mrjulz

[mrjulz]

Abstract

The hard problem. And that is the problem of consciousness – how a kilogram or so of nerve cells conjures up the seamless kaleidoscope of sensations, thoughts, memories and emotions that occupy every waking moment.  

Consciousness is apparent in living organisms when they have electricity passing between cells. Our stipulation is that it is this electric transfer that creates the whole knowing and sense of self and therefore consciousness. 

Every cell in a human has electricity flowing between cell walls and thus the harnessing of this power, or force, allows the knowledge and sense of being. This allows for any organism that harness enough electricity to know what, where and why an organism is. 

 

Only when an organism handles and controls the surging power can it know what's is relative to it. 

 

Harnessing power creates the necessary conditions for the feeling of self as it allows the organism control raw power. 

This theory is experimentally verifiable with present and future technologies.  

Thesis Statement:

Concioncienss  has direct relationship with the amount of ‘Ionic bonding’ the electrostatic force of attraction between positively and negatively charged ions.

These ions have been produced as a result of a transfer of electrons between two atoms with a large difference in electronegativities.

The smallest particles carry these charges, the electron flying around the nukeleuss.

Every single particle allows the process of this flow and ‘Continuous Universal  Conductivity’

In other words every single thing everywhere always. 

We find that no single measure fully captures the multidimensional complexity of these systems, and all of these measures have practical limitations. Our analysis suggests guidelines for the specification of alternative measures which, in combination, may improve the quantitative characterization of conscious neural systems. Given that some aspects of consciousness are likely to resist quantification altogether, we conclude that a satisfactory theory is likely to be one that combines both qualitative and quantitative elements.

Once the particles mass combined becomes bacteria there is a basic level of harnessing  12GEV. This doesn’t constitute concionesses but we need to start separating out the reality we all observe and the self aware consiononess animals can observe

They are one and not the same. (Like shrodengier)

The theory of this paper is that the level needed to observe the universe as animals and then humans is similar but gives us different glasses to view the universe through.

Could it be that by testing a Micron thick charged cell membrane could lead to harnessing the electrical energy the control and ustikizatoln to move and feel and functioning might be the genesis moment of selfh

Measuring Relevant Complexity

In this article, we critically examine three proposed measures of the relevant complexity of conscious neural systems: neural complexity, C N; information integration, Φ; and a new measure, causal density, cd (16–19). To our knowledge, these are the only extant measures that explicitly attempt to quantify the balance between integration and differentiation exhibited by a neural system. Although these and related measures might also be applicable to nonneural systems, we are concerned in the main with neural systems only. In our analysis of these measures, we investigate how well the constraints of process-orientation, causality, and computability are satisfied. We exclude from detailed consideration properties of neuronal dynamics, such as synchrony (20), for which explicit measures that can be associated with relevant complexity have not been proposed. Moreover, we do not consider several theoretical perspectives that share many common features with the dynamic core hypothesis (1) but which are not explicitly concerned with quantitative measures of complex dynamics. They include the notions of “coalitions” of neurons (21), global negatively entropic brain states (22), the “global workspace” (23), and association of perceptual events with the coalescence of a “macroscopic pool” of mesoscopic “wave packets” of neural activity (24).

Neural Complexity.

Neural complexity expresses the extent to which a system is both dynamically segregated, so that small subsets of the system tend to behave independently, and dynamically integrated, so that large subsets of the system tend to behave coherently (3, 7, 16). A practical algorithm for the computation of neural complexity is provided in ref. 16; see also Neural Complexity in Supporting Text, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site. In brief, the neural complexity, C N, of a system X composed of n elements is equal to the sum of the average mutual information across all bipartitions of the system (16). The mutual information between two subsets A and B, defined by a single bipartition, measures the uncertainty about A that is accounted for by the state of B. It is calculated as MI(A;B) = H(A) + H(B) − H(AB), where H is the informational entropy, i.e., the overall degree of statistical independence. Under Gaussian assumptions, the entropy of the system, H(X), or the entropy of any subset of the system, can be calculated analytically from the covariance matrix COV(X) relating the responses of the elements of the system.

The covariance matrix COV(X) can in turn be calculated analytically from the system’s connectivity matrix C ij(X), assuming linear system dynamics and activation of network elements by uncorrelated noise (16). Alternatively, COV(X) can be derived empirically on the basis of the recorded activity of a network over a specific time period. In this case, C N reflects the explicit exchange of signals that takes place either within the isolated system or in a behaving system during interaction with an external environment as an embedded and embodied neural network (25). The concept of neural complexity has been extended to characterize the selectional responses of neural systems to inputs in terms of “matching” complexity, which is calculated as the total neural complexity of a neural system X when the input is present, minus the intrinsic complexity of X and minus the complexity that is directly attributable to the input (26).

