June 10th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, cartographer, engineer, scientist and inventor in the 15th century. Yet, despite his genius, he referred to himself as “senza lettere” (the illiterate, the man without letters). For good reason: until late in life, he was unable to read, or write, Latin, the language used by virtually all other Renaissance intellectuals, the lingua franca, akin to English today. Nor was he acquainted with mathematics until he was 30.
Leonardo was born out of wedlock but was raised by his real father, a wealthy Florentine notary. He served at least ten years (1466-1476) as Garzone (apprentice) to Andrea del Verrocchio and painted details in Verrocchio’s canvasses. Only in 1478, when he was 26, did he become independent.
He was not off to an auspicious start. He never executed his first commission (an altarpiece in the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio della Signoria, Florence’s town hall). His first large paintings were left unfinished (”The Adoration of the Magi” and “Saint Jerome”, both 1481).
Most of the sketches and studies for Leonardo’s works of art and engineering are found on his shopping lists, personal notes, and personal expenditure ledgers.
No one was allowed to enter Leonardo’s den, where he kept, as Giorgio Vasari in “Lives of the Artists”, describes: “a number of green and other kinds of lizards, crickets, serpents, butterflies, locusts, hats, and various strange creatures of this nature”.
Leonardo’s clients were often dissatisfied with his glacial pace, lack of professional discipline, and inability to conclude his assignments. He was frequently involved in litigation. The Cofraternity of the Immaculate Conception sued him when he failed to produce the Virgin on the Rocks, an altarpiece they commissioned from him in 1483. The court proceedings lasted 10 years. The head of Jesus in “The Last Supper” was left blank because Leonardo did not dare to paint a human model, nor did he trust his imagination sufficiently. Leonardo worked four years on the Mona Lisa but never completed it, either. He carried it with him wherever he went.
Leonardo’s terra cota model for a colossal bronze sculpture of the father of his benefactor and employer, Ludovico Sforza, was used for target practice by invading French soldiers in 1499. The metal which was supposed to go into this work of art was molded into cannon balls.
Leonardo was a member of the commission which deliberated where to place Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David. His cartographic work was so ahead of its time, that the express highway from Florence to the sea - built in the 20th century - follows precisely the route of a canal he envisioned. His scientific investigations - in anatomy, hydraulics, mechanics, ornithology, botany - are considered valuable to this very day. Bill Gates owns some his notebooks containing scientific data and observations (known as the Codex Hammer).
But Leonardo’s loyalties were fickle. He switched sides to the conquering French and in 1506 returned to Milan to work for its French governor, Charles D’Amboise. Later, he became court painter for King Louis XII of France who, at the time, resided in Milan. In 1516, he relocated to France, to serve King Francis I and there he died.
Leonardo summed up the lessons of his art in a series of missives to his students, probably in Milan. These were later (1542) collected by his close associate, Francesco Melzi, as “A Treatise on Painting” and published in print (1651, 1817).
The word “cognition” is defined as “the act of knowing” or “knowledge.” Cognitive skills therefore refer to those skills that make it possible for us to know.
It should be noted that there is nothing that any human being knows, or can do, that he has not learned. This of course excludes natural body functions, such as breathing, as well as the reflexes, for example the involuntary closing of the eye when an object approaches it. But apart from that a human being knows nothing, or cannot do anything, that he has not learned. Therefore, all cognitive skills must be TAUGHT, of which the following cognitive skills are the most important:
CONCENTRATION
Paying attention must be distinguished from concentration. Paying attention is a body function, and therefore does not need to be taught. However, paying attention as such is a function that is quite useless for the act of learning, because it is only a fleeting occurrence. Attention usually shifts very quickly from one object or one thing to the next. The child must first be taught to focus his attention on something and to keep his attention focused on this something for some length of time. When a person focuses his attention for any length of time, we refer to it as concentration.
Concentration rests on two legs. First, it is an act of will and cannot take place automatically. Second, it is also a cognitive skill, and therefore has to be taught.
