Bucky Group 4 - Local, Global and Universe - Penang Hill

The picture says it all, a happy Singapore group with Bucky's famous Geodesic Dome on top of Penang Hill with breathtaking scenery!
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We were there for the “LOCAL, GLOBAL & UNIVERSE - A Tribute to Buckminster Fuller" seminar organised by Penang Tourism Council Action, Suriana Events, BigPictureSmallWorld (USA), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Angkasa (Malaysian National Space Agency), Penang Hill Resident Association and Bellevue-The Penang Hill Hotel.
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Well thank you so much to all those that made this event possible because we enjoyed it thoroughly. It was indeed an environmental awareness and education program for learners of all ages.

The opening address overlooking Penang City and Butterworth on the Peninsula. Of course, we could not see anything of the cities below as the mountain mists decended on us.

Talk about mists, Datuk Sri Lim Chong Kiat the owner of Bellevue Hotel said that Bucky invented a shower that uses mist spray to cleanse the body and this saves water.

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Incidentally, Bellevue Hotel uses a de-ionised water system called Tamura Water. No soap or detergent is needed to wash your body and your hair. The de-ionised water even cleans kitchen grease. The Bellevue kitchen washes all its plates and crockery just with water and a cotton cloth. That way, no chemicals are discharged into the water system.

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I showered in the hotel's water system without soap and true enough felt it to be very refreshing and clean. Not satisfied, a few of us put the water to the ultimate tests, by washing our fingers with only their water after eating durains!!! :) True enough, even the durains smell went off! That was impressive!

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One of the main activity of the weekend was World Game. It was a scaled down version of the game and was also customised for the high school students.
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Bucky said, "Perspective is more important than Knowledge".

This seems to be the message in the World Game.
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We started with the World Map. The one which we are usually fed with is the following...

This is not a very accurate one. For instance, the island of Greenland is almost bigger than the entire South America. This inaccuracy is the result of trying to put a spherical surface on a flat piece of paper.
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The Dymaxion map, made of many equilateral triangles is a more accurate representation of the world map. Here, South America is a lot bigger than Greenland. And look at the size of Antartica, which is usually even forgotten!

The standard size of the Dymaxion Map for the World Game is a lot bigger. This is a cut down version due to constraint of space. We carried out this activity in a Hindu Temple Hall on Penang Hill.

As the Game proceeded, the participants got to experience the feeling of the size of the world, its demographics, wealth distribution and commonly disproportionate representation by the Western World.

It's through games like these that the next generations of young people will have a better perspective of the world, its problems and the resources to solve them to make the world young again!

In between the World Game sessions, we had a meeting with Dr Medard Gabel, the facilitator of the Game. Dr Gabel said he is very impressed with the enthusiasm of the Bucky Group in Singapore and that he is now inspired to think of what he can do to promote the principles of Bucky's philosophies in Singapore and the region. After a short brainstorm, we came to the conclusion that perhaps we should focus on spreading the awareness of Bucky's Generalised Principles. Bucky's Generalised Principles are principles that works across different human categorised disciplines. Bucky believes that in the Universe there is only one system, not different systems obeying different laws. We are now working on how we can organise seminars based on Bucky's Generalised Principles.

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That means, from the vastness of the Universe and the minutest sub-atomic 'particle' that we are studying, they all obey the same laws under one system. As we understand more about the Universe, how stars in the cosmos expands and create new elements and it is the same types of elements that make earth and our bodies, we know that we can understand the Universe by understanding ourselves. That is, the understanding of the smallest 'particle' will enable us to understand the vast Universe better. Therein, now comes the subject of "Quantum Cosmology", which at first glance would sound like an oxymoron term of two contradicting terms. That was what Prof Mazlan Othman from Angkasa said.

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In the evening, we spent our time star gazing. Had the opportunity to see planet Jupiter and three of its moons and also planet Venus using the telescopes. It was so relaxing gazing at into the skies. At some point, I became entirely immersed into the universe and forgot about my physical presence. In those brief moments, I became one with all.

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For more pixs of this Penang Hill trip, click here

Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Usury 2a - World Game, Usury 2b - World Game Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Usury 2b - World Game

Finished reading the chapter on "World Games". The following is a summary of the chapter. For a complete understanding, it is best to read the chapter itself.

