Using this $10 toy now might save your life WHEN coronavirus hits you

And yes, you should expect the virus to hit you. Maybe I will explain why below, but that’s the bottom line. But most of the people who die are people who die because of weak lungs. Above all, people like me over 70 need to remember that their lungs (like other parts of their body) tend to grow weaker than they used to be, UNLESS they are exercised regularly.

No, I don’t sell this little device, called an incentive spirometer. I learned about it in the hospital a few years ago, when I had a (successful) operation for cancer, and they told me to use it five times a day, breathing in ten times each time. They said it prevents colds, and they didn’t want more colds in the hospital. I decided I didn’t want extra colds at home either, so I did some web searches from pubmed to the market. I was really delighted to learn that this is also very useful as a BREATHING exercise, better than what world class yoga can do on its own; after all, why not be ultra mindful when breathing in and focusing on pushing up the numbers? In short, I am a satisfied customer, and can’t help hoping that something like this might save Pope Francis right now if it’s not too early and not too late for him.

Satisfied customer – hospitals have tons of these, thrown away all the time, costing them maybe $100 each and costing $10 to make. (What did Sanders say?) But I bought this on Amazon, being sure it reads as high as 4000 cc (what you need if you are not near death even before the virus hits you), is cheap enough, and has the little faces on the right to let you do this right. I did get up to 4000 before when I used it regularly for awhile, but after I stopped, a few years later, I am back down to 2500. I will pump it up again every day, maybe once or three times, until the world is free of coronavirus.

As to why – I started watching CNN and CNN International a lot, in addition to France24, when they impeached Trump, and reported details on the Coronavirus. Years ago, I remember when Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN recommended using the “Happy Birthday” song to time exactly 15 seconds when washing my hands, twice, to meet hospital standards. After Luda told me to grind out coffee for 45 seconds, I sing “Happy Birthday, Dr. Gupta” to myself when I grind the copy, the Dr. Patel (who sold us this house), then Gupta again. They and France24 have gotten pretty deep into what is happening with this coming pandemic. The medical experts have lots of OTHER important advice. (For example, I put my wallet in a drawer a few feet away from the sink, and remember to do that handwashing whenever I put back my wallet.) By avoiding dangerous places, I might postpone getting this until it evolves to lower lethality or I get a vaccination, but that’s not so clear as yet.

I still remember the day (another blog post) when trump really wanted to fulfill a weird kind of duty so many devotees of the Great Ostrich in the sky believe in: hold events to calm the public down as much as possible, regardless of what real objective truth might call for, and feed them words like strong opiates. It reminds me of a VERY truthful Republican staffer I worked with who quoted Upton Sinclair, “There is nothing so simple and obvious that people won’t fail to see and understand it when they are paid to be blind.” Maybe he expected that at first, but docs told him that old guys in Congress care about staying alive and actually check into reality when THEIR lives are on the line here and now. That’s why they compromised, and let us publics get access to real information (if we open our eyes). It’s a huge mass of information by now).

I do wonder whether this experience is reminding Trump yet of the first curse of Moses. But news from South Korea reminds me of a sci fi I am reading now, The Name of the Wind, where I don’t yet know what happened to a certain deserving wagon train which deserved better. Strange world we live in. When Bernie calls for a revolution, I think of an ancient black and white TV in my sister’s room in 1963, where “revolution” menat turning the dial to change the channel. Could we please change the channel from Wizard of Oz to Wonder Woman 2? (At least to the trailer, which really raised a real positive chill up my spine, a lot like a kundalini experience.)

By the way, the photo is a view of our kitchen and of this very text, from kneeling where I usually sit in a boardroom chair inherited from my father.

======================
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Ops, that pesky old "Voice of Loki" responded after that post. It told what I think of as a typical Russian style joke: "Why will Trump's messages of reassurance actually improve public health in the US? Answer: by natural selection, reducing the ostrich population." No, not so. Mainly it will kill OLDER ostriches, beyond the age of normal reproduction. Still, there might be some benefit in putting some of the uncontrolled old guys out of operation.

Will Presidency 2020 become a Rerun of the Wizard of Oz?

Will Presidency 2020 become a Rerun of the Wizard of Oz?

When Trump accused Bloomberg of being a Munchkin… I became nervous.

Oh, no, not another impossible weird rerun! (And thank God he doesn’t really know about the real Munchen.)

Serious meditation tells me we really should resist going there… but my sense of humor is going out of control.

After all, I got closer to reenacting Dr. Strange in Nepal a couple of years ago than I thought possible, so why not yet another?

So now… what invokes the spirit of Loki… Bloomberg, looking like a tin woodman (not a munchkin) telling us that he has a heart after all…

a week after Elizabeth Warren (the wicked witch of the East?) gets involved in a house dropping on those munchkins… and Biden acts more and more like the scarecrow without a brain… and Sanders has such strong vibes of the stuffed lion… is Buttigig like Toto? (or like the assistant of the patent medicine salesman?)… and Trump himself is so much like the Wizard of Oz, that guy making big noises from  behind a curtain … who really would love to send Dorothy (aka Klobuchar) back to Iowa….

Would Pelosi be the kindly witch who helps Dorothy?

BUT NO. I do not WANT Dorothy to be sent back to Kansas this time.

I am so happy that Luda showed me the trailer to Wonder Woman 2. The trailer itself was enough to send a shiver up my spine, a very positive kind of shiver. I have no idea how it works out in the end, but please folks, let’ re-enact that one instead. Even if Wonder Woman is a wimp compared to Luda’s people (and more like the Romanoff type character also a wimp), she sure beats going back to Kansas. And we don’t need more tornadoes, really. We need the spirit of truth, and I am so happy that the trailer does the justice which it calls for.

Czars for SARS: not a true story but…

Czars for SARS: not a true story but…

Yesterday afternoon, after a Guinness but before Trump’s speech, the following image came to my mind even as I watched CNN. This is **NOT** what Quakers would view as “a message from God.’ They would say it is a classic example of why we need DISCERNMENT, the trained skill to give different levels of attention to different messages which may come to mind. Jungians often talk about the “Loki” archetype (aka the Trickster or Hahnuman) which plays a useful role as PART of our noosphere, and deserves a voice and a certain kind of respect, but should be treated as recounting the truth.

So here is the story I saw, before Trump’s speech. D for Doc, T for Trump.

