Nikola Tesla and Swami Vivekananda:

Swami Vivekananda, late in the year l895 wrote in a letter to an English friend, “Mr. Tesla thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am to go and see him next week to get this new mathematical demonstration. In that case the Vedantic cosmoloqy will be placed on the surest of foundations. I am working a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of the Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect union with modern science, and the elucidation of the one will be followed by that of the other.” (Complete Works, Vol. V, Fifth Edition, 1347, p. 77).

Here Swamiji uses the terms force and matter for the Sanskrit terms Prana and Akasha. Tesla used the Sanskrit terms and apparently understood them as energy and mass. (In Swamiji’s day, as in many dictionaries published in the first half of the present century, force and energy were not alwavys clearly differentiated. Energy is a more proper translation of the Sanskrit term Prana.)

Tesla apparently failed in his effort to show the identity of mass and energy. Apparently he understood that when speed increases, mass must decrease. He seems to have thought that mass might be “converted” to energy and vice versa, rather than that they were identical in some way, as is pointed out in Einstein’s equations. At any rate, Swamiji seems to have sensed where the difficulty lay in joining the maps of European science and Advaita Vedanta and set Tesla to solve the problem. It is apparently in the hope that Tesla would succeed in this that Swamiji says “In that case the Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations.” Unfortunately Tesla failed and the solution did not come till ten years later, in a paper by Albert Einstein. But by then Swamiji was gone and the connecting of the maps was delayed.

The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla’s Understanding of Free Energy

An Article by Toby Grotz

Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia – Southern Autumn of 1997

Abstract …

Nikola Tesla used ancient Sanskrit terminology in his descriptions of natural phenomena. As early as 1891 Tesla described the universe as a kinetic system filled with energy which could be harnessed at any location. His concepts during the following years were greatly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda was the first of a succession of eastern yogi’s who brought Vedic philosophy and religion to the west. After meeting the Swami and after continued study of the Eastern view of the mechanisms driving the material world, Tesla began using the Sanskrit words Akasha, Prana, and the concept of a luminiferous ether to describe the source, existence and construction of matter. This paper will trace the development of Tesla’s understanding of Vedic Science, his correspondence with Lord Kelvin concerning these matters, and the relation between Tesla and Walter Russell and other turn of the century scientists concerning advanced understanding of physics. Finally, after being obscured for many years, the author will give a description of what he believes is the the pre-requisite for the free energy systems envisioned by Tesla.

Tesla’s Earler Description of the Physical Universe

By the year 1891, Nikola Tesla had invented many useful devices. These included a system of arc lighting (1886), the alternating current motor, power generation and transmission systems (1888), systems of electrical conversion and distribution by oscillatory discharges (1889), and a generator of high frequency currents (1890), to name a few. The most well known patent centers around an inspiration that occurred while walking with a friend in a park in Budapest, Hungry. It was while observing the sunset that Tesla had a vision of how rotating electromagnetic fields could be used in a new form of electric motor. his led to the well known system of alternating current power distribution. In 1891 however, Tesla patented what one day may become his most famous invention. It is the basis for the wireless transmission of electrical power and is know as the Tesla Coil Transformer. It was during this year that Tesla made the following comments during a speech before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers:

“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe. This idea is not novel… We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians… Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic.? If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic – and this we know it is, for certain – then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” [1]

This description of the physical mechanisms of the universe was given before Tesla became familiar with the Vedic science of the eastern Nations of India, Tibet, and Nepal. This science was first popualized in the United States and the west during the three year visit of Swami Vivekananda.

Vedic Science and Swami Vivekananda

The Vedas are a collection of writings consisting of hymns, prayers, myths, historical accounting, dissertations on science, and the nature of reality, which date back at least 5,000 years. The nature of matter, antimatter, and the make up of atomic structure are described in the Vedas. The language of the Vedas is known as Sanskrit. The origin of Sanskrit is not fully understood. Western scholars suggest that it was brought into the Himalayas and thence south into India by the southward migrations of the Aryan culture.

(Lila: This is the now discredited Aryan invasion theory, which European scholars promoted, since it originated the Aryans in the West)

Paramahansa Yogananda and other historians however do not subscribe to that theory, pointing out that there is no evidence within India to substantiate such claims. [2]

There are words in Sanskrit that describe concepts totally foreign to the western mind. Single words may require a full paragraph for translation into english. Having studied Sanskrit for a brief period during the late 70’s, it finally occurred to this writer that Tesla’s use of Vedic terminology could provide a key to understanding his view of electromagnetism and the nature of the universe. But where did Tesla learn Vedic concepts and Sanskrit terminology? A review of the well known biographies by Cheney, Hunt and Draper, and O’Neil [3], [4], [5], reveal no mention of Tesla’s knowledge of Sanskrit. O’Neal however includes the following excerpt from an unpublished article called Man’s Greatest Achievement:

“There manifests itself in the fully developed being , Man, a desire mysterious, inscrutable and irresistible: to imitate nature, to create, to work himself the wonders he perceives…. Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.”

According to Leland Anderson the article was written May 13th, 1907. Anderson also suggested that it was through association with Swami Vivekananda that Tesla may have come into contact with Sanskrit terminology and that John Dobson of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers Association had researched that association. [6]

Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta, India in 1863. He was inspired by his teacher, Ramakrishna to serve men as visible manifestations of God.

(Lila: It is this Ramakrishna Paramahansa, whom Western scholars like Wendy Doniger and her students, have attemtpted to discredit through reductionist psycho-sexual studies of a kind that would never pass muster if the targets were Christian. We must guess that the recent attacks on the most prominent practitioners of Hinduism have to do with a concerted effort among some Western secular (read, militant atheistic) individuals to demote Hinduism).

In 1893 Swami Vivekananda began a tour of the west by attending the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago. During the three years that he toured the United States and Europe, Vivekananda met with many of the well known scientists of the time including Lord Kelvin and Nikola Tesla. [7] According to Swami Nikhilananda:

Nikola Tesla, the great scientist who specialized in the field of electricity, was much impressed to hear from the Swami his explanation of the Samkhya cosmogony and the theory of cycles given by the Hindus. He was particularly struck by the resemblance between the Samkhya theory of matter and energy and that of modern physics. The Swami also met in New York Sir William Thompson, afterwards Lord Kelvin, and Professor Helmholtz, two leading representatives of western science. Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French actress had an interview with the Swami and greatly admired his teachings. [8]

It was at a party given by Sarah Bernhardt that Nikola Tesla probably first met Swami Vivekananda. [9] Sarah Bernhardt was playing the part of ‘Iziel’ in a play of the same name. It was a French version about the life of Bhudda. The actress upon seeing Swami Vivekananda in the audience, arranged a meeting which was also attended by Nikola Tesla. In a letter to a friend, dated February 13th, 1896, Swami Vivekananda noted the following:

…Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prana and Akasha and the Kalpas, which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain…..Mr Tesla thinks he can demonstrate that mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am to go see him next week to get this mathematical demonstration. [10]

Swami Vivekananda was hopeful that Tesla would be able to show that what we call matter is simply potential energy because that would reconcile the teachings of the Vedas with modern science. The Swami realized that “In that case, the Vedantic cosmology [would] be placed on the surest of foundations”. The harmony between Vedantic theories and and western science was explained by the following diagram:

BRAHMAN = THE ABSOLUTE

MAHAT OR ISHVARA = PRIMAL CREATIVE ENERGY

|PRANA and AKASHA = ENERGY and MATTER

Tesla understood the Sanskrit terminology and philosophy and found that it was a good means to describe the physical mechanisms of the universe as seen through his eyes. It would behoove those who would attempt to understand the science behind the inventions of Nikola Tesla to study Sanskrit and Vedic philosophy.