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To Bucky, wealth consists of physical energy (as matter or radiation) combined with metaphysical know-what and know-how.

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In the game of making money with money, the money makers and their economists continue to exploit the general political and religious world's assumptions that a fundamental inadequacy of human life support exists around the planet.

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These assumptions are wrong because of:

1. the constant increase in strength per pound of new metallic alloys


2. the constant increase in horsepower per each pound and cubic inch of aircraft engines'


3. the ever-increasing performance per pound and cubic inches of new chemistries and electronics.

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It all can be done with proven technology and also phasing out the use of fossil fuels and atomic energy. The technological strategy is to live luxuriously entirely on sun radiation and gravity produced energy. The quantity of physical, cosmic energy wealth as radiation arriving on-board planet Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity. World Game makes it clear that we are all billionaires on planet Earth, as accounted by real wealth. And that this fact is obscured from public knowledge by the exclusively conceived and operated money game and its monopolised credit system accounting.

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The success of humanity can be accomplished only by a terrestrially comprehensive, technologically competent, design revolution.

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There can be no planetary equity until all the sovereign nations are abolished and we have but one accounting system. One that show more justice to the balance-of-trade between rich nations and developing nations (mostly providing the basic mineral resources).

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Ample food and growing capacity exist on our planet to feed well every human being. But sovereign nations and their international trade balancing system, and the individual hoarders of foods and other goods within the separate nations, prevent the distribution of foods. Metaphorically, nations are akin to blood-clot to the integrity of the aforesaid distribution.

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Bucky's fundamental idea of desovereignization will be the closing of the gaps of the world electrical power grid. Electrical energy integration of the night and day regions of the Earth will bring all the capacity to use all the time, thus instantly doubling the generating capacity of humanity because it will integrate all the most extreme night and day peaks and valleys.

The world-unifying electric power accounting will be the beginning of the omni-energy accounting for the world economic management.

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Bucky demonstrated how resources can be better used in his geodesic dome design which gives the strongest structure per weight of materials employed. Read here for more about Bucky's geodesic domes. Besides the structural advantage, Bucky has designed the dome to take advantage of the energy concentrating geometry of the dome and its ability to create the upward draft (Bernoulli effect) caused by the solar heating outside its surface.

World Game is a continuing scientific research and physical prototyping development. It is devoted to progressive discovery of how most efficiently and expeditiously to employ:

1. the total world-around resources
2. the total accumulated knowledge
3. the total already-produced technological tooling of Spaceship Earth.
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World Game is therefore the antithesis of World War Gaming as played by the joint chief of staff of the world's most powerful sovereign nations' respective military, air and naval establishments.

The paragraph in page 214 describes it very well,

"With legal planning of their lawyer-advised banking leaders, the "haves" have now succeeded in cornering all the world's monetary gold as well as he prepondence of the world's petroleum sources - along with their refineries and world-around petro-delivery systems together also with acquisition of all the atomic power-generating plants, originally paid for by the US taxpayers - and thereafter in severing the monetary system from the wealth system while marking up the negotiable equity value of gold and petroleum tenfold."

This is the monopolised credit accounting system that Bucky talks about frequently that have kept the poor countries poor and also allow the leaders of the supreme socioeconomic control systems to induce spontaneous sub-divisioning of those designed to be conquered.

Bucky said,

"The prime vulnerabilities of humanity, which make it subject to spontaneous subdividing, are those of different speech patterns, skin colour, religions, social customs, class or caste systems, political preferences, and all varieties of individually unique "troubles", suffering, and discontent."

The World Game conversely works on the basis of a world electrical systems' energy-network integration and its comprehensive powering of automated, special case machinery would most effectively counter the peril of overspecialisation of the humans and would introduce the omni-Universe-operative, time-energy, kilowatt-hours-per-year, commonwealth (with a small 'c') accounting system. With this computerised integration, each individual will have a "credit card" to enjoy world commonwealth facilities, their per-capita "consumable" and "employable". Everyone of use will thus become "Omni-billionaires" overnight.

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There will also not be a need to mined new resources in the ground as all the resource needs are already above ground and can be recycled and mixed into new alloys giving more strength per unit of their weight. In short, we can continue to "do more with less".