Precise calculation of C N requires the evaluation of mutual information across all possible bipartitions, which can become computationally prohibitive for large systems. There is, however, a tractable approximation to C N, which, instead of considering all possible bipartitions of a system, considers only those that divide the system into sets comprising one single element and all of the remaining elements (see ref. 27 and Neural Complexity in Supporting Text). A disadvantage of C N and its approximation is that they do not reflect causal interactions because C N is based on mutual information, which is a symmetric quantity.

Information Integration, Φ.

This measure has been proposed as a way to quantify the total amount of information that a conscious system can integrate (18). The theory in which Φ is proposed as the central element, the information integration theory of consciousness (18), makes the claim that consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate information and that Φ measures this capacity: “experience, that is, information integration, is a fundamental quantity, just as mass, charge, or energy are. It follows that any physical system has subjective experience to the extent that it is capable of integrating information” (18). Φ is defined in (18) as the “effective information” across the informational “weakest link” of a system, the so-called “minimum information bipartition” (see refs. 17 and 18 and Information Integration in Supporting Text). Effective information is calculated as the mutual information across a partition in the case where outputs from one subset have maximum entropy, and the minimum information bipartition is that partition of the system for which the effective information is lowest.

Inasmuch as Φ was explicitly formulated to measure consciousness as a capacity as opposed to a process, two features are critical: (i) determining Φ depends on replacing the outputs of all possible subsets of a system with uncorrelated noise, so that each set of outputs has maximum entropy (i.e., reflecting all possible activity patterns), and (ii) the effective information across the majority of partitions is significant only insofar as it helps determine which partition is the minimum information bipartition; the value of Φ depends only on the effective information across the minimum information bipartition. The focus on capacity leads to the counterintuitive prediction (18) that a brain with a high value of Φ but displaying no activity at all would be conscious.

Unlike C N, Φ reflects causal interactions because Φ is based on effective information, which is a directional version of mutual information that relies on the replacement of the outputs of different subsets of the studied system with maximum entropy signals. However, Φ cannot be measured for any nontrivial real-world system, for two reasons. First, it is infeasible to replace the outputs of arbitrary subsets of complex real neural systems with uncorrelated noise. Second, the evaluation of Φ requires the calculation of effective information across each bipartition of a system, and there is a factorial growth in the number of partitions that must be examined as the size of the network increases, i.e., as with C N, the number of partitions grows approximately as n n for networks of size n. Although the possibility of confronting this issue has been discussed (17), absent an effective approximation, the evaluation of Φ is computationally infeasible for large networks.

In contrast to neural complexity C N and causal density cd (19), Φ has been proposed as an adequate measure of the “quantity of consciousness” generated by a system, such that systems with sufficiently high values of Φ would necessarily be conscious (18). It is therefore critical for the information integration theory of consciousness that high values of Φ should not be obtained from arbitrary nonconscious systems. However, we here show analytically that, even for a trivially simple network, Φ may grow without bound as a function of network size.

Some of the greatest minds in human history have struggled to even define consciousness. The dictionary definition is:

Consciousness

 The state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself

The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings, a person's awareness or perception of something.

However there are states of consciousness like sleeping, when you are unconsciousness you are not aware of the your surrounding or responsive however you do still have cognitive ability and are able continue respiration. Therefore we must now divide the state of consciousness with the awareness or perception of something to the 

I am trying to ascertain why we are aware of ourselves self our being part of the Earth, our perosn even if all in our minds is real to us observers.

As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

 

I hesitate to ever criticise the immense suggestions by Crick and Koch that layer 5 neurons of the mammalian brain have a special role, seems difficult to apply to the avian brain, since the avian homologues have a different morphology.

They postulate that consciousness is intrinsically connected to quantum spin since the latter is the origin of quantum effects in both Bohm and Hestenes quantum formalism and a fundamental quantum process associated with the structure of space-time. That is, spin is the “mind-pixel”. The unity of mind is achieved by entanglement of the mind-pixels. Applying these ideas to the particular structures and dynamics of the brain, we theorize that human brain works as follows: through action potential modulated nuclear spin interactions and paramagnetic O2/NO driven activations, the nuclear spins inside neural membranes and proteins form various entangled quantum states some of which survive decoherence through quantum Zeno effects or in decoherence-free subspaces and then collapse contextually via irreversible and non-computable means producing consciousness and, in turn, the collective spin dynamics associated with said collapses have effects through spin chemistry on classical neural activities thus influencing the neural networks of the brain. Our proposal calls for extension of associative encoding of neural memories to the dynamical structures of neural membranes and proteins. Thus, according our theory, the nuclear spin ensembles are the “mind-screen” with nuclear spins as its pixels, the neural membranes and proteins are the mind-screen and memory matrices, and the biologically available paramagnetic species such as O2 and NO are pixel-activating agents. Together, they form the neural substrates of consciousness. We also present supporting evidence and make important predictions. We stress that our theory is experimentally verifiable with present technologies. Further, experimental realizations of intra-/inter-molecular nuclear spin coherence and entanglement, macroscopic entanglement of spin ensembles and NMR quantum computation, all in room temperatures, strongly suggest the possibility of a spin-mediated mind. #wrong 

[mrjulz]

How can society be like this?

