The military will lead in robotic development 2010-Dec-29 at 16:27 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: AI, military, Robots
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And that’s OK.
It makes sense. The U.S. military has the most to gain from using robots on the battlefield… every robot that does the job that a human might do keeps a man or woman out of harm’s way.
From War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat, by John Markoff, 27-Nov-2010:
And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots — none of them particularly human-looking — are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.
…
Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.
…
“One of the great arguments for armed robots is they can fire second,” said Joseph W. Dyer, a former vice admiral and the chief operating officer of iRobot, which makes robots that clear explosives as well as the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. When a robot looks around a battlefield, he said, the remote technician who is seeing through its eyes can take time to assess a scene without firing in haste at an innocent person.
Although there is a risk of lowering the barrier-to-entry for war by sending robots rather than humans to do the fighting, our main threat (and therefore our main area of military focus) over the next 40 years is going to be terrorists, not other nations, and most terrorists won’t be able to afford these robots. Of course, they have suicide bombers, which enable some sophisticated kinds of attacks that aren’t otherwise possible.
Better they bomb a bunch of robots, for now.
One thing I wonder about… when the military has a significant number of these kinds of robots, and AI grows up, someone will mix that peanut butter and chocolate and we’ll have some military-specific robots that are capable of performing some sophisticated decision-making. When that happens, will we still be so cavalier about sending them into battle, when we know that they’re exhibiting identifiable signs of intelligence? And will we eventually have to establish a command structure in the military that includes AI-based commanders?
I’m guessing that, at some point in the next 40 years, we’ll have artificial intelligence capable of holding an officer’s rank, and probably General or Admiral.
P.S. Sorry I’ve been away… working on the book! I’ll try to do both now… walk and chew gum. I can do this.
Full Tilt Poker pulls out of Washington State 2010-Nov-16 at 14:56 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Full Tilt Poker, poker, Washington
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As I thought in September they might, Full Tilt Poker has ceased allowing real money poker in Washington State. It’s absolutely disgusting that a game of skill like poker has such an awful legal environment around it in Washington State that this has come about.
For the record, I’m not mad at Full Tilt for pulling out… they’re just doing what they have to do. I’m mad at our Legislature for not making the legal environment as clear as possible.
Poker, like skateboarding, is not a crime.
Alcohol worst drug overall 2010-Nov-15 at 19:09 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: alcohol, drug policy, marijuana
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From Alcohol ‘more harmful than heroin’ says Prof David Nutt, 1-Nov-2010:
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered, according to a study in the Lancet.
The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former government chief drugs adviser who was sacked in 2009.
It ranked 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.
Heroin, crack and crystal meth were deemed worst for individuals, with alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine worst for society, and alcohol worst overall.
The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also said tobacco and cocaine were judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD were among the least damaging.
This is an attempt to take a multi-perspectival approach to Britain’s overall drug policy and enforcement. Among the things that such an approach would have to look at would be both the individual toll and the toll on society around the use of each drug.
When this group used exactly that approach, they found that alcohol clearly was the worst drug in terms of its overall effects, ranking near the top in individual harm, and ranking well above all others in terms of its negative effects on society.
By the way, Ecstasy, LSD, and Mushrooms were three of the four least damaging drugs in the study.
If we’re going to develop an Integral perspective on drug policy, this is the kind of study that we need to sanction and support here in the United States and around the world. And we’d do well to listen to the… sorry, got distracted by some woman in a tight shirt selling beer… results.
Supercomputing: Right on time 2010-Nov-14 at 19:08 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: exponential growth, supercomputer
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The growth of supercomputing capability in the world continues along it’s exponential curve. In the wake of China staking out its territory by announcing the world’s fastest supercomputer, at 2.5 petaflops, the United States announces its next move: two different 20 petaflop systems by 2012.
From U.S. building next wave of supercomputers, by Patrick Thibodeau, 12-Nov-2010:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, home for what has been the world’s most powerful system, the Jaguar, a 1.75-petaflop system, versus Tianhe-1A’s 2.5 petaflops, is building a 20-petaflop system that will include accelerators.
That system will be ready in 2012, James Hack, director of the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge, told Computerworld. No other details about the system are being offered.
Another 20-petaflop system is being built for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by IBM. That system has already been announced and is expected to arrive at the lab in late 2011 and be in production in 2012.
To put this in perspective, according to Wikipedia, "As of June 2010, the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world combine for 32.4 petaFLOPS of computing power." That means that, in less than two years, we’ll have two systems in the United States that, together, are more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers on Earth today. Japan will have a 10 petaflop system as well.
Additionally, the price per gigaflop (a petaflop is 1,000,000 gigaflops) has dropped from $15,000,000 in 1984, to $30,000 in 1997, to $1,000 in 2000, and today to around $0.14. That’s right: from $15,000,000 to 14¢, and we’ll soon get a gigaflop for under 1¢, on hardware available to ordinary consumers around the world.
That’s how fast supercomputing power grows. That’s how fast it grows for us as well, on ordinary computers. More computing power, less cost to build it. It’s fun to watch.
Charming but naïve: Obama shouldn’t run for reelection 2010-Nov-14 at 01:23 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Democrats, Obama, politics, Republicans
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From One and done: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012, by Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell, 14-Nov-2010:
This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
If Obama announced this week that he wouldn’t seek reelection, it would Bring Hope Back™ for a little while. That’s why this idea is so charming… for a little while, it’ll be right. The country would seem united again, there would be excitement that we could work through our problems quickly, and that we could come together around some simple ideas that most of us agree on. Unfortunately, after some months, it would fade, and impatience would once again take over.
