The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part V

Fifty Dangerous Things is really about providing an antidote to the overprotective parenting style that seems to becoming the norm in our society. _Wired

Gever Tulley's book 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do, is about breaking through the suffocating wrap of risk aversion that threatens the future of modern societies. But most of the activities presented there would not have been considered dangerous just a few decades ago.

If children are not taught to responsibly, creatively, and ethically deal with risk, they will go out looking for risky activities on their own. Drugs, delinquency, drunk driving, and worse. If you think you are protecting your child by keeping them away from all forms of risk, you may be in for a big surprise before too long.

The idea behind this new book by Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler is that by allowing our children some exposure to slightly dangerous things (with supervision and care, of course) we can help foster creativity, teach problem-solving, and have some good old-fashioned fun at the same time. After going through much of the book with my 7-year-old son, I’m fully on board with this theory. My little guy was thrilled with most of the activities, had many “aha” moments of accomplishment, and eagerly paged through the book checking out what our next dangerous activity would be.


The suggestions are presented in a clear and straightforward manner, with each topic getting its own illustrated description with a requirements list, possible hazards, estimated time for the activity, safety tips and some supplemental information related to the topic. There’s space to enter your own field notes and observations for each activity, giving it a sort of “lab book” feel, which my son seemed to really like. By including areas for kids to write about their experiences and take notes, the book became a cherished guide that my son wanted to keep handy and turn to regularly.


Some of the suggestions feel like pretty typical kid activities that I assumed every kid would just naturally do as they grow up, like throwing rocks or climbing a tree. But as we went through the book I found myself repeatedly surprised at how many of these kind of activities my son hadn’t actually ever tried. _Wired

More from the John David Garcia early childhood curriculum:

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
7.00	9.00	Consolidation of Greek mathematics and geometry using modern notation; practical chemistry in purifying common elements from their ores and making chemical compounds such as sulphuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, aqua regia, and gun powder	Use geometry and mathematics to design a cathedral using Roman arches, vaults, and buttresses; isolate elements from their ores; make acids and simple compounds, gun powder, and paints; make mortars and cements; continue modification of sailing ship	Further study of microscopic life, protozoa, mites, worms, and other microorganisms that live on and in mammals; diseases they cause and symbiosis they provide	Microscopic observation of microorganisms, classification in modern terms; observe sea plankton, sponges, and hydra, and observation of their life cycles
7.25	9.25	Mathematical modeling of nature through advanced algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; derive solutions to quadratic and cubic equations; advanced navigation, the compass and the theory of the sextant; advanced geometry, trigonometry of arches, domes and vaults	Masonry work, making stone arches & vaults; begin construction of small wooden house with some masonry; continue to work with lenses and practical optics, make large reflecting telescope, make better microscope; make additional chemical compounds, acids and paints, dyes and cements; construction of an astrolabe; practical astronomy; finish modifications on sailing ship	Animal systematics, invertebrate zoology, comparative organ systems, organ structure and function, cell theory of animal structures	Laboratory dissection and study of the invertebrate phyla in an evolutionary context; detailed experimentation for function of organ systems and microhistology
7.50	9.50	Mathematical modeling of nature continued; quartic equations; heliocentric model of solar system compared to Ptolemaic; comparison of Viking ships as fast raiders to more seaworthy sailing ships; prepare for two-week ocean trip, theory of alchemy	Continue work with wood and masonry in house; begin construction of accurate water and weighted clock; begin construction of astronomical telescope with instruments; alchemical preparation for isolating elements and making compounds; the alchemical symbols as archetypes	Continue classification of invertebrates for all remaining major phyla, specifying organ functions and histology; show how all metazoa have same types of cells and all start as single cell, simple embryo egg	Laboratory dissection and microscopic observation of major invertebrate phyla; tissue and embryology; transition species to vertebrates, tunicates, and amphioxus
7.75	9.75	Begin study of conics and analytical geometry; begin study of the dynamics of falling bodies and the pendulum; continue study of alchemy, showing how acceptance of wrong hypotheses impeded progress; consider measurements of time, temperature, and position	Finish wooden house; using telescope and clocks, begin observations of movements of planets and earth relative to sun, and deduce Kepler's laws; take a two-week ocean trip; begin construction of sextant	Continue classification of invertebrates; compare with anatomy of simpler vertebrates; study all organs and their physiology and function; identify cells common to vertebrates and invertebrates	Microscopic observations and dissection of simple vertebrates and their organs; observation of simple embryology and comparison to invertebrate embryology; full dissection of shark