People dying everywhere with hunger?

Famine rampantly affecting millions while the privilege just consume more and more at the cost of the planet? 

Nature is not only warning us but displays the sign of the imminent disaster 

The world is dying and burning literally and physically 

We see the oceans being poisoned whilst we burn more and more fossil fuels

Consumer capitalism is the problem. Consumption 

I've seen people living in slums in poverty on streets in desperation my whole life. 

The word genocide was created following the 2nd world war. It continues to occur and again and again. 

Why do we continue on the same path. Zigmunt Bauman wrote in his seminal work Modernity and the Holocaust that we as society are capable of evil 

Dr Martin Shaw who I studied under when I did a degree in Human Rights that there are 13 stages for genocide. We as a species continue to repeat the stages. Never again in a world I am part of. 

Dehumanizing like the Chinese are doing to the Whiugur Muslim population like the Israelis do to the Palestinians in an Apartheid state in 2023.

Absolute madness that society is and being able to understand the problems I do not want to continue with the destruction on my behalf.

The solution is simple stop don't continue with the As Is change the To Be 

I hope this happens but i wont ever stop trying to 

[mrjulz]

I don't have anything or anyone or any more than anyone else

I feel unhappy and lethargic and complacent and disillusioned and beyond disappointed in the way I let my behavior detoriate over the years

I never understood or believed in myself. I never realised how much potential and how much my abilities would enable me to do

I also have already realised I focus on others I even studied it to a degree level. I don't really care for myself at all.

I never have given a single fuck about me. That's one of the main reasons I have destroyed the most amazing thing ever. I wish I could change the past but I cannot but I can try to learn see the actions that cause me to go into schizophrenia

I have also been given the ability to change and push myself incredibly hard

I don't actually feel anything inside myself. I am a void totally devoid of feelings for myself. My whole self worth comes from others and that's why I am here. Unfortunately it has made me uniquely positioned to go from happy to sad quickly. Its always the smiling happy on the outside the ones who show what others want to see that are often the ones hurting inside the most. And that's me. I work after work I am lost nothing in the world is important to me other than my relationship and that's incredibly bad sad mad and wont make me glad.

I need to break this cycle and change. I will look at this journey that others have been on and see how I can get help. How I can build and how I can make the necessary changes and right decisions.

Without the help I need I will not be able to ever fully appreciate what I have. What I want is too much and I need to remove myself from this situation.

There might be easy way out and I refuse to even begin contemplating that. I will support others through the journey learned and document the steps I take so hopefully there will be a record and reason for the unbelievably sad pain I feel. And I hope it works

1st step samaritans https://www.samaritans.org/

2nd step https://www.projectrewild.co.uk/takeactionman

3rd step I Dont know but I will find it and go and keep this journey going

[mrjulz]

My top 8 films of all time.

What are yours and which of mine have you seen???

[mrjulz]

R.I.P. NHS

The NHS was launched by the then minister of health, Aneurin Bevan, on July 5th 1948, it  was based on three core principles:

That it meet the needs of everyone   That it be free at the point of delivery   That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay  

These three principals have guided the development of the NHS over more than sixty years and remain at its core. (Although in July 2000 a modernization program was launched which added core principles).  

So even at this point it is oblivious creating a two tier system would be in direct contravention of the NHS’s core principles.

Universal single-tier health care is not only a British institution, but also the most efficient and ethical system of health care available to us.  

A two-tier system would be costly to implement, and raises the danger of a deteriorating public health care system and an unethical gap in basic human rights between the rich and the poor.

The right to medical treatment, based on need rather than financial situation, lies at the heart of the argument. A two-tier system would mean that two people facing the same health-related emergency would have a difference in level of care, defined primarily by their ability to afford private care.

A capitalist economy ideally rewards those who generate wealth with an increase in opportunities. The question in this case is whether improved health care belongs in that category of opportunities (i.e., is health care equivalent to a new car, or the ability to travel?).  

Health care, however, is not a reward; health care is a right. And while wealthy individuals may deserve to be rewarded in many ways, they do not deserve a longer life than the rest of the population.

A proponent of the two-tier system may argue that it would have no negative effect on the quality of public health care, but rather would reduce the burden on the system. However, establishing a private system would remove one of the greatest assets of our health care system: the wealthy.