Soon the Democrats in Congress would stop listening to President Obama, because their neck is on the line in the next election, but not his.
And the Republicans… if you think that what you’ve seen so far is what an uncooperative Republican Caucus looks like, you haven’t seen them when he’s not even an opponent anymore. Don’t forget, Republicans believe that the policies they’re advocating are better for the country, and a whole bunch of them just got elected, so they think they’re on the right track. Anything he proposes that doesn’t match the story they’re selling gets stonewalled immediately, and there won’t be enough Democrats who want to fight about it to get things done.
So, really, it would lead to an even worse version of Congress than we’re seeing right now. But what we’d really lose is the potential to have our first Integral President serve for another four years.
If he runs and loses, I’ll be disappointed and I’ll be among those who reevaluates the pace of development I think I’m seeing. But if Obama doesn’t run at all… I’ll wonder what could have been, and where the country could have gone if someone with a clearly Integral perspective were running things just as the Integral movement heated up around the world. I’ll wonder if we’re missing out on a chance to ride out this current storm and end up in some smoother sailing by the end of his second term, thanks to a segment of the public undergoing rapid transformation, as they take on broader perspectives.
So, I’m sorry, I must disagree with this sweet and well-intentioned idea we find written up in the Opinion section of the Washington Post. Charming idea, but it won’t lead to the world that they think it will.
This doesn’t make a pessimist, by the way, just a realist. I trust you already know how optimistic I am about where we’re going, because I am.
And don’t despair: the Republicans don’t actually have a credible candidate right now who can beat him in a general election, and we’re two years out. I know that’s a lot of time, but in the world of United States National Politics, that’s less time than it might seem. I really don’t think President Obama has much to worry about in 2012.
Who is buying the U.S. midterm elections? 2010-Oct-06 at 12:16 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Citizens United, Congress, election, term limits
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We don’t know. Thanks to the Citizens United ruling – the one that President Obama criticized in his State of the Union speech, where we saw Justice Alito mouth the words "not true" when the Supreme Court was called out – we now have a system where any group can spend any amount of money on any "issue" they want… which is in practice an unlimited supply of money to get particular people elected.
From Midterm campaigns, brought to you by . . . ?, by Eugene Robinson, 5-Oct-2010:
According to The Post, $80 million has been spent on midterm election campaigns by these shadowy "independent" groups — as opposed to just $16 million at this point in the 2006 midterm cycle.
I put "independent" in quotes because this spending is anything but. Officially, groups such as Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads are not allowed to spend on behalf of specific candidates; rather, they are supposed to confine themselves to such anodyne activities as highlighting issues and advocating policy positions. In practice, however, this gives them the latitude to attack one candidate — a Democrat, say — for his or her position on health care, financial reform or whatever.
…
The Supreme Court made all this possible with its ruling early this year, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which legalized unlimited campaign spending by corporations, unions, trade associations and other such entities. And the independent-expenditure groups with the patriotic names are often structured as nonprofits, which means they are not required to disclose their donors publicly.
I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the specifics of the ruling to know how much latitude Congress has to create a narrower statute that reinstates disclosure or limitation of funding. It may not have any. Even if it does, I don’t have any confidence that Congress has the political will to turn off the funding trough it feeds at.
Once again… term limits solves these problems.
The moral imperative to evolve 2010-Oct-05 at 11:11 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Andrew Cohen, evolution, Spirituality
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When you begin to recognize that your own presence here in this world is part of something infinitely bigger than yourself, you feel a sense of obligation awakening within you—a spiritually inspired, soul-level moral imperative to evolve for the sake of the future of the evolutionary process itself. The way you respond to that obligation and to that sense of cosmic responsibility is by demonstrating that the process is profoundly positive—indeed, the process is sacred—through your own example, through your own victory, through your own tangible and unmistakable higher development.
– Andrew Cohen
That’s what it feels like to me, too.
I know Andrew doesn’t appeal to everyone, but he is also the surface for more projection than perhaps anyone else in the Integral movement. He’s doing honest, hard, good work on developing Integral Spirituality, through his own unique self, and I think that over the coming years more and more people will appreciate how he’s pioneered that field in many ways.
This is just one example of what he’s been thinking. It’s good stuff, and I do recommend checking it out.
"Winning" a war is never clear-cut 2010-Oct-04 at 10:56 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda
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More great stuff from Fareed Zakaria. I disagree with him less frequently than perhaps any other major columnist.
From Even ‘winning’ in Afghanistan would include some failures, 4-Oct-2010:
Critics of the president have seized on the book as proof that he is a weakling who doesn’t have the fortitude to wage war. He should learn from Lincoln, FDR or Churchill, they say, and do what it takes to win. No. Those leaders were engaged in massive wars that threatened their nation’s existence. Obama is prosecuting a complex military intervention aimed at weakening a terrorist organization. It requires less Churchill and more Eisenhower, a tough willingness to make strategic choices and impose limits on the use of American blood and treasure. The United States has spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is understandable, in fact commendable, that the president does not want to write another set of blank checks for the Afghan war.