D:”Mr. Trump, we need for you to appoint a Car and give us lots more money, to fight coronavirus. The public and even the Congress are frantic, the financial folks are frantic so you must do it. By the way, I would look good in a toga.”

T: “Czar? Czar? Are you crazy? I am already in enough trouble with people thinking I am too close to the Russians.”

D: “But we HAVE to have a czar. No one will believe anyone can do anything without a CZAR.”

T: “Tell that to Putin. What would HE say if I called myself a czar?”

D: “I didn’t say it should be YOU. Of course it should not be you. It should be a prominent member of the medical profession, you know, like me.”

T:”Are you crazy? Did Nancy or Chuck tell you to insult me this way? **I* am the chief law enforcemeng agent of this country, and if anyone gets to be czar, it would have to be me. It has to be the White House; get real.”

D:”I’m sorry to say this sir, but we have heard from leaders of both parties in Congress, and none of them would be willing to put their own lives in your hands that way. They look at what you have been saying, on this and other issues. They know what you think about science, and this is a case where we need science. Theysimply wouldn’t accept that.”

T: “Mumble, grumbles curses and spite. But OK. You can have Pence, no less than that, and you get money only if you play ball 100% with that. White House fully in control. And yes you can have your money.”

T to Melania: “Don’t worry. Of course I hatre their stupid request formore money than they know to handle. But don’t worry. I can use that money to build a wall. After all, the money can be used as part of the quarantine budget. Quarantine is a big part of this. Now how to we quarantine Nancy? We do have information about her neighborhood we will begin to let out and spin..”

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Minor clarification for those who might not know: the toga reflects how "Czar" or "Tsar" are Romanized versions of the Russian word, which is itself a reflection of Russia's view of itself as "the Third Rome". It basically is their word for Caesar. Just the other day, in the car we discussed :"WHICH Caesar is Trump reflecting? Augustus or Nero or Trajan?"
Of course, Julius is the one who rode a white horse, got rid of democracy, and exploited support from plutocrats who made the mistake of thinking he represented their values. But I often think of a place we visited in Spain, Caesarea, where Augustus used a maor stadium to glorify his version of "Let's make Rome great again" and even provided an outlet for his daughter. I wondered whether Ivanka has ever visited that place, full of such powerful ancient memories. And of course, Augustus is the one who ordained the hiring of the guy who ordered the execution of Jesus Christ; I appreciated the movie Master and Margarita (actually, many episodes with English subtitles) much better on my second watch of it a few weeks ago. Still, it was Trajan who expanded the borders and ruined the economy, and the gay Emperor Hadrian who actually built the famous wall. 