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
7.00	9.00	The Roman Empire and its interaction with Christianity, the Greco-Roman disdain for manual labor, the Christian disdain for the natural world, the Gnostic Christians, the stagnation and disintegration of the Roman Empire until the rise of Islam	Write speculative essay on how Roman Empire might have endured and what the world would be like if it had; write speculative essay on how Christianity would have developed if the Gnostics had not been persecuted	The ethical decay of Rome; Roman bureaucracy; how the Catholic bureaucracy established itself; Catholic intolerance of deviant views; persecution of heretics; inferiority complex about pagan knowledge; the destruction of Alexandrian library; Hypatia	Finish design of cathedral; paint Christian symbols that express what is best in Christianity; sing Gregorian chants in Latin after studying translations; do an art project expressing the meaning of the Catholic church
7.25	9.25	The rise of Islam; read the Koran; early history of Arabia to 7th century; relationship of Islam to Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and the surrounding cultures; the political vacuum in the Middle East	Essay on why so many Jews rejected Islam; essay on why Islam was able to grow and expand so rapidly; essay on the ethical contradictions within Islam compared to Judaism and Christianity	Islam as a closed system; how Islam induces fanaticism; its comparison to Christianity; why Christianity is more open in spite of church bureaucracy; Islam and creativity; the reason for Islam declining as Christianity rose	Islamic abstract art; how lack of representational art diminishes creativity; draw abstract designs in the Islamic style; Islamic mandalas; paint representational art of Islam; compare to Persian and Mogul art forms
7.50	9.50	The great theologians, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, Averroes, Avicena, Maimonides, St. Anselm, Abelard; show their depth and breadth of vision; the weakness of having orthodoxy to defend; the Holy Roman Empire and its relationship to Islam, India, and China; Charlemagne and his successors	Essays on the "proofs" of the existence of God and the ontological arguments; essay on the humanizing role of the Church while it bureaucratically decayed; essay on priestly celibacy and its implications; write your own ideas about God	The dominance of ideology and bureaucracy over ethics and truth, the preservation and distortion of the teachings of Jesus, the fundamental power of the teachings of Jesus in spite of the negative elements	Compare Byzantine with Western religious art and paint a synthesis of the two; paint a synthesis of Christian, Chinese, Hindu, and Muslim art of the period; begin study of the organ
7.75	9.75	St. Thomas Aquinas and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire; the feedback produced by the great schism; the decline of Byzantium relative to the newly emerging West; Roger Bacon and the rise of science; the apparent cultural superiority of Islam, India, China, and Byzantium	Write essay on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, indicating the holes in his arguments; essay on Thomistic ethics; the schism analyzed in theological and bureaucratic terms, why schism was so important to Western progress	The relationship of rational theology to mathematics; the church as an arbiter of power between barbarian states; the moral authority of the church in a world of brute force; the cathedral as the synthesis of Western technology, art, and religion	Study and do detailed drawings of major cathedrals; plan to implement construction of cathedral design; begin construction on scale model in stone

Gever Tulley's 50 Dangerous Things are not truly dangerous. But doing them with your children may be early steps in the creation of dangerous children. At this stage in the decline of the west, there is no greater need than the need for the dangerous child.

The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part IV

Modern societies tend to shelter children from experiences and responsibilities which would be invaluable training for the future. Most of us live in a risk-aversive culture which protects children from "dangerous" learning situations which might eventually save their lives -- and the lives of many others -- in the future.

A movement of sorts is growing in opposition to this overprotective culture. From Gever Tulley's Tinkering School to Hal Iggulden's Dangerous Book for Boys to a wide variety of wilderness adventure programs for youth, several people and organisations are pushing back against the stifling atmosphere of a risk-free upbringing.

Dangerous children must learn to accept and deal with risk responsibly and ethically. There is no rational alternative to this approach, in a world that grows more dangerous -- thanks to governmental decay, malfeasance, and corruption -- by the minute.