…
In a smart new book, "How Wars End," Gideon Rose, the incoming editor of Foreign Affairs, points out that Americans are chronically disappointed by the way their wars end. Even as World War II came to a close, there was the deep sense of betrayal over Yalta. This is because while waging wars, Americans refuse to think through the political and military tradeoffs needed to get to a reasonable outcome. In Korea we continued to fight for one-and-a-half bloody years over an obscure prisoner-of-war exchange that few remember today. At this point, to get a decent outcome in Afghanistan, it’s less important that the president’s heart be in the fight than his head be in the strategy.
When the U.S. "won" in "democratic" South Korea in 1953, we left an autocratic leader there, who ruled for seven years until 1960, until he was overthrown in a coup d’état led by a general, "heavily criticized as a ruthless military dictator," who ruled until his assassination in 1979, followed by a short period of instability until another coup d’état by another general, enforcing a "despotic" rule until 1987, when the first directly-elected President of South Korea was chosen.
To sum that up… South Korea, this shining jewel of democracy and capitalism, has only been functioning that way for 23 years. Before that, and for 34 years after the Korean cease-fire agreement was signed, that country was not exactly under any sort of government that we’d like to see. But the support of the United States and other democracies led to the conditions for that nation to evolve from a Red/Blue center-of-gravity to something like an Orange center-of-gravity… at least as far as the government and economy is concerned. (That Koreans still hold a significant ethnocentric and bloodline-based view is well-known, particularly through the stigma attached to adoption.) This is precisely what Thomas Barnett would call a "soft-kill" through connectivity. Get the economy rolling through connectivity to the rest of the world, grow a functioning middle class, and eventually that middle class will demand democracy.
The time and thought I’ve dedicated to understanding the work of Thomas Barnett has helped me over the years to come to a more reasonable view of what "winning" a war looks like… especially when we’re fighting enemies that we will never sign an unconditional surrender with, like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Quelling an insurgency requires a thoughtful use of military power to kill or capture those groups fighting to keep that area disconnected from the world, while inviting in NGO’s and foreign direct investment to build structures and economic conditions that turn the population against the insurgency, by showing them that a better life for them and their children is available when they do.
To that extent, Dr. Barnett has been clear for a long time about the exit strategy for any such insurgency: jobs. It’s the only sustainable exit strategy, and once it takes hold, it’s the one that we can rely on to scale back American military power. Jobs are what grows that functioning middle class that eventually demands greater and more transparent democracy. It also generally takes around 8-10 years to pull that off. Iraq… seven years so far, and right on schedule. Afghanistan… I count that as two years since we got serious there.
Either way… eyes on the prize. Functioning democracies in the heart of Islamic Asia. The conditions for moving an Orange worldview onto center-stage in a part of the world that has resisted that call to growth for centuries. And we all have seen that once Orange takes hold, it creates an openness into which Green can flow (in a generation or two) and then Second Tier worldviews. We’ll never get there without establishing Orange. And that initial establishment of Orange will be messy and will include corruption and will include parties that are hostile to the United States… but I don’t care. We just have to get it started… and the rest of the goodness will follow, for all of the generations after.
Crowdsourcing for the U.S. Government 2010-Oct-02 at 14:17 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: crowdsourcing, United States
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Some smart person has actually created a website to get crowdsourced feedback on various challenges facing the United States Federal Government.
It’s at http://challenge.gov/.
Some of the challenges offer cash prizes for good solutions, too.
I like this whole idea.
Rahm Emanuel leaves the White House 2010-Oct-02 at 08:08 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Obama, Pete Rouse, Rahm Emanuel, White House
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This has been an interesting time in Washington the last couple of years. We had an incredible combination at the helm… perhaps the smartest man in our history as President, and the best Washington political operator in a generation, with experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., as the Chief of Staff. I believe we’ll look back on these first two years of the Obama Administration in awe of how much was accomplished in the face of the most polarized Congress we’ve seen in decades.
I remember two days after the 2008 election, when President-elect Obama made his first staffing announcement, and it was to announce that Rahm Emanuel had agreed to leave Congress, and what surely would have been a future as the Speaker of the House, to become White House Chief of Staff. I remember thinking… you know, I was a big fan of Obama already, but now I’m really a fan. Wow… Obama and Emanuel together, that’s a combination that works.
And it has. We’ve seen more significant legislation passed by a supposedly unpopular President in the last two years than anyone ever could have expected, and this during the worst economic crisis – not created by him, but managed well by him – in generations, and during two wars. Really impressive stuff.
I know that Pete Rouse has been an incredible behind-the-scenes Capitol Hill player for many years, and the main job of the Chief of Staff under President Obama is to get legislation passed, so I’m hopeful that we’ll not see a significant drop-off in effectiveness in this position.
Chicago’s gain is our loss. I can’t wait to visit a Chicago run by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
And I hope that, one day, he decides to run for President himself. We’ll be a fortunate nation when that happens.
This is a blog post quoting a news website article about a scientific paper 2010-Oct-02 at 06:19 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: comedy, science, websites
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In this paragaph, I like to give some context about why I think this article is truly important. Then I’ll quote it at length, giving the appearance that this blog post is more substantial than it actually is.
From This is a news website article about a scientific paper, by Martin Robbins, 27-Sep-2010
In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won’t provide a link because either a) the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, b) I can’t be bothered, or c) the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published.
"Basically, this is a brief soundbite," the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. "The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on," she or he will continue.