Neural math foundations: Telos, Purpose, Utility and Identity

There are certain points which apply not only to spiritual or noosphere intelligence, but also to plain old mundane brains and go true artificial intelligence ("AGI"). The image below is the most important slide I used at NSF to illustrate the"COPN" topic, which developed the kind of general mathematics needed to understand or create intelligent systems (minds) on ANY of these three hardware platforms. The core of this is the stream we called "optimization," which means that the system tries to learn how to maximize the expected value of "U", a kind of hard wired cardinal utility function. The  cardinal utility function U is just a modern mathematical expression or distillation of Aristotle's ancient concept of TELOS or purpose.  Long before I designed this slide, some neural network researchers would say "The brain is not just any old,random dynamical system or IT design. It is an INTENTIONAL system, a very important special type of system. It is a system which has INTENTIONS... [i.e. purpose, goals, some metric of value]".. There is a long history behind this idea. But instead of reviewing that history, let me just cite a paper which includes a review AND gives empirical evidence that this kind of model fits actual real-time brain data better than the ancient more passive types of brain model assumed in some parts of computational neuroscience: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00097/full   Bernie Baars recently reminded us that people often need to be reminded of important fundamental things which "they already know but still need to remember and connect" when they take on new tasks, like the PSI or AGI tasks we have discussed here, and more. In fact, whenever we take on ANY challenge where there is some goal, some meaning or purpose in the end, it is important to be clear about the concept of purpose or value in ANY mind including our own. This leads directly into some key issues discussed in https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41470-019-00038-z , a paper in a special issue which Stan Klein organized last year, for which I again thank him. Before I reached age 15, I often asked myself the central questions of "ethics" (as defined by classic philosophers): "What SHOULD I do? What should I pursue as the true meaning or purpose of everything I do (telos)?" Having read  both Aristotle's Nichomachean ethics and Von Neumann's Theory of Games (and yes, Asimov's Foundation trilogy), I might have said: "I see that sanity or rationality calls for me to maximize the expected future value of a utility function U, BUT WHAT SHOULD U BE? What should I be trying to accomplish?" For years (age 12 to 15), I tried to reason about that question, and thought I was making progress, but I still remember a letter I received from Bertrand Russell (still in my files) saying "No, it cannot be done. It is simply  not possible to deduce a proposition containing the word 'should' unless it is already there in the axioms which you assume." That is what led me at age 15 to decide I should REPHRASE the question, to make it into one with operational meaning but general enough that I could still put my heart and soul into it. Not "What SHOULD I do?" but "What WOULD I (try to) do 'IF I WERE WISE'... if I learned and thought enough to reach a U, a formulation of purpose, which would SATISFY ME, my entire mind, without exclusions and such. A KEY POINT WHICH NONE OF SHOULD EVER FORGET OR NEGLECT: It becomes operational ONLY after we have enough understanding of the word "I" in this question.  This would not really be news either to Shakespeare or to Confucius, who called on us to be "true to ourselves" which requires paying high level conscious attention to the question "who am I?" What IS this "I", concretely? Obviously, neuroscience and biology in general have a lot to say about this... not only for mundane brains but also for noospheres. The system to define "U" is also a crucial issue in AGI policy; failure to understand and remember this basic fact about "intentional systems" could easily lead go total catastrophes as AGI systems start to manage our planet, designed and regulated by people who do not understand. My concept of basic first-order mundane sanity or sapience is that we must learn to be explicit with ourselves about what our most basic values U really are, connecting our choice to the full range on first person and scientific information available to us, including what can be learned via our "mirror neurons" (second person information). In PSI education, especially (e.g. for second order sanity, which implies awareness of self as mundane body and soul BOTH together), it is crucial to learn NOT to take this little word "I" for granted. Just two days ago, I saw a  video of a very proud teacher of Vedas in the US, about as enlightened as certain pig-headed Catholic priests my family once told stories about. (There is great diversity both in Catholic priests and in teachers of Vedas.) So proud, yet so utterly imprisoned in the gleeful imaginary world of four white walls surrounding him, full of empty theories unconnected to the messy, confusing realm of real experience. But back when I was reading the Upanishads (partly the famous anthology of Hume) at 15 in Princeton, what struck me most was the distinction it made between self and Self, the little personal I and the larger I defined by considering the viewpoint which would see through ALL the eyes of ALL the conscious humans everywhere. Why not define U as the total conscious happiness across the entire larger Self? That is how I thought of it before I heard from Bertrand Russell. Notice that this was a kind of abstract or mathematical concept; at that age, I did  not even believe in soul or noosphere. And yes, there was an attractive young woman who along with Bertrand Russell helped  bring me more in connection to earth. Yet the distinction between self and Self is important, and I did not stop learning at age 15. Many yogins and such imagine that they know what "I" means, who unconsciously assume that "I" is "I" is "I", and ghat the self which engages in astral travel is the same I which wakes up in the morning or has dinner. That tacit assumption is good enough for some purposes, but for PSI it basically does not work. It does not fit reality well enough to provide a sane basis for action and purpose.  This is so fundamental that it calls out for a very long elaboration, connecting it to all aspects of life. But since this is already long for an email post, let me just cut it short. I already talked about the relation between "the beast and the angel" (citing Dante), and the alchymical marriage. I find that the "I" of real PSI connection (typically 3AM until I get out of bed, but also often in special places like the sanzan shrines I showed in photos linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm) is quite different from the "I" of the evening after some Irish cream, and that I need to be conscious of that rhythm both to plan my activities effectively and to prepare for the difficult changes coming to all of us. Like having to rely more on Innernet instead of Internet. And yes, taking more and more conscious advantage of the times when our mind is at a higher level. =========================== =================================== After I posted this, a comment and reply: On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 6:21 PM Bernard Baars <baarsbj@gmail.com> wrote: The massive appearance of militant identity confusions also signal bad omens. Ooops! Thank you , Bernie, for pointing out a major hole in my brief history, leaving out how today's culture would address a question like "Who am I? And so what utility function U would it be sane or rational for me to maximize? What is my purpose?" Back when I was a teenager (and no, Bernie, I have not failed to grow up a bit), I lived in a very special culture of freedom, where it was ASSUMED that conscious rational people have an active, living, conscious sense of free will. And so when I asked myself "what would **I** do if I were wise?", I was naturally thinking of myself as a human being. At that time, I thought of myself as a simple mundane human being, with no dark matter or extramundane soul included. Yes, there were bosses back then and corporations, but we thought of them as ENVIRONMENTS in which people would act, and respect what their environment would do but still CHOOSE. I became deeply interested in the MOTIVATION side of the human brain, the evolutionary mechanisms which gave rise to the behavior of U calculating organs in the brain like hypothalamus and epithalamus.  But nowadays... even as some of us worry about efforts to make  robots and computers more independent, more competent in decision making, and more "human," we also face equally scary efforts to "make humans into artificial robots," to make humans more robotic, more controlled, more obedient, and less consciously aware of themselves as free creatures (even when wearing chains) responsible for ALL of their actions and choices from the level of twitching to the level of anything they do with any of their muscles. Just as our understanding of how the brain works is MUCH deeper when we make full use of 20KHz deep brain data, you are right that we could get better understanding of the Spengler type QUESTIONS by making use of stuff like real time social network type data not only on the defense mechanisms studied by Vaillant, but also on changes in how people approach "who am I?" and other aspects reflective of the state of the noosphere and mundane cultures (including evidence of what Spengler called "weltaunschaung").  This aspect of "consciousness" is extremely important, but once again I need to avoid writing down the MANY things which come to mind... and thank those patient enough to get this far! ====================== ================ Ok, Deepak Chopra got this far. So here is one sgtep deeper: Because Deepak is playing an important role in the noosphere, and does his best to take the difficult moral highground, I was happy to watch his video from start to finish. Please forgive if I try to be slow and careful in reply... and Deepak, please forgive me if I am even so still not slow and careful ENOUGH. It is a tricky subject. One of the first main questions he addresses in the video is "Where causes people to feel so much suffering on earth?" He suggests a possible response which many Buddhists, Hindus and Western mystics have used: "the suffering is just an illusion.\It is not real." One of the first times I encountered that response, in an elaborate and thoughtful discussion, was in discussions with Joel Whitten, author of https://www.amazon.com/Life-Between-Joel-Whitten/dp/0446347620/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Joel+Life+between+life and of several deeper and more scientific things.. Instead of simply suggesting people ignore their pain (e.g. negative primary reinforcement signals from epithalamus and hypothalamus, or qi of the same flavor and outcome, or secondary reinforcement signals of either or both). He might have said "This life is just a school. All that matters i what we learn from it. The pain is as unreal as the pain of losing a piece in a game of chess (with no side bets)." (I THINK I have his final unpublished book somewhere in my electronic files, but somehow missed it when last I looked for it, except for the synposis.)  But that does not REALLY mean that our choices, plans and strategies do not matter at all!! Even more: if there is some probability p that they don't matter, and 1-p that they do, the rational procedure is to act on the assumption that they do. It just makes the problem trickier. I asked Joel long ago: "If life is just a school, what is the curriculum? How do we know when we are just wasting time (his book gives examples not unlike things we have seen in some of the lists)? What subjects do we really need to learn?" He said: "I have actually done (PSI) research on that. My new book gets deeper and more explicit on that, but even my earlier pop stuff gives clues, despite being written for a more general audience."  I suppose it would belong on a (large) annotated reading and resource list for this list! This issue also has some relation to the debate between Zen and Tibetan Buddhism in Tricycle Magazine a few years ago, which mentioned on the other list. I apologize that I cannot give you the citation and link right now, but it should not be TOO hard to find. There was a grand debate between two leading teachers of Buddhbism in the US, leaders of each school here. It ended with one or two word summaries. The Tibetan said "mindfulness." The Zen said "No mind." I am 100% aligned with the former over the latter. ACTUAL Zen and TIbetan Buddhists hold different views, or phrasings which change the  basic meanings,  but I will never forget witnessing with my own eyes (both inner and outer together then) an old Zen style monk in Korea in such great weird pain, exactly like the dying musician in the underworld in the cartoon Coco (but with a weird rictus of a pseudosmile, a grimace like that described in Voyage to Arcturus by Lindsay, another important book). the great void is not the same as true nothingness, and detachment with mindfulness is not the same as annihilation of all the selves. All the pain is real. And all calls for facing up to reality, to consciousness. Now if only the folks making climate policy could truly understand that...  In the end, we need to be vigilant against the defense mechanism called "defense" in Vaillant's work./ Those of us on a real path, really strengthening brain and soul, need to be ever MORE vigilant of the twin delusions of helplessness and of gradeur, the scylla and charybdis of personal development.  ReplyReply allForward

Meditation on the present world situation and historical tendencies

There are times when I work hard to try to frame my thoughts in a way which is socially acceptable, which won't seem totally crazy to folks who simply

don't have the same experience base or reference representations I do. But current world events drive me to wonder what I really make of them, struggling to find an orderly way to think about the challenges to humanity and to our souls, taking advantage of ANY clues.