Although learning disability specialists acknowledge that “the ability to concentrate and attend to a task for a prolonged period of time is essential for the student to receive necessary information and complete certain academic activities,” it seems that the ability to concentrate is regarded as a “fafrotsky” — a word coined by Ivan T. Sanderson, and standing for “things that FAll FROm The SKY.” Concentration must be taught, after which one’s proficiency can be constantly improved by regular and sustained practice.
PERCEPTION
The terms “processing” and “perception” are often used interchangeably.
Before one can learn anything, perception must take place, i.e. one has to become aware of it through one of the senses. Usually one has to hear or see it. Subsequently one has to interpret whatever one has seen or heard. In essence then, perception means interpretation. Of course, lack of experience may cause a person to misinterpret what he has seen or heard. In other words, perception represents our apprehension of a present situation in terms of our past experiences, or, as stated by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “We see things not as they are but as we are.”
The following situation will illustrate how perception correlates with previous experience:
Suppose a person parked his car and walks away from it while continuing to look back at it. As he goes further and further away from his car, it will appear to him as if his car is gradually getting smaller and smaller. In such a situation none of us, however, would gasp in horror and cry out, “My car is shrinking!” Although the sensory perception is that the car is shrinking rapidly, we do not interpret that the car is changing size. Through past experiences we have learned that objects do not grow or shrink as we walk toward or away from them. You have learned that their actual size remains constant, despite the illusion. Even when one is five blocks away from one’s car and it seems no larger than one’s fingernail, one would interpret it as that it is still one’s car and that it hasn’t actually changed size. This learned perception is known as size constancy.
Pygmies, however, who live deep in the rain forests of tropical Africa, are not often exposed to wide vistas and distant horizons, and therefore do not have sufficient opportunities to learn size constancy. One Pygmy, removed from his usual environment, was convinced he was seeing a swarm of insects when he was actually looking at a herd of buffalo at a great distance. When driven toward the animals he was frightened to see the insects “grow” into buffalo and was sure that some form of witchcraft had been at work.
A person needs to INTERPRET sensory phenomena, and this can only be done on the basis of past experience of the same, similar or related phenomena. Perceptual ability, therefore, heavily depends upon the amount of perceptual practice and experience that the subject has already enjoyed. This implies that perception is a cognitive skill that can be improved tremendously through judicious practice and experience.
MEMORY
A variety of memory problems are evidenced in the learning disabled. Some major categories of memory functions wherein these problems lie are:
Receptive memory: This refers to the ability to note the physical features of a given stimulus to be able to recognize it at a later time. The child who has receptive processing difficulties invariably fails to recognize visual or auditory stimuli such as the shapes or sounds associated with the letters of the alphabet, the number system, etc.
Sequential memory: This refers to the ability to recall stimuli in their order of observation or presentation. Many dyslexics have poor visual sequential memory. Naturally this will affect their ability to read and spell correctly. After all, every word consists of letters in a specific sequence. In order to read one has to perceive the letters in sequence, and also remember what word is represented by that sequence of letters. By simply changing the sequence of the letters in “name” it can become “mean” or “amen”. Some also have poor auditory sequential memory, and therefore may be unable to repeat longer words orally without getting the syllables in the wrong order, for example words like “preliminary” and “statistical”.
Rote memory: This refers to the ability to learn certain information as a habit pattern. The child who has problems in this area is unable to recall with ease those responses which should have been automatic, such as the alphabet, the number system, multiplication tables, spelling rules, grammatical rules, etc.
Short-term memory: Short-term memory lasts from a few seconds to a minute; the exact amount of time may vary somewhat. When you are trying to recall a telephone number that was heard a few seconds earlier, the name of a person who has just been introduced, or the substance of the remarks just made by a teacher in class, you are calling on short-term memory. You need this kind of memory to retain ideas and thoughts when writing a letter, since you must be able to keep the last sentence in mind as you compose the next. You also need this kind of memory when you work on problems. Suppose a problem required that we first add two numbers together (step 1: add 15 + 27) and next divide the sum (step 2: divide sum by 2). If we did this problem in our heads, we would need to retain the result of step 1 (42) momentarily, while we apply the next step (divide by 2). Some space in our short-term memory is necessary to retain the results of step 1.