I will then briefly state how many years the scientist spent leading the study, to reinforce the fact that this is a serious study and worthy of being published by
the BBCthe website.This is a sub-heading that gives the impression I am about to add useful context.
Here I will state that whatever was being researched was first discovered in some year, presenting a vague timeline in a token gesture toward establishing context for the reader.
To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link.
This paragraph will be short so no one has to work too hard as they stop reading the quote and start reading whatever else I’m going to write.
The final paragraph will give tremendous praise to Martin Robbins for writing one of the most brilliant pieces of journalistic satire I’ve ever read, and for getting it onto the website of a respected British news organization.
California makes marijuana possession just an infraction 2010-Oct-02 at 00:31 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, marijuana
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I love it when the news conspires with a topic I’ve been talking about.
From California Reduces Its Penalty for Marijuana, by Jesse McKinley, 1-Oct-2010:
A month before California voters decide the fate of a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that essentially puts those caught possessing small amounts of the drug on the same level as those caught speeding on the freeway.
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“The only difference is that because it is a misdemeanor, a criminal defendant is entitled to a jury trial,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a statement that accompanied his signature. “In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket.”
It’s not quite decriminalization, but it’s a step in the right direction, and it’s a model that other states can adopt on their way to eventual decriminalization, and eventually legalization.
Legalize it? Integral will. 2010-Oct-01 at 08:29 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: drug policy, entheogens, marijuana
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Bill Piper is the Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.
From Sooner or later, marijuana will be legal, by Bill Piper, 28-Sep-2010:
Even though police made more than 850,000 marijuana arrests last year, a recent government report shows youth marijuana use increased by about 9 percent.
Supporters of the failed war on drugs will no doubt argue this increase means policymakers should spend more taxpayer money next year arresting and incarcerating a greater number of Americans. In other words, their solution to failure is to do more of the same. Fortunately, the "reform nothing" club is getting mighty lonely these days — 76 percent of Americans recognize the drug war has failed; millions are demanding change.
In the almost 40 years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. Yet drugs are just as available now as they were then.
…
The racial disparities are appalling. As Michelle Alexander so eloquently shows in her new book, "The New Jim Crow," a drug conviction automatically makes a person a second-class citizen who can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment, denied school loans, and barred for life from serving on juries, accessing public benefits and even voting. While African Americans make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population and about 15 percent of drug users, they make up about 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and a mind-boggling 59 percent of those convicted for drug law violations.
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Even if Proposition 19 loses, it will only be temporary. Support for marijuana legalization is growing, and not just in California. Legalization will happen. It’s just a question of how many lives and tax dollars will be wasted before it does. Some vested interests, of course, will fight change until the bitter end. Progress has never been accepted by everyone.
The Boomers failed to get this job done, but the Integral movement will. The financial, social, and criminal costs involved, and the obvious failures in this "war", are too great a contradiction to be ignored for much longer.
An Integral perspective allows us to consider the difference between substances that are entheogens (like marijuana, MDMA, LSD, ayahuasca, and mushrooms) and those that are not (like cocaine and alcohol) and to view the use of those substances with more discernment than previous generations have been able to summon. We’ll bring research and an understanding of these substances, from all quadrants, into crafting new policies that welcome those who wish to explore different aspects of consciousness through these lenses, and yet still prevent behaviors that impact society negatively.
By the way, the word "entheogen" means "God inside us". Is that clear enough?
You should be able to trip, but you shouldn’t be allowed to drive when you do. After all, stop signs can have a funny way of remaining the same distance away no matter how close you get to them….
PokerStars pulls out of Washington state 2010-Sep-30 at 13:25 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: poker, PokerStars
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Obviously, this sucks. Fortunately, I play on Full Tilt. I can’t help but wonder if they’ll follow suit.
From PokerStars No Longer Accepting Washington Cash Play On Site, by Earl Burton, 30-Sep-2010:
After a decision from the state’s Supreme Court regarding the legality of a law set in place four years ago, the top online site in the poker industry, PokerStars, has made the move to no longer accept cash players from the state of Washington.
In an e-mail message sent to residents of the state of Washington, PokerStars spells out the unfortunate news. “To date, PokerStars has operated in Washington on the basis of legal opinions where the central advice was that the state could not constitutionally regulate Internet poker, or at least could not discriminate in favor of local card rooms and against online sites. Last week, however, the Washington Supreme Court for the first time rejected that position and upheld the state’s Internet gaming prohibition.”
The e-mail continued, “In light of this decision, following extensive consultation with our legal advisors, we believe that the right course of action is to now block real money play by Washington residents on the PokerStars.com site.” PokerStars emphasized that the company always has legal issues in mind when offering their wares, stating, “In all of the jurisdictions where we operate, we are committed to making responsible decisions that are based on a full and considered understanding of the most up-to-date legal advice.”
Poker is not gambling. It is a game of skill. Tens of millions of Americans play poker regularly, and the haphazard legal environment around poker – particularly when it’s lumped together with other games like Blackjack and Roulette and Slot Machines – makes it difficult for the large online poker sites to operate.
How can you tell the difference between gambling and a game of skill? To me it’s easy… am I playing against the house? If I’m playing against the house, I’m gambling, because they don’t set up games that they lose money at. If I’m playing against other players… it’s probably about skill.