Tesla apparently failed to show the identity of energy and matter. If he had, certainly Swami Vivekananda would have recorded that occasion. The mathematical proof of the principle did come until about ten years later when Albert Einstein published his paper on relativity. What had been known in the East for the last 5,000 years was then known to the West. (Lila: there is very much more to this story, since Einstein, like Edison, was also a plagiariser, taking his work from his wife, as well as from Poincare)

Brahman is defined as the one self existent impersonal spirit; the Divine Essence, from which all things emanate, by which they are sustained, and to which they return. Notice that this is very similar to the concept of the Great Spirit as understood by Native American cultures. Ishvara is the Supreme Ruler; the highest possible conception of the Absolute, which is beyond all thought. Mahat means literally the Great One, and is also interpreted as meaning universal mind or cosmic intelligence. Prana means energy (usually translated as life force) and Akasha means matter (usually translated as ether). Dobson points out that the more common translations for Akasha and Prana are not quite correct, but that Tesla did understand their true meanings.

(Lila: I wonder if Tesla, like Nietzsche, knew far more than is usually cedited about Eastern science, cosmology and religion, which had been introduced into the West by scholars like Max Muller. I submit that this influence has been buried or minimized out of chauvinism and ignorance, if not active malice)

The meeting with Swami Vivekananda greatly stimulated Nikola Tesla’s interest in Eastern Science. The Swami later remarked during a lecture in India, “I myself have been told by some of the best scientific minds of the day, how wonderfully rational the conclusions of the Vedanta are. I know of one of them personally, who scarcely has time to eat his meal, or go out of his laboratory, but who would stand by the hour to attend my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they are so scientific, they so exactly harmonize with the aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which modern science is coming at the present time”. [11]

Tesla and Lord Kelvin

William S. Thompson was one of the prominent scientists and engineers of the 1800s. He developed analogies between heat and electricity and his work influenced the theories developed by James Clerk Maxwell, one of the founders of electromagnetic theory. Thompson supervised the successful laying of the Trans Atlantic Cable and for that work was knighted Lord Kelvin. Kelvin had endorsed Tesla’s theories and proposed system for the wireless transmission of electrical power. [12] FootNOTE- Grotz PACE

Tesla continued to study Hindu and Vedic philosophy for a number of years as indicated by the following letter written to him by Lord Kelvin.

15, Eaton Place

London, S.W.

May 20, 1902

Dear Mr. Tesla,

I do not know how I can ever thank you enough for the

most kind letter of May, 10, which I found in my cabin in the

Lucania, with the beautiful books which you most kindly sent

me along with it: -“The Buried Temple”, “The Gospel of

Bhudda”, Les Grands Inities”, the exquisite edition of

Rossetti’s “House of Life”, and last but not least the

Century Magazine for June, 1900 with the splendid and

marvelous photographs on pp. 176, 187, 190, 191, 192, full of

electrical lessons.

We had a most beautiful passage across the Atlantic, much

the finest I have ever had. I was trying hard nearly all the

way, but quite unsuccessfully, to find something definite as

to the functions of ether in respect to plain, old fashioned

magnetism. A propos of this, I have instructed the

publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, to send you at the Waldorf a

copy of my book (Collection of Separate Papers) on

Electrostatics and Magnetism. I shall be glad if you will

accept it from me as a very small mark of my gratitude to you

for your kindness. You may possibly find something

interesting in the articles on Atmospheric Electricity which

it contains.

Lady Kelvin joins me in kind regards, and I remain,

Yours always truly,

Kelvin

Thank you also warmly for the beautiful flowers [13]

Tesla and Russell

Walter Russell was one of the most accomplished artists, sculptors, writers and scientists of this century. His periodic chart of the elements accurately predicted the location and characteristics of four elements years before they were discovered in laboratories. These are now known as Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium, and Plutonium. Russell apparently entered into a heightened state of awareness after being struck by lightning. He began several weeks of drawing and writing about the basic nature and make up of the physical universe. Russells’ family finally called the family doctor to determine if Russell should be committed to an mental institution. The doctor, upon seeing the results of Russells weeks of work, said that he did not know what Russell was doing, but that he definitely was not mad.

Although the exact time and occasion of their meeting has not yet been determined, Nikola Tesla and Walter Russell did meet and discuss their respective cosmologies. 14 Tesla recognized the wisdom and power of Russells’ teaching and urged Russell to lock up his knowledge in a safe for 1,000 years until man was ready for it. [15]

The Appearance of Free Energy

Or Why Free Energy has not yet Happened

Comments, Possibilities and Socio Economic Implications

Although Tesla did not accept many of the tenants of relativity and quantum theory and never made the connection between matter and energy, he did recognize the possibility of free and unlimited energy as demonstrated by the following statement.

Can Man control [the ] grandest, most awe inspiring of all processes in nature?…If he could do this, he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural… He could cause planes to collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms….[Such powers] would place him beside his creator, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny. [16]

We see that Tesla is asking a question, speculating, searching for an answer. If Tesla had developed free energy sources or learned how to manipulate space time and gravity, during the time of his most public and productive years, (up until about 1920), he would have had answers to those questions.

Tesla’s most misunderstood invention is popularly known as the “Death Ray”. It was simply a particle beam weapon which he proposed in 1937 and was fabricated under contracts with Alcoa Aluminum and the English and Italian governments. [17] It used electrostatic propulsion techniques and similar devices are being developed today by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) and the US Army Strategic Defense Command. [18]

So we see that mankind has not yet harnessed the infinite power of the universe as envisioned by Nikola Tesla. The question remains, why not?

Free energy devices, if they are feasible, are not about smaller faster microcircuits or a bigger better mouse traps. This is a technology which may revolutionize the socio-economic status quo on planet Earth. At this moment the big pie is unevenly divided. One quarter of the population on this rock, the third stone from the sun, consumes three quarters of the yearly resource output. As one can easily deduce, from a brief study of world affairs, there are about three billion people who have just about had it with this scenario. There are wars starvation and strife in every nook and cranny of the planet. So what do we do about it?