The press and the journals are already overflowing with evaluations of the future and of the present situation, but almost all of them have the old problem of "not seeing the forests for the trees." Just a few years ago, two major futures organizations asked me to give a few slides on the BIG picture, the larger historical trends and choices, relevant to the IT industry but also to the rest of us:

http://www.werbos.com/IT_big_picture.pdf 

Crudely, I ASSUMED that the dynamics we are living with now are a COMBINATION of the same KIND of historical dynamics which folks like Hegel, Marx, Spengler and Weber tried to make sense of -- ultimately based on flows of money and of biological selection (DNA) -- changed by one or two massive phase transitions in the dynamics, one due to IT technology and one (I hope) due to a higher level of consciousness in our noosphere. As in my previous post, I assume (90%?) that we humans are all a symbiosis of body and "soul," where "soul" is our personal part of the noosphere, the great living organism grounded in dark matter spanning life from worms beneath our feet all the way to the sun (the greatest center of energy in our solar system). That's way different from what most people assume; see werbos.com/religions.htm for 2019 papers explaining what brought me to this conclusion.

1. Spengler

But hey, Spengler is still there, and lots of folks who know about Spengler are becoming unnerved by developments all over the world which fit his model of cultures and civilizations growing, losing their cultural vitality, becoming hollowed out militarized corrupt systems, and then falling to pieces, NEVER TO RETURN EXCEPT AS PEOPLE OUTSIDE the old core start a new regime which conquers the old one. 

That previous paragraph cries out for LOTS of explanation and citation. I hope someone will be interested enough to get me do more of that. Just a few quick thoughts:

1.1.  I have been saddened by folks in the US who thought they follow the lessons of history, by trying to reinvent the conquests of Trajan. But I have seen what PERMANENT damage Trajan did to the social structure of his homeland (still frozen in many ways to this day!!), how he was replaced by the gay emperor Hadrian (who could be like  Buttigig to Trump?) who actually built a wall, restored more market economics, but couldn't help a massive shift of power far to the east due to the damage Trajan etc did to the west. . 

1.2. At scholar.google.com, you can see thousands of citations to my Harvard PhD thesis, which included the first explicit statement, proof and application of backpropagation, which underlies "the new AI" and the ongoing revolution in the software/algorithm/architecture side of the IT technology. The real math tells a story about the future radically different from what endless pseudoexperts tell policy makers and historians these days. (Just this morning Wired magazine has a cover story which is ever so strong and impressive, and Widrow Wilson has a coming policy briefing... all very credible if you don't know what's REALLY going on. My youtube video on AGI summarizes the tip of the real iceberg.) But when I defended "the mathematics of intelligence" as my PhD topic  in 1972, I ALSO defended the mathematics of selection  and economic forces and motivation as drivers of history as a topic; Harvard faculty much preferred that topic, which I had lots to say about already. I chose to postpone that because in many ways intelligence comes first.

1.3. This is a global situation, not just US. The EU, US, China and India all fit the model, though of course the details are complicated. Were it not for World War II, the powerful Tokyo Dynasty would be ruling a resurgent China, but China is now on a path more like that which India has followed, and IT is mainly just reinforcing the kinds of patterns Spengler described, ever stronger in both countries.

======

About ten days ago, I was ever more worried about where we might find real hope of avoiding the obvious path of decline, corruption, and conflicts which, becoming nuclear, would point towards human extinction well before climate change could kill us. So MANY zingers! What jarred me most was when House Republicans refused to comply with Intelligence Committee efforts to prevent total disintegration of coming elections due to cybersecurity problems... problems which also threaten the viability of power grids and the global money system. Who is behind all the really massive screwups in so many sectors, getting in the way of any hope of sustainable AI and climate, among other things? Where is noosphere intelligence when we need it?

Most depressing to me was to see how more fundamental cybersecurity is an obvious necessity (at least if humans will still exist) and yet strange things happen to block it, things which would strain any ordinary types of conspiracy theory. Admittedly, one of the folks named in the well-researched book Dark Money has at times said that we do not need humans any more and has financed groups like Bannon (gently tweaking and using some of Sean's friends, just as KGB once funded some Black Panthers), but the barriers to things like the technology of unbreakable operating systems needed here and now go beyond what that suggests.

I am reminded that the noosphere itself DOES contain lots of crazy commitments which, as I see it, have real destructive "PSI" impacts beyond what mundane explanations can cope with. 

Ten days ago or so, , at Quaker meeting, I thought of what Yeshua and Varadan both said -- in effect, "Don't just limit it to OUR noosphere. Try to tune into the Creator." As I explained in my previous post, I am more comfortable with Jesus's word "Father" than Creator, but I decided to try. Why not?

So I meditated on something like: "OK, I respect your existence. Please forgive my intrusion, but I am really worried that we humans really might all die, and most of noosphere with us. All of this really dangerous craziness, properly paralyzing to those of us on your side... who see how little we know about which way is up. Could you please give us a clue?"