I know most of you don’t care about this issue, but I do. Ever since the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was tacked on to a Port Security bill in 2006 by Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, who was attempting to mollify social conservatives in the Republican party, the national legal structures for poker have been problematic. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has been shepherding a bill through Congress to address internet gaming in general, and although that bill has 70 co-sponsors, it doesn’t look like it’ll get through Congress in this session. Let’s hope that reason prevails soon.
I hope Snoqualmie and Tulalip Casinos expand their poker rooms soon… I think we’re going to need it.
Bill Gates and Integral Education 2010-Sep-30 at 08:21 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Bill Gates, Integral Education, teaching
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Did you know that Bill Gates spoke to the American Federation of Teachers over the summer? I didn’t.
A couple of interesting quotes from this speech:
Great teaching is the centerpiece of a strong education; everything else revolves around it. This is the main finding of our foundation’s work in education over the past ten years.
I have to admit – that is not where we started. Our work in schools began with a focus on making high schools smaller, in the hope of improving relationships to drive down dropout rates and increase student achievement. Many of the schools we worked with made strong gains, but others were disappointing. The schools that made the biggest gains in achievement did more than make structural changes; they also improved teaching.
….
In 2008 and 2009, our foundation partnered with Scholastic on a national survey to learn the views of 40,000 teachers on crucial questions facing your profession.
Teachers said in huge numbers that they don’t get enough feedback. They’re not told how they can improve. They’re not given training that can address their weaknesses or help them share their strengths with others.
This has helped spark the movement for change. Teachers want to help set the expectations that they will be held accountable for. You want to be rewarded for results. You want better evaluations. You’re tired of subjective, infrequent evaluations by administrators who don’t know how to improve instruction – the people who come into your class and write ―Yes‖ or ―No‖ for things like: ―arrives on time‖ and ―maintains professional appearance.
But even fair and insightful teacher evaluations are not enough to improve student gains; they have to be tied to great professional development that is customized for each teacher. After all, the goal of evaluation is not to sort teachers into groups; it’s to help every teacher get better.
And what, exactly, is the Gates Foundation doing about American education?
The first of these projects addresses a big gap in our knowledge: There has been a lot of research done about the impact of effective teaching, but little research has been done on what makes teaching effective.
That’s the research we’re doing now with nearly 3,000 teachers in six school districts who have volunteered to open their classrooms to visitors, to video cameras, to new assessments, to watching themselves teach and talking about their practice. Many of these teachers are members of the AFT. I want to thank those of you who are here today for being part of this project.
The chief goal is to work with teachers – using technology, data and research – to develop a system of evaluation that teachers believe is fair and will help them improve.
Project teams record student gains on two assessments – one a state multiple choice test, the other a more open-ended, problem-solving test to make sure the test scores reflect real knowledge and not just test-taking skill.
They assess the learning atmosphere in the classroom – asking students if they agree with statements such as: ―If you don’t understand something, my teacher explains it another way.‖
The teams will watch more than 13,000 videos of classes this year and 13,000 more again next year. They’ll put special focus on classes that showed big student gains and try to map it backwards to identify the most effective teaching practices. They’ll also look for what doesn’t work. If a struggling new teacher comes to a veteran colleague and asks: ―What am I doing wrong?‖ he should get an evidence-based answer.
What I love about this speech most is the perspective that Mr. Gates is taking on this problem. He’s not coming into the AFT and dictating to them what needs to be done; he’s inviting them in to be part of the solution, he’s listening to their concerns about current testing regimes, and he’s standing firm in the idea that good practices can be reverse-engineered and shared.
You hear more about that perspective in this video he did as part of NBC News Education Nation week.
As I think about what goes into something that we might call Integral Education, the most glaring lack we seem to have today is simply the gathering of raw data around all of the objective and subjective factors that go into great teaching. Without this data, we’re all just a bunch of philosophers (and I admit that I’ve bashed the teacher’s unions as hard as anyone out there) with no information to apply to our theories.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing a great service to the future of education in the United States, and the future of Integral Education, with the work they’re doing, and with the humility and perspective they’re bringing to it. I’m excited to follow this work over the coming years, and to see it adopted around the country.
A new view of Integral Spirituality 2010-Sep-29 at 03:22 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Integral Spirituality
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I think there’s a problem with spirituality as it’s seen and practiced in the Integral movement today.
It’s going to take a bit to explain what I mean… so this is going to be a long one. I post it as a work-in-progress.
Evolution and Involution
Let’s start with the idea of evolution and involution. Although the definitions of these terms change in different systems, I’ll define them this way: evolution is the process through which matter returns to Spirit, and involution is the process through which Spirit returns to matter. In evolution, the sequence that is put forth (by Ken Wilber, among others) is, roughly speaking: matter to life to mind to soul to Spirit. In involution, the sequence is reversed: Spirit to soul to mind to life to matter.
Both evolution and involution are taking place, in every moment. And this is crucial to Integral Philosophy; without both evolution (the Ascending path, the Path of Wisdom) and involution (the Descending path, the Path of Compassion), held in balance, we cut ourselves off from one of the two crucial flows contained in our Universe. So far, so good.
Let’s take a deeper look at involution, and at what we might call the levels of complexity that arise as involution unfolds.