Spaceship Earth Needs A Flight Plan

Either we divide the pie more evenly or we make the pie larger. The first option requires that our standard of living must fall so that the standard of living in the third world may rise. The second option allows us to maintain our standard of living while we help raise the standard of living of under privileged nations. This we must do. It is our destiny. It is our responsibility. It is our final test.

Thirty thousand people starve to death every day on this planet, most of them are children. Nations fight nations, war is part of our lives. What drives our economy in the western world, allows us to enjoy a high standard of living, a life of leisure compared to our neighbors south of the imaginary line called a border? Many answers both economic, social, political, and spiritual can be given. We do know that the standard of living that a nation enjoys is directly related energy consumption.

Energy drives the economies of nations and Tesla’s life long goal was to make electric power equally available to all people any where on this planet. He continued to promote his plan for the wireless transmission of power in the yearly interviews he gave on his birthday as late as 1940. [19] Electrical power allows on site processing of raw materials. Electrical power can run pumps from water wells in areas affected by drought. Electrical power delivered to the poverty stricken areas of the world can make the pie larger, can help bring about the needed economic equality which is our birth right.

Why hasn’t power been made equally available to all people and nations? Why haven’t the much touted free energy devices described by Tom Bearden, John Bedini, Bruce DePalma, and others ever materialized? Perhaps because “easy things are seldom done for the same reason that impossible things are rarely done: no one will pay for anything believed to be easy or impossible”. [20] Perhaps because when we talk about power there is more there than one would initially visualize. What we are talking about is personal power, national power, planetary power, karmic power and the power of love.

The sages tell us that in order to enjoy power we have to let go of power, to overcome ourselves. As an example this author can describe one of his recent experiences. After a very successful symposium celebrating the 100th year after Nikola Tesla arrived in the United States 21, a non profit corporation, 501(c)(3), was formed specifically to encourage and pursue research into the inventions and discoveries of Nikola Tesla. Two years later, after a second symposium, several of the founding members approached the board of directors with a proposal to validate Tesla’s claim that wireless transmission of power was possible. Board members suggested that permission be obtained from the FCC, an environmental impact statement be filed with the EPA, and we should go form “our own non profit corporation”. It was also decided that since there was no procedure to cover research, the organization could not be involved.

Another goal of the organization had been to establish a museum to be named the Nikola Tesla Museum of Science and Technology. We proposed that since 60 -70 billion dollars are given away to non profit organizations annually, we had as good a chance as any other organization for obtaining funding, for a museum or research. We reasoned that:

“Since only 16% of the museums in this country are science museums, this museum in honor of Nikola Tesla will help educate the public in technological areas. With the need for economic revitalization of industry in Colorado, 1986is the time to begin supporting the scientific education of our region. With the current statistics showing that the United States is falling behind the world technologically, the effort to educate the public is becoming more important, and the surge of public awareness of Nikola Tesla’s inventions makes him an appropriate namesake for a science and technology museum.” [23]

The board moved to table our proposal indefinitely.

What had happened? Of the 15 – 20 people that had started the organization only four remained as part of the governing body. Three of those members were opposed to research. The collective mind of the board of directors had become the antithesis of the momentum Tesla had gained in his lifetime. Unlike the independent inventor and businessman, the board was now composed of members who were bureaucrats and paper pushers for Fortune 500 companies. Tesla was a vegetarian, the board members all ate meat. Tesla did not ask for permission to be inventive and strike out on bold new adventures, the board needed approval from higher sources. The dichotomies were endless.

Tesla’s visions have been delayed for 89 years. The squabbling started with Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan and Nikola Tesla himself.

(Lila: Please note the role of J P Morgan, and the inveterate plagiarizer and intellectual thief, Thomas Edison)

24 It continues to this day. Perhaps the reason for the delay of wireless power transmission or free energy devices lies even deeper within the human psyche. Is it possible that we could compare the Tesla story to a biblical story? Bruce Gordan thinks so. In Gordan’s analysis Tesla’s attempt at building a prototype magnifying transmitter parallels Genesis 11:1-9. [25]

“The message; human curiosity and technological derring-do makes God nervous; God demolishes project, confounds language”. Gordan further outlines the the scenario as follows:

“When everything is perfect, the right time shows up.” [26] This is equivalent to saying, “Absolute knowledge in the hands of one whose heart is not yet tender, would be a terrible weapon. [27] We might postulate that technological developments do not occur until the planet is ready. The recent examination of the theory of Gaia credits the Earth with an intelligence. “Thousands of years ago, by means of seeing, sorcerers became aware that the Earth was sentinent and that its awareness could affect the awareness of humans.” [28] By implication of reciprocity the reverse could be true. The group or collective unconscious is still struggling with the result of quantum and relativity theory. We as a race were ready for nuclear power, every thing was perfect and the right time showed up. Soon we will have put the technology to good use or abandon it to insure our survival as a species.

SO WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT IT

FREE ENERGY: CREATING AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME

Wireless transmission of power and free energy have not happened yet, perhaps we aren’t ready, perhaps the Earth isn’t ready. Pogo said it best, ” we have met the enemy and it is us.” In the Jungian view of collective unconscious, things happen when the time is right, we get what we agree to. We need a flight plan. And that plan must realize that:

WHEN THE POWER OF LOVE

OVERCOMES

THE LOVE OF POWER

THERE WILL BE PEACE

[Source; Girls Lavatory, Boulder High School, Boulder, Colorado]

Described as “Post Industrial, neo-technical, teen-age graffiti.”

“So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet….”

Nikola Tesla describing what is now known as Schumann Resonance (7.8 Hz) in “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires As A Means Of Furthering World Peace”, Electrical World And Engineer, January 7, 1905, PP 21-24.

Footnotes …

1. Ratzlaff, John, Tesla Said, Tesla Book Company, PO Box 1649, Greenville, TX 75401, 1984.

2. Yogananda, Paramahansa, Autobiography of a Yogi, Self Realization Fellowship,, 3880 San Rafael Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065, 1985.

3. Cheney, Margaret, Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall, 1981.

4. Hunt, Inez and Draper. Wanetta, W., Lightning In His Hand, The Life Story Of Nikola Tesla, Omni Publications, Hawthorne, CA, 1981.

5. O’Neal, John, J., Prodigal Genius, The Life Of Nikola Tesla, Ives Washington, Inc., 1944.

6. Anderson, Leland, personal communication. See also Anderson, L.I., and Ratzlaff, J.T., Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography, Ragusan Press, 936 Industrial Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94303, 1979.

7. Nikhilananda, Swami, Vivekananda, The Yogas and Other Works, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, 1973.