High-income earners are the group best equipped to deal with the problems they see in society, simply due to their greater pool of resources and clout within the political system.  

If there is a problem with wait times at the local hospital, a well-off individual is more likely to have the local MP’s ear (or be the local MP).  

A blue-collar worker, on the other hand, is unlikely to have the time to launch a grassroots campaign. Creating two separate health care systems would leave the public system without this vital feedback loop.

Are there other successful single-tier health care systems? Interestingly enough, Cuba provides an example.

Despite the fact that the country is often an economic and political disaster, and spends only $251 per capita on health care (compared to Canada's $2669 and America's staggering $5711), the health care system was ranked by the World Health Organization as 39th best in the world, comparable to the U.S. (37th), Australia (32nd), and the United Kingdom (18th).  

That a country in such a poor financial situation is able to pull off public health care successfully suggests that any problems with our own system may not be based in the model, but rather in the details of how we implement it

One of the major complaints of the NHS is the way treatment is provided.  What the NHS does is wait for the citizen to get ill and then make them better.  

A more efficient way of providing healthcare, like the Cuban model, is to check all citizens regularly and then if a health issue is discovered it can be prevented.  Prevention illness is more cost efficient and better than the curing illness.  

Although the NHS is a cherished institution it is a relic of a bygone age.  

The NHS does need drastic surgery to ensure more flexibility, more freedom for innovation and lees bureaucracy.

However creating a two tier system would be disastrous for the overall health of the United Kingdom, the NHS’s ability to provide healthcare.

Would you want to live in a society that treats your health as a reward not a right?  

[mrjulz]

Don't pray educate inform engage

In 2001 the jihadis were a small group of Saudi ex-pats in Afghanistan. Now jihadi groups control more than half of Syria, a third of Iraq, and large swathes of Libya. They’re fighting in Yemen, in Afghanistan (still), in Pakistan, in Somalia and in Nigeria. They’ve attacked in Paris (twice), Sousse, Sharm el-Sheikh, Beirut and other places. perhaps we could try something different from the War on Terror spiral? After all, it's not going so well. In 2001, when 9/11 happened, the jihadis were a small group of Saudi ex-pats in the mountains of Afghanistan. Now jihadi groups control more than half of Syria, a third of Iraq, and large swathes of Libya. They're fighting in Yemen, in Afghanistan (still), in Pakistan, in Somalia and in Nigeria. They've attacked in Paris (twice), Sousse, Sharm el-Sheikh, Beirut and other places just this year. If the West has been trying to stop jihadis since 9/11, it hasn't worked. But it's much worse than that. The aim of jihadis is to shock Muslims in order to – as they see it – wake them up and get them to join their struggle. Bin Laden was explicit about it. One tactic to do that is to provoke an over-reaction from the West – and the West has been willing to oblige. Invading and occupying Iraq is the most obvious example, which led directly to the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2007. But terrorist attacks also provoke increased government surveillance on all of us, the targeting of Muslim communities and social division. The jihadis' great allies are the politicians and journalists who shut down any attempt to understand this. The airwaves are full today of facile people saying that what happened in Paris is an attack on Western freedom and culture, so there's no point in thinking any more deeply about it. But on Thursday ISIS killed 43 people in Beirut with two suicide bombs – because they hate Arab culture? Pulling up the roots I expect we'll carry on acting out the cycle that has worked so successfully for the jihadis since 2001. But personally, out of a sense of self-interest, I'd prefer it if we tried something different. Like: tackling the problem of Saudi Arabia, where the jihadi ideology comes from, and which prefers ISIS and the other jihadi groups to succeed if it means Shia Muslims can't live. Like: withdrawing support from Turkey while its intelligence agencies help the Nusra Front and turn a blind eye to ISIS, all because it hates the Kurds more than the jihadis and bombs them with NATO's blessing. Like: trying to refrain from destroying countries like Iraq and Libya, both now overrun by jihadis. Like: actually attempting to end the war in Syria, which is complicated and difficult, but Britain could help by at least not blocking negotiations as it did in the Geneva I and II peace conferences in 2012 and 2014. The British, French and American governments thought for a few years that it was in their strategic interests for the Syrian war to go on, weakening Syria's ally Iran and knocking out an enemy of Israel. But it wasn't in the interests of us, the people, and certainly not of the thousands of Syrians who have died as a result. Like: helping refugees who are fleeing from horror, mostly because we should obviously help people in need but also because it's not wise to have millions of people languishing in squalid camps building up resentment. I know people's first impulse when a terrorist attack happens is to want to hit back in a direct way, to punish the people who did it and deter others. But that impulse has been tested to destruction since 2001. Jihadis bank on it, it's a central part of their strategy. I don't know why we always go along with it. It'd be better to do things that might work instead.

