Here’s a
corrected global perspective on character-based community stewardship
redistributed by the Monticello United Methodist Church (MUMC) just across
the K-7 Corridor from our “Prairie Passage”
outpost …
An Ode to America
Submitted by Debi
Sokol to MUMC
(Edited for FutureThought Leadership) 
We rarely get a
chance to see another country's editorial about the USA. This is an excerpt
from a Romanian Newspaper. The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and
published under the title "C"ntarea Americii, meaning "Ode To
America") on September 24, 2002, in the Romanian newspaper
Evenimentulzilei … ("The Daily Event" or "News of the
Day").
Why are Americans so united? They
would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They
speak all the languages of the world and
form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.
Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put
on the heart.
Ř Nobody
rushed to accuse the White House, the army,
and the secret services that they
are only a bunch of losers.
Ř
Nobody rushed to
empty their bank accounts.
Ř Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby
to gape about.
The Americans
volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.
After the first
moments of panic, they raised their flag over
the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of
the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place
and on every car a government official or the president was passing.
On every
occasion, they started singing their traditional song: "God Bless
America!" I watched the live broadcast
and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down
one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she
was, or of the (Bloomington,
Minnesota) hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the
terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed
other hundreds or thousands of people.
How
on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? Imperceptibly,
with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a
modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions
of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family,
but a spirit, which no money can buy.
What on earth
can unite the Americans in such a way?
Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic
Power? Money?
I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases
with the risk of sounding commonplace. I thought things over, but I
reached
only one conclusion. Only freedom (with character) can work such miracles.
Learn About … MnIPS
MentorshipART …Vision 2005 …
Keywords
:: "Bloomington MN" 9/11 Hero Memorial Burnett
Focus: Kaw Valley" Eco-Futures"
MapXchange Services (KV-EMS)
:: UNEP Peaceboat-V47 Revisits "Global Brain" (4d29am)
Jess - After catastrophic
Boxing Day 2004 WestPac events in Sumatra & Thailand,
we got some "current
reality" insights from Brooke who's now a master's
program student
in "NextGen" Wetland Ecology & Environmental Protection (WEEP) at UW-Madison ...
Note: Key phrase captured for our inter-regional
collaboration was
USDA Feedlot
"Environmental Monitoring Systems" (EMS) ...
Re:: KanGIS "Prairie
Passage Pathfinder" proposals
for "Adopt-A-Wetland/CERT Passports"...
1- At UH-Manoa, Dr. Ralph Sprague was my multi-disciplinary CBA graduate
program advisor
when I began refining decision support &
information science (knowledge, skills & abilities)
for global "Ocean Keeping" after
completing USNR active duty near Kunia, Hawaii (1971) ...
TOPO!
GPS Data Format
Deg NAD83 ElevFeet
KUNIA CAMP,21.46017,-158.06253,NA,KUNIA HAWAII FOCCPAC
(C322)
2- At FOCCPAC, I managed sea surveillance duties that supported
"search & rescue" services
when we weren't conducting off-shore outrigger sailing
clinics via "trimaran team tutoring" ...
3- While attending HICSS-34 @ Maui
in Jan-2001, I presented my "CyberCrime Fighter"
"lessons learned" after returning to General
Mills (Chemical), Inc & doing NRSAND-V12
advanced research for CNA & Third Fleet as a
NAS Twin Cities "week-end warrior" ...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4- While on
Maui, I learned about flexible "WinWin groupware"
collaboration "thinkLets"
for addressing Campus "Incident
Management" Scenarios (CIMS) by
adapting them
to pioneering FEMA "Project Impact" resources
hosted at Pacific Disaster Center
where I was given a VIP Tour of
GIS-based CincPAC applications ...
5- My UH-Manoa (PACIBER) guided
tour with Dr. Steve Itoga in Jan-2001 included visiting
with "DARPA Bioneers"
at ICS-ANCL where they were completing PODS (smart dust)
as wireless broadband network prototypes for "Biosphere
Monitoring" applications ...
6- Our "Brine
Shrimp Biosphere" gift from Honolulu Community
College (Dr. Ron Takata)
was a persistent reminder (microcosm)
about the fragile inter-dependencies
of our Island "Ocean Keepers" & Mainland
"EarthKeepers" heritage ...
*** Using KU-Public
Health's "Community Tool Box" innovations @ http://ctb.ku.edu
we may "Be Prepared" to AVOID
Eco-Futures plagued by Failures of Imagination!
Re: http://www.paleotrek.com/PaleoTrekLinks.html
<- Midwest "Elder-Trek" prototype ...
& http://web.umr.edu/~rogersda/gis/
(GIS-based Group Decision Support Systems)
Jerry - Recent
KACEE-USEPA Region7 "Four-State Board-To-Board EE
( Environmental
Economics / Experts Exchange ) Leadership Summit 2004"
was both well-planned
& executed at Lied Conference Center in Nebraska City, NE
< May
29, 2003 in conjunction with a national companion program
< By The People: America
in the World.
< By The People:
Minnesota; Thursday, May 29, 8:00 p.m.
< Global
Health: http://www.micglobe.org/index.cfm
< Why
Should Minnesotans
(as "Prairie Passage Pathfinders") Care?
