OneMind

My primary teaching and research focus is on the convergence of ancient
wisdom and modern science/technology. I have conducted a series of 24
classes (the first 12 of which are available as a CD collection) called
“Leading-Edge Spiritual Thought” in Monterey, CA, where I live.

During my research for those classes, I have spent a good bit of time
studying something called the Quantum Potential (aka Quantum Field and
other labels). This is the very fabric of our space-time continuum, the
“stuff” that connects all the other “stuff” into a Oneness that
constittues this particular Universe in the Multiverse.

I am beginning work on a book, tentatively tield “Field of God, Field
of Dreams”, which will explore this newly discovered field and its
impact upon and interactions with us as carbon-based, DNA-defined life
forms appearing to live in its context.

I would welcome a conversation with any like-minded individuals to
explore these ideas further, help develop the book, or just explore
mutual interests.

The Oakland A’s are at least possibly headed for Fremont in the East Bay but just north of San Jose instead of just east of San Francisco. The team has expressed strong public interest in relocating in about four or five seasons. Cisco Systems owns the naming rights to the club’s new facility in Fremont. But more importantly, the networking giant plans to trick out the stadium with every conceivable — and a few almost inconceivable — technogadget.

I like the idea. They’re talking about things like tickets on your PDA, upgrades over wireless even at the park, watching instant replays on handhelds, keeping score, and a bunch of other cool goodies that would represent a heavenly convergence of baseball and tech. I’d become an A’s fan in a heartbeat. I imagine lots of techies in Silicon Valley would go for the tech and then stay for the game.

But I’d like to sound an early note of caution here, too. The A’s and Cisco should not allow any essential aspect of the game to rest solely on technology. Technology breaks. And it shows an alarming propensity to break at the most inopportune times. I don’t care how much reliability and redundancy they build in, the only absolute certainty about technology applied to baseball is that there will be glitches.

Cisco knows this better than anyone with the possible exception of Microsoft. It should ensure that its enchantment with technology will not be allowed to destroy the fan experience through inevitable failures.

Other than that, go for the silicon!

It’s taken a day or so for the shock to wear off. The Giants acquired premier pitcher Barry Zito from the A’s for a staggering $126 million over seven years. That’s $18 million per year, making him apparently the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history and one of the top 10 players at any position in that regard. This from the Giants, whose stinginess is legend, whose whining about stadium amortization costs is boring and whose inability or refusal to surround that other Barry with even decent talent for a shot at a World Series borders on unforgivable.

There was a lot of press outrage at the Zito deal. According to rumors (always such a reliable source), the nearest competitor’s offer for BZ was $41 million lower than the offer the Giants made. Thus, these illogical folks suggest, we paid too much or him.

Poppycock.

Zito is everything the Giants need in a No. 1 starter: reliable, crafty (so he’s likely to last a few years without blowing out his arm), disciplined, and a winner. He may be worth his salary solely as a steadying presence in the bullpen as the Giants nurture other, younger talent. True, I wouldn’t have spent that much money on a No. 1 starter in the face of the dire need for a solid-hitting player to protect the other Barry in the lineup. But if you’re going to go after a top starter, Barry Z is the guy.

I think I know the real reason the Giants wanted Zito, though. Now when reporters ask, “What’s up with Barry?” the G-men can look astonished and say, “Barry’s just fine. He’s 6-3 with a 2.97 ERA. Why do you ask?”

Tonight as I was listening to an excellent lecture in a college series I’m studying right now on the Philosophy of Religion, the professor raised the question of whether America is a Christian nation. The editorial page editor of his local paper had recently (this was five years ago) written a column in which he suggested that, yes, indeed America is a Christian nation and if you are a non-Christian living here, you are doing so at the tolerance and good offices of your Christian countrymen.

The professor confessed being nonplussed by that position. I would take it a step farther. It is intellectually dishonest and historically (as well as socially) incorrect to paint America as a Christian nation. Our Founding Fathers deliberately created a religiously neutral nation, albeit a theistic one. It is fair and accurate to say that America is a country founded on principles of theism, that is, a belief in a Higher Power of transcendent importance. It is not, however, reasonable or fair to say that we are a nation founded in any real sense on the principles or teachings of Jesus, let alone on a narrow description of what it means to “believe in” him. Indeed, his name does not appear in any of our founding documents. This includes, to the best of my knowledge and recollection, The Federalist, which, far more completely and accurately than the condensed and concise text of either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, describes the beliefs of those (mostly) wise men who created this country more than 200 years ago.

I am also led to ask the question, “What would it mean if the United States were in fact a Christian nation?” Given the staggering variety of definitions ascribed to the term “Christian” in the hopelessly fragmented body of those who profess some degree of belief in Jesus (while almost without exception ignoring vast swatches of his fundamental teachings), what common ground could be found on which to hang a definition of the concept of a “Christian Nation”?

No doubt Judeo-Christianity influenced much about our culture, from the basic rules of conduct patterned largely after the Ten Commandments to mores such as monogamy. But there is also a great deal of secular influence in those same arenas as well as a smattering of other, non-European cultures.

Furthermore, if America were a truly and essentially Christian nation, it would be marked in its socio-political profile and behaviors by unconditional love, tolerance, and a sense of the oneness of all humanity, character traits that have never, even in its finest hour, been accurate descriptors of this nation.

Don’t get me wrong. America is a great nation on many, many levels and in many, many ways. But it is decidedly not a Christian nation in any real sense of that word.

Gerald R. Ford, the only man to hold the office of President of the United States without ever running for a national office, died today at the age of 93. As a life-long Democrat, I was not a huge fan of Ford, but he won me over as he steadied the tiller on the ship of state after what, until recent years, was the worst presidency in my experience, that of Richard Nixon.