[mrjulz]

My multiverse suggestion

I suggest the universe we see is just one bubble among many. Such a multiverse may be a consequence of cosmic inflation, the widely accepted idea that the early universe expanded exponentially in the slimmest fraction of a second after the big bang.

[mrjulz]

Jokes are relative subjective humorous observations

An erection is like the theory of relativity. The more you think about it, the harder it gets

[mrjulz]

Higgs is 125 GEV but its only a smaller part of bigger picture. Standard model will b refined

[mrjulz]

I came from Babylon & Shangri-La.

Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, and particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. In the reality of the multiverse and especially beyond the quantum level people who are from Shangri-La are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. I was taken to Mombasa to learn to walk on Bamburi beach I moved to london and never looked back….

[mrjulz]

Dark Energy & String Theory Expalined

Dark Energy If space contains something else—not clumps of matter but an invisible energy, sort of like an invisible mist that’s uniformly spread through space—then the gravity exerted by the energy mist would be repulsive. The repulsive gravity of an invisible energy mist filling space—we now call it dark energy—would push every galaxy away from every other, driving the expansion to speed up, not slow down. There are many universes containing many different amounts of dark energy. In universes with larger amounts of dark energy, whenever matter tries to clump into galaxies, the repulsive push of the dark energy is so strong that the clump gets blown apart, thwarting galactic formation. In universes whose dark-energy value is much smaller, the repulsive push changes to an attractive pull, causing those universes to collapse back on themselves so quickly that again galaxies wouldn’t form. String theory Deep inside every fundamental particle is a tiny, vibrating, string like filament of energy. The different vibrational patterns of these tiny strings would yield different kinds of particles. To those advancing the multiverse theory, string theory’s enormous diversity of possible universes has proven vital.

[mrjulz]

An alternative

We humans sit at a crossroads in human history. Thousands of years of Imperialism have evolved into the reality of capitalism. Tribalism still exists and dominates human interaction.

The situation is dire however we now, as a species for the first time in human history, have the potential and the technology to change the course of the future for the benefit of everyone & not just the few.

We live in a society in which capitalism is the only option, here is no other way, and we have to accept it. Equal distribution of the Earth’s current resources could solve the current global poverty crisis yet the governments decide not to act.

Human beings do what is urgent and not what is necessary. We could power the world from solar panelling we have the technology to place it on every rooftop and no longer need to drill for oil and pollute. Yet the will is not there.

Australia could be self-sufficient with 20 years with a $150 billion outlay yet they decide not to act and lead the way.

We have a system that needs refining. Socialism has not got the single answers we are looking for however capitalism is not an entirely self-regulating system. The governments still set taxes justice and have a monopoly on power.

The system needs refining. The work of the proletariat is not rewarded enough in the system and the wealth of the bourgeois has developed to such an extent that the world systems need correction.

The system is in place and has the channels to act. Co-operation is what is needed. Human rights are not deniable any longer. We must act and move and make people aware of what is going on the future needs free thinking

Government’s and co- operations work together to such an extent that the true reality is we must decide what level of profits is justified.

When profits of multi-national co operations run in to % of the country’s GDP they must be levied. These vast recourses can be justifiably resourced to people without water. Billionaires and future trillionaires will still be rich. The rich have enough money and the poor have nothing.

We can prove with the use of science that Israelis and Palestinians share the same genetic material.

The genetics of Arabs and Jews have been pretty extensively researched. A study in 2000, from a team lead by Michael Hammer of University of Arizona looked at Y-chromosome haplotypes - this is the genetic material passed from father to son down the generations. What they revealed was that Arabs and Jews are essentially a single population, The Israelis know this and choose to ignore it and use science and technology to harm and make problems.

Science should solve problems not make them

Since the holocaust the world has been aware of the human species ability to kill on an industrial scale. The years since the holocaust have seen genocides occurring in Darfur, Bosnia and there is one occurring now in Palestine.

How can a Palestinian child live without access to water when another Israeli child can live 2 miles away with a swimming pool? Water  

Medicine food education basic primary human rights are denied to millions of people daily and yet we live happily in the west without it even rising in our consciousness. Our minds are numb from the conditioning of the media we live and are absorbed in.

We know we do care are we all just apathetic? Large multi-national co operations are becoming aware of cooperate consignees and it is the latest trend for companies to appear to care. But they don’t these multi nationals thrive from profits dividends and shareholders..

Illegal tax havens have become the domain of the rich and powerful. Tax avoidance by companies that make millions of pounds profits every day are fundamental problems with the system we live in today.

Many great scholars work on these and many other global problems. The structures and institutions of global governance have been rigidly set in place and are so overwhelmed with bureaucracy they no longer exist to server their purpose.  