8. Nikhilananda, Swami.

9. Dobson, John, personal communication.

7. Dobson, John, Advaita Vedanta and Modern Science, Vedanta Book Center, 5423 S. Hyde Park, Chicago, IL 60615, 1979.

10. Nikhilananda, Swami.

11. Burke, Marie Louise, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries, The World Teacher, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, India, 1985, p. 500

12. Grotz, T., “Artificially Stimulated Resonance of the Earth’s Schumann Cavity Waveguide”, Proceedings of the Third International New Energy Technology Symposium/Exhibition, June 25th-28th, 1988, Hull, Quebec, Planetary Association for Clean Energy, 191 Promenade du Portage/600, Hull, Quebec J8X 2K6 Canada

13. From the personal collection of L. Anderson.

14. Russell, Lao. personal communication.

15. The University of Science and Philosophy, Swannanoa, Waynesboro, VA 22980, (703) 942-5161.

16. First written by Tesla on May 13, 1907, for the “Actors Fair Fund”, text transcribed from an A.L.S. in the collections of the Bakken Library of Electricity in Life. The article later appeared in the “New York American”, July 6, 1930, pg. 10.

17. Tesla, Nikola, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through Natural Media, Proceedings of the Tesla Centennial Symposium, Grotz, T. & Rauscher, E., Editors, 1984.

18. Turchi, P.J.,Conte, D.,Seiler, S., Electrostatic Acceleration of Microprojectiles to Ultrahypervelocities, “Proceedings of the Seventh Pulsed Power Conference”, June 12th-14th, Monterey, California, Jointly Sponsored by the DOD, DOE, and the IEEE Electron Devices Society.

19. “Death Ray for Planes”, New York Times, September 20, 1940.

20. Pawlicki, T.B., Exploring Hyperspace, 848 Fort Street, Victoria, B.C., Canada, electronic book on floppy disk, 1988, (Log onto the TESLA BBS at (719) 486-2775 for copy of ASCII text files)

21. Broad, William J., “Tesla a Bizarre Genius, Regains Aura of Greatness”, New York Times, Aug. 28th, 1984

22. Deleted

23. Grotz, T., & Sheppard, J., The Nikola Tesla Museum of Science and Technology submitted to the Board of Directors December 12th, 1986. [Available as an ASCII text file on the TESLA BBS (719) 486-2775]

24. Cheney, Margaret, Tesla, Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1981.

25. Gordan, Bruce, private communication, 1988.

26. Arguelles, Jose & Lloydine, personal communication.

27. Hercules, Michael, The Circle of Love, published by the author.

28. Castenada, Carlos, The Power of Silence, Further Lessons of don Jaun, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987, Pg. 120.

FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT TESLA

TESLA BBS: This is a full featured computer Bulletin Board Service for access to information about current research and the life and times of Nikola Tesla. A subsection of the Colorado Mountain College BBS, it may be contacted using a computer and 300/1200/2400 baud modems at (719) 486-2775.

The Tesla Memorial Society The Tesla Coil Builders Association

% Nicholas Kosanovich % Harry Goldman

453 Martin Road RD #6 Box 181

Lackawanna, NY 14218 Glenns Falls, NY 12801

(716) 822-0281 (518) 792-1003

The Tesla Book Company High Voltage Press

PO Box 1649 PO Box 532

Greenville, TX 75401 Claremont, CA 91711

(214) 454-6819

About the Author…

Mr. Toby Grotz, President, Wireless Engineering is an electrical engineer and has 16 years experience in the field of geophysics, aerospace and industrial research and design. While working for the Geophysical Services Division of Texas Instruments and at the University of Texas at Dallas, Mr. Grotz was introduced to and worked with the geophysical concepts which are of importance to the wireless transmission of power. As a Senior Engineer at Martin Marietta, Mr. Grotz designed and supervised the construction of industrial process control systems and designed and built devices and equipment for use in research and development and for testing space flight hardware. Mr. Grotz also worked for the public utility industry installing mini computer based pollutant measuring data acquisition systems in fossil fuel power plants and as a results engineer in a nuclear power plant. Mr. Grotz organized and chaired the 1984 Tesla Centennial Symposium and the 1986 International Tesla Symposium and was president of the International Tesla Society, a not for profit corporation formed as a result the first symposium. As Project Manager for Project Tesla, Mr. Grotz aided in the design and construction of a recreation of the equipment Nikola Tesla used for wireless transmission of power experiments in 1899 in Colorado Springs. Mr. Grotz received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Connecticut in 1973.

John Daily at OilPrice.com:

“Every now and again, one reads an editorial that stops the reader in his tracks.

On 8 December, with the headline “War Inevitable To Tackle Indian Water Aggression,” Pakistan’s Urdu-language Nawa-e Waqt, issued such a screed.

Nawa-e Waqt bluntly commented on India’s Kashmiri water polices and Islamabad’s failure up to now to stop New Delhi’s efforts to construct hydroelectric dams in Kashmir, “India should be forcibly prevented from constructing these dams. If it fails to constrain itself, we should not hesitate in launching nuclear war because there is no solution except this.”

Potential nuclear war over water rights – such sentiments ought to light up switchboards from New Delhi to Washington.

Needless to say, the fact that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers is cause for concern.

Nawa-e Waqt is a privately owned, widely read conservative Pakistani Islamic daily with a circulation around 125,000 and is heavily critical of the U.S. and India. To put Nawa-e Waqt’s circulation in context, consider that the conservative Washington Times has a current estimated circulation of 50,000.

So, what has the editorial board of the Nawa-e Waqt so excited?

Indian dam building in the disputed area of Kashmir. Compared with much of South Asia, Kashmir has many rivers and relatively few people.

Bashir Ahmad, a geologist in Srinagar, Kashmir commented grimly about the Indians’ future intentions, “They will switch the Indus off to make Pakistan solely dependent on India. It’s going to be a water bomb.” A more dispassionate report by America’s Senate last February offered still a similar assessment, noting, “The cumulative effect of (the dam) projects could give India the ability to store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the growing season” before concluding that dams are a source of “significant bilateral tension.”

How many dams and hydroelectric reports? The Senate report counted 33 hydroelectric projects in the border area, a number that Pakistani analysts nearly double to 60, which according to the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, will add an extra 3,000 megawatts to the national power grid by 2019.

Pakistan’s vulnerability is underwritten by the fact that, like Egypt it exists around a single great river, although the Indus is nearly twice the Nile’s size when it reaches the sea. The Indus provides water to over 80 percent of Pakistan’s 54 million acres of irrigated land, via a canal system largely built by the British.

A further potential diplomatic tar-pit is that Afghanistan plans to build 12 dams on the Kabul river with a combined storage capacity of 4.7 million acre-feet, which Pakistan frets will further diminish the Indus water supply, quite aside from the fact that Indian support for these dams will increase India’s hydro-influence in the region.

The Kabul River Basin (KRB) is the most important river basin in Afghanistan and contains half the country’s urban population, including the city of Kabul. While New Delhi has not directly confirmed its support for the facilities, the proposed hydroelectric projects represent one of India’s largest assistance interests, with $1.3 billion invested in infrastructure projects.

So, is there any way out before the missiles fly?

The 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) between India and Pakistan can not only assist in easing tension, but provide a template for developing an Afghan-Pakistani agreement on the Kabul river. The treaty, which has survived three wars, explicitly outlines how both India and Pakistan can use cross-border rivers and deals in particular with the tributaries flowing from Kashmir to form the Indus.
 