What came back (somewhat simplified of course) was an appropriate message for the "afterthoughts" time at our local Meeting: "The thing is, this noosphere that you are part of is a teenager. you, Paul, know what it means to be father of a teenager. Yes, the teenager has wild and pre-sane pre-sapient emotional sturm and drang which can in fact be fatal in some cases. But as a father of a teenager what do you do? You DON'T just drug the kid into fuzzy bliss which blocks learning, maturity and intelligence. The teenager MUST feel the whole spectrum of surn and drang, and must struggle not to avoid it or repress it, but rather to experience and feel it with MORE intensity and MORE awareness of all the difficult choices and inner conflicts. [Of course, arguments between folks like us and folks like Sarfatti or Sean or Bannon or Sanders are all partly INTERNAL conflicts in the noosphere, though some of Bannon's folks are more like cancer cells joyfully devouring the body they inhabit.] I can give clues, but it is YOUR duty -- YOU collectively -- to figure it our yourselves, to learn to grow and understand at a higher level."

So maybe one urgent thing is to dispel our inner  misunderstandings about what threatens our lives immediately and what doesn't -- and how serious grounded open access international cybersecurity is an answer to a threat. How the status quo WILL change, both for It and for energy, and our only hope is that better change emerges before lethal change does. How many of the old ways ARE DEAD (fortunately not including either the quest for truth or social feedback mechanisms ala democracy). But no, dreams of infinite abundance and lack of selection mechanisms are equally dangerous delusions. 

First person PSI or spiritual experience in Japan last year

At http://www.werbos.com/religions.htm, I discuss the importance of connecting a new scientific world view to intense, detailed first person experience of a “PSI” or “spiritual”nature. That webpage links to annotated photo albums of a PART of my trip to Japan last year, but here I give links to more of the photos of PSI importance, and I copy over emails I sent at the time which provide some context and explanation.

The most relevant additional photo albums are:

=======================================================

Mt Fuji Oct 16-17

https://photos.app.goo.gl/5epcqQJi8KoHjtj78

Shirakawaga Oct 21-22 (from Takayama, one afternoon Japan time)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8bKDtqGiEZwUHDiJ8

Magome Oct 22-24

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mfxfhGH49UjmqBet7

Beppu Nov 4 to Nov 7

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LsqHkY3dBpidNnGt8

EMAILS:

Sept. 24 To Toshi-----------------------------------------------

Dear Toshi-san,

thank you so much for your enthusiastic response!

We are arriving to Yokahama early morning on October 13th. We are planning to take a brief trip to Kamakura from there and then take a train to Shinjuku, where we are staying for the next two days. So, if you are available after 16:00 on October 13th, we'll be happy to see you. Please don't cancel your travel abroad -- on October 20-23 we will be in Takayama, using it as a base for exploring the gassho-zukuri villages.

Sept 28 to Maia and Roger------------------------

Just for amusement.. we woke up today with message from United. In other words: "Go to. a different airport Your flight was cancelled. At Dulles, go to gates D for different. That's where you will board a plane for SF, where you will spend 4 hours in the secure area. Then you fly from there to Vancouver (late enough to cancel the meeting with iT executives in that city)".  Oh, well. We will be close but not close enough.

Tomorrow, like Greta, we board a ship to take us to the big climate meeting, but it's a bit trickier and unpredictable. Laws which govern AI will also be on the agenda. Meeting first with world President of IEEE in Japan on the way. Who knows? 

Sept 28 in Vancouver….-----------------------------------------------

Hi Lincoln and Meilang, 

It would be extremely nice if you could stop by our place in the morning (382 Powell st) and call Luda's phone ... We'll be up and around starting at 8 AM, but you guys will probably need more rest. 

This way we can coordinate better, and if we can leave the bags in your trunk, we don't have to come back to the apartment.

Written to friends just after Vancouver but only sent by google on Oct 10 (when internet was open):

We are approaching Juneau now, where we expect brief internet. (Image  below, taken from our balcony).

Am so glad Luda arranged a balcony via late upgrade!

I have three missions for this trip. First, the official one, to give a talk on climate in Korea. I have found it hard to control fear and anxiety re that onem because every day I hear people say crazy and even dangerous things so confidently. I was ready to give up until I concentrated on three promises I made -- to Luda first,  also to conference organizers, but especially to life itself as I rested and meditated with Luda in a small pool in Brazil last year.

That spiritual connection yesterday was so important... the sense of reality for all of this.

Other 2 promises? MAYBE talk on internet law/regulations, a bigger and closer extinction risk even than climate but harder to discuss. And continuing to try to grasp the bigger picture. Sites in Japan? 

Oct 12 3AM to friends:

Luda and I finally have cell phone email again, as we stand on a ship between Honshu and Shikoku.

We were scheduled to arrive in Yokohama (to go to Tokyo) tomorrow but at the same time another visitor us now scheduled, they say -- the biggest supertyphoon in more than 20 years (probably 50). My very last previous day in Tokyo was the day of the biggest earthquake there in more than10 years. So many details!

Most off: that morning my previous friend Kunio Yasue became enraged at me. I was not unpleasant to him but I could not support his new mathematical theory of physics. I supported what he said about miraculous kinds of experiences he related about Notre Dame and ki, but I could not support incorrect math. Later they told me he shifyed from physics to all martial arts and Shinto, and will help organize formal installation of the new emperor this month. I couldn't find his email but did inform his collaborator Mari Jibu I would come tomorrow.

It seems so sad, how pride creates useless unnecessary schisms. But we will see what we see in this month.

==================================================

Oct 1 to friends from Westerdam:

Written yesterday afternoon (just as we lost internet):

Good morning, folks!

It is 530 pm here now on Monday. This was our first full day on the Westerdam, the Holland American (HAL) ship taking us from Vancouver to Tokyo, with port visits to come at Juneau and two Japanese ports along the way, about two weeks.

Yesterday, it was a whole big story getting to the dock at about 230pm, among the latest people to board. But we should not bore you with those details. We settled into our fourth floor balcony room in record time, mainly because we just had carry-on luggage, and went to bed not long after dining room dinner starting at 530 pm here (830 est).

Ocean stars from an open balcony are usually spectacular. Luda found on the web that northern lights were unusually great last night.. but mainly south of here.  I did not even get up more than about ten seconds on the balcony; cold winds limited me.

Closer to dawn, I lay in bed totally conscious. That's partly due to time zone, but I usually spend time exercising some kind of mediation then anyway.  But then Luda suggested we put on something warm and go out on the balcony. Usually at home when she suggests a walk or strenuous activity, I say yes (but in PM); I dont feel like doing it, but deeply believe her suggestion is good, and I do it. This time.. I did not feel as much faith (in part because the regular meditation seemed good enough), but, logic or no logic, I decided to go along.  Then on the balcony I thanked her several times; it was well worth it.

