recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Harmonious society, from Wikipedia

music could

bring about harmony by maintaining balance in the society

music was
considered to have the power to transform people into becoming more civilized

In a country
where political class struggle and socialist slogans were the normative
political guidelines for decades, the idea of societal harmony attempts to
bring about the fusion of socialism and democracy. – this
represents the Chinese switch to “social-democracy”

over the years
"Harmonious Society" has emerged as a euphemism for "stability
at all costs,"

The government
often uses "Harmonious Society" to justify the suppression of dissent
and the tight control on information in China

Critics cite
the increased wealth gap, higher internal security budgets, and unprecedented
corruption in state-owned industries as evidence that Harmonious Society has
failed in practice

Something that has been censored in this manner
is often referred to as having been "harmonized."
International Society for the Systems Sciences

The **International Society for the**
Systems Sciences**(ISSS) is a world-wide organization for systems sciences. The overall purpose**
of the ISSS is:

"to promote the
development of conceptual frameworks based on general system theory, as well as
their implementation in practice. It further seeks to encourage research and facilitate
communication between and among scientists and professionals from various
disciplines and professions at local, regional, national, and international
levels."[1]

The society initiated in 1954 as *Society*
for the Advancement of General Systems Theory*started*
in 1955/56 as **Society**
for General Systems Research**, and became the first interdisciplinary and**
international co-operations in the field of systems theoryand systems science.[2] In 1988 it was renamed
to the International Society for the Systems Sciences.

In mission of the society was
formulated with the following four objectives:[4]

·
to investigate the isomorphy of concepts,
laws, and models in various fields, and to help in useful transfers from one
field to another

·
to encourage the development of adequate
theoretical models in areas which lack them

·
to eliminate the duplication of theoretical
efforts in different fields

·
to promote the unity of science through
improving the communication among specialists.

Wikipedia page

Official site

FB page
Jules Verne

1828-1905

A French author in the period of industrialization. Wrote science fiction and novels of adventure, encourging the young generation to dream of progress. Noted for a careful gathering and organization of information on various topics. Made enough money writing books to own a yacht. Read his:

"In Search of the Castaways"

"20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"

"The Mysterious Island"

"Around the World in 80 Days"

"Towards the Center of the Earth"

Audio of his books
General information on China, from Wikipedia

China is the world's most populous state, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China based in the capital of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, andChongqing), two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau), and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

   As of 2014, it is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.

   China is a recognized nuclear weapons stateand has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.

   China is rapidly developing its education system with an emphasis on science, mathematics and engineering; in 2009, it produced over 10,000 Ph.D. engineering graduates, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China is also the world's second-largest publisher of scientific papers

, producing 121,500 in 2010 alone, including 5,200 in     leading international scientific journals.Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and Lenovo have become world leaders in telecommunications and personal computing, and Chinese supercomputers are consistently ranked among the world's most powerful. China is furthermore experiencing a significant growth in the use of industrial robots; from 2008 to 2011, the installation of multi-role robots in Chinese factories rose by 136 percent.

    In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; as of 2015, ten Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large manned station by the early 2020s. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 probe and Yutu rover onto the Moon; China plans to collect lunar soil samples by 2017.

China is developing its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012, and is planned to offer global coverage by 2020.

    China's high-speed rail (HSR) system, built entirely since the early 2000s, had 11,028 kilometers (6,852 miles) of track in 2013 and was the longest HSR network in the world. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The HSR track network is set to reach approximately 16,000 km (9,900 mi) by 2020. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches 431 km/h (268 mph), is the fastest commercial train service in the world.
"Tragedy of Chinese Revolution by Ah Xiang"

(Read here )

   (Written from anti-communist perspective)

Sun Yat-sen's decision to ally with Russia and CCP was induced by the antagonisms from the imperialistic powers. Sun Yat-sen complained to reporters of "*New York Times*" in July, 1923 about this kind of imperialistic antagonisms towards the Chinese revolution.