Long-term memory: This refers to the ability to retrieve information of things learned in the past.
Until the learning disabled develop adequate skills in recalling information, they will continue to face each learning situation as though it is a new one. No real progress can be attained by either the child or the teacher when the same ground has to be covered over and over because the child has forgotten. It would appear that the most critical need that the learning disabled have is to be helped to develop an effective processing system for remembering, because without it their performance will always remain at a level much below what their capabilities indicate.
Strangely, though, while memory is universally considered a prerequisite skill to successful learning, attempts to delineate its process in the learning disabled are few, and fewer still are methods to systematically improve it.
LOGICAL THINKING
In his book “Brain Building” Dr. Karl Albrecht states that logical thinking is not a magical process or a matter of genetic endowment, but a learned mental process. It is the process in which one uses reasoning consistently to come to a conclusion. Problems or situations that involve logical thinking call for structure, for relationships between facts, and for chains of reasoning that “make sense.”
The basis of all logical thinking is sequential thought, says Dr. Albrecht. This process involves taking the important ideas, facts, and conclusions involved in a problem and arranging them in a chain-like progression that takes on a meaning in and of itself. To think logically is to think in steps.
Logical thinking is also an important foundational skill of math. “Learning mathematics is a highly sequential process,” says Dr. Albrecht. “If you don’t grasp a certain concept, fact, or procedure, you can never hope to grasp others that come later, which depend upon it. For example, to understand fractions you must first understand division. To understand simple equations in algebra requires that you understand fractions. Solving ‘word problems’ depends on knowing how to set up and manipulate equations, and so on.”
It has been proven that specific training in logical thinking processes can make people “smarter.” Logical thinking allows a child to reject quick and easy answers, such as “I don’t know,” or “this is too difficult,” by empowering him to delve deeper into his thinking processes and understand better the methods used to arrive at a solution.
Geothermal energy is often viewed as a relatively new form of alternative energy. In truth, the use of geothermal energy stretches far back into the past.
Looking To The Past Of Geothermal Energy
Geothermal energy is literally, “earth heat”. This type of energy’s name comes from two Greek words: “geo” meaning earth, and “therme”, which means heat. While it may seem that the use of geothermal energy is a relatively new idea, it is actually an ancient practice. Many different cultures have used geothermal power to their advantage, dating back to some of the Earth’s earliest civilizations.
In order to use geothermal energy, the energy source itself must be tapped into. Geothermal energy comes from reserves of water located in the Earth’s layer of magma. Magma, otherwise known as molten rock, is a super hot substance that springs directly from the Earth’s core, which is a scalding 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Magma heats the reserves of water located in its midst to very high temperatures, around 700 degrees Fahrenheit. These geothermal reservoirs, as they are known, can be drilled into or can escape naturally through cracks in the Earth’s crust. These natural formations create such places on Earth as hot springs and geysers.
Geothermal energy can be traced back to 10,000 years ago when Native Americans used geothermal water found in hot springs to cook and for use as medicine. The geothermal energy found in hot springs was also used by the Romans. The ancient city of Pompeii used geothermal energy to heat homes. Romans also were known to use geothermal water for its medicinal properties; such as in the treatment of skin and eye diseases. Romans and other ancient civilizations also used the soothing geothermal waters found in hot springs for relaxation and natural bathing places. In more recent times, France started using this type of energy in the 1960’s to heat their homes. More than 200,000 homes in France are now heated by geothermal water.
Scientists and other researchers are constantly coming up with new ways to use the Earth’s latent powers. While geothermal energy has not yet shown us all it can do, it is evident that many cultures have enjoyed its power already. From the comfort of a hot springs bath to the warmth of a geothermal water heated home, the Earth has just begun to use the energy contained within its crust.
The preservation of human life is the ultimate value, a pillar of ethics and the foundation of all morality. This held true in most cultures and societies throughout history.