< A one hour program that will air on TPT 2 on Thursday ...
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob-RJ Burkhart [mailto:bburkhart3@kc.rr.com]
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 9:45 PM
Subject: UNEP Peaceboat-V47 Revisits "Global Brain" Ocean
Keepers from a Lost Civilization (4d27pm)
Rog -
I'm meeting with MapNotes
to package an "Adopt-A-Wetland/CERT"
K-7
Corridor "passport program" with an "Eco-Futures
Forum" theme
that includes UN
Peaceboat (GlobalBrain) remote
sensing capabilities ...
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GlobalBrain
@ 28-29 Dec
2004 Papa Nui Port-of-Call ...
Peace Boat visits an average of 15
ports on each global voyage.
During our visits, typically one to three days in length, we develop various ways
through which our overall objective of promoting peace and sustainability
can find a concrete expression, locally and globally.
Ernest Thompson Seton Institute
"The Ernest Thompson Seton Institute is a non-profit
organization dedicated
to
preserving the legacy of E.T. Seton - artist,
naturalist ... story teller,
author,
philosopher and leader par excellence" 
-----Original
Message-----
From: Roger Rydberg [mailto:rarydberg@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:32 PM
To: Bob (mn-RR) Burkhart
Subject: Global Brain
The Pricipia Cybernetica Web discusses this subject on http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAIN-L.html
-- FridemarPache
The web site above contains a large list of references
on the GlobalBrain,
including authors who thought about similar ideas but never used that term -
partly because they predated it. Conspicuous by his absence is OlafStapledon.
While most of his words on the GlobalBrain
were fiction, his ideas were not really more speculative than those of some
others on the list, and he looms too large in the field to make it easy to
imagine he was accidentally omitted. This decision says something about the
site, and I'm not sure if it's good or bad. I can sympathize with the desire to
make sure nobody dismisses the whole idea as science fiction by including such
a far out author, but he's actually thought more about what a GlobalBrain
would do after coming into being than most of those other authors, and since
the concept of the GlobalBrain
still is in the formative stage I think trying to get people to take it more
seriously by excluding fiction authors from the di alog could back fire. -- DavidWeisman
from the website ...
Cybernetic immortality can take the place of
metaphysical immortality to provide the ultimate goals and values for the
emerging global civilization.
Why not: Cybernetic immortality refines the now
somewhat deprecated "metaphysical" immortality ...
The GlobalBrain
is usually considered a CollectiveIntelligence,
although it more likely will evolve (in my opinion) into a demogogic HiveMind.
The WikiMind
is generally considered a smaller version of the GlobalBrain.
Or at least it's generally considered that by people
who do nothing here but navel gaze. The net is no more a brain than an
ecosystem is an organism. It's a place where minds interact,
not some larger mind.
That sounds like saying: "The brain is no more than
an ecosystem of interacting cells. -- fp
Yes, thanks for saying this. As a place where minds interact,
Wiki has been absolutely brilliant. Stating the false and fantastic teleology
of emerging GlobalBrain
suggests that Wiki being a place where human minds can interact so effectively
is small beer. Well, I think otherwise. In its unpretentious
simplicity Wiki is magnificent. This mind needs a lot of help
but can interact here with many others much greater ... and is very grateful.
There is a saying: "Manchmal sieht man den Wald vor
lauter Bdumen nicht". Please help me to translate it to the English
equivalent. First draft: "Sometimes you can't see the forest, because you
only see the trees".
·
GlobalBrain
= the forest
·
trees = the interacting minds
·
WikiMind
= a tree school ("Baumschule", there must be a better translation) [a
copse is a small group of trees - is this what you mean? Hmm, that sounds
like grove.] ["nursery" might be right.. a place where gardeners
grow small trees, later to be planted elsewhere -- ChristophLuehr?]
-- FridemarPache
"You can't see the forest for the trees"
is the usual English rendering. The converse is "Don't make a mountain out
of a molehill". Then again wiki is more significant than a molehill. But
if Quixote sees a giant, that doesn't mean the windmill isn't still a wonderful
invention.
More on the GlobalBrain,
with annotations and background music: http://crit.org/http://predicasts.net/brain.html
"References to historical GlobalBrain
Thinkers: as collection of basic references,
grouped by author, that explore the idea of the emerging planetary organism
and its global brain, in the chronological order of first publication"
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAINREF.html
H.G.Wells anticipated the WorldMind?
and the need for world wide collaboration:
·
http://sherlock.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html
[1] http://predicasts.net/brain.html
There's also a new book out titled Global Brain, written
by Howard Bloom.
·
http://www.howardbloom.net/
CategoryMetaWiki
Also see Peter Russell's Global Brain Awakens : http://www.peterussell.com/GB/globalbrain.html
EditText
of this page (last edited November
30, 2003)
FindPage
by searching (or browse LikePages
or take a VisualTour)
END::
Kaw Valley" Eco-Futures" MapXchange Services (KV-EMS)
:: UNEP Peaceboat-V47 Revisits "Global Brain" (4d29am)
Eco-Futures_OdeToAmerica_2004-Dec-29am.htm