The United Nations has a mandate more overwhelming that is human possible to comprehend. Why must we sit back and watch as genocides occur again and again, media does not represent the poverty that dominates the lives of so many.

Well no longer we must put in place the corrections that are needed to our system we must levee profits of large multi-national corporations and persons with vast wealth and re distribute these funds to those who need it most efficiently.

There are project now lead by philanthropists like the Bill & Linda Gates Foundation. These new philanthropists are able to work efficiently to secure the positive future they demand.

The goal of ending deaths from malaria is exponentially massive. Yet the Bill & Linda Gates Foundation is on course to achieve this target.

We will soon as a species seriously consider a new form of living capitalist society. This is known as agro-centric capitalism. This is where sustainable farming sits at the core of a well-run and managed capitalist society. This is another alternative to socialism that is being slowly promoted.

However like socialism it seeks to dominate the capitalists markets and this I believe is untenable. We must adjust the markets we use in the capitalist  society and adjust the personal wealth allowed to be obtained and still live in a society where you can be a capitalists and work and prosper but not at the expense of the many and with only a very small few controlling the power and resources..

We are now discovering from nature systems that are more effective than our current technology we must work with nature and not against it.

Vote Green Vote for a society that care and then more votes the greens receive the more the major political parties will consider and use their mandates. Scholars will decipher the system and adapt it but we as citizens must demand action. Take action and educate as many as possible.

Soon will be too late the time is now.

[mrjulz]

the life that I lead is not the life that I chose. The life i choose is not the life i lead

So just another day another day at the same life, still best keep plodding on keep on trying I guess.  That’s not the way to look at it or maybe it’s just one way. But I can be incredibly difficult to focus when you want to.

Try focus on anything other than a relationship when its going wrong is not easy.  Philosophical views are irrelevant and life does not want to go an unabated. Suddenly you become selfish to and incredible extent. Why per say is this? What exhilarative, galvanic, provocative, tantalizing, titillating; all absorbing and engrossing chemical reaction is occurring? Somebody either knows or is working on the answer, no doubt funded by a large multinational pharmaceutical company seeking profits and dividends.

If you think about life sex death and cannot clear your mind of issues you do need to consider what is the problem and what you think is the best solution.

  Imagine thinking about the world, globalisation the agenda the Earth has on this day. Does that help? If you look into the problems facing humanity it might get worse, if you have a conscience. Some people do not and these issues do not affect them. Many humans have conscience’s but also have apathetic media bombarding them with celebrities and culture, fashion, art, cinema and so many beautiful things the harsh reality of many people’s daily lives becomes so far away from their s they never need to think about this agenda.

Imagine knowing the whole system was wrong and not doing anything about it. Why not do something? Does this make one culpable?

If the problem doesn’t affect you why fix it but what if it does affect millions of other and has the potential to affect everyone I the future.

What are the problems and what are the solutions.  Do we just re work the system, adjust the settings or controls. Thinking about what has changed will help to realise the current global position and decide what to do. But we must do something.

The lack of current alternatives drives no reason to act. The position is clear on so many ways, human rights, climate change genocide. The industrial march has progressed so far it its irreversible and undeniable. 

[mrjulz]

Vision on TV how video media can change the world

Vision on TV creates shows to put news in context, and collate the best social change video from around the world.

Vision on TV also curates media so that it can be found and enjoyed easily by anyone with internet access who wants to. There are currently 5 main channels of rapidly updating films, which are editorially controlled to ensure a good mix of quality content.

Vision on TV is also a source of in-depth and verifiable news, with fact-checking links to reliable sources. This organisation appealed to me a great deal as communicating news and human rights information to a multitude of people is one of the best ways to make voices heard and raise agendas of issues not represented in main stream media.

The organisation Vision on TV operates in a market place that is flourishing. There are many companies that offer similar services. It is therefore important that Vision on TV offers a unique service to make their organisation different from other social media organisations.

Social media can be defined as a network of web-based and mobile technologies that are used to turn communication into interactive discourse.  Social media has blossomed during the early expansion years if the internet.

Many major broadcasters and mainstream news based organisations have taken to adopting user generated content for their broadcasting channels. The role of new media is growing and there are many different organisations focusing on campaigns and issues on Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content

The organisation Vision on TV has clearly stated aims on its website to be the best source for the widest possible distribution of video for social change. This is a bold and colossal goal. This would therefore put Vision on TV in direct competition with other media sharing organisations for example Transmission which is a network of citizen journalists which has the objective to make independent online video distribution This also puts Vision on TV in the same arena as YouTube which is by some way the largest video-sharing website available, however YouTube does not focus specifically on human rights issues.

Although there is strong competition in the market of citizen journalism as well as video distribution for social change, this is a booming area, in the modern digital age, and has the potential to change political option or even change the world.