On first impression, the last sentence sounds patently wrong. We all know about human collectives that regarded human lives as dispensable, that murdered and tortured, that cleansed and annihilated whole populations in recurrent genocides. Surely, these defy the aforementioned statement?
Liberal philosophies claim that human life was treated as a prime value throughout the ages. Authoritarian regimes do not contest the over-riding importance of this value. Life is sacred, valuable, to be cherished and preserved. But, in totalitarian societies, it can be deferred, subsumed, subjected to higher goals, quantized, and, therefore, applied with differential rigor in the following circumstances:
1.. Quantitative - when a lesser evil prevents a greater one. Sacrificing the lives of the few to save the lives of the many is a principle enshrined and embedded in activities such as war and medicinal care. All cultures, no matter how steeped (or rooted) in liberal lore accept it. They all send soldiers to die to save the more numerous civilian population. Medical doctors sacrifice lives daily, to save others.
It is boils down to a quantitative assessment (”the numerical ratio between those saved and those sacrificed”), and to questions of quality (”are there privileged lives whose saving or preservation is worth the sacrifice of others’ lives?”) and of evaluation (no one can safely predict the results of such moral dilemmas - will lives be saved as the result of the sacrifice?).
2.. Temporal - when sacrificing life (voluntarily or not) in the present secures a better life for others in the future. These future lives need not be more numerous than the lives sacrificed. A life in the future immediately acquires the connotation of youth in need of protection. It is the old sacrificed for the sake of the new, a trade off between those who already had their share of life - and those who hadn’t. It is the bloody equivalent of a savings plan: one defers present consumption to the future.
The mirror image of this temporal argument belongs to the third group (see next), the qualitative one. It prefers to sacrifice a life in the present so that another life, also in the present, will continue to exist in the future. Abortion is an instance of this approach: the life of the child is sacrificed to secure the future well-being of the mother. In Judaism, it is forbidden to kill a female bird. Better to kill its off-spring. The mother has the potential to compensate for this loss of life by bringing giving birth to other chicks.
3.. Qualitative - This is an especially vicious variant because it purports to endow subjective notions and views with “scientific” objectivity. People are judged to belong to different qualitative groups (classified by race, skin color, birth, gender, age, wealth, or other arbitrary parameters). The result of this immoral taxonomy is that the lives of the “lesser” brands of humans are considered less “weighty” and worthy than the lives of the upper grades of humanity. The former are therefore sacrificed to benefit the latter. The Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, the black slaves in America, the aborigines in Australia are three examples of such pernicious thinking.
4.. Utilitarian - When the sacrifice of one life brings another person material or other benefits. This is the thinking (and action) which characterizes psychopaths and sociopathic criminals, for instance. For them, life is a tradable commodity and it can be exchanged against inanimate goods and services. Money and drugs are bartered for life.
Purpose of the Learning Garden
The John Muir Learning Garden is designed to give San Francisco Schools students a change to take learning further outside of the classroom. The Garden builds on the fundamental curriculum concerns of the elementary school and provides an opportunity for students to gain real life experience that complements their academic studies. San Francisco school students are able to integrate classroom literacy, mathematics, science, history, and language arts instruction through their participation in activities in the Learning Garden.
The Learning Garden reaches out to the community in providing outreach services for parents, neighbors, and interested volunteers. Mentor gardeners work with teachers and students to design educational opportunities. One of the interesting projects going on now is the sustainable composting program that takes organic waste from San Francisco school lunches and uses it for fertilizing garden projects instead of filling landfills. This is just one of many projects that combine garden training with practical real world environmental concerns. The events organized in the park help students and the community learn about how to protect the local environment while studying nature in an urban setting.
Partners of the Learning Garden
The Learning Garden would not be possible without the support in terms of time and money from a variety of neighborhood partners. San Francisco area businesses, organizations, and volunteer groups have all played a role in establishing the Learning Garden. Located in Daniel E. Koshland Park, the Learning Garden has benefited from the dedication of two part-time garden mentors provided by the Hayes Valley Neighborhoods Parks Group. These two women, Rebecca and Aubrey, have become part of the local community as they organize activities that raise local awareness about the environment.