More from the John David Garcia curriculum for early childhood:

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
6.00	8.00	The geometry of Euclid using modern algebraic notation, introduction to algebra as it applies to geometry, use of geometry and vectors to sail against the wind; give many examples of the practical applications of geometry in many fields; the Atomic Theory of matter of Democritus; other Greek theories of water, earth, air, and fire	Use geometry to calculate size of the earth, distance to the sun, size of the sun; use geometry to construct and use a large catapult; build a bridge by geometric design; work with glass making lenses and mirrors; begin design of ship that can sail against the wind; practice sailing the ship built last year	Internal anatomy of vertebrates, fish, frog, rat, and pig; the true role of each organ and what Aristotle and Galen thought they were for; Greek theories of evolution compared to modern theory; point out how dangerous it is for authorities to be wrong; the value of doubt	Dissection of fish, frog, rat, and pig; identification of all major organs and bones; practice in meat processing, packaging, and preservation without refrigeration; continue practice in caring for young infants in first year
6.25	8.25	Continue the previous work and continue with the geometry and science of Archimedes; use modern algebraic notation and point out how difficult the work of Archimedes was because of notation; theory of pullies and parabolic mirrors; show how abacus gives answers to the notational problem	Construct a system of pulleys and a block and tackle; construct parabolic mirrors to collect solar energy by heating water, and work out schedule for how mirrors should be aligned as function of time of year and day; finish design of ship	Detailed survey of Greco-Roman medicine and the modern versions of these beliefs; the complete guide to the use of herbs and medicines for curing and preventing illnesses; taxonomy of herbs; review Greco-Roman theories of biology	Plant a garden of medicinal herbs, take field trips to collect medicinal herbs, prepare poultices and medicines as have been verified by time and modern usage
6.50	8.50	The works of Archimedes continued, the school of Alexandria, and the continuation of Greek mathematics, science, and technology; full development of algebra and trigonometry using modern notation; solid geometry and trigonometry, applications to navigation, the construction of lenses	The design and construction of water pumps, the design and construction of steam turbines; practical lens making continued; begin modification of ship made in fifth year to sail against the wind; glass blowing continued	Study of preventive medicine; germ theory of infection and how hygiene can prevent it (although Greeks had lenses, no one discovered germs for 2000 years), parasites and their life cycles, the danger of eating meat, the importance of cooking and cleanliness	Use lenses to study small organisms, examine parasites in intestines of animals, show how maggots hatch from fly's eggs; basic entomology observed; use microscope to study basic parasitology
6.75	8.75	Continuation of the study of the science, technology, and mathematics of the School of Alexandria	Continuation of the above; make crude telescope and microscopes	The study of microscopic life; how lack of scientific method inhibited medical practice for 2000 years; how to prevent the spread of disease; viruses as submicroscopic organisms not to be discovered for 2000 years	Study of amoebas and major human parasites; animals as sources of infection for humans; the parasitic worms

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
6.00	8.00	Greek history from Thales to the Roman conquest, the Dialogues of Plato, a survey of Aristotle, a survey of the Greek plays and the fables of Aesop, the ethical teaching of Socrates, the Macedonian interlude and Alexander	Perform one play by Sophocles and one by Euripides; write a critique of Greek culture and why it failed; write a critique on Socrates' life and on whether Socrates should have drunk the hemlock; write an epic poem on Greece	Ethical analysis of the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; show how the lack of love and the will to power forced Greece to destroy itself; consider that the great thinkers of Greece never had power nor were they free of tyrants except at first	Write a play in the Greek style on Greek themes, critique one another's plays, finish sculpture in the Greek style, do a group art project on the meaning of Greece
6.25	8.25	Greco-Roman history from the start of Rome to the time of Jesus; analysis of the works of Lucretius; what the Romans had of their own and what they learned from the Greeks; Roman ethics and theories of government; how tyranny can always replace a democracy by promising to take from the rich and give to the poor	Learn Greek and Latin roots to English and scientific and technical terms, emphasis on nouns; the Greek alphabet, brief survey of Greek and Roman grammar and its complexity; show how English grammar is simpler, more practical; show how as vocabulary expands grammar can be simplified; write essay comparing Greek and Roman culture	Sexual ethics and how the Greeks and Romans related to them; pleasure as an end in itself; the exploitation of women, exclusion of women from all important decision making, women as sexual objects, the absolute authority of the father; Roman law and evolutionary ethics, subservience to the state and ethical principles	Design a domed and vaulted building made of wood and masonry, calculate stresses, and show the use of the arch and dome; play Roman music and practice sports, do a group art project on the meaning of Rome under Augustus
6.50	8.50	The history of the Jews; read all of the Old Testament, the ethical principles derivable from the Old Testament, the mixing of ethics, techniques, and ritual; the Jewish interaction with the Aryans after the Babylonian captivity, the resistance to Hellenization, the conquest by Rome, the Jewish bureaucracy, sampling of the Talmud	Essay analyzing Old Testament as a historical account and as a myth; compare to Iliad and Odyssey; Jewish laws are analyzed in terms of their ethical value and their political implication; essay on Judaism as an ethical system	Ethical analysis of the Old Testament, personal ethics, health implications of many of the Jewish laws; show how the means became the ends and how ritual destroys ethics; the destructiveness of becoming specialized in one's own religion	Jewish abstract art in the form of the Menorah and the Star of David; paint an art work using Jewish symbols to express a Jewish theme without including the human form or animals; Jewish music and Passover songs
6.75	8.75	The New Testament and the life of Jesus, the ethical teaching of Jesus, Jesus as a Jewish reformer and rabbi, the deification of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus in relationship to the Greco-Roman religion, St. Paul and Christianity as a synthesis of Judaism, Jesus, and Greco-Roman religion and philosophy	Write an essay on Jesus and the meaning of his life and death, essay on the criticisms of Jesus against traditions and the Jewish bureaucracy, essay on whether Jesus could have studied in India and/or Tibet, essay on Jesus' teaching and the school of Alexandria	Ethical analysis of the New Testament, the high ethical content in the teachings of Jesus compared to their corruption by St. Paul, the mythification & deification of Jesus in the Roman tradition by those who did not know him, analysis of synoptic gospels showing how they were all derived from a simpler, common source	Draw and paint art showing the unification of Judaism, the teachings of Jesus, and the Greco-Roman religion (Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel is best model); write a poem expressing this synthesis; do a group art project expressing the essence of Christianity