I guess you could say it reminded me of the huge difference between connections made in bed, even in a state of meditation, and strong direct connections here and now, with the ideas and images they also convey. It was a first order spiritual experience. As dinner comes soon.. I woukdnt want to bore you.. but net that I typed very condensed and dense notes after we came back in.

Just now, Luda tells me we travelled from then to now through the Haida channel. The Haida are themselves an important part of earth, not unlike the ancient Vikings and preVikings in the North Atlantic ("our people").

When we came to the balcony.. it was an impressive sight looking north east (which our balcony faced). Luda took pictures. To the left, a kind of vast open area, blue water and blue coast; the feeling reminded me of an airy Jain Temple we once visited. (Photo recently reposted on Facebook.)
To the right, a glow over the mountains which reminded me of the reality and intensity of the Greek idea of Golden dawn, which I assume the Haida tribe shared.  Bits of fog and cloud came to life, playing on the color of the water next to us, the shore hundreds of meters off, and the sky. After some time of that, and inner conversation, Luda pointed where the red sun began to appear. It reminded me of the passage a rabbi discussed with a group on the last cruise, from exodus., the face which would blind if seen directly.

But Luda says internet will go soon, so let me close now. Best regards,
Paul

Oct 5:   Dear Toshio, 

I'm sorry I forwarded you Luda's message from September 28th carelessly and it got hidden under Google's cutoff line.

Here is her message:

"We can come to Nagoya on the 23rd and leave on the morning of the 24th. We are hiking from Magome to Tsumago"

Oct 9 to friends:

Finally in Japan, with first real internet cell phone connection since Canada. The picture shows you Hokkaido where we have our first two port days. Luda says we will know a lot more about Ainu later today. (The ship lectures gave us better appreciation of Japan in general as it has weathered so many challenges since my last full update.) Vancouver deeply enhanced our understanding of natives there, but internet limits...

It was sobering to deeply realize how the discouragement of age is bigger here in Japan than in our circles,,!

=======================================

Oct 12, 3AM, to friends:

 Luda and I finally have cell phone email again, as we stand on a ship between Honshu and Shikoku.

We were scheduled to arrive in Yokohama (to go to Tokyo) tomorrow but at the same time another visitor us now scheduled, they say -- the biggest supertyphon in more than 20 years (probably 50). My very last previous day in Tokyo was the day of the biggest earthquake there in more than10 years. So many details!

Most off: that morning my previous friend Kunio Yasue became enraged at me. I was not unpleasant to him but I could not support his new mathematical theory of physics. I supported what he said about miraculous kinds of experiences he related about Notre Dame and ki, but I could not support incorrect math. Later they told me he shifyed from physics to all martial arts and Shinto, and will help organize formal installation of the new emperor this month. I couldn't find his email but did inform his collaborator Mari Jibu I would come tomorrow.

It seems so sad, how pride creates useless unnecessary schisms. But we will see what we see in this month.

================================

Oct 19 12:20AM

Good afternoon, Toshio-San!

We got bus tickets from Takayama to Nagoya, leaving Takayama at 13:00, and arriving to Meitetsu Bus Center in Nagoya at 15:40 on October 23. We will be grateful to be picked up there. We have two small bags with us.

Best regards, Paul and Luda

================================

Oct 24 to a few friends:

Luda and I are on Japan mainly for vacation. We spent just part of one day with the world President of IEEE who happens to be an old friend. It is mainly cultural education, exercise of spirit, and physical exercise, great for all three. Hundreds of photos from me on Google photos, but thousands and better from Luda. Mostly like what college students would do Tak ng busses and Airbnb.

Oct 28 to a few very trusted friends, regarding training qi and PK:

Please forgive my sending you access to hundreds of photos from four new unedited albums today. 

I have learned a lot on the spiritual or psi levels on this trip. These four places have been places where the most physical qi has further opened my eyes. There are great toys for the soul in these places. Many many experiences and thoughts which I have started to write up, for later. Extensive notes and psi spirit in other places as well, less physical.

A little more explanation. Luda and I are very comfortable on a four hour train ride ( not shinkansen but quiet soft roomy enough). 

About a week ago I gave a rehearsal of my talk for next month on Korea TV on the big policy challenge of how to manage or regulate what the new AI could do to us. I included reference to the YouTube video of Stuart Russell on "slaugherbots " I made very moderate suggestions, exactly in line with John Von Neumann,'s tough but rational approach to n player nonzerosum game. But a lot of folks making money in that area do not want rational approaches even to save our lives. I recently got dinged hard for US/EU/Japan links by the guy whose algorithms are used in autonomous drones Russell doesn't know about, already there, using ANN to decide whom to kill. They once liked me, a true German in many ways, but they don't want constraints. Yuk.

On the photos, so many types of toys to play with. Many images which are 2D address windows pointing to 3d and 4d scenes.

Oct 29 to Nancy duTerte:

July 23 date of fall was a major watershed for me, in several ways. It was EXTREMELY odd for me to remember nothing at all that whole day (could I have it off a day?), even in the hours before I fell at about 3AM (Luda later told me). I remember regaining consciousness at Lahey Hospital, but only much later did Luda tell me that that was the next day.

Routine stuff so far, all written up elsewhere. What was not written up is how this led to a new level of experience and understanding of PM and other paranormal skills, albeit built on my previous experiments in Iceland and Caribean discussed briefly on Facebook (mainly in files on this which I should  back up at home). It is notable that these have mainly been during travel. That fits this past week, where travel to Fuji, Shirakawago and Magome presented important new opportunities for experimentation. Yesterday I even imagined drafting an email to several sincere people on training paranormal abilities using these places.

Back at Lahey hospital: When I first regained consciousness that I can remember, I was fully conscious but not embodied. (I wish I had written up all I could remember before this.) I saw faces and heard words of several people discussing serious matters I would have commented on, but as I became more aware I realized I could not comment by internet. My arms by my side were so far from any keyboard. I said to myself: it seems I must rely more now on innernet not internet, then, and more and more later as I get further past 70 and closer to the coming transition. But innernet is a familiar place for me already (though always in need of enhancement and maybe overdue for upgrade).

That, and  learning what happened,  were the first two big changes. And of course I wondered about why this happened.

The third big change, reinforced after I saw Dr. Uy back home, was to realize I could never just rely on my unconscious  (and  neural) sense of balance to avoid falls. I said more in emails this week discussing our experience on Fuji.