Further assistance has come from the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, the Center for Ecoliteracy, the Recreation and Park Department, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the San Francisco Zen Center. All of these organizations have devoted time and money to helping the John Muir Learning Garden become an environmental center for the San Francisco community, especially the children that attend John Muir Elementary School. In particular, the John Muir Learning Garden is indebted to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which donated the initial funds to start the Learning Garden and remains an active community partner with John Muir Elementary School.
A Look at John Muir Elementary School
John Muir Elementary School has a unique place within the San Francisco Public School System. Located in the Western Addition of San Francisco, it operates as a professional development school where education students from the San Francisco State University’s Muir Alternative Teaching Program are able to hone their skills in a real world environment, learning how to specially adapt course for the urban classroom.
John Muir students come from a rich cultural background and are supported within the school community with language and literacy programs beginning in infancy. The programs also extend to the parents and families of John Muir Elementary School students. Within the San Francisco school district, John Muir Elementary School acts as a BASRC (Bay Area School Reform Collaborative) leadership school with a clear focus on literacy for the whole community
Scientists say evidence is mounting “that creating healthy animals through cloning is More difficult than they had expected.” So began a front-page story in the New York Times (Marching 25), highlighting the frustrations of animal cloners, and the chance that person cloning whitethorn prove technically inconceivable. Those worried about the ethics of individual cloning have greeted this as good news, a sign that the slippery slope is leveling come out of the closet. Unfortunately, the new obstacles English hawthorn prove less than insurmountable in the hanker tally–and in bioengineering, the yearn running often proves surprisingly short. For those whose doubts about ergonomics ar expressed by the philosopher Leon Kass as “the wisdom of repugnance,” it is no meter to relax: The slope Crataegus laevigata soon steepen once Thomas More. In cloning, a cellular cell nucleus from the grownup to be cloned is injected into an testis from which the karyon has been removed.
As it turns , the environment of the unfertilized testicle, hijacked for cloning purposes, is able-bodied to “reprogram” big nuclei, returning their DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID to a naive, pseudo-embryonic state. As the orchis develops, it follows the familial blueprint of the full-grown from which the core was derived, essentially producing an identical twin of that individual. But at that place problems. When Ian Ian Wilmut and his co-workers produced the cloned sheep Doll, they caught about biologists unawares because it was thinking out of the question to clone a mammal. Frogs had been cloned Sir Thomas More than twenty-five years ago, but many biologists cerebration that a phenomenon termed “imprinting” would prevent mammalian cloning. Imprinting confers “memory” on a developing cell, helping to distinguish fully grown skin cells, for instance, from heart, liver, and blood cells.
Experiments in mice suggested that imprinting permanently altered the DESOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID, making it unimaginable to derive a feasible embryo from an grown core group. changed all that. Still, the cloning of mammals is a precarious enterprise. himself acknowledged that cloning was ineffective and fraught with grotesque loser, and he strongly advised against trying to clone world. Even the just about experienced researchers to generate executable clones only 2 to 5 percent of the metre. The failures appear to stem from the imprinting phenomenon, which had been discounted post-: the hereditary absolution conferred by the ball turns to be at best, and memories persist in the of cloned embryos, interfering with their development.
This point was made by MIT developmental biologist Rudolf Jaenisch during testimony earlier a House subcommittee on Master of Architecture 28, and in a forceful article he co-authored with , “Don’t Clone Humans!” (Science, MArch 28). As Jaenisch and others stressed ahead Congress, the high unsuccessful person rate in animal cloning should make somebody cloning unthinkable. The proponents of cloning, a motley crew of UFO cultists and fringe physicians, argue that they volition succeed in human race where experts have failed in animals. Their position is, of course, untenable.
For now, soul cloning testament probably end up prohibited. However, in that location is a danger in arguing against cloning on technical grounds alone: Once the procedure is perfected, it implicitly becomes ethically permissible.