From the outset of Xin Hai Revolution of 1911, imperialist powers had opposed China's democracy process, and this is best exemplified by US ambassador's pressuring Manchu government into recalling Yuan Shi-Kai for sake of cracking down on Xin Hai Revolution. That is what I will call here as the **Tragedy of Chinese Revolution**, not the same as Harold Isaacs' book Tragedy of The Chinese Revolution, i.e., Chinese revolution failed as a result of the ideological difference between Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin and Trotsky on the matter whether China's revolution was at the stage of Russian 1905 Revolution or Russian 1917 Revolution.
Li Dazhao, Wikipedia

1888-1927

Co-founder of the Communist Party of China in 1921

With
the collapse of the United Front in 1927, Li was captured during a
Fengtian ordered raid on the Soviet embassy in Peking (Beijing). Along
with nineteen others arrested in the raid, he was executed on the orders of the
warlord Zhang
Zuolin on April 28, 1927
Human Genome Project

**Definition:**

An international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of chemicalbase pairs which make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.[1] It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project.[2] The project was proposed and funded by the US government; planning started in 1984, the project got underway in 1990, and was declared complete in 2003.
Andy Blunden's collection of links to interpretations of Hegel's logic

Andy Blunden wrote extensively on Hegel. Here are some of his links:

* “1841”
* Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach 1841
* Attack on Hegel, by Friedrich Schelling, 1841
* Schelling & Hegel, Engels 1841
* The Concept of Dread, Søren Kierkegaard 1844
* God & the State, Bakunin 1872
* On Hegel, Peirce 1893
* Prejudices of Philosophers, Nietzsche 1885
* The Dialectic, Kautsky
* For 60th Anniversary of Hegel's Death, Plekhanov 1891
* Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, McTaggart 1896
* The Origin and Significance of Hegel’s Logic, Baillie 1901
* Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, McTaggart 1901
* Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation, John Grier Hibben 1902
* Hegelianism, George Herbert Mead 1901
* Dialectic & Synthesis, Benadetto Croce 1906
* Commentary on Hegel's Logic, McTaggart 1910
* Thought and Reality In Hegel’s System, Cunningham 1910
* Thing-in-Itself, Lenin 1908
* Annotations on Hegel's Logic, Lenin 1915
* History & Class Concsciousness, Georg Lukacs, 1923
* Marxism & Philosophy, Karl Korsch, 1923
* The Logical Influence of Hegel on Marx, Rebecca Cooper 1925
* Hegel & Mathematics, Ernst Kol'man & Sonia Yanovskaya 1931
* Dialectic of the Real, Alexandre Kojève 1934
* Dialectical & Historical Materialism, Josef Stalin 1938
* ABC of Materialist Dialectics, Leon Trotsky, 1939
* On Contradiction, Mao Tse Tung 1937 ?
* Hegel's First System, Herbert Marcuse 1941
* Notes on Dialectics, C L R James 1948
* Woman as Other, Simone de Beauvoir 1949
* Marxism & Freedom, Raya Dunayevskaya 1957
* Organisation of the Logic, Jean Hyppolite, 1952
* On Marxism, Louis Althusser, 1953
* The Hegel Myth and Its Method, Walter Kaufmann, 1959
* Dogmatic & Critical Dialectic, Jean-Paul Sartre 1960
* Abstract & Concrete, E V Ilyenkov 1960
* Is Nature Dialectical?, George Novack 1962
* Alienation, George Novack 1962
* Lenin & Hegel, Cliff Slaughter 1962
* Knowledge and Human Interests, by Jürgen Habermas 1968
* Marx’s Theory of Alienation, Istvan Meszaros 1970
* Speech & Writing for Hegel, Derrida 1971
* The Idea of Hegel’s Logic, Gadamer 1971
* Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Shlomo Avineri 1972
* Dialectical Logic, E V Ilyenkov 1974
* Riddle of Self, Mikhailov 1976
* Concepts of Capital, Geoff Pilling 1980
* Hegel's philosophy of state, Z Pelczynski 1984
* Dialectic and the Rational State, David MacGregor 1984
* Marx's Grundrisse and Hegel's Logic, Hiroshi Uchida 1988
* Logic of Marx's Capital, Tony Smith 1990
* Logic: Dialectic and contradiction, Lawrence Wilde 1991
* The Struggle for Recognition, Axel Honneth 1992
* Transformations, by Drucilla Cornell 1993
* The Hegel Myths and Legends, Jon Stewart 1996
* Reconciliation & Rejection, Ute Bublitz 1998
* Marx at the Millenium, Cyril Smith 1998
* Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, Glenn Magee 2001
* Value of Knowledge - Library of texts from 140 philosophers.
* Articles on Hegel, Andy Blunden
Alfred Wegener

(1880-1930)

He is most remembered for
advancing the theory of continental drift  (*Kontinentalverschiebung*) in 1912, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. His
hypothesis was controversial and not widely accepted until the 1950s, when
numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift,
and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of Plate tectonics.

Wegener's last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14
participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations
from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and
year-round Arctic weather observations made. Wegener felt personally
responsible for the expedition's success, as the German
government had contributed
$120,000 ($1.5 million in 2007 dollars). Success depended on enough provisions
being transferred from West camp to *Eismitte* ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there, and this
was a factor in the decision that led to his death. Owing to a late thaw, the
expedition was six weeks behind schedule and, as summer ended, the men at *Eismitte* sent a message that they had insufficient
fuel and so would return on October 20.