Nondual
At first, before taking the first step into manifestation, I exist as Spirit itself. You exist as Spirit itself. Nothing other than Spirit exists, in fact. The worldview that arises from this point-of-view is what we typically call nondual. If I hold myself as Spirit-prior-to-manifestation, then a nondual view is precisely the worldview that must arise. When I inhabit a nondual worldview, I see everything – my house, my body, the computer I’m typing on – as undifferentiated Spirit, arising within a consciousness beyond all labels or description, a consciousness where, as Ramana Maharshi said, "That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real." In this worldview, there is no Witness because nothing real has ever arisen to be Witnessed, and nothing has arisen that is not, itself, Spirit.
This worldview has the least amount of complexity in it. The forms of spirituality that arise from this worldview reflect it and teach it, such as Advaita Vedanta and the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism.
Witness and Form, or Self and Other
The first step into manifestation is to create a split between Self and Other. At this level of awareness, I exist as Witness, seeing all that arises as undifferentiated Manifestation. In this worldview, I exist as a pure Witness, never entangled in the vast field of arising, aware that all that arises is not Me, aware that all arises with no boundaries, able to sit apart from it with no attachment, and in complete Wisdom. I can also arise as Manifestation being Witnessed, allowing myself to be unbroken Compassion for all that manifests without boundary. Either way… there is at least the split between Self and Other. This worldview is no longer nondual, but is the simplest form of duality… only Two exist. No suffering exists in this worldview, because there are no separate entities in Manifestation… only Form with No Boundary. (Someone ought to write a book with that title….)
This worldview is just that slight bit more complex than a nondual worldview,. Again, the forms of spirituality that arise from this worldview reflect it and teach it. The Hinayana forms of Buddhism, such as Theravadan, hold this view. Really, any religion that holds that there are Two comes from this worldview: Witness and Form, Emptiness and Fullness, Atman and Brahman, Yesh and Ayin, Peanut Butter and Chocolate… if your spirituality has Two, your worldview is of this level of complexity.
The Few Things
The next step in involution is to create a Universe that has some small number of fundamental things at play. At this level of awareness, I begin to see things arise as manifestations of combinations of a small number of different energies or elements. From here, I believe, we see some of the great traditional systems, like the Five Great Elements of Ayurveda, the Chinese Five Movements, and the Sefirot in Kabbalah, among many others (most of which, no doubt, I’m not even familiar with).
From this worldview, we clearly see the beginning of separation, and therefore suffering. But all entities that appear separate are made up of, and therefore closely linked to, the fundamental elements or energies. Healing and wholeness are always available through balancing these fundamental elements. Although separation between objects seems to exist now, each object retains a connection back to the fundamental energies, and so can be seen as an emanation of those energies, leaving an enchantment within the manifest world.
[A note: this doesn't mean that all healing modalities that arose in these times are therefore better than the ones we have today... it just means that they dealt with things from a different worldview, one that indicated that it was important to view the world through those fundamental energies. The good news is that those worldviews are native to all of us. Of course, our Western societies have been locked in a predominantly modern and postmodern view of science, medicine, and the body (in other words, a purely UR view), and so we're only now starting to see the effectiveness of these modalities, as we re-access the intelligence existent through this worldview.]
The Many Things
Eventually, through involution, we arrive at a level of complexity in manifestation where it appears to us that multiple things exist. We come to believe, for instance, that there’s such a thing as a separate self, and that you are a separate thing from me, and that we are separate from other things that are arising, and that those separate things have an intrinsic existence. In this worldview, suffering arises because separation arises. We look at other people and see them as suffering. We look at the planet and see that parts of it are suffering. We look at ourselves and see that we are suffering. And everywhere we look in what is now a world of gross manifestation, we see separate entities arising.
This worldview has still more complexity in it. The forms of spirituality that arise from this worldview also include separation and separate entities. Here, we start to see things like angels, faeries, elementals, guides, ghosts, spirits, advisors; in other words… an uncountable number of independent entities of varying degrees of awareness and helpfulness. We see some of the mainstream religions.
We also see separate souls arising. We see those souls arising both incarnated in gross bodies in this universe (bodies like yours and mine), and we see those souls not incarnated in this universe, in some sort of subtle or causal world.
It’s all about worldview
What I’m arguing for is that if worldview determines the relationship we hold to gross manifestation, then that worldview also must determine the relationship we have to subtle and causal manifestation. Do I believe that there are separate objects arising in manifestation at the moment? Well then, the world looks one way. Do I view it all as undifferentiated sensation, with no boundary arising between those objects? You can, and if you do, the world looks another way. Do I view it as lacking an intrinsic existence apart from the arising of Consciousness? I hope you do from time to time… and as if there could be such a thing as time in the first place.
And don’t lie to yourself about it… we walk around in one of these modes at all times. We spend different amounts of time acting like one worldview or another is real. Some spend all of their lives believing in complete separation, and never taste a nondual worldview, for instance. Some spend years cultivating a Witness / Form worldview, and eventually walk around with this view the vast majority of the time.
No matter what your path, you’re in one of the worldviews that corresponds to one of the levels of complexity we might perceive in manifestation.
What’s right about Integral Spirituality
The greatest contribution of Integral Spirituality to the world is that it allows us to put all of the different expressions of spirituality on one map, and view how they complement each other, and how much territory they overlap on. It helps us see that the mystic forms of each path, while having different vibrations because they wear different cultural clothing, all lead to the same awareness. We can give space for each of us to follow the path that feels and works best, while deeply enjoying the one that we walk.