Are we human because of unique traits and attributes not shared with either animal or machine? The definition of “human” is circular: we are human by virtue of the properties that make us human (i.e., distinct from animal and machine). It is a definition by negation: that which separates us from animal and machine is our “human-ness”.
We are human because we are not animal, nor machine. But such thinking has been rendered progressively less tenable by the advent of evolutionary and neo-evolutionary theories which postulate a continuum in nature between animals and Man.
Our uniqueness is partly quantitative and partly qualitative. Many animals are capable of cognitively manipulating symbols and using tools. Few are as adept at it as we are. These are easily quantifiable differences - two of many.
Qualitative differences are a lot more difficult to substantiate. In the absence of privileged access to the animal mind, we cannot and don’t know if animals feel guilt, for instance. Do animals love? Do they have a concept of sin? What about object permanence, meaning, reasoning, self-awareness, critical thinking? Individuality? Emotions? Empathy? Is artificial intelligence (AI) an oxymoron? A machine that passes the Turing Test may well be described as “human”. But is it really? And if it is not - why isn’t it?
Literature is full of stories of monsters - Frankenstein, the Golem - and androids or anthropoids. Their behaviour is more “humane” than the humans around them. This, perhaps, is what really sets humans apart: their behavioural unpredictability. It is yielded by the interaction between Mankind’s underlying immutable genetically-determined nature - and Man’s kaleidoscopically changing environments.
The Constructivists even claim that Human Nature is a mere cultural artefact. Sociobiologists, on the other hand, are determinists. They believe that human nature - being the inevitable and inexorable outcome of our bestial ancestry - cannot be the subject of moral judgment.
An improved Turing Test would look for baffling and erratic patterns of misbehaviour to identify humans. Pico della Mirandola wrote in “Oration on the Dignity of Man” that Man was born without a form and can mould and transform - actually, create - himself at will. Existence precedes essence, said the Existentialists centuries later.
The one defining human characteristic may be our awareness of our mortality. The automatically triggered, “fight or flight”, battle for survival is common to all living things (and to appropriately programmed machines). Not so the catalytic effects of imminent death. These are uniquely human. The appreciation of the fleeting translates into aesthetics, the uniqueness of our ephemeral life breeds morality, and the scarcity of time gives rise to ambition and creativity.
In an infinite life, everything materializes at one time or another, so the concept of choice is spurious. The realization of our finiteness forces us to choose among alternatives. This act of selection is predicated upon the existence of “free will”. Animals and machines are thought to be devoid of choice, slaves to their genetic or human programming.
Yet, all these answers to the question: “What does it mean to be human” - are lacking.
The set of attributes we designate as human is subject to profound alteration. Drugs, neuroscience, introspection, and experience all cause irreversible changes in these traits and characteristics. The accumulation of these changes can lead, in principle, to the emergence of new properties, or to the abolition of old ones.
Animals and machines are not supposed to possess free will or exercise it. What, then, about fusions of machines and humans (bionics)? At which point does a human turn into a machine? And why should we assume that free will ceases to exist at that - rather arbitrary - point?
Introspection - the ability to construct self-referential and recursive models of the world - is supposed to be a uniquely human quality. What about introspective machines? Surely, say the critics, such machines are PROGRAMMED to introspect, as opposed to humans. To qualify as introspection, it must be WILLED, they continue. Yet, if introspection is willed - WHO wills it? Self-willed introspection leads to infinite regression and formal logical paradoxes.
Moreover, the notion - if not the formal concept - of “human” rests on many hidden assumptions and conventions.
Political correctness notwithstanding - why presume that men and women (or different races) are identically human? Aristotle thought they were not. A lot separates males from females - genetically (both genotype and phenotype) and environmentally (culturally). What is common to these two sub-species that makes them both “human”?
Can we conceive of a human without body (i.e., a Platonian Form, or soul)? Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas think not. A soul has no existence separate from the body. A machine-supported energy field with mental states similar to ours today - would it be considered human? What about someone in a state of coma - is he or she (or it) fully human?