On September 24, although
the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with
thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by
dog sled. During the journey the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F)
and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife
without anesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On
October 19, the remaining three members of the expedition reached *Eismitte*. There being only enough
supplies for three at *Eismitte*, Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West
camp. They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the
rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener
had to use skis. They never reached the camp. The expedition was completed by
his brother, Kurt Wegener.
Agriculture as emerging technology

Agricultural robot -  a robot deployed for agricultural purposes. These are: 1) collecting the harvest, 2) picking fruits, 3) irrigation, 4) milking cows, 5) cutting the fleece, etc. 6) tilling the field, 7) monitoring (the earliest example is a scarecrow!). Picture is a field robot, from a German company Amazonen-Werke

  Closed ecological systems - small manmade ecosystems. Such systems are scientifically interesting and can potentially serve as a life support system during space flights, in space stations or space habitats. One example of such an experiment is Biosphere 2 (picture)

Genetically modified food -  foods produced from organisms that have had specific changes introduced into their DNA using the methods of genetic engineering. These techniques have allowed for the introduction of new crop traits as well as a far greater control over a food's genetic structure than previously afforded by methods such as selective breeding and mutation breeding. The key area here is genetic engineering.

  Precision agriculture - a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. This field involves GPS, aerial photography using using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and other advanced techniques. One example is Yara N-Sensor ALS mounted on a tractor's canopy (picture) – a system that records light reflection of crops, calculates fertilisation recommendations and then varies the amount of fertilizer spread.

Vertical farming - cultivating plant or animal life within a skyscraper greenhouse or on vertically inclined surfaces. One example is a Columbia University project proposed for the New York City, 2007.

More see here
Alexander Bogdanov

1873-1928

Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian revolutionary (once a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party) and philosopher.

In 1908 he published a science-fiction novel "The Red Star".

"Socialism" means a "New World", like that discovered by Columbus. Hence, A. Bogdanov (1873-1928) attempts to imagine such a society on Mars. This gives him a space for fantasy.

Bogdanov posits before us a goal which the future society must achieve. This is upbringing people similar to engineer Manny, who is the leader of the expedition of Martians to Earth. He is not a worker-automaton, but a creator.

Leonid is a human on Earth. He is invited by the Martians to visit Mars. So, what does he find there?

Bogdanov did not foresee an end to the industrial revolution, i.e. a transition to a post-industrial type of production. That's why he continues to divide the Martian society into "workers" and "specialists".

However, in his later book, "Essays in the Organizational Science" ("Очерки организационной науки"), Bogdanov notes that "organization" essentially means the same as "production".  The word "organization" is used in reference to people, while "production" is used in reference to things.

The manner of education which Bogdanov proposes is reminiscent of J.J. Rousseau's "Emile". For example, Rousseau suggests studying geography by travelling around one's neighborhood, before studying the maps. In other words, Bogdanov suggests a gradual transition from concrete facts and pieces of information to theoretical knowledge.

Bogdanov was going in the direction of monism of knowledge. To that end, he published "Tectology", in 1920's, which is seen as an early version of systems theory . Wikipedia writes on tectology:

"a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems"

It continues:

"The starting point in Bogdanov's *Universal Science of Organization - Tectology* (1913-1922) was that nature has a general, organized character, **with one set of laws of organization for all objects**. This set of laws also organizes the internal development of the complex units, as implied by Simona Poustilnik's "macro-paradigm", which induces synergistic consequences into an adaptive assembling phenomenon (1995). Bogdanov's visionary view of nature was one of an 'organization' with interconnected systems. Bogdanov's*Tectology* outlined the concepts and concerns of Complexity Theory a full 50 years in advance of chaos and fractal mathematics."

**See:**

What I think of Alexander Bogdanov's "Tectology"
History of physics 2013

2nd
law of thermodynamics – formulated in 1824 by Said Carnot, and later in
1850 by Rudolf Clausius. Important for development of the power of the steam
engine.

Theory
of relativity – the only thought that comes to my mind as application is
movement to the stars, interstellar travel. This is the general tendency of the
theory.

Quantum
theory – this appears as pointing to a journey into the micro world. Energy
comes in “quanta”. Matter has wave properties.