The IWT is considered one of the world’s most successful trans-boundary water treaties, as it addresses specific water allocation issues and provides unique design requirements for run-of-the-river dams, which ensure the steady flow of water and guarantee power generation through hydro-electricity. The IWT also provides a mechanism for consultation and arbitration should questions, disagreements, or disputes arise.

All foreign governments interested in avoiding further military conflict in South Asia should impress upon both New Delhi and Islamabad the ongoing value of their 51 year-old water agreement and urge them to resolve their conflicts within its framework.”

The Bovine

(hat-tip to Karen De Coster, LRC blog)

From Kimberly Hartke:

December 6, 2011–Washington, D.C.– Independent filmmaker Kristin Canty announces today that her film is being screened next week for members of Congress, and the shocking new food documentary was invited back for an encore run at Chicago’s prestigious Gene Siskel Film Center. This summer’s theatrical releases in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, and Boston garnered critical acclaim, and grassroots interest spawned 150 community screenings around the country.

The film opens in Chicago on Saturday, December 10 through the 12th, for one show daily, with a final show on Thursday the 15th. See Gene Siskel Center website for showtimes. The Congressional screening event will take place on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, December 13, 5:30 pm in the Orientation Theater North. U.S. Citizens are encouraged to invite their Congressman and Senator to see the film (find your Representative: http://www.house.gov find your Senator: http://www.senate.gov.

Farmageddon, The Unseen War on American Family Farms, vividly conveys the stories of numerous farmers who found themselves on the wrong side of government food policy. It is hard to imagine our government using S.W.A.T. raids to deal with misdemeanors, nor is it easy to fathom agents of the law seizing valuable farm products and equipment, particularly in cases where there is no proof of harm. This movie enables audiences all across America to come face to face with harsh realities of farm life in our modern day.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty says, “I am very grateful to the Gene Siskel Center for bringing the film back. We had a number of sold out shows in our brief run there this summer. Now more Chicagoans will have the opportunity to see the film!”

Canty’s film project may also have an opportunity to influence public policy. The gravity of the plight of small farmers has gotten the attention of our politicians in Washington, D.C. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D, ME) and Ed Perlmutter, (D, CO), and Congressman Ron Paul, (R, TX) are sponsoring the Congressional screening of Farmaggedon on Capitol Hill. Pingree, who is also an organic farmer, wants her colleagues to see the devastating effects regulatory policies are having on small American farms.

Pingree serves on the Agriculture Committee and recently introduced H.R. 3286, the “Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act”, which reforms agriculture policy to give consumers greater access to local foods, and gives farmers more opportunities. The bill is co-sponsored by 60 of her colleagues in the House, and has also been introduced in the Senate.

Kristin Canty is a member of the nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation, as well as, The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, whose work defending the rights of farmers and consumers to direct trade inspired the film. Visit the film’s website: FarmageddonMovie.com.

And now, from a report on the New York City screening of Farmageddon, by Laurel on Health (source for lead picture):

“Last week I attended an NYC screening for the new documentary Farmageddon. From the film website: “Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent ac-tion, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.” The movie is very well done and it’s focuses on an important issue that we all need to know more about—the unseen war on family farms.”

David Gray:

1. Math and Ethnocentrism

The study of mathematics in the West has long been characterized by a certain ethnocentric bias, a bias which most often manifests not in explicit racism, but in a tendency toward undermining or eliding the real contributions made by non-Western civilizations. The debt owed by the West to other civilizations, and to India in particular, go back to the earliest epoch of the “Western” scientific tradition, the age of the classical Greeks, and continued up until the dawn of the modern era, the renaissance, when Europe was awakening from its dark ages. This awakening was in part made possible by the rediscovery of mathematics and other sciences and technologies through the medium of the Arabs, who transmitted to Europe both their own lost heritage as well as the advanced mathematical traditions formulated in India.

George Ghevarughese Joseph, in an important article entitled “Foundations of Eurocentrism in Mathematics,” argued that “the standard treatment of the history of non-European mathematics is a product of historiographical bias (conscious or otherwise) in the selection and interpretation of facts, which, as a consequence, results in ignoring, devaluing or distorting contributions arising outside European mathematical traditions.” (1987:14)

Due to the legacy of colonialism, the exploitation of which was ideologically justified through a doctrine of racial superiority, the contributions of non-European civilizations were often ignored, or, as Joseph argued, even distorted, in that they were often misattributed as European, i.e. Greek, contributions, and when their contributions were so great as to resist such treatment, they were typically devalued, considered inferior or irrelevant to Western mathematical traditions.

This tendency has not only led to the devaluation of non-Western mathematical traditions, but has distorted the history of Western mathematics as well. In so far as the contributions from non-Western civilizations are ignored, there is the problem of accounting for the development of mathematics purely within the Western cultural framework. This has led, as Sabetai Unguru has argued, toward a tendency to read more advanced mathematical concepts into the relatively simplistic geometrical formulations of Greek mathematicians such as Euclid, despite the fact that the Greeks lacked not only mathematic notation, but even the place-value system of enumeration, without which advanced mathematical calculation is impossible. Such ethnocentric revisionist history resulted in the attribution of more advanced algebraic concepts, which were actually introduced to Europe over a millennium later by the Arabs, to the Greeks. And while the contributions of the Greeks to mathematics were quite significant, the tendency of some math historians to jump from the Greeks to Renaissance Europe results not only in an ethnocentric history, but an inadequate history as well, one which fails to take into account the full history of the development of modern mathematics, which is by no means a purely European development.

1. Vedic Altars and the “Pythagorean theorem”

A perfect example of this sort of misattribution involves the so-called Pythagorean theorem, the well-known theorem which was attributed to Pythagoras who lived around 500 BCE, but which was first proven in Greek sources in Euclid’s Geometry, written centuries later. Despite the scarcity of evidence backing this attribution, it is not often questioned, perhaps due to the mantra-like frequency with which it is repeated. However, Seidenberg, in his 1978 article, shows that the thesis that Greece was the origin of geometric algebra was incorrect, “for geometric algebra existed in India before the classical period in Greece.” (1978:323). It is now generally understood that the so-called “Pythagorean theorem” was understood in ancient India, and was in fact proved in Baudhayana’s Shulva Sutra, a text dated to circa 600 BCE. (1978:323).