Starting at Lahey, I remembered a time after Margaret Ho left when my esprit and will to live were so weak that I consciously operated my body like a puppet from afar. For the rest of  my life now I must now be more like that,  just to avoid more falls ever more serious. And so, as I said in the Fuji emails, I resolved to try to be more aware through qi to compensate for weakness in my aging mundane neural circuits. As proposed in my 2012 paper in Neural Networks, I took a bootstrapping approach to combine mundane and qi inputs and learn; I really needed to learn. Learn  on ship, exercise on Fuji, lots of other qi balance learning on this trip with so many challenges to avoid falling in new unfamiliar situations of all kinds.

But that was just one aspect.

Just as important even in the "first grade" (Fuji) were bits of cloud/fog,  to be found across so much of Japan. After all, falls and qi gong are available all over the earth (though they require info need training methods). But Japan is really special in this department. Bits exist here and there elsewhere, but volume and prevalence and choice are so much greater here!

I already played with wisps of fog many times in the past, building on my first focused experience with PK in 1972 when I focused on a mobile hanging in my bedroom in Roxbury. (Before that I remember focusing on swirling patterns of falling snow one time, looking out the window of my sister's room at Haws Lane).  I think I first played (successfully) with PK  on wisps of fog in Hunan Province, on a trip with Haibo He and Luda to the place where Avatar was filmed. After that, as we cruised by Jamaica,  Luda showed me I could see wisps of fog between the ship and the shore which I somehow could not notice before; tracking them, in a bootstrap kind of way, I learned how to see and predict better, "looking sideways."

"Looking sideways" is a big deal. Likewise a totally different thread, learning to see in dark.

Later at Niagara Falls, looking into wisps and meditating, linking to some mind there, a type of entry to noosphere…

Niagara Falls, entry via wisps of fog to a kind of part of noosphere allowing communication.
(This whole trip I have also practiced the three types of communication psi I documented for Iceland at sites suitable for THAT. )

And so, first stop of 3 PK scenes: station 5 of Fuji, giant bus stop.
So MANY vibrant wisps of fog!

So more on fog OK PK.  In Hunan, I treated fog as I treated mobile in 1972, a lot like "Technique of the Master" which I read later but fit. First represent state as if feeling my I own foot, But equally construct image of how I want it to feel and look. Then holding both images firmly in mind push by actmoff will. Feel push, maybe attach higher qi, will, emotional energy to the movement.

But by Niagara I was more relaxed, feeling, listening, seeing first. And in noosphere it is like a ganglion above the lower specific drrtaikksm and the ganglion also serves as a kind of link to higher local levels. It reminded me then if kegensss of elemental, which I could contact at that higher ganglion level and above.

So: At Fuji station 5, first and lower were dozens if bus stops in two or more groups. Easy to walk uphill gently with hundreds of visitors from so many bus lines. Then big two story buildings like a giant malls of people taking selfies buying stuff, being excited just to be there. Gently uphill, last two story building ends with stairs up to second floor observation platform looking ahead to the main (horizontal) trail ahead, sloping gently upwards, with Fuji visible through clouds on the right.

Lud a and I went straight to the crowded observation platform, where dozens of us took pictures, including pictures of a few handfuls  of people actually walking ahead onto the trail. Already we saw dozens of animated wisps of cloud moving in different directions near and far, responsive to thoughts in the area. We took photos and videos.

Then as walked onto the trail, taking pictures and meditating and dodging a few others, I "heard the voucebbof Loki" yet again. Whether it us a Jungian connection or a personal cell assembly I don't care but I notice and ooay attention though not reverently, It conjured up a person cursing how hard it was to get a good picture with all these glowing kami or ghosts glowing in the picture.

I took notes on my mental communications there.
I stopped to meditate at one promising place but expected  more to come. Some photos.

After some distance, Luda and I came to a split, where the branch up on the right was blocked by threatening fence-like covers. (See photo.)

Then we faced a dilemma. Luda and I share many values, but on Fuji I gave clear priority to spiritual growth via meditation and such, as such, while Lud a would not sacrifice a once in a lifetime chance to scale Mr. Fuji,nor part of it. She reasoned the warnings should be interpreted as "We take no responsibility; it is at your own risk."
I feel a bit "superstitious" about other people's rules in their places. So we agreed to split for two hours, agreeing to meet again between that point and Fuji station, unless we agreed via our cell phones to change plans. That us why our photos for that period have different locations.

I intended at first to spend time somewhere on that trail for more serious meditation. I did a little. But having two hours and a cell phone, I decided to walk forward at least a half hour to see what I would see, and do some photos. I was amaz3d to see two or three side trails on the right, wide fresh plowed black dirt and bulldozers working it.  I saw a small "window gap" in a stone walk like a Shinto shrine! Ahead I came to a trail up to a building/ hut on the ascending Yoshida trail (main trail up Fuji) which I took many photos of. As I walked up, I soon met another "trail closed" barrier. I came down and did intense mental communication meditation by the hut which I chose as best meditation spot in Fuji by far for me,

By the way, I knew the main trail was closed (And deserted of course) due to damage from our recent supertyphoon.

On the first step down the stone step side iif the tra

On the first few steps down from the hut, on the flat steep stones staircase on the right, I soon felt a little anxiety about my wobbly balance since my confusion in July, along with so many small stones on the staircase. So I was amused to fell myself: "Just above, I engaged several major styles and messages with the. So why not now one more doing respect to Dr. Kam from the ship, his first qi gong exercise, enhanced a bit with thoughts from heaven and earth as I drew abnd felt qi and felt my body and I needed to be much more conscious there just to be firmly under mental control stable and not fall. That was a great exercise.

As I walked back to the rendezvous point, Lud a called me by cell phone. She told me to stay put. She would come down and meet me where I was, so she could see more with us together. We saw no one but construction workers, mostly on their bulldozer like trucks. When we reached the obstacle, I agree to walk up with her this time, to get to the nna in Buddhist Temple above on the trail. I reasoned that this motivation would be acceptable to whatever powers that be. It was more great physical therapy and exercise for physical body feelings control and bakance and qi,
using consciousness to control my body at low level and clear qi.

Then the Temple, many pictures. Who is on the statue? We do not know yet. Mental meditation, a second great place, and photos. We found trail up, but photos and meditation already took more time than expected. Due to Bus schedules  and risk, we agreed strongly when to go back down, with vigor and awareness as needed.