Theory of
Everything

·
М. Планк,
«Единство физической картины мира», в «Астрономия и космология», 1998.1

·
М.
Борн, «Эйнштейновская теория относительности», в «Астрономия и космология»,
1998.1

·
Niels Bohr, “Discussions with Einstein on
Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics”, в «Астр. и косм.», 1998.1

Physics / 100 Greatest
Discoveries – video

Michio Kaku: The Universe in a Nutshell

Einstein
didn’t finish working on “the unified field theory”, or “theory of everything”:
“one equation to summarize all the physical forces in the Universe”. But theory
of everything cannot be limited to physics. And why it should be merely a
theory, and not also a practice? =

“Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from divinity”, Arthur C.
Clark. We will have the power of gods.

Beginning
of modern physics: Galileo and Newton.

First force: gravitation. Newton’s
3 laws. They made the
Industrial revolution possible.

Second force: electromagnetism. Michael Faraday. Light is an
electromagnetic force. Maxwell. We’re still in this force, developing it.

Strong Nuclear force: holds the nucleus together. Can it be the
same as “gravity”? Collision of matter and anti-matter gives the greatest
possible energy.

String
theory: a multiverse, instead of one universe. A possibility of “worm holes”,
i.e. passing from one “time-space” to another, in effect, time travel, from one
universe to another.

73%
of the Universe is “dark energy”, 23% is “dark matter”. Stars – 4% of the
universe. Human beings, planets, etc. – 0.3% of the Universe.

Therefore,
most of the Universe is not made of “atoms” but of “dark energy and matter”.

Michio Kaku: The Intelligence
Revolution

No
doubt, the future revolution – both, in material production and in social
relations – will be driven by intelligence, or rather intelligence + physical
force.

Machines
learn to recognize objects. That means that computers will become robots.

Robots
are certainly the technology of the future to explore with V.
Chaos theory

**Definition**, from Wikipedia:

   "Chaos theory" studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.

* A short video intro to chaos theory

**Other languages**:

Теория хаоса
Continental drift

**Continental drift** is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed.[2] The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener  in 1912, but his theory was rejected by some for lack of a mechanism (though this was supplied later by Holmes) and others because of prior theoretical commitments. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics , which explains how the continents move.

In 1858 Antonio Snider-Pellegrini created two maps demonstrating how the American and African continents might have once fit together (on the right).
Emerging technologies in manufacturing

Principal

directions in the future of manufacturing are nanotechnology and 3d printing.

3D printing - a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an *additive process*, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes.[2] 3D printing is also considered distinct from traditional machining techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material by methods such as cutting or drilling (*subtractive* processes). Potentially, this is the process that can be combined with nanotechnology to produce ("print") anything, any material object. Here is an illustration from "Popular Mechanics" of how to design and print a model of a futuristic car. A presentation from MIT on 3D printing has subtitles - can be used for teaching English. An overview of applications of 3D printing. Things are grown. Houses and sculptures are printed in 3-D printers.  Yachts are 3d printed .

RepRap Project - a 3D printer that prints itself. A video of the leader of the project explaining the purpose.

Claytronics- an abstract future concept that combines nanoscale robotics and computer science to create individual nanometer-scale computers called claytronic atoms, or catoms, which can interact with each other to form tangible 3-D objects that a user can interact with. This idea is more broadly referred to as programmable matter

Programmable matter - matter which has the ability to change its physical properties (shape, density, moduli, conductivity, optical properties, etc.) in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing. Programmable matter is thus linked to the concept of a material which inherently has the ability to perform information processing.

Molecular assembler -  as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition. This is because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and then assemble specific sequences of amino acids to construct protein molecules. This is the basic component of nanotechnology (see "Nanotechnology " category).
How do we learn

**Definition:**

This is a discussion of the best ways to learn.

Many agree that we learn worst during lectures, and best by practicing what we need to learn. In fact, I was told by my logic teacher at Columbia University, if you want to really learn logic, you got to teach it.

It is also true that different age groups have different learning forms. Kids learn through games. Adults learn better through a discussion that presupposes equal partners.

Techniques for improving learning:

Source
Marcel van der Linden's view

**The “Law” of Uneven and Combined Development:**

**Some Underdeveloped Thoughts**

In a region where the earlier form attained its
highest development, the material and intellectual forces and institutions that
ensured its existence became so fixed and sturdy that they became almost
insurmountable obstacles to the development of new forms

A scientific law should outline the particular sets of conditions which give rise to a typical result in the given sphere of investigation

Novack had answered Slaughter that the law cannot predict the outcome of combining factors at different levels of development,

because its action and results do not depend upon itself alone, but more upon the total situation in which it functions. [...] Under certain conditions, the introduction of higher elements and their amalgamation with lower ones accelerates social progress; under other conditions, the synthesis can retard progress and even cause a retrogression. Whether progress or reaction will be favored depends upon the specific weight of all the factors in the given situation.