Ford was from Michigan, which is my home state, so I followed his political career a bit more closely than I might otherwise have done. I was a reporter-editor in the daily news biz for a few years during his term in the Congress. He had a rep as a straight shooter, a bland personality, a steady-handed type who would never surprise anyone, good or bad. He lived up to that reputation throughout his brief tenure in the White House.

Like most of my liberal friends, I vilified Ford for pardoning Nixon before serious charges could be levled against that snake in the grass. But the distance of history suggests that he probably made a wise choice in terms of national unity and stability and one that probably cost him a shot of his own at the White House. That was courageous, even if it turned out to be wrong.

Another quiet Christmas has come and gone. This year, for the first time in three years, we stayed home and two of our daughters and a son-in-law visited us in Monterey. We had in past years traveled to the Grass Valley area where most of our grandchildren live but this year we decided not to attempt the trip.

We did, however, use our iSight cameras — Christmas gifts we gave all the kids last year — to have a virual visit Christmas Day evening and that was quite nice.

Relaxing time is now over. Back to the buzz of daily activity.

The San Francisco 49ers gave one away today on the strength of the kinds of mistakes you expect from a football team that is young, inexperienced, banged up, and largely out of contention for the playoffs. They seemed to play the 4-10 Arizona Cardinals tough, but in reality they just couldn’t sustain anything en route to a 26-20 loss.

The game’s outcome finally hinged, as it so often does for young teams, on turnovers. Late in the game when it seemed the Niners would rally and get soemthing going, they turned the ball over on two consecutive plays, extinguishing their vanishingly thin playoff hopes. They were hurt by the four-game disciplinary suspension of Antonio Bryant, the key deep threat, for a drunken-driving offense last week. Boneheaded play by a guy who’s had a lot of off-field problems. And today they lost left tackle Jonas Jennings to a season-ending injury which made it much harder for Frank Gore to gain ground. The Cardinals lost their starting QB, Matt Leinart, to a shoulder injury late in the first half but Kurt Warner picked up the load nicely.

So despite the fact that the Seahawks lost to the Chargers as pretty much everyone expected (though in a much closer game than most thought it would be), the Niners are eliminated from the NFL West title chase. Their Wild Card hopes are pretty much dashed as well.

Now the team can begin to think about what it needs to do to improve still more next season. This team wasn’t great, or even good, but it wasn’t as bad as most of us expected it would be.

When I started this blog many years ago, I used to do regular movie and book reviews. But as time went on, I noticed that: (a) a lot of folks did that and many of them did it better than I did; and (b) there were places such as amazon.com where reviews would be more widely read by a more targeted audience. So I stopped posting book and movie reviews here with rare exceptions. Here’s one of those exceptions. I posted this review on amazon.com a few minutes ago but thought it was worth sharing here as well.

Read on if you want to know what I thought of Orson Scott Card’s book Empire.

I’ve long been an admirer of Orson Scott Card. As a writer, I admire his character development, story-telling ability and use of the language. He is a true master of his craft and I bow deeply in his direction.

That said, Empire is one of the worst books I have ever read in my life. Unlike every other Card product, it is shallow, weakly plotted and peopled with cardboard characters who neither change nor cause one to care about what happens to them. It is too bad that Card found it necessary or appropriate to stoop to writing what is clearly political propaganda thinly disguised as a poorly plotted and badly written attempt at an adventure novel.

It may be that constraints placed on him by the fact that he was charged with writing the book version of a new video game for Chair Entertainment caused this terrible result. Video games are not well-known for complex story lines involving interesting and adaptive characters. Even granting Card the benefit of that particular doubt, however, this is a book that is clearly not worthy of having such a master’s name on it.

There is far too much telling, not nearly enough showing. The “menace” is never made personal and real for most of the book. The female characters are few and very poorly drawn or understood.

I wish Card had stuck to a genre he knows and of which he is the master. This is a blemish on his record as a writer, one I suspect he will come to regret if he doesn’t already.

As the second member of a hopefully short parade of has-been Padres marching north to San Francisco to follow their relocated manager Bruce Bochy, the Giants have acquired the services of Ryan Klesko. Pardon me if I find myself picking at the lint on my T-shirt.

Klesko, 35 (do you see a continuing trend here?), is a lifetime .280 hitter who plays first base and outfield. He spent most of 2006 on IR and only got to the plate six times. He’ll apparently back up Rich Aurilia (another not-so-youngster) at first.

SF will once again have almost certainly the oldest roster in the majors. Doesn’t bode well for their season hopes. I’m in favor of a youth movement, starting with firing GM Brian Sabean.

Hewlett-Packard’s VP of Design, Sam Lucente, told a San Jose Mercury-News columnist yesterday that the consumer electronics industry will have to shift its focus in the near term. “Half of what we’re going to do in the future,” he said, “is fix what we have already made.” As columnist Michelle Quinn said in response, “One can only hope.”

Lucente’s comment came when he and Quinn were in a Best Buy store and an employee of the store approach the VP and asked, since he worked for H-P, if he could take a look at a printer with a paper jam. “Otherwise,” the employee said, “I’ll have to send it to Texas for repair.” I almost fell over laughing.

You see, recently I’ve had two H-P printers — one relatively old and one very new — go down for the count with paper jam and feed problems. I almost posted about it but I decided it was probably just a couple of isolated incidents. (I have, however, decided to avoid H-P printes in the future and stay with Epsons, which just seem to work.) But to learn that the retailer and a VP (admittedly not a printer division guy) were also unable to clear a simple paper jam? That was priceless.