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The chapter speaks a lot more details in criticising the state of the monopolised credit accounting system and the 'blood clot' of sovereign nations preventing the swift distribution of a global electrical energy grid to distribute wealth and implement the individual per-capita energy-based credit card. For a full treatise, it best to read the book "Critical Path" written by Bucky. If your thoughts about global wealth distribution and equity to all individuals have been provoked, then this post has serve its purpose.

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I would like to conclude this post with a poem and a song. First the poem, by Rudyard Kipling's "L'Envois":

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When Earth's last picture is painted,

And the tubes are all twisted dried,

The oldest of colors have faded,

We shall rest

And well shall we need to

Lie down for an eon or two

'Til the master of all good workmen

Shall put us to work anew.

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Then only the master shall praise us.

And only the master shall blame,

No one will work for money,

And no one will work for fame.

But all for the love of working

And each in his separate star

Shall draw the thing as he sees it

For the God of things as they are.

Now the song, most of you would have heard it before but you may like to pay attention to the lyrics clearly - make it a song message! :)

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Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Usury 2a - World Game, Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Usury 2a - World Game

Got the ripped off chapter on "World Game" from Joo Hock and had been busy reading it in between my daily chores. It made me think of how the world could be in-tune to solve all its problems and yet not resorting to vicious competition, exclusively sanctioned (approved by political powers) cartels and wars.

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As my thoughts travel, I ended up discussing this with my business associate Zen whilst working on the iron-ore mine investment. Zen related to me how in one of his projects, he had advocated that money be backed by 'useful' commodities, like coffee or rice. Then it dawned on me that since the world monetary system had left the gold standard in 1973, money is now no longer representative of 'life supporting wealth'. It has worsened the adverse effects of 'money making money' by the trading of financial risks.

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Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Usury 2 - World Game

"...the real enemies of humanity: hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, environmental degradation and 'you or me' thinking. "

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Just back from the Middle East, so it is time to get the logistics sorted out for Wednesday's Movie Nite in Singapore. Amazing that I organised everything else via the Internet! Thanks to technology.

I managed to borrow the projector from a friend and now am to test it at Joo Hock's hair salon. He is going to close his shop earlier so that we can watch the show there! Isn't that sweet?

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As we were setting up the laptop and projector, we discussed about the Bucky (Buckminster Fuller) Programme we will be attending this coming weekend (13-15 July 07) at Penang Hill, Malaysia and that Datuk Lim (the organiser) used to work with Bucky himself on the World Game.

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What is amazing about the "World Game" is that the players are supposed to solve simulated world problems by role play, without resorting to using money as a tool to make money, but instead, design ecologically sustainable solutions.

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Bucky's game was intended to be a tool that could be used by people around the world to understand and develop solutions to what he called the real enemies of humanity: hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, environmental degradation and "you or me" thinking.

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At this point, Joo Hock handed me a ripped out chapter "World Game", from one of Bucky's books - "Critical Path". I started reading the chapter, whilst Joo Hock went back to do his customer's hair. The opening paragraphs are astonishingly revolutionary! It talks about how the current economy makes money with money and that it is not a representation of real wealth. Astonishing because this is what most of our banks are doing!!! And that, in the United States, many people work for such industries that are not creating real wealth, but yet travel to office every morning burning fossil fuels contributing to a total estimated costs of US$3 trillion wasted every day!

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I have asked to borrow the chapter back to read and digest, and I am going to get it today. Funny enough, I once borrowed the book, "Critical Path" from the Theosophical Society Singapore Lodge, but found it an extremely daunting book to follow and returned it after the first few pages. Very dense in content. I will try harder to comprehend better this time round, so more later...

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Past Posts: Usury , Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Movie Nite - Tuesdays with Morrie

Movie:

Mitch (Azaria) is a successful sportswriter who suddenly learns that one of his old professors, Morrie (Lemmon) is ill. Mitch visits Morrie and the two form an emotional bond, allowing Mitch to see what is really important in life. A touching story produced by Oprah Winfrey and based on the national bestseller by Mitch Albom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuesdays_With_Morrie

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Date: 11th July 2007, 7pm

Place: The Hair Affair
1 Coleman St. #B1-10
The Adelphi Shopping Centre
(Opposite: Funan IT Mall)
Tel: 63365525

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Fee: FREE! But bring some drinks and cakes if you are kind :)

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Past posts: What The Bleep Do We Know?, The Inconvenient Truth

Bucky Group 3 - What is Success?