            This defense leads us at the very least to the conclusion that the “law” is insufficiently specific. We generally understand a “law” to be a statement of the type: “If preconditions C1 ... Cn hold true, then it follows that if P, then Q.”

Statements about uneven and combined development thus also lack any predictive value, although one can say with certainty in hindsight, *ex post facto*, whether a combined development has taken place.

Думаю, что van der Linden прав в том, что закон к.р. не достаточно специфичен. Например, одна девушка может «лайкнуть» мой пост, и другая. Но с одной я буду пойду на откровенность, а с другой нет. Почему? Потому, что кроме «лайка» есть еще другое условие. А именно: первая интересуется фракталами, купается зимой, любит туризм, а другая выглядит как дурочка, хотя и строит из себя «модную». Аналогично со странами: в одной отсталой стране происходит – начинается – соц. Революция, Куба напр. А в другой – хуй собачий. Почему так? Наверное, дело в других условиях, которые также важны, например наличие партии, а значит долгий период борьбы, поражений, назревания кризиса. Этот вопрос надо изучить, через внимательное сравнение стран, в которых произошли революции, и тех, в которых они либо не удались, как то Германия в 1918, или вообще накрылись медным тазиком, как Афганистан в 1978 г.
Motherland calls!

A statue in Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia, commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. It was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin, and declared the largest statue in the world in 1967. Today, it is the tallest statue in Europe and the tallest statue of a woman in the world, not including pedestals
Narodniki, part 11

Previous: Narodniki, part 10

(vi) Identification of Revolutionary Class

The virtual museum of "Narodnaya Volya", http://narovol.narod.ru/ is perhaps the best source of information (in Russian) about this group. In "A Brief History of Narodnaya Volya" from this site, we read: "First and most important that distinguishes narodniks from Marxists is their identification of peasantry as the main revolutionary class".

Thus, *one party is distinguished from another by the identification of a social class which it represents*.

This is the reason I can not consider myself a Marxist, as I don't see the proletariat as a modern revolutionary class. I believe the world as a whole has already passed the stage of the Industrial revolution, in the course of which proletariat was one of the leading forces. Today, the world is at the stage of the Information revolution and is moving towards the nanotechnological revolution. Proletariat, the blue-collar workers, the industrial workers, can no longer be considered to be revolutionary class.

   Nor can "professionals", specialists in any one sphere of knowlege can be considered as revolutionary, as in general they are philistines, or even reactionaries.

The future belongs to "universal" men and women, a type of new Renaissance human being, a person who can do, or learn, anything that s/he wants.

Next: Narodniki, Part 12
Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803-1882

Emerson was a friend and a teacher of another eminent American philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. They both lived in New England, USA, and were proponents of philosophy known as "transcendentalism". "To transcend" means to go beyond, to go over the edge, in other words to rebel. The rebellion which they were fostering in the minds was the rebellion of the Southern states against the North, the Industrial revolution against the semi-feudal society.

   The most memorable essay of Emerson is "Self-Reliance". I can still remember the words with which it began, even though I studied the essay in high school: "Whose be a man must be a non-conformist". With this criterion, most of the people are not really "men", but slime.

* The Three Great Virtues: Self-reliance, love, friendship (audio)
Theory of evolution

**Definition:**

Evolution is change in heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations.[1] Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the level of species, individual organisms, and at the level of molecular evolution.

   **See:**

* Darwin, 1809-1882
* Development of human tools
Анри Пуанкаре о творчестве

1854-1912

Анри Пуанкаре в своём докладе в Психологическом обществе в Париже (в 1908 году) описал процесс совершения им нескольких математических открытий и выявил стадии этого творческого процесса, которые впоследствии выделялись многими психологами

1. В начале ставится задача и в течение некоторого времени делаются попытки решить её.

2. За этим следует более или менее продолжительный период, в течение которого человек не думает о так и не решённой пока задаче, отвлекается от неё. В это время, полагает Пуанкаре, происходит бессознательная работа над задачей.

3. И наконец наступает момент, когда внезапно, без непосредственно предшествовавших этому размышлений о задаче, в случайной ситуации, не имеющей к задаче никакого отношения, в сознании возникает ключ к решению: «Однажды вечером, вопреки своей привычке, я выпил черного кофе; я не мог заснуть; идеи теснились, я чувствовал, как они сталкиваются, пока две из них не соединились, чтобы образовать устойчивую комбинацию».

