker Bernie Haisch, who is an
editor of the Astrophysical Journal, both strongly believe in the
physical reality of flying saucers. They, with Jacques Vallee, have
been active in UFO groups, including the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion
Program, some financed by Laurance Rockefeller and the "Howard Hughes"
clone Las Vegas Hotel Tycoon Robert Bigelow who owns Bigelow Aerospace
Corporation. Since they take the reality of the flying saucers
seriously so do I. The two lines of theoretical physics research that
Hal has pursued for several decades now, zero point energy and a
polarized vacuum model of gravity, is primarily motivated by the quest
to understand how the saucers fly. The alleged reality of such
advanced alien technology is clearly of immense importance to US
National Security and beyond. The recent development in physics shown
in NOVA's "Elegant Universe" with Brian Greene, in Stephen Hawking's
"The Universe in a Nutshell", Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace" and Igor
Novikov's "The River of Time" makes time traveling alien interference
in our history more probable not less probable. This is all an aspect
of "metric engineering" defined as the practical control of space and
time warps. I have discussed this in Paramount Pictures DVD Special
Collector's Edition of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" in "Time Travel:
The Art of the Possible" and in Learning Channel's "Ultra-Science: Time
Travel." The ultimate form of metric engineering is seen in "Q" in
"Star Trek" where a Super Mind is able to warp space-time. We also
need a physics of consciousness to see if that fiction can be realized
in fact. British Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees who runs the
laboratory where Stephen Hawking works and who is the new Master of
Trinity College, Cambridge has added the dimension of "Doomsday WMD" to
the quest for a metric engineering breakthrough in his Chapter 9 of his
pessimistic "Our Final Hour" on the "Ice Nine" "rip-in-space"
propagating at the speed of light that could literally destroy our
universe. We are now at that turning point in our history where, like
Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney's "Fantasia" we could, in our incompetence,
destroy the entire Universe just as we are now surely destroying
Earth's Biosphere. Therefore, any aliens out there with Star Gate Time
Travel and Warp Drive Super Technology are already here in order to
stop us from killing them as well as ourselves. The American Christian
Fundamentalist Right has a strong belief in Apocalypse Now and there is
real danger that this is a self fulfilling prophecy in a precognitive
remote viewing of our future by Saint John in The Bible's
"Revelations." All the more reason for me like Paul Revere to alert
the public to these new developments in physics because only real
knowledge can possibly save us and even then there is no guarantee.
What does mainstream physics tell us about the possibility of metric
engineering? The relevant parts of mainstream physics for metric
engineering are of Einstein's general theory of relativity and
micro-quantum mechanics including the "More is Different" emergence of
"macro-quantum" coherent superfluid order in ground state and vacuum
instabilities developed by condensed matter Princeton physicist P.W.
Anderson also seen in high-energy physics in the "Higgs mechanism" and
in the "inflationary chaotic cosmology of A. Linde consistent with the
"parallel universes" nicely described by Max Tegmark in the May 2003
issue of Scientific American.
Let's start with Einstein's gravity field equation of ~ 1915. Einstein
viewed pure space-time geometry like the marble in a statue by
Michelangelo with gross matter and radiation as "wood." Einstein's
equation, in the 21st Century language, is
Space-Time Curvature = - (Stress-Energy Density)/(String Tension)
(1)
Curvature has the physical dimensions of 1/Area, String Tension has
Energy/Length and Stress-Enegy Density has Energy/Volume. Simple
algebra confirms that this way of writing Einstein's equation is
correct dimensionally. The "String Tension" is the basic parameter that
Ed Witten of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study uses in his
discussions of "M theory" that unifies the five limiting cases of
"super string theory" in which the elementary leptons, quarks and gauge
force bosons are "vibrating strings of pure energy" pulsating in the
extra space dimensions of "Calabi-Yau" hyperspace. The ordinary matter
and radiation on the right hand side of Einstein's equation are open
strings whose ends are stuck to 3Dim brane worlds of which our universe
is one. You can picture a string as a tiny wormhole whose two ends
need not be on the same brane world because only then can you not have
equal numbers of particles and antiparticles in the same brane world.