Knowledge of mathematics, and geometry in particular, was necessary for the precise construction of the complex Vedic altars, and mathematics was thus one of the topics covered in the brahmanas. This knowledge was further elaborated in the kalpa sutras, which gave more detailed instructions concerning Vedic ritual. Several of these treat the topic of altar construction. The oldest and most complete of these is the previously mentioned Shulva Sutra of Baudhaayana. As this text was composed about a century before Pythagoras, the theory that the Greeks were the source of Geometric algebra is untenable, while the hypothesis that India could [corrected] have been a source for Greek geometry, transmitted via the Persians who traded both with the Greeks and the Indians, looks increasingly plausible. On the other hand, it is quite possible that both the Greeks and the Indians developed geometry. Seidenberg has argued, in fact, that both seem to have developed geometry out of the practical problems involving their construction of elaborate sacrificial altars. (See Seidenberg 1962 and 1983)

1. Zero and the Place Value System

Far more important to the development of modern mathematics than either Greek or Indian geometry was the development of the place value system of enumeration, the base ten system of calculation which uses nine numerals and zero to represent numbers ranging from the most minuscule decimal to the most inconceivably large power of ten. This system of enumeration was not developed by the Greeks, whose largest unit of enumeration was the myriad (10,000) or in China, where 10,000 was also the largest unit of enumeration until recent times. Nor was it developed by the Arabs, despite the fact that this numeral system is commonly called the Arabic numerals in Europe, where this system was first introduced by the Arabs in the thirteenth century.

Rather, this system was invented in India, where it evidently was of quite ancient origin. The Yajurveda Samhitaa, one of the Vedic texts predating Euclid and the Greek mathematicians by at least a millennium, lists names for each of the units of ten up to 10 to the twelfth power (paraardha). (Subbarayappa 1970:49) Later Buddhist and Jain authors extended this list as high as the fifty-third power, far exceeding their Greek contemporaries, who lacking a system of enumeration were unable to develop abstract mathematical concepts.

The place value system of enumeration is in fact built into the Sanskrit language, where each power of ten is given a distinct name. Not only are the units ten, hundred and thousand (daza, zata, sahasra) named as in English, but also ten thousand, hundred thousand, ten million, hundred million (ayuta, lakSa, koti, vyarbuda), and so forth up to the fifty-third power, providing distinct names where English makes use of auxillary bases such as thousand, million, etc. Ifrah has commented that

by giving each power of ten an individual name, the Sanskrit system gave no special importance to any number. Thus the Sanskrit system is obviously superior to that of the Arabs (for whom the thousand was the limit), or the Greeks and Chinese (whose limit was ten thousand) and even to our own system (where the names thousand, million etc. continue to act as auxillary bases). Instead of naming the numbers in groups of three, four or eight orders of units, the Indians, from a very early date, expressed them taking the powers of ten and the names of the first nine units individually. In other words, to express a given number, one only had to place the name indicating the order of units between the name of the order of units immediately immediately below it and the one immediately above it. That is exactly what is required in order to gain a precise idea of the place-value system, the rule being presented in a natural way and thus appearing self-explanatory. To put it plainly, the Sanskrit numeral system contained the very key to the discovery of the place-value system. (2000:429)

As Ifrah has shown at length, there is little doubt that our place-value numeral system developed in India (2000:399-409), and this system is embedded in the Sanskrit language, several aspects of which make it a very logical language, well suited to scientific and mathematical reasoning. Nor did this system exhaust Indian ingenuity; as van Nooten has shown, Pingala, who lived circa the first century BCE, developed a system of binary enumeration convertible to decimal numerals, described in his Chandahzaastra. His system is quite similar to that of Leibniz, who lived roughly fourteen hundred years later. (See Van Nooten)

India is also the locus of another closely related an equally important mathematical discovery, the numeral zero. The oldest known text to use zero is a Jain text entitled the Lokavibhaaga, which has been definitely dated to Monday 25 August 458 CE. (Ifrah 2000:417-1 9) This concept, combined by the place-value system of enumeration, became the basis for a classical era renaissance in Indian mathematics.

The Indian numeral system and its place value, decimal system of enumeration came to the attention of the Arabs in the seventh or eighth century, and served as the basis for the well known advancement in Arab mathematics, represented by figures such as al-Khwarizmi. It reached Europe in the twelfth century when Adelard of Bath translated al-Khwarizmi’s works into Latin. (Subbarayappa 1970:49) But the Europeans were at first resistant to this system, being attached to the far less logical roman numeral system, but their eventual adoption of this system led to the scientific revolution that began to sweep Europe beginning in the thirteenth century.

1. Luminaries of Classical Indian Mathematics
   Aryabhata

The world did not have to wait for the Europeans to awake from their long intellectual slumber to see the development of advanced mathematical techniques. India achieved its own scientific renaissance of sorts during its classical era, beginning roughly one thousand years before the European Renaissance. Probably the most celebrated Indian mathematicians belonging to this period was Aaryabhat.a, who was born in 476 CE.
In 499, when he was only 23 years old, Aaryabhat.a wrote his Aaryabhat.iiya, a text covering both astronomy and mathematics. With regard to the former, the text is notable for its for its awareness of the relativity of motion. (See Kak p. 16) This awareness led to the astonishing suggestion that it is the Earth that rotates the Sun. He argued for the diurnal rotation of the earth, as an alternate theory to the rotation of the fixed stars and sun around the earth (Pingree 1981:18). He made this suggestion approximately one thousand years before Copernicus, evidently independently, reached the same conclusion.

With regard to mathematics, one of Aaryabhat.a’s greatest contributions was the calculation of sine tables, which no doubt was of great use for his astronomical calculations. In developing a way to calculate the sine of curves, rather than the cruder method of calculating chords devised by the Greeks, he thus went beyond geometry and contributed to the development of trigonometry, a development which did not occur in Europe until roughly one thousand years later, when the Europeans translated Indian influenced Arab mathematical texts.

Aaryabhat.a’s mathematics was far ranging, as the topics he covered include geometry, algebra, trigonometry. He also developed methods of solving quadratic and indeterminate equations using fractions. He calculated pi to four decimal places, i.e., 3.1416. (Pingree 1981:57) In addition, Aaryabhat.a “invented a unique method of recording numbers which required perfect understanding of zero and the place-value system.” (Ifrah 2000:419)

Given the astounding range of advanced mathematical concepts and techniques covered in this fifth century text, it should be of no surprise that it became extremely well known in India, judging by the large numbers of commentaries written upon it. It was studied by the Arabs in the eighth century following their conquest of Sind, and translated into Arabic, whence it influenced the development of both Arabic and European mathematical traditions.

Brahmagupta

Born in 598 CE in Rajastan in Western India, Brahmagupta founded an influential school of mathematics which rivaled Aaryabhat.a’s. His best known work is the Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, written in 628 CE, in which he developed a solution for a certain type of second order indeterminate equation. This text was translated into Arabic in the eighth century, and became very influential in Arab mathematics. (See Kak p. 16)

Mahavira

Mahaaviira was a Jain mathematician who lived in the ninth century, who wrote on a wide range of mathematical topics. These include the mathematics of zero, squares, cubes, square-roots, cube-roots, and the series extending beyond these. He also wrote on plane and solid geometry, as well as problems relating to the casting of shadows. (Pingree 1981:60)

Bhaaskara

Bhaaskara was one of the many outstanding mathematicians hailing from South India. Born in 1114 CE in Karnataka, he composed a four-part text entitled the Siddhanta Ziromani. Included in this compilation is the Biijagan.ita, which became the standard algebra textbook in Sanskrit. It contains descriptions of advanced mathematical techniques involving both positive and negative integers as well as zero, irrational numbers. It treats at length the “pulverizer” (kut.t.akaara) method of solving indeterminate equations with continued fractions, as well as the so-called “Pell’s equation (vargaprakr.ti) dealing with indeterminate equations of the second degree. He also wrote on the solution to numerous kinds of linear and quadratic equations, including those involving multiple unknowns, and equations involving the product of different unknowns. (Pingree 1981, p. 64)

In short, he wrote a highly sophisticated mathematical text that proceeded by several centuries the development of such techniques in Europe, although it would be better to term this a rediscovery, since much of the Renaissance advances of mathematics in Europe was based upon the discovery of Arab mathematical texts, which were in turn highly influenced by these Indian traditions.