4. После этого, когда ключевая для решения идея уже известна, происходит завершение решения, его проверка, развитие.
Александр Берегов

# СЛАГАЕМЫЕ УСПЕХА

   Олександр Берегов

Партия или «горизонтальная организация»:

Хвалебная ода партийной организации, вышедшая из-под пера Артема Кирпиченка, — еще один пример подобного подхода. Возможно, она осталась бы незамеченной на фоне других более-менее схожих по содержанию статей, если бы автор не апеллировал к современной ситуации и порождаемой ею формам протестной организации – от площади Тахрир, через испанских «возмущенных» к движению «Оккупай Уолл-стрит».

Основной посыл статьи автора таков – только партия как форма политической организации пролетариата способна привести революцию к победе. Любые горизонтальные формы организации – пустая и не эффективная трата времени. Вывод, который должен сделать читатель, прост – надо строить партию, а если партия по какой-то причине окажется неспособна захватить власть, то причина этого кроется в «перерождении руководства».

«Мне кажется, что успешное движение (?) всегда представляет собой сочетание горизонтальных связей и иерархии. Самое впечатляющее из того, что я видел, было движение чилийских студентов, одним из лидеров которого является молодая девушка-коммунист [Камила Вальехо]. Это движение является полностью открытым и горизонтально организованным настолько, насколько это возможно при принятии решений и независимо от воли центрального комитета. Но,вместе с тем, если руководство движения призвало к действию, все должны участвовать."

В принципе, Берегов прав. Революционная организация должна сочетать противоположности: 1) военную диктатуру, иерархическое управление, 2) инициативу снизу вверх.
Notes on factional fight in SWP between majority led by Cannon and minority led by Morrow-Heijenoort-Goldman, 1943-45

The original article is here:

http://knowledge.ucoz.org/daniel\_gaido\_and\_velia\_luparello-strategy\_and\_tact.pdf

SWP minority (Morrow, Heijenoort, Goldman) better estimated the situation in Europe because they didn’t set high hopes on “revolutionary potential” of the working class, which supported its traditional Social-Democratic and Stalinist parties. These parties adhere to the policy of “class collaboration”, in reality renouncing socialist program.

Trotskyists (majority of SWP) have become self-congratulatory, self-complacent, just like the Communists, after the victory of Hitler in Germany in 1933:

“By November 1944 it was obvious that the resolution of the October

1943 Plenum had failed to foresee the course of events in Europe

and to orient the Trotskyist cadres in the tactics required by the political

moment. Yet despite the insistence of the Minority Report to the

Convention on “the importance of a democratic interlude,”16 the

Resolution adopted by the Sixth Convention of the SWP in November

1944 started by stating that “the events of the past nine months have

served to underline the validity of our previous analysis of the world

situation” (Sixth Convention of the SWP, 1944, 361).”

Careless political analysis:

*Militant* editorial “Warsaw Betrayed,” arguing that it had not

taken up the question of

*the duty of guerrilla forces — and in the circumstances that is what the Warsaw detachments*

*are — to subordinate themselves to the high command of the main army*,

the Red Army, in timing of such an important battle as the siege of Warsaw.

On the contrary, the editorial appears to take as its point of departure the

assumption that a full-scale proletarian uprising occurred in Warsaw and that

Stalin deliberately maneuvered to permit Hitler to crush the revolt. . . . W e are

deeply concerned about this carelessness in writing about such a crucial question.

(Letter from Dobbs dated August 23, 1944, quoted in Jacobs, 1944, 34.)

According to Morrow, the sectarianism of the French section was

long-standing; indeed “when the armed proletariat made the Paris insurrection

in August 1944 our party was completely outside the movement

thanks to their false position on the resistance movement” (Morrow,

1946c, 31)

denial of political reality and glossing over past mistakes in political analysis,

staking a virtual claim to infallibility on the part of the party leaders
Plato

428-348 B.C.

A student of Socrates, a philosopher of ancient Greece who believed in reality of ideas, and that the ideas are the source of all things. Most important appears his treatise on justice, "The Republic".

* General info on Plato
* Audio recordings of Plato
* Apology
* Symposium
* The Republic, audio
Notes in preparation of meeting of parents of 4 kids, April 1, 2012

Format: meeting of several concerned parents about their 5-6 year kids, who next have to go to school.

Proposal: to create a new type of school, alternative to state schools, with their bureaucracy, and private schools, with their high tuition rates. (I can start by describing my last talk with Volodya Oshofsky)

Radical differences: 1) parents are the teachers, stress on self-education;

2) conflict resolution through meetings, similar to the ones at Summerhill School.