And it also identifies a hierarchy of awareness that these expressions of spirituality sit within. Noticing this natural hierarchy does help us to remain oriented towards paths that feature the most pure expression of nondual awareness, and those that include some subtle or even gross duality in them.
The Confusion
Noticing that there must be some sort of natural hierarchy running from nondual, to slightly dualistic, to more dualistic, to very dualistic is a crucial piece of Integral Spirituality. This noticing is required if we’re to get the most benefit from taking an Integral perspective on spirituality… without it, we’re running a Flatland version of spirituality where every path is equal to every other path. We know that’s simply not true… we’ve seen that different paths arise in, and therefore run through, different worldviews.
What I believe we’ve done, though, is that we’ve misused that hierarchy.
We’ve heard the message that the hierarchy exists, and that certain paths create state experiences from various degrees of duality (and nonduality, which has no degrees). In fact, many of us have identified our favorite versions of those, and we’ve invested some time and money into exploring what life would look like in accordance with those teachings.
But then we turn around and spend most of our lives living from a worldview that most certainly includes many things. Most of the time, we imagine ourselves as separate entities. Most of the time, we believe that others exist. We believe in separation, and therefore we believe in ideas like: the planet is suffering. Or populations are suffering. Or animals are suffering.
Or <insert-your-favorite-cause-here> is suffering, and we must help!
We seem to believe in that worldview, don’t we? I assume we do, because we sure do believe in the suffering. But then many of us turn our eyes to what seems like a distant high mountain, towards a form of spirituality that arises from a different worldview, and from a simpler level of complexity. We turn our attention to Buddhism, or Kabbalah, or Sufism, or whatever seems to work for us. When we do this, we commit ourselves to spending some of our time in a worldview that reflects that (simpler) level of complexity, which is good for us on many levels. But we should notice that these kinds of paths have not been revealed from the more complex worldview we normally walk around with, and instead they take a perspective on it, so they can’t really help us when we’re living from inside the more complex story (which, I observe, most of us spend most of our time in). They function only when we’re not locked into the more complex story… this is exactly what "being present" means.
We create a mismatch for ourselves… we spend most of our time believing in more complexity, we seek solace in less complexity, and therefore we cut ourselves off from the two sources that would give us a much smoother flow through this life. We cut ourselves off from actually acting like the less complex world is possible, by being locked in a world with time and doubt. And while we’re locked in that world, we don’t allow ourselves to believe in the arising of a spiritual world that’s appropriate to that worldview, and to that level of complexity.
It stands to reason that while we’re locked in the worldview of the many, we should also imagine a subtle realm occupied by the uncountable many spirits, souls, guides, elementals, and angels (call them whatever you want) who also arise within this worldview.
The people I know who have some facility for communicating with these entities —souls who may or may not be incarnated in gross bodies at this moment – all report that these entities carry a very high vibrational frequency, that they’re rooted in connection with each other and with all things, and that they reside in and reflect to us only love. Only love. (And that any scary encounters are our projections on that experience. Duh, right?)
And I think it’s crucially important to remain intellectually honest about the worldviews we’re holding, and to act as if they’re true when we’re in them. When I’m in a state from a nondual practice or path, and I’m not acting as if that state were true, then I’m not quite all-in, am I? And that works both ways… in one direction, our spiritual view brings along a valid worldview, and in the other direction, our worldview brings along a valid spirituality.
I see no contradiction in believing that I have spirit guides, or advisors (because I do), at the same time I believe that Mirror Mind is an important vehicle for seeing the truth of Witness and Form, at the same time I know, because I have experienced it, the absolute truth of the nondual perspective.
If, however, I’m acting as if the gross world contains separation, and I’m not including a spirituality in that worldview that’s also made up of separation, them I’m engaged in some self-deception. There’s room to add some new forms of spirituality into the mix.
The Promise
The sad, crushing part of that self-deception is that we cut ourselves off from the very source of all of our hope and love within this worldview. We don’t believe that there are any others who arise to help us through the suffering, but how could the suffering exist if there weren’t others to begin with? We therefore try to become Big Mind and Big Heart ourselves and alone, hoping that that move will magically make things better in this world. The very fact that we see the suffering, though, is our indication that we must also have an uncountable many souls aligned with us, supporting us, helping us, as we navigate the gross, manifest world. It is the indication of the arising of a particular worldview, and that worldview includes separation and suffering… and it also includes multiple souls both in and out of incarnation at this time.
I invite each of you to feel into the rightness of this for yourselves. Does it feel more accurate to imagine these kinds of plentiful subtle and causal realms, or does it feel more accurate to imagine that they don’t exist?
For me, I know they exist, and I know that they’re full of souls.
They’re full of souls who have been around the wheel of existence enough times to carry a higher vibrational frequency than we’ve ever seen in a large group on this planet before.
They’re full of souls who carry such a high vibrational frequency that they only choose to incarnate at times when they’re needed to make a significant shift in consciousness on the planet.
They’re full of souls who are choosing difficult circumstances of birth all around the planet so that this consciousness arises in all places as it’s needed.
And they’ve already been coming. We’ve heard about the Indigo Children. Or the Crystal Children. Or the Ages of Aquarius and Pisces. Or a thousand other labels indicating that something interesting and new is happening with some of the children these days. I’m guessing they’re all different ways of saying the same thing: souls that have been around the block more times than some others are starting to show up in large numbers, and they’re showing some incredible ability to be present through whatever is arising.