Maadhava

The Kerala region of South India was home to a very important school of mathematics. The best known member of this school Maadhava (c. 1444-1545), who lived in Sangamagraama in Kerala. Primarily an astronomer, he made history in mathematics with his writings on trigonometry. He calculated the sine, cosine and arctangent of the circle, developing the world’s first consistent system of trigonometry. (See Hayashi 1997:784-786) He also correctly calculated the value of p to eleven decimal places. (Pingree 1981:490)

This is by no means a complete list of influential Indian mathematicians or Indian contributions to mathematics, but rather a survey of the highlights of what is, judged by any fair, unbiased standard, an illustrious tradition, important both for its own internal elegance as well as its influence on the history of European mathematical traditions. The classical Indian mathematical renaissance was an important precursor to the European renaissance, and to ignore this fact is to fail to grasp the history of latter, a history which was truly multicultural, deriving its inspiration from a variety of cultural roots.

There are in fact, as Frits Staal has suggested in his important (1995) article, “The Sanskrit of Science”, profound similarities between the social contexts of classical India and renaissance Europe. In both cases, important revolutions in scientific thought occurred in complex, hierarchical societies in which certain elite groups were granted freedom from manual labor, and thus the opportunity to dedicate themselves to intellectual pursuits. In the case of classical India, these groups included certain brahmins as well as the Buddhist and Jain monks, while in renaissance Europe they included both the monks as well as their secular derivatives, the university scholars.

Why, one might ask, did Europe’s take over thousand years to attain the level of abstract mathematics achieved by Indians such as Aaryabhat.a? The answer appears to be that Europeans were trapped in the relatively simplistic and concrete geometrical mathematics developed by the Greeks. It was not until they had, via the Arabs, received, assimilated and accepted the place-value system of enumeration developed in India that they were able to free their minds from the concrete and develop more abstract systems of thought. This development thus triggered the scientific and information technology revolutions which swept Europe and, later, the world. The role played by India in the development is no mere footnote, easily and inconsequentially swept under the rug of Eurocentric bias. To do so is to distort history, and to deny India one of it’s greatest contributions to world civilization.

Works Cited

Hayashi, Takao. 1997. “Number Theory in India”. In Helaine Selin, ed. Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 784-786.

Ifrah, Georges. 2000. The Universal History of Numbers: From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer. David Bellos, E. F. Harding, Sophie Wood and Ian Monk, trans. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Joseph, George Ghevarughese. 1987. “Foundations of Eurocentrism in Mathematics”. In Race & Class 28.3, pp. 13-28.

Kak, Subhash. “An Overview of Ancient Indian Science”. In T. R. N. Rao and Subhash Kak, eds. Computing Science in Ancient India, pp. 6-21.

van Nooten, B. “Binary Numbers in Indian Antiquity”. In T. R. N. Rao and Subhash Kak, eds. Computing Science in Ancient India, pp. 21-39.

Pingree, David. Jyotih.zaastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981, p. 4.

Seidenberg, A. 1962. “The Ritual Origin of Geometry”. In Archive for History of Exact Sciences 1, pp. 488-527.

______. 1978. “The Origin of Mathematics”. In Archive for History of Exact Sciences 18.4, pp. 301-42.

______. 1983. “The Geometry of Vedic Rituals”. In Frits Staal, ed. Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 95-126.

Unguru, Sabetai. 1975. “On the Need to Rewrite the History of Greek Mathematics”. In Archive for History of Exact Sciences 15.1, pp. 67-114.

Staal, Frits. 1995. “The Sanskrit of Science”. In Journal of Indian Philosophy 23, pp. 73-127.

Subbarayappa, B. V. 1970. “India’s Contributions to the History of Science”. In Lokesh Chandra, et al., eds. India’s Contribution to World Thought and Culture. Madras: Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee, pp. 47-66.

Floyd Abrams in the Wall Street Journal on Wikileaks:

“In 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 77,000 confidential U.S. military reports from Afghanistan, which included the names of over 100 Afghan sources of information, placing them at risk of retaliation by the Taliban. This was followed, just a few months ago, by WikiLeaks’ release of the full texts of over 251,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, many containing the names of individuals who had sought and been promised confidentiality.

As summarized in London’s Guardian newspaper, “several thousand [documents were] labeled with a tag used by the U.S. to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger, and more than 150 specifically mentioned whistleblowers.” References were, as well, made to “people persecuted by their governments, victims of sex offenses and locations of sensitive government installations and infrastructure.

Comment

I’ll defer to the judgment of editors who’ve gone through all the material and are in touch with government sources. But frankly, if you are an informer against your own country (“Afghan source of information”), the better word for you would be “collaborator”…. and the character (and fate) of collaborators isn’t usually an edifying one. Not even the fact of their being on “our” side makes that better.

The rest, I agree, should have been redacted.

But, did Assange intentionally release that information? Or did a lot of it just end up on the site because it hadn’t first been vetted?

Next. What rights do governments have to pronounce on privacy when their routine conduct involves surveillance (Echelon, NSA programs that monitor satellite and cell phones, for example)?

Robocalls to cell phones billed to the phone owner might be on the agenda:

“The innocent-sounding “Mobile Information Call Act” would allow all sorts of nuisance calls to cell phones, eating into customers’ costly minutes, Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Sunday.

“The floodgates would be open to telemarketers, who could call you on your cell phone during breakfast, lunch, dinner, no matter if you’re at home, at school, at the office,” said Schumer, who vowed to fight the legislation proposed by House Republicans.

Schumer didn’t mention that the GOP bill’s sole Democratic co-sponsor was a fellow New Yorker — Rep. Ed Towns (D-Brooklyn).

Towns and the entire House Energy and Commerce Committee already got an earful at a recent hearing when consumer groups blasted the bill.

Brooklyn residents interviewed Sunday said the legislation was a bad idea.

“What politician in his right mind would support this?” asked John Berigan, 44, of Park Slope, who uses his cell phone for his real estate business.

“There’s no one in the general public who would want this. “It would seem that some lobbyist in Washington has gotten to [Towns],” he said.

Current law bars telemarketing calls to cell phones unless the customer has given approval. The proposed change would allow prerecorded “informational” calls to be made to cell phones without consent.”

