Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent meditation developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The TM technique involves the silent repetition of a mantra or sound, and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per day. It is taught by certified teachers through a standard course of instruction, with a cost which varies by country and individual circumstance. According to the TM organization, it is a non-religious method that promotes relaxed awareness, stress relief, self-development, and higher states of consciousness. The technique has been variously described as both religious[2] and non-religious.[nb 1] Maharishi began teaching the technique in India in the mid-1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi (more)

Rusty Guinn: A Man Must Have a Code. One such Britticism was the idea that any person who wants to be consistently successful as a human being, and especially as an investor, must have a World View. (more)

Ray Dalio describes Credit Crisis 2008 as a "DProcess". But now you can ask yourself, OK, when was the last time bank stocks went down so much? When was the last time the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, exploded like it has? When was the last time interest rates went to zero, essentially, making monetary policy as we know it ineffective? When was the last time we had Deflation? The answers to those questions all point to times other than the U.S. post-WorldWarII experience. This was the dynamic that occurred in Japan in the '90s, that occurred in Latin America in the '80s, and that occurred in the Great Depression in the '30s... Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a Debt Restructuring... This has happened in Latin America regularly. Emerging countries default, and then restructure. It is an essential process to get them economically healthy. We will go through a giant debt-restructuring, because we either have to bring debt-service payments down so they are low relative to incomes - the cash flows that are being produced to service them - or we are going to have to raise incomes by printing a lot of money. It isn't complicated. It is the same as all bankruptcies, but when it happens pervasively to a country, and the country has a lot of Foreign Debt denominated in its own currency, it is preferable to print money and devalue... What the Federal Reserve has done and what the Treasury has done, by and large, is to take an existing debt and say they will own it or lend against it. But they haven't said they are going to write down the debt and cut debt payments each month. There has been little in the way of debt relief yet. Very, very few actual mortgages have been restructured. Very little corporate debt has been restructured... Only when those debts are actually written down will we get to the point where we will have credit growth. There is a Mortgage Debt piece that will need to be restructured. There is a giant financial-sector piece - banks and Investment Bank-s and whatever is left of the financial sector - that will need to be restructured. There is a Corporate Debt piece that will need to be restructured, and then there is a commercial-RealEstate piece that will need to be restructured. (more)

Venkatesh Rao wonders whether you should drink the Kool Aid. (more)

Aaron Swartz on Personality Tests. There are related claims, however, that exercise much more power over our lives and (perhaps as a result) are far less challenged. One of their creators explained that they would “promote personal development”, “manage conflict”, and “increase human understanding worldwide.” (Paul, 121) But instead of Vedic science, she was talking about her creation: the Myers-Briggs personality test. I have written before about the failures of experiments to provide evidence in favor of our concepts of personality or intelligence and how despite this many continue to believe in them. One can discuss how even studies by proponents find that IQ lacks validity and that 47% of people have a different Myers-Briggs personality type on a second administration of a test. But this somehow seems not to convince. So let us try another tack: let us look at how these tests are made.

aka MBTI; Personality Test (more)

Processing is an Open Source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound (Multimedia). It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook (NoteBook) and professional production tool. (more)

aka Graphic Novel; longer than a Comic Strip (more)

*The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services.[1] Its mission is to "make pivotal investments in break-through technologies and broadly applicable platforms, capabilities, resources, and solutions that have the potential to transform important areas of medicine and health for the benefit of all patients and that cannot readily be accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity."[2]. (more)

precursor to DARPA, see also ARPA-H

Pentagon R And D outfit. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.[3][4] Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created on February 7, 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. By collaborating with academia, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements.[5] The name of the organization first changed from its founding name, ARPA, to DARPA, in March 1972, changing back to ARPA in February 1993, then reverted to DARPA in March 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA

Past and present reads. Bolded-titles were faves. See esp. Greatest Books (more)

Brain Training/Meta Programming book by Robert Anton Wilson ISBN:1561840564 (more)

Tim Leary "game" where you rated yourself on 16 mental attributes, and it generated a radial graph showing your state of mind. You could track changes over time, compare yourself to historical figures (rated by some expert, I guess), etc. (more)

aka Timothy Leary Tune in, turn on, and drop out. http://www.leary.com/ (more)

John Higgs: The High Priest and the Great Beast: Timothy Leary's Belief That He Was a 'Continuation' of Aleister Crowley. In 1972 Dr. Tim Leary picked up a pack of Aleister Crowley-designed tarot cards and asked them the question, “Who am I and what is my destiny?” He then cut the pack and found the Ace of Discs, the card that Crowley believed represented himself (more)

Ralph Metzner: on JFK, Mary Pinchot Meyer and the Leary Connection. I have come to believe that the multiple assassinations of leaders (JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X to name only four of the most prominent) that occurred in the 1960s signaled the end of the American republic and the establishment of a military-industrial empire, governed according to increasingly secretive, fascistic and militaristic principles, with the formerly “free press” reduced to being the propaganda extension of the controlling elites (more)

Strong Towns is replacing America’s postwar pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient (cf Resilient Community). We advocate for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable and inviting. We elevate local government as the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place, not merely the lowest level in a hierarchy of governments. https://www.strongtowns.org/

"The Resilient Community Wiki" (more)

Hipster refers to a PostModern SubCulture of young, Urban Middle Class adults and older teenagers that appeared in the 1990s, being derived from earlier movements in the 1940s. The subculture is associated with indie music, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, progressive or independent political views,[1][2] and alternative lifestyles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture) (more)