The technology that allows organisations like Vision on TV to operate did not exist 20 years ago. Not only did the technology not exist 20 years ago the technology is now so prolific the majority of people In the developed world now have the ability to record film on their mobile cell phones. This is a new society and these technologies have the potential to allow anyone anywhere to voice their opinion on any issue that they feel passionately about or record violations of human rights as and when they occur.

Vision on TV could be described as a content community concerned with media for social change. They differ from social networking sites like for example Facebook or collaborative projects like for example .Wikipedia, or even  blogs and micro blogging websites like Twitter. However Vision on TV should and does utilise these other channels involved in social media.

Vision on TV does have a Facebook page that has information about current campaigns that Vision on TV supports and this is a fantastic resource for the company. Many of the people who will be involved in grassroots or citizen journalism will have access to Facebook and many people could find out about Vision on TV for the first time on Facebook. The new digital generation, people under 30 years old, go to Facebook for news media and much more. It is therefore imperative that Vision on TV utilises this free resource correctly.

[mrjulz]

Roger and Me, 1989 Dir. Michael Moore

Roger and Me, 1989 Dir. Michael Moore

Roger and Me, 1989 Dir. Michael Moore 

ROGER AND ME is a feature-length documentary film chronicling the efforts of the world's largest corporation, General Motors, as it turns its hometown of Flint, Michigan, into a ghost town.

This movie about the effect of auto plant closures in Flint, Mich., the birthplace of General Motors.

Cover for Roger and Me, 1989 Dir. Michael Moore 

In late 1986, General Motors, under its then president Roger Smith, shut down 11 auto plants, which brought to about 30,000 the total number of jobs eliminated in Flint since 1974.

Moore, who lives in Flint, began filming in early 1988; originally he wanted Smith to accompany him for a day to survey the havoc wreaked by GM's policies in his hometown.

Snubbed in a series of attempts to reach Smith, Moore turns the quest into loopy skulduggery. Moore poses as a stockholder at the annual GM shareholders meeting and has his microphone cut off moments before posing a question to the GM president

It's apparent early on that Moore isn't going to be granted entry into Smith's inner sanctum, and Moore milks the rejection -- makes it politically symbolic.

 Dressed in his trademark Bedraggled style Moore in his standard working-class uniform of down jacket and cap, clearly contrast to Smith's sleek yachting-club gentility style however  Moore wants us to recognize  this juxtaposition.

This may be Moore's first movie, although he is very well known now, however even by this stage of his life Moore had an extensive left-wing political activist background.

In 1976, he founded the well-regarded alternative newspaper Flint Voice; appeared as a commentator on National Public Radio, and was briefly the editor of Mother Jones magazine in 1986.

  Michael Moore in his trademark baseball cap.

Meanwhile, some resourceful victims fight back. A woman advertises "Bunnies as Pets or Rabbits as Meat."

Jobless auto workers hire themselves out as living statues who stand around in costume at a Great Gatsby charity benefit.

Many aspects of the film were alarming and disturbing to me. Perhaps the most shocking part of the film to me was the construction of a new jail in the area where the highest redundancies had occurred.

Even during this hard time for General Motors the United States were funding large scale space project through NASA and had huge resources to draw upon. The United States in the 1980’s spent trillions of dollars on The Strategic Defense Initiative and had the best funded military on earth yet they could not afford to provide work for those who wanted to and needed to work.

The profits of General Motors were huge during the 1980’s and while they moved their production to overseas plants where labour costs were much lower they missed out on considering the consequences and the plight of the workers who they laid off.

It is perhaps fair to suggest the top managers at General Motors knew what the consequences of the redundancies would be but they were too interested in profits.

The most repulsive part of the film for me was when some local socialites hold a charity ball in the jail the night before it opens for business. They have a lot of fun wearing riot helmets and banging each other over the head with police batons.

This one image will stay with me for a long time as it shows the direct lack of respect many American socialites have for their fellow man.

Roger & Me brilliantly delivers a message about corporate America and the ways in which profits really are more important to big American corporations than the lives of their workers.

The movie is the first by Moore who goes on to make many more similar style documentary films about similar issues. However during the current economic problems the West are experiencing the lessons from Roger & Me are as valid today as ever.

[mrjulz]

Blue director Derek Jarman,

Blue Derek Jarman

Blue is the twelfth and final feature film by director Derek Jarman, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications in February 1994.

The director Derek Jarman was suffering himself from AIDS related complications while shooting this film and the director and writer Derek Jarman had already become partially blind at the time of the film's release.

The film was Derek Jarman’s last as a film maker and perhaps his most poignant as he himself was suffering from AIDS.

Derek Jarman

The film and consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack where Jarman and some of his favourite actors' narration describes his life and vision.