Comment:

Repeat. You would be billed for nuisance and junk calls from strangers. Not to mention the incredible attack on privacy this involves…and the cybercrime it’s bound to enable.

Well, apologies for being away.  Blame it on tech problems that remain unresolved. No phone or computer. That leaves cell phones. Which I avoid.  And friends. Whom I also avoid.

But time away from blogging is always good, because it reminds me how pleasant life away from  “instant access” can be.

The first benefit is the amount of time that seems to be freed up when you aren’t tied to the net.  Computers were supposed to make things faster and easier so we’d spend less time on communicating. instead, they made communication more time-consuming…. by raising the bar.  Staying in touch used to be a letter or post card every month. Now you’re a hermit if you haven’t called in a week. We want to reach out and touch someone, it seems, no matter where they are – driving, eating, sleeping, in the loo…

That seems to be the characteristic of a lot of technology. Or, perhaps it’s a characteristic of human beings. We’re prone to turn a good thing into a bad thing, no matter what.

The net, taken intravenously the way bloggers tend to, is calculated to overwhelm you with buzz, with noise.  You’re inundated daily with events that are either completely irrelevant to your life or of vital relevance…. but completely beyond your ability to affect in any way.

It’s like watching a train hurtling at a baby while you’re locked behind a glass window.

You’re inundated by second-by-second bad news getting badder, class-warfare out of Occupy Wall Street, legislation authorizing indefinite detentions without trial for practically everyone, incipient legislation to shut down the Internet, cheer-leading for all kinds of schemes to remake the system into something even more liable to being gamed, dreamed up mostly by people whom I wouldn’t trust to microwave a pop-tart.

The result for most of us is that we freeze. We give up.  Or we exhaust our nerves and vital energy.

I spent the last few days thinking about that and the fix for it. At least, a temporary fix. It’s quite a simple one and it boils down to this – narrow your focus.

Take your eyes off the big picture.

The big picture is the incessant drive by the elites of the Anglo-Zionist establishment to centralize, manage, and police the entire globe. I say, take your eyes off that picture and fix it on something you can do something about. Not permanently. But just for now. Intermittently. As a discipline.

The small picture I focused on was my desk. Yes, the long-suffering brown kitchen table where I usually work.

I forgot about the empire, Occupy Wall Street, Soros, hackers, the Line of Control, Neocons etc. etc. I took aim at my old receipts, my warranties, old letters, junk  mail, JC Penny deals, gala opening invitations, bank statements, unidentified metal objects, dust bunnies of venerable age , computer thingies that don’t fit anything, cables lurking in a Loch Nessian tangle in the bottom drawer of the cabinet.

And I won. Almost. A few sorties left. A skirmish or two. Then I will be on top of it all.

And I did something else. I began a new nutrition regime.  Specifically, cod-liver oil. It’s better emulsified, but I got a bottle of 100 good quality capsules for about eight bucks and I thought I’d start with that. I’m taking B-Complex and C along with it, because those always help with assimilation.  I cut back on the coffee (slipping for a few days recently), because you never want to drink coffee or tea while taking vitamins, as they don’t get absorbed.

Coincidentally, (or was it synchronistic?), Bill Sardi has a piece on this at Lew Rockwell today on what happens if you don’t get enough B1 – you get beri beri. He claims, plausibly, that because so many people drink tea or coffee today, this is fairly widespread. I believe him.  Here are some of the symptoms he says you should look out for:

• Difficulty walking
• Loss of feeling (sensation) in hands and feet
• Loss of muscle function or paralysis of the lower legs
• Mental confusion/speech difficulties
• Pain
• Uncontrolled side-to-side eye movements (nystagmus)
• Tingling
• Vomiting
• Increased heart rate
• Swelling of lower legs
• Neck veins that stick out
• Droopy eyelids
• Fatigue
• Irritability, moodiness, depression
• Loss of appetite
• Heartburn
• Abdominal pain
• Leg cramps
• Mental confusion
• Underactive thyroid
• Anxiety
• Oversensitivity to pain or noise
• Pain upon pressure to calves (classic early sign)
• Slow heart rate or fast heart rate
• Multiple sclerosis
• Diabetes
• Sleep disturbances
• Memory loss

That’s quite a list, and the good thing is, unlike the bad news, you can do something about it. Quite easily and quite fast.

And my third tip is simple too.  Yoga breathing.

You probably know how already. 5 seconds breathe in through the left nostril, 10 seconds hold with nostrils pinched shut, 5 seconds out through the right nostril. Do that whenever you have a minute, when you’re waiting for someone to pick up, at a traffic stop, or while the hot water is boiling.

That’s it. Clean your work space; take fish oil regularly (with Vitamin B); take deep breaths.

Try that for a week. And then get back to worrying about the globalists. You’ll do it much better.

For anyone who still thinks that Hank Paulson was the only one gaming the system to the hilt, here’s a glimpse of the murky world of welfare assistance:

“A Seattle woman who is receiving welfare assistance from Washington state also happens to live in a waterfront house on Lake Washington worth more than a million dollars.

Federal agents raided the home this weekend but have not released the woman or her husband’s name because they have not officially been charged with a crime.

However, federal documents obtained by KING 5 News show the couple currently receives more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. They have been receiving the benefits since 2003.

The 2,500 square-foot home, which includes gardens and a boat dock, is valued at $1.2 million. And even though the couple has been receiving the benefits for nearly 10 years, records show that they accurately listed the address of their current home when applying for the state and federal benefits.

A federal official told KING 5 that the couple likely took advantage of a loophole, which allows low-income individuals to receive financial assistance to help them pay their rent and move away from housing projects. However, the law does not require officials to verify what type of home the benefits recipient is living in.

“As if the million dollar home weren’t enough, the supposedly low-income couple also gave money to various charities and traveled around the world to locales in Turkey, Tel Aviv and resort towns in Mexico, according to court records.”

Comment

D’ you think this sort of thing is unusual? I doubt it. And yet, people still go on with their mantras about government assistance going only to the needy, or to starving children.

Children do starve in America. I’ve taught a few who were malnourished, but the problem had nothing to do with money (except in rural areas).

It had to do with completely irresponsible families, violent neighborhoods, drugs, junk food, intrusive school psychologists who diagnose and treat boredom as a disease, and aggressive marketers who target low-income families.

From Andrew Rosenthal, the New York Times blog (apparently the NYT doesn’t think this deserves the front page):

“The Senate is debating the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a series of provisions that mandate military interrogation and detention for any suspected member of Al Qaeda, and authorize indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without trial. (The law is written so broadly that parts of it could also cover U.S. citizens.)

The provisions were co-sponsored by Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, both of whom should know better. Their excuse was that some Republicans had proposed worse rules. But the smart response to that situation would have been to block faulty legislation outright, not to make a really bad deal.

A deal, by the way, that Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said was hashed out behind closed doors without consultation with his committee, or the Intelligence Committee, or the Defense Department, the F.B.I. or the intelligence community.”