When we passed the rock wall with a flower "window" we did stop to feel and take pictures. As we left, fog let up enough to let us see misty magical seeming rocks above/ past that wall, but no time. Saw two bold German women tourists between there and station 5, but that was the end of that, except for finding our bus and cchecking out base camp.

====  Shirakawago

Again Fuji was just first and weakest of three physical qi sites so far, as I type on  JR train from Shin Osaka to Issa Peninsula full of wisps and mountains and big water we can see out our windows.

Number two, far more startling to me, was Shirakawago (many pics).

First we read how this was a preserved natural rural village a great tourist site. After a few pictures, we noticed the popular  200 yen bus to the viewing platform above. After we found it (tricky for nonJapanese), It seemed a great mental meditation place as well as picture place.

First mental connection: not my usual mind talk, but feeling reminding me of a little pool on Ilha Belha I wrote about on Facebook, with "i" on pictures more detailed than this. As we planned this trip at home, and nasty politics and difficult logistics discouraged me, I often asked myself: "Why don't I just give up, really?" My real answer wss clear: " I keep promises. This time to Luda, to Youngsook (inviter in Seoul) and to natural earthlife as I promised in strong meditation in Ilha Belha. Looking at Shirakawago from the platform, I linked to it and felt it as an extension or expansion of that special little pool in Ilha Belha (just one site of the meditation there but enough of a gate), a bigger pool of life encompassing normal life, wispy kami, rice paddies and humans in harmony as part of one big pool of life.

That was a great start, despite hordes of gabby, jostling picture takers. But then as Lud a asked for a better picture, and we drifted to the  far right side of the platform, I drifted ontii and by a discrete Shinto shrine which of course we photoed and talked to a bit. It was a calm place from which I could link to the wisps up to the left on the mountains, and play PK by  ganglion, which was effective. But it also seemed natural there to try to draw qi and link to sun, a natural link both in Shinto and in my understanding of noosphere.
(Based on what we know about far  matter and galaxies, It seems more natural to assume that a life form based on dark matter would have sun as its main center. That fits many things.)

Oct 30 to me, one piece of extensive background information

http://data.yamagatakanko.com/english/sightseeing/dewasanzan.html

Oct 29 (Magome) 540PM:

And so, the first real surprise for me at Shirakawago platform was what happened when I linked to the wisps of cloud and at the same time
tried my new qi exercise pulling energy from sky sun (high in sky there unlike Fuji that day) through power at my lower spine (raised long ago, discussed in "i" in Facebook album posts for Caribbean islands we visited).  Basically the wusosm which had been persistent all day, just evaporated when I conected to them.

I also experimented in looking sideways not just at wisps but at qi from my hands, which I had played with before.

And second, biggest surprise. Extending qi for OK to soft nessr tree branch,not worked, but qi right showed more. I could even see both present and past if the tree in vivid color and sharp. I practiced this kind of OK and qi sight together. It was a special place and I had tuned in to it. Later as we walked down the  path to the village (which I found after the long sequence), I saw an older lone tree and practiced again. Yes it was to see the past.

We stayed much longer in the village with more pictures.  I tuned in more closely to the village at a mental level again, but no PK stuff.

===========

Then the peak place, Magome, too rich for me to exhaust.

My first hour walking uphill...
===
I finished the text above as Luda and I reached  Katsuura.  Next our kind host drove us to kiyoMon onsen (hot spa).  The best hot spring spa in the whole region. Arrive 615 agree to meet him at 730.

I stayed until 650 or so. At most times 5 men in the hot sulfurous water, 4 in washing area before it. At first relax very powerful for that. Then try a bit of PK, as in islands. The deep long wave still works better than little ripples  but other movements and situation made PK mild, not so impressive, and what got me further out of water. Yes, some real stuff, but I did not bring watch, giit up to check time, and finally got out to go to shoe removal place where I knew Luda would come. She had REALLY relaxed, less crowd.

As I stood and sat by shoe removal place, I first noticed a kind of gently lit central courtyard out the windows on one side of the corridor. But I realized the women's area was on the other side and I should not stare. Fresh air through the window. So I went to other side of corridor,  opened a window, breathed great air and stared out at a tree with gentle branches one foot awash, lit from below by soft lights.

Staring at that tree... It was a better psi exercise than the spa! Looking sideways, qi vision. Once basics are established, living things like wisps much better foci than pool water. I was reminded of 1972, glowing around object moved, but also more around and past again! Clearly visible was form, color, mmlight, life, flow of qi. Qi vision merits more..

====
Back to Magemo., I took notes on phone. Similar to this tree, really, but more history,  river flow, rich life, wisps and water. My sense: the Meiji shrine was an attempt to copy this, but the original was much more powerful.

Nov 1 720 PM to Nancy:

For a few minutes I am at a train station with cell phone coverage I can link to Google FI.

Those long pieces on learning psi were typed into "memo" offline. It let me forward to Gmail when I was briefly in range again.  [Those are emails above!!!]

But Luda and I are not suffering. yesterday she brought me to enter five onsen (sulfurous baths), climb up a mountain, take 4 local busses, and more.

Nov 2 just to me: https://www.isejingu.or.jp/en/

Nov 6 to friends:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LsqHkY3dBpidNnGt8

This town on Kyushu is second only to Yellowstone in sulfur hot springs. Today was the first of our two full days here. After that, Yakushima on Shikoku, then Fukuoka, our final stop in Japan. From there we fly to the Big One in Seoul. Can we really save the world in Seoul? Will try.

News from Philadelphia reinforces idea I need to focus more on these kind of issue, saving the more advanced tech to eastern Pacific, maybe not even Japan dye to connections they have getting in the way. Who knows? Can you believe, there is even an actual Nazi involved. Crazy planet.

After Beppu, we went on to Fukuoka and Yakushima, especially, but the spiritual aspects are largely covered in the Shinto and Buddhism photo albums linked to on http://www.werbos.com/religions.htm. The full Yakushima album is at:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Szbi56ZXW7qbcicQ6

I will always remember how the small town public address system broadcast Edelweiss everywhere there in the early morning.. and my mind replied with Old and Wise of Alan Parsons (see youtube). That was sad in its way, but better than the 30s and 40s stuff in the air. Back home, Christmas music  was a much more positive way to start a day. Miyazaki was a major positive part of our days on Yakushima, as was a great host from New Zealand.