They’ve been coming for some time, and now they’re coming in growing numbers – and if my prediction that we can get 10%-20% of the world’s population operating from an Integral center-of-gravity is right – then they’ll be coming in much larger numbers very soon now. They’ll have to be adults as some of the amazing new technology comes online, so that they can partner with it from a very present place. They’ll also carry the kind of vibrational frequency that allows what seem like intractable issues on the planet to be solved with quite a bit more grace than we’ve seen, because they’ll natively see a global – dare I say Integral – perspective.
They’re arising as the Integral movement is arising, because all timing is perfect, and because they must in order to help us navigate the incredible new worlds of technology that are coming. Things are just getting good around here.
A final plea
If you believe nothing else that I’ve said about how our world is going to be fine, if you think that technology and artificial intelligence will harm us, if you think that nanotechnology-based manufacturing will never happen, and solar power is too far off to prevent permanent damage, and even if you think that spiritual development won’t come soon enough: I tell you, those souls are coming, and they’re coming in large numbers, large enough to make a difference. You probably already know a few.
Nice to meet you, too.
So hold all of the perspectives of spirituality with me, as we all remain aware of the level of complexity we’re seeing at any given moment, and act as if they’re all true, without disowning any of them. This ride through manifestation can go far more smoothly for all beings than it has thus far, and it’s in our ability to see that it happens at all levels. We can’t get there if we have a large hole in our lives where the spirituality of the many should be.
President Obama at the United Nations 2010-Sep-23 at 14:21 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Obama, United Nations
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Another great, if short, speech by President Obama today at the United Nations. Here, he presents a balanced and serious approach for all nations dealing with the recession, with wars, and with global development. Seriously, the only guy with more hits than Obama is Jay-Z.
The Killers are the next U2 2010-Sep-12 at 08:21 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: music, The Killers, U2
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There, I said it.
I’m so hooked on this band right now. Four albums so far, one of them was mostly covers and B-sides, but at least half of each of the other three are amazing pop songs.
And they have a great singer and frontman, like U2. And the other guys grow on you after a little while.
Great lyrics, and you know they’re feeling their way into talking about spirituality.
And so young. U2 did Live at Red Rocks after their third album, and The Killers have done their first video, Live From Royal Albert Hall, after their third full album (not counting the covers and B-sides album). The difference: The Killers have more good songs at this point than U2 did. Of course, they don’t have a "Sunday Bloody Sunday", but then again, no one but U2 does.
I’m not making any claims about them operating from Second Tier or anything… they might be, they might not be. But they’re definitely headed in the right direction. Very impressive early career so far, and I’m on board for the ride.
A New START 2010-Sep-09 at 03:09 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: nuclear, Russia, START, United States
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President Obama and President Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague, on April 8, 2010. The treaty remains stuck, waiting for the U.S. Senate’s "advice and consent" to ratify it. In the meantime, the previous START expired in 2009, and so, for the last nine months, we’ve had no visibility into Russia’s nuclear forces.
This remains important because, even though the U.S. and Russia are now allies, we’re still, by far, the two nations with the largest nuclear force, and keeping up an inspection regime between us remains the best way for both nations to stay up-to-date and accurate about our nuclear weapons.
From New START: Security Through 21st Century Verification, by Rose Gottemoeller:
In the 22 years since these first inspections occurred under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, on-site inspections have been a vital means of verifying compliance with arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet successor states, and now the Russian Federation.
With the December 2009 expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the United States is unable, for the first time in more than 20 years, to conduct nuclear arms inspections inside Russia.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which was signed April 8 and is before the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification, provides for a resumption of vital on-site inspections of Russian strategic nuclear facilities. There is no substitute for on-site inspections. They provide not only the “boots on the ground” presence to confirm Russian data declarations, thus helping to verify compliance with treaty obligations, but also insights into Russian strategic forces located at those facilities. Simply put, the United States is more secure and safer when our country is able to gain a better understanding of the Russian strategic arsenal.
Interestingly, what started as a contentious relationship warmed over the years into a healthy professional respect.
These baseline inspections began at the close of a very cold winter in Russia. U.S. inspectors often stood knee deep in snow while conducting three- to four-hour-long discussions with their Russian escorts on the nuances of inspection procedures. For many Russian and U.S. personnel, this was their first encounter with their counterparts from the other country, so initially the relationship was impersonal, formal, and sometimes adversarial. During the succeeding years of conducting START inspections, the demeanor on both sides developed into one of mutual respect as each side recognized that the other’s inspection team members or in-country escorts were doing their jobs with competence, professionalism, and fairness while ensuring the exercise of their full and reciprocal rights under the treaty.
Over the life of START, the atmosphere during inspections continued to improve. “It’s not personal, it’s about the treaty” became the mantra of the inspectors on both sides. Each side learned a great deal about the other’s strategic forces during those on-site inspections. Thus, both sides gained a strong body of knowledge and experience about conducting on-site inspections efficiently and effectively under START and the INF Treaty; they also learned how to improve on them.
We’re not nearly done with the threat of nuclear attack, particularly in terms of nuclear non-proliferation. Keeping our two nations aligned in this regard remains a crucial piece of United States foreign policy, and a wonderful demonstration of the kind of International cooperation that eventually gets people to trust that it’s OK to give up a little bit of national sovereignty for a larger peace.