Another equivalent way to look at Einstein's 1915 equation from our
post-modern 2003 point of view is as a perfect balance on The Scale of
Cosmic Justice peeking through the blindfold. That is, the
stress-energy density "tensor" of pure marble geometry is
Stress-Energy Density Tensor of Pure Geometry = (String
Tension)(Space-Time Curvature) (2)
Einstein's equation is then like the static equilibrium balance of
forces in architecture in which the sum of all the contributions to the
stress-energy density tensor add up to a perfect zero! In this
simplest of cases
Stress-Energy Density Tensor of Geometry + Stress-Energy Density of
Matter etc. = 0 (3)
All physically real objects are either tensors, spinors or twistors in
the theory of relativity. This is because the coordinate map is not
the physical territory. The form of the laws of physics must be the
same locally no matter how the coordinate map is morphed. To this we
must add the Einstein Equivalence Principle or EEP which says that even
in a curved space-time, we can use the special theory of relativity
locally for a special class of LIF observers to describe what is
happening to a good approximation. The EEP is only meant to apply in
this approximate way and it will break down if one is falling into a
black hole singularity of if the microscope magnification is so large
that quantum gravity zero point energy density fluctuations in the
space-time geometry itself get large. There may also be torsion fields
not included in Einstein's 1915 "geometrodynamics" that may require a
modification of the EEP. The spinor is a square root of a tensor and
the Penrose twistor is a spinor in a complex space-time. The physics
of point particles in real space-time when extended to complex and
hyper-complex matrix space-time is in reality the physics of extended
strings and membranes in real space-time.
Hawking's "imaginary time" and its connection to inverse temperature is
part of that same story.
The key concept for metric engineering is the Einstein currents!
Einstein's field equation is always the statement that the sum of all
the stress-energy density tensors when put on the same side of the
equation all balance out to exactly zero. We then take a "covariant
divergence" of the equation to get the Einstein currents, which are
conserved when added together.
The covariant divergence depends on something called a "connection
field", which tells us how to "parallel transport" tensors and spinors
along paths or "histories" in space-time and beyond including the extra
dimensions of hyperspace. Every time a gauge force field is added, like
a torsion field, there is an additional piece added to this connection
field. Einstein's 1915 theory is a degenerate case of the bigger
unified field theory just like a circle is a degenerate case of an
ellipse. An ellipse has two centers or "foci". When the two foci merge
together the ellipse degenerates into a circle. Einstein's 1915 theory
in the form of the "Bianchi identities" forbids practical metric
engineering because it has an impenetrable barrier completely
separating the marble geometric current from the wood matter current.
Both kinds of currents must be able to intermingle to transform into
each other in order to have "soft" practical metric engineering of Star
Gate Time Travel traversable wormholes and weightless superluminal warp
drives using the anti-gravitating exotic vacuum "dark energy" with
negative zero point exotic vacuum pressure that is equal in magnitude,
but opposite in sign, to the zero point energy density. The new Type
Ia super novae data showing that our brane world Universe is
accelerating in its rate of expansion, i.e. speeding up rather than
slowing down. Indeed approximately 3/4 of all the stuff of our Universe
on the large scale is made out of "dark energy." Therefore, the idea of
ancient traversable Star Gate wormholes stabilized by dark energy is
not so far fetched. The brute force approach to metric engineering
taken by Hal Puthoff now for at least two decades can never work
because space-time is too stiff to bend directly with electromagnetic
field energy density to do anything worth doing because the string
tension is too large. In contrast, we can used the quantum interference
of the Einstein stress-energy density currents via the
Bohm-Aharonov-Josephson effect for practical metric engineering
provided that the pure geometric currents are not separately conserved
like they are in Einstein's original theory. One way to do that is to
"bottle" or "harness" the "dark energy" as General Douglas Mac Arthur
precognitively remote viewed in his "Duty, Honor, Country" Farewell
Speech to the Cadets at West Point in 1962 in a speech made even more
remarkable for its reference to the coming war in space with
extra-terrestrials. Michael Turner, a professor of physics at the
University of Chicago, says in April 2003 Physics Today that it is
impossible to "bottle dark energy" and if Einstein's 1915 theory is the
final theory he is correct. However, the real UFO evidence that drives
Hal Puthoff like Captain Ahab after The White Wale, Moby Dick, is the
evidence that suggests Professor Turner will be proved wrong in that
prediction.
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Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
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End of litsci-l-digest V1 #49
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