Is a new born baby human - or, at least, fully human - and, if so, in which sense? What about a future human race - whose features would be unrecognizable to us? Machine-based intelligence - would it be thought of as human? If yes, when would it be considered human?
In all these deliberations, we may be confusing “human” with “person”. The former is a private case of the latter. Locke’s person is a moral agent, a being responsible for its actions. It is constituted by the continuity of its mental states accessible to introspection.
Locke’s is a functional definition. It readily accommodates non-human persons (machines, energy matrices) if the functional conditions are satisfied. Thus, an android which meets the prescribed requirements is more human than a brain dead person.
Descartes’ objection that one cannot specify conditions of singularity and identity over time for disembodied souls is right only if we assume that such “souls” possess no energy. A bodiless intelligent energy matrix which maintains its form and identity over time is conceivable. Certain AI and genetic software programs already do it.
Strawson is Cartesian and Kantian in his definition of a “person” as a “primitive”. Both the corporeal predicates and those pertaining to mental states apply equally, simultaneously, and inseparably to all the individuals of that type of entity. Human beings are one such entity. Some, like Wiggins, limit the list of possible persons to animals - but this is far from rigorously necessary and is unduly restrictive.
The truth is probably in a synthesis:
A person is any type of fundamental and irreducible entity whose typical physical individuals (i.e., members) are capable of continuously experiencing a range of states of consciousness and permanently having a list of psychological attributes.
This definition allows for non-animal persons and recognizes the personhood of a brain damaged human (”capable of experiencing”). It also incorporates Locke’s view of humans as possessing an ontological status similar to “clubs” or “nations” - their personal identity consists of a variety of interconnected psychological continuities.
What is malaria?
Malaria is a very serious disease caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Four species of the parasites produce the disease which is transmitted by the female anopheline mosquito. The most dangerous is P. falciparum. If untreated it can lead to fatal cerebral malaria.
What are the symptoms?
Flu-like symptoms: headaches, muscle aches, confusion, dizziness, vomiting (lasting several hours), sweating, tiredness, but most of all, fever. Anemia and jaundice can occur.
Symptoms generally occur from 7 days to a few weeks after being bitten, however may not occur for up to one year.
How is it prevented?
The following drugs should be taken before embarking on a trip to a country where malaria is prevalent:
Atovaquone/proguanil
Doxycycline
Mefloquine
Primaquine (in special circumstances)
Visit your doctor or health clinic several weeks before travelling as these drugs need to be administered in advance.
A good insect repellent should also be applied to exposed skin whilst abroad; preferably one containing DEET (N.N - diethyl meta-toulamide) which is the only ingredient guaranteed to work and is long lasting. There are other repellents on the market for those not wishing to use DEET, but they need to be applied frequently.
What countries are at risk?
Afghanistan. Angola, Brazil, Benin, Burkino, Cambodia, Camaroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial New Guinea, Eritrea, Faso Burindi, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Bissau, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Principe, Rwanda, Sao Tome, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, Zaire, Zambia.
BE SAFE!
I’m telling you affordable degrees are the wave of the future. Do you remember how when all your drone friends were slaving away at their universities with less money than the guy that sleeps in your hedges? Meanwhile, you laughed all the way to the bank every week with the sweet check you collected from the carwash? Well, its been awhile, since you’ve felt that sort of ability to condescend, but not for long. Lie to your friends and tell them that you’re going to your grandmas for week…and then return with a PhD!
That’s right, someone finally got higher education right. Instead of learning things…and paying someone to do it, you can just tell them what you’ve learned and then collect the appropriate degree. It’s genius and affordable. This exciting program also will only sideline you for five days. I know it’s a week and that’s pretty irritating, but depending on your current level of knowledge you can walk away from that week with an associate, bachelor, masters or even a PhD.
The only problematic aspect that I can see in the beautiful concept is that you need to know things in order to actually get your affordable degree in five days. I mean, I know a couple things. But Master’s Degree sufficient worth of things, that I can’t be completely sure of? I don’t want to just settle for a lousy Bachelor’s Degree. I need to go big. On second thought, these programs seem to be run by fairly reasonable people. I bet that if I promised them that I would learn enough things later they would accept that and give me the degree.