Initial subject must include:

1) physical development – physical games, activities such as biking, playing ball, swimming, fighting, etc.

2) Musical and artistic development – singing, dancing, drawing, etc.

3) Learning to read (later: write) – in Russian, English and Ukrainian.

4) Some basics of science – mathematics, biology, physics, astronomy, geography, etc.

5) Understanding of society and self – history, psychology

However, a child must have a freedom not to attend a lesson/activity, otherwise, s/he will grow to hate it.

Problems:

1.       Parents want to prepare a child for an exam, equivalent to a state school

2.       Finding a location. Initial location for the kids’ meetings can be my apartment – I have a study room and a play room + a kitchen. However, if we expand, we’ll need to find another place, and probably pay for it. Ideal place would be outside of Kiev, in a country, where kids can run.

Children should attend clubs in parallel with school, share information on what everyone is doing at weekly meetings, e.g. on Friday/weekend.

If we agree to this program, then we should:

1.       Parents volunteer on the tasks which they want to organize, or subjects to teach. E.g. for the next meeting, on 14th April, I can find out information about other alternative schools in Kiev, and other places. Report on their experience.

2.       We should start meeting regularly (once in 2 weeks), to discuss our progress, or discuss issues dealing with teaching/education.

Люда:

1.       Нет «предпосылок» к созданию новой школы. Надо не сносить а подправить.

Оксана

2.       Социализация – в школе дети учатся решать свои проблемы, без родителей. Школа должна быть рядом с домом – кружки рядом. Настрой на позитив. Деньги.

Виктория

Изучить вопрос альтернативных школ. Не мешать развитию.
Statue of Liberty

The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

Here, we already feel a transition from "art" to a fusion of "art" and "technology", that has become more pronounced in XXI century with 3D printing. Another similar monument is "Motherland calls" in Volgograd, Russia.
Wernher Braun

1912-1977

He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, where he was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.

Following World War II, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,500 other scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip, where he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1, and the Apollo program manned lunar landings.

Insisted that men should go to the stars to survive as species.
Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement

MRTA

Started in 1980's. Gained international fame when it led Japanese Embassy Hostage Crisis, in 1992.

Leader was Victor Polay, until his capture in 1992. Serves 32 years in prison (born 1951)

Wikipedia:

The MRTA originated in 1980 from the merging of the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Socialist Party and the militant faction of the Revolutionary Left Movement, *MIR El Militante* (MIR-EM)...

The first action by the MRTA occurred on 31 May 1982, when five of its members, including Victor Polay Campos and Jorge Talledo Feria (members of the Central Committee) robbed a bank in La Victoria, Lima. During the hold up, Talledo was killed by friendly fire and became the first loss of the movement.

Socialism
Guevarism
Peruviannationalism
 Notable attacks

On 31 May 1989, a group of six guerrillas shot dead eight transvestites and homosexuals in a bar in the city of Tarapoto. The weekly "Cambio", official organ of the MRTA, claimed responsibility, accusing the police of protecting "these social ills, which were used to corrupt youth."

...the MRTA suffered from infighting as well as violent clashes with Maoist rival Shining Path, the imprisonment or deaths of senior leaders, and loss of leftist support

At the height of its strength, the movement had several hundred active members. Its stated goals were to establish a socialist state and rid the country of all imperialist elements.

A story of Victory Polay, from The New York Times, at the height of the Japanese Embassy take-over

"According to figures supplied by the Andean Commission of Jurists, a human rights organization, of the roughly 4,500 people killed in guerrilla conflict in Peru in 1991, the most violent year, 3,145 were killed by the military, 1,314 by Shining Path and 139 by Tupac Amaru."

**Néstor Cerpa Cartolini** (August 14, 1953 – April 22, 1997) was a member, then leader of the Peruvian Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) guerrilla movement.

Cerpa was born in the Lima working class district of La Victoria. As a union leader in the 1970s he was involved in the takeover by workers of the Cromotex textile factory in December 1978, which was violently ended by the military government in February 1979, resulting in the deaths of several workers. Following the release of the survivors in late 1979, Cerpa organized a sit-in at the United Nations communications office in Lima.

RAND article on MRTA

Shining Path is considered to be more extreme than MRTA
Robert Goddard

1882-1945

A rocket scientist.

“When German rocket experts were brought to America after the war and were questioned about rocketry, they stared in amazement and asked why American officials did not inquire of Goddard, from whom they had learned virtually all they knew”.

"Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace."[29][30] (His response to a reporter's question following criticism in *The New York* Times*, 1920)*
Анатолий Иванович Китов

* Док. фильм "Интернет полковника Китова", РФ, 2015
* История о том, как пионер кибернетики оказался не нужным в СССР
	+ Книга Н. Винера "Кибернетика" хранилась в сцец. хране в СССР, была недоступна для широких масс народа. Почему?
	+ Власть предержащие в СССР почувствовали угрозу своему могуществу со стороны кибернетики, и потому "прижимали" её теорию и пионеров.
	+ Кибернетика решает задачи управления целыми хозяйственными комлексами и политическими единицами.
	+ Идею Китова и Глушкова подобрал Стаффорд Бир. Он сделал единый центр управления экономикой в правительстве Альенде.
	+ Китов в начале 1970-х перешел к медицинской кибернетике, т.е. возможно работал вместе с Амосовым.
Бюллетень Оппозиции №36-7

Б.О. №№36-7, 1933 г.

Социальные корни бюрократии лежат, как мы знаем, в пролетариате: если не в его активной поддержке, то, по крайней мере, в его «толерировании». При переходе пролетариата в активность, сталинский аппарат повиснет в воздухе. Если он все же попытается сопротивляться, придется применить против него не меры гражданской войны, а скорее меры полицейского порядка. Дело будет идти, во всяком случае, не о восстании против диктатуры пролетариата, а об устранении злокачественного нароста на ней.

Настоящая гражданская война могла бы развернуться не между сталинской бюрократией и поднявшимся пролетариатом, а между пролетариатом и активными силами контр-революции. О самостоятельной роли бюрократии, в случае открытого столкновения двух массовых лагерей, не могло бы быть и речи. Ее полярные фланги распределились бы по разные стороны баррикады.

Условием дальнейших успехов является правильная оценка мировой обстановки, и в том числе классовой природы Советского Союза.

Всякое политическое течение, которое под предлогом «непролетарского» характера Союза, махнет на него безнадежно рукой, рискует оказаться пассивным орудием империализма.
Theory of relativity

A theory created by Albert Einstein . It's a radical revision of Newton’s theory, predicting important new results for fast-moving and/or very massive bodies. This implies that we're heading into space travel, and we will be dealing with "black holes".

Video introduction to the theory, 8 min., kids level

“Einstein’s theories of both special and general relativity have been confirmed to be accurate to a very high degree over recent years, and the data has been shown to corroborate many key predictions; the most famous being the solar eclipse of 1919 bearing testimony that the light of stars is indeed deflected by the sun as the light passes near the sun on its way to earth. The total solar eclipse allowed astronomers to -- for the first time -- analyse starlight near the edge of the sun, which had been previously inaccessible to observers due to the intense brightness of the sun. It also predicted the rate at which two neutron stars orbiting one another will move toward each other. When this phenomenon was first documented, general relativity proved itself accurate to better than a trillionth of a percent precision, thus making it one of the best confirmed principles in all of physics”.

Here you can see a nice illustration of gravity according to Einstein , i.e. bending of "space-time", and hence "attraction" of various objects to each other.

"Relativity: special and general theory" by A. Einstein. Primary source. Part III: “Consideration of the Universe as a whole”

   Gravity can bend light, allowing huge clusters of galaxies to act as telescopes. Almost all of the bright objects in this released Hubble Space Telescopeimage are galaxies in the cluster known as Abell 2218. The cluster is so massive and so compact that its gravity bends and focuses the light from galaxies that lie behind it. As a result, multiple images of these background galaxies are distorted into long faint arcs - a simple lensing effect analogous to viewing distant street lamps through a glass of wine. The cluster of galaxies Abell 2218 is itself about three billion light-years away in the northern constellation Draco.
World systems theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-systems\_theory - emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis = that’s correct. But the next criteria is wrong:

"World-system"
refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery
countries, and the periphery
countries.[2] Core countries focus on higher skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the
world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw
materials.[3] This constantly reinforces the dominance of the
core countries.[3] Nonetheless, the system has dynamic
characteristics, in part as a result of revolutions intransport technology, and individual states can gain or
lose their core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time.[3] For a time, some countries become the world hegemon;
during the last few centuries, as the world-system has extended geographically
and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and (most recently) to the United
States of America.[3]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/World\_trade\_map.PNG/1280px-World\_trade\_map.PNG

Blue – core, purple – semi-periphery (China – most productive
– on the semi-periphery!) and red – periphery)

- criteria should be “capitalist” or “transitional”
states. “Capitalist” should be divided into “imperialist” and “3rd
world”.

Orthodox Marxists find the world-systems approach deviating too far from
orthodox Marxist principles.