The film is like no other film I have ever seen. The screen is continuously filled with luminous blue 35mm glow, unchanging, calming, irritating, numbing. This gives an uneasy and sometimes quite unpleasant feel to the movie. However it does heighten the strength of the audio and perhaps focuses the attention of the audience on the audio.

 The audio of the film consists of a soundtrack strenuously collaged out of snippets of sound and music and Jarman's deliberations on his encroaching blindness and approaching death. The way Jarman speaks of his slower and equally inevitable demise is mind-boggling.

Although when this film was released many critics and those who saw it criticised it has now become widely accepted as a classic.

It momentously contrasts with another AIDS related film that was released the same year starring Tom Hanks, Philadelphia.

Both these films attempt to convey the terror and problems of the AIDS issue in the 1990’s, however the Hollywood film , Philadelphia, takes a very soft cosy approach whereas Jarman decides to show the full brutal aspects of the AIDS disease.

I full up hold Jarman's decision to use a blue screen and brutal audio in this film in order to convey how gloomy life would have been like for those suffering from AIDS in the 1990’s. I personally believe there is not sufficient hyperbole in the English vocabulary to convey the suffering that Jarman and other AIDS sufferers were feeling and the use of the blue screen goes some way to convey these atrocious sentiments.

The director Jarman himself an AIDS patient offers his insights on life, love, disease, the meaning of art, and the symbology of the colour blue.

This was perhaps the most unpleasant film to watch and absorb. Even after watching it 3 times I still am unable to comprehend the whole film.

I cannot perceive the horrid and repulsive feelings that many AIDS sufferers must have gone through. The film does go some way to developing my understanding of the AIDS issue in the context of the 1990’s, when there was not much medical help or sense of a future cure.

The AIDS disease did, and to some extent still does, have a stigma attached with it. Many miss understand the disease and how it is transmitted and what the consequences are.

Although the stigma attached to AIDS may have reduced the issue is still very prevalent on a global scale.

The amount of resources still being ploughed into AIDS especially in sub Saharan Africa perhaps show how this film is as relevant today as it ever was and perhaps the lives of people like Derek Jarman can still teach many lessons that are relevant today.

As the film cover says there is nothing in cinema history to match this.

[mrjulz]

The Lie Machine 1980's miners’ strike campaign.

The Lie Machine

This short film was shot and set in the 1980's during the miners’ strike campaign. It reflects the public opinion and the opinion of many of the people involved in the miners’ campaign.

The miners’ strike is now seen with the benefit of hindsight as the major industrial action that affected the British coal industry.

It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trade union movement. 

The film the Lie Machine reflects upon the part played by the press and TV in the miners’ strike of 1984-1985. It often shows how the media did not reflect the attitudes held by the miners and often completely disregarded their sentiments.

The film focuses on a few particular aspects of the strike and includes interviews with miners and miner’s families in a local pub. During this interview the works and miners wives and families express distain at the way Fleet Street has attacked the workers.

The miners also express their issues in an eloquent way about the bullyboy tactics of the riot police.

The big question that arose from this film for me was if the mainstream media can or will ever report a big strike in a fair manner?

The anger and bitterness that is apparent from the picketer’s and the miner’s families towards the Tory government is immense. There is no faith or any sense that the miners will be treated fairly by the government or authorities by the actual miners themselves.

The picketers claim their views and problems are not represented at all by the media and also claim the media has targeted Arthur Scargill and made him a scapegoat and vilified him in the media.

   Arthur Scargill as portrayed in the Sun as a Nazi, with obvious comparisons to Hitler. (This image was never published)

The British police are portrayed in the film as deliberately provoking the picketers  as is also claimed by the picketers. This although un founded does seem to be the case. However the film is considerably one sided and is only representing the case from the miners and picketers side.

This is the seminal image from the miners’ strike. It perhaps proves the miner’s claims of bullyboy tactics from the police. 

I would conclude from watching the film that perhaps the police were deliberately provoking the picketers into negative responses. This might have been from instructions from Whitehall and the top levels of the UK government as the negative images of miners fighting with police would only help the governments’ cause.

As I was only a small child when these events took place I do not have a direct relationship with them. I do however having grown up in the UK have an idea of what occurred and of their significance in the UK psyche.

I have learned a lot from this film and although it is biased towards the aspects of the strike the miners would want to focus on it does perhaps show a glimpse into what life was like for ordinary workers during the 1980’s and it is a great insight into how much life has changed in the short time since this film was shot.

The lack of health and safety of the police force is unerring and the amount life has changed in the UK since this film was shot is unbelievable. The UK no longer has a mining industry or any production industry of any kind.

We now in the UK do not produce anything of any significance and mostly operate in the tertiary sector or service industry. This partisan film perhaps captures the end an era for the UK where due to the Conservative government’s actions life in the UK was changed forever.