The following are emails between my friend Joo Hock and myself, about 'success'.

Joo Hock

I have read about Warren Buffet's lifestyle before, but thanks for reminding me that most of us have been conditioned about what "success" is. Subconsciously, I am going through this de-programming. It's work-in-progress.

Guru Paranjothi Subramaniam, from the Self Awareness Centre defines it as:

"Success is a moment-by-moment realisation of worthwhile chosen goals so as to have continued happiness."

Also, can I include this email in my blog?

Michael

-------Original Message-------

From: Joo Hock
Date: 6/25/2007 8:59:23 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:,
Subject: Fwd: Warren Buffet

Dear Fellow Fullerenes,

This was sent to me from my customer and friend, Dale. Movie star Richard Gere looks like him. Heh Heh.........He has company is called "Brainhook". Creative and fun guy.

Felt this might be quite interesting for you to know......

Warren Buffet is considered one of the world's most "successful" guys, if we equate money with success. (which truly it is NOT.) Yet, we've been conditioned to think so.

Anyway, it feels like Warren Buffet is living really a simple life, just like you and I.

Which mean you are already successful.

However, there's lot's of programming out there in the media, which make you feel that you are not successful and happy until you have this and that, and that.....and that.

I shared about this in my blog......

Anyway read on.........about Warren Buffet...


Cheers
JooHock

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Dale Yost

Date: Jun 25, 2007 2:19 AM

Subject: Warren Buffet

To: Choo Siang Lee

There was a one-hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet— the world's second-richest man— who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:

1. He bought his first share of stock at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!
   
2. He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.
   
3. He still lives in the same small 3-bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, Nebraska that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.
   
4. He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.
   
5. He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largest private jet company.
   
6. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies.
   He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.
   He has given his CEOs only two rules. Rule number 1: Do not lose any of your shareholder's money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.
   
7. He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His pastime after he gets home is to make himself some popcorn and watch television.
   
8. Bill Gates, the world's richest man, met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet, so he had scheduled his meeting for only a half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.
   
9. Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone nor does he have a computer on his desk.

His advice to young people: "Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself…and remember:

• Money doesn't create man but it is man who created money.
• Live your life as simple as you are.
• Don't do what others say, just listen to them— but then do what you feel is right.
• Don't go for brand names; just wear the things in which you feel comfortable.
• Don't waste your money on unnecessary things; just spend on those who are really in need.
• After all, it's your life— why give chances to others to rule our lives?"
  

-- Buckyfully yours

Joohock

Check out the latest topics on Bucky on my blog at http://joohock.blogspot.com/

New thoughts shared at least once a week

Past posts: Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Kids Play 5 - Clever Boy

There was a tree rotting in its core and might fall and crash onto the neighbour's house. The insurance does not cover third party damage due to falling trees. Cutting down the tree is expensive as it has to be cut slowly part by part, instead of doing it in one fell. Vic seeing that his mum is concerned with the costs, said, "Mum, just report that the tree has fallen after an unusually heavy storm, the insurance will cover that."

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Surprised at what the 11 year old had said, mum went to check the insurance papers and true enough, compensation will be meted out if damage is caused by heavy storms. "How did this little boy know so much?" mum wondered, delighted at his quick mind.

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Much as mum knew that Vic meant well, she went over to him and said, "Vic, you are right about the insurance, but that's not the point. If the tree falls on the house, the little kids there will not have a house. So it is not just about the money, much as I would like to save this money."

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Vic listened intently, reflected deeply for a while, then nodded in agreement.

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Whilst many mums aspire their kids to be smart, it is also important to teach them about love. In this cut and thrust market economy amid the intricate webs of commerce and contracts, the clever mind usually wins against many odds. Many times, this mean disadvantaging the weak and slow. Teaching kids to love their neighbours as they love themselves at an early age is therefore crucial.

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Past posts: Kids Play, Kids Play 2, Kids Play 3, Kids Play 4, Soar above the clouds, Usury