Reproduced in part from Aikido Journal for your consideration
Psycho-Chemical Stress Conditioning in Budo - Part 1
Posted by Toby Threadgill on February 27th, 2005
...The chances of successfully navigating the adverse effects of PCS are compromised significantly if one is involved in a form of budo predominantly driven by a teaching model based on cooperative partner interaction. No dojo or seminar training environment can replicate an actual violent confrontation. However, the model of cooperative partner training common in most schools of aikido and some classical styles of budo is among the least likely to provide actual confrontation with the effects of PCS. How can one be expected to realistically confront violence if the dojo environment is always harmonious? It’s all fine and dandy to wax philosophically about harmonizing peacefully with an attacker and reaching a higher plane of spiritual existence through the study of budo, but I must point out that such ideals are of little value to a budo student violently attacked in a parking garage. Claiming that the aikido most commonly available in dojos today is effective self-defense in such a situation or, for that matter, a genuine reflection of strict martial study is propagation of a highly irresponsible myth. When I hear such naiveté provided as fact I am reminded of the harsh wisdom of sensei Yuiyoshi Takamura when he said:
"Remember that most people who call themselves martial artists are nothing of the sort. Most dojos are not martial arts dojos either. They are glorified social clubs thriving in an environment of emotional stimulation which is heightened by a false or extremely limited perception of danger. When real danger shows itself in such a dojo, the participants run for cover. In a real dojo the participants run towards the conflict."
| posted by Unknown @ 2/28/2005 05:05:00 PM
I require more input and research to understand the balances better. What is on the horizon for sustainable fuels?
Have you seen this? This is an exerpt of a longer article
The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.
Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.
"The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only clean ing up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world."
-ed. If this doesn't work out, immortality is always an option. | posted by Unknown @ 2/28/2005 09:00:00 AM