Well, I don’t know why I’m still here writing. I just wasted a fifth of the time its going to take me to graduate. So, if you want an affordable degree that could have you working in the United Nations in a week, get out there and start explaining to someone what you know.
Conversational Hypnosis is a type of hypnosis where it is very important to access certain states of mind in order to set triggers to change lives for the better. In order to do this you must learn and know how to access those states to start the trigger process with a clean and pure state of mind.
Access State Principal plays a huge role in this process. This is because the clarity of the state of mind a person is in when the trigger is set will determine how well the trigger is going to work, if at all. When people access emotions they are really going back through their files of memories to re-experience memories that correlate with the emotion you are asking them to bring to mind.
If you are asking them to relax they will think of times and places where they felt this way. Accessing the state of mind you want is important. However it is equally important to make sure it is a pure state. You will have conflict in placing your suggestions and triggers if the state of the listener is not just in the mode of relaxation.
If your listener is experiencing relaxation along with anxiety it will cause the same combination of feelings when you set off the trigger again in the future. This can cause problems in accomplishing the changes you want to achieve throughout the course of hypnosis.
The main thing from previous articles you will want to remember as you learn to use revivification is that you need to know how to change the whole mood of a person before setting your emotional trigger. If you can keep this in mind and access a clear state of mind before setting those triggers it will aid in the process of accessing states with revivification as well.
The concept behind revivification itself is to bring an experience to life for the person having it. The listener needs to be able to experience the memory fully in order to access a completely pure state of mind. This means you will be using and developing different skills in this process that will make the experience as real as possible for your subjects.
The first state inducing method (and the only one we will focus on in this article) is the revivification process. This is a process of accessing a state is by asking revivification questions. These questions are used to give direction to your subject while they are attempting to emerge themselves fully in a particular emotional state.
In your practice as a hypnotist you will be asking questions of the people in your care, these questions will be the start of a journey through their experiences in order to answer each one. You see when you ask a question of someone they are required to re-experience the situations where they felt the way in which you are asking about. We all must experience the actual answer before our minds compute how to answer a question.
Revivification will run more smoothly if you apply the principal of ‘going first’. ‘Going first’ in this situation means that you will first tell as story of your own that would get you into the same emotional state you are trying to get your subject into. If you want the person to feel happy you would tell a story of a thing that happened or a time when you were completely happy.
By ‘going first’ your physiology will change, your body will sub-communicate that emotion on an unconscious level through tone, body language, movements and gestures. In turn the person you are talking to will unconsciously pick up on those signals and start to be open to accessing that emotion as well.
After you have told a story and you are now in the same state of mind you wish your listener to be in you prompt or ask them of a time when they felt that way. When you ask questions of the people around you, especially when using revivification you want to make each question sound meaningful.
If you sound bored or uninterested the person you are working with will be more likely to reserve their answers, meaning they will not be interested in reliving an emotion for you. When you ask a question make it sound like the answer is extremely important to you. You can use different tonalities and language suggestions to make this happen. This will cause the person to really get deeper into the experience and in turn give you a much more quality answer.
The next step in revivification questions is to listen closely to the answer the person is giving, and repeat it back to them. You want to do this in the exact same way they said it to you. Use the same tone, lean and emphasis on the words they used.
The reason for doing this is people will use words that are what we call trigger words, these words are important to them. When you repeat the same words back using the same tones and such it will help your listener to access the memory and experience it more fully.
As you are doing this you will notice that you are going to be able to create a kind of feedback loop. In this loop you will give a story to go first, then ask them to give an example of the same emotion, listen for the sensory information they are giving, repeat the answer back to them exactly as they have said it and then start again.
Each time you complete the loop you will be allowing the subjects to dive deeper and deeper into the state of mind you are accessing.
As you use the process of revivification remember that part of the goal is to make the experience as real as possible through the language and stories each of you are telling. This is a powerful scenario and will be a great help in accessing pure clean states of mind.