The children of tomorrow must be well trained and well-rounded. They must be able to work independently, confidently. They must also be able to work together in teams and organised groups, to accomplish larger and more complex goals. They must be able to see through the media, academic, and PR smokescreens coming out of corrupt and established institutions which control most public discourse.

What they will do about what they discover, will remain a mystery until it happens. That is what will make them dangerous.

The Dangerous Child Curricula: Part III

For a child to be dangerous to the powers that be in a decaying society, he must be creative, knowledgeable, competent, and ethical -- all wrapped up in a framework of both independence and responsibility.

Most of the important things a child learns in life, are learned by the ages of 5 to 7. These things are learned by example -- for better or for worse. Raw native intelligence is important, but it is only a small, though important, ingredient of the whole. More important than intelligence is executive function -- grit, patience, fairness, honesty, openness, persistence, conscientiousness, etc.

If a child has intelligence and good executive function, it is crucial that he be given the tools of knowledge and competence -- that is how true self-confidence is built.

More from the John David Garcia Curriculum for Early Childhood:

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
5.00	7.00	The smelting of iron and simple steels, forging iron and blacksmithing; simple astronomy and navigation, advanced sailing ships that might have crossed the Atlantic; the iron forging necessary for controlling a horse in battle; pre-Greek geometry and arithmetic using Arabic numbers, advanced theory of the Babylonian abacus	Smelt ore, forge from iron a complete set of tack for a horse, plus horseshoes; forge and make iron sword and spear; make large clay jars for storing grain, oils, and wine; begin one-year sailing ship construction project for group; show how geometry and arithmetic help in the above projects, build a Babylonian abacus	Advanced study of equestrianship for war, shooting a compound bow while riding horseback, the use of the lance and the sword from horseback; mammalian reproduction in detail, nursing and care of young mammals; processing milk into cheese and yogurt	Horse handling, training, and riding; grooming and care of horses, shodding and equipping the horse, the use of different bits, saddles, and stirrups; mammalian reproduction and breeding; comparisons of dogs, cats, sheep, goats, cows, and horses; cheese and yogurt from cow's milk; extract oil from fruits and nuts; make and store wine; optimal physical training of the human body
5.25	7.25	Continue with projects begun previous quarter	Continue with projects begun previous quarter	Continue with projects begun previous quarter	Continue with projects begun previous quarter
5.50	7.50	Advanced metallurgy, casting bronze sculptures through lost wax process; making of hard steel alloys, nails, bolts, and screws; making advanced presses and catapults; fractions and decimals, empirical basis of Pythagorean Theorem, right triangles, circles, spheres, and parallelopipeds	Continue work on sailing ship, do precision bronze castings; make knives using hard steel alloys; make nails, bolts, screws, presses, and catapults; show applications of mathematics and geometry to the above	Human reproduction, comparative male and female anatomy, hormonal cycles, fertility cycles, puberty and emotions, lactation and nursing, care of infants, normal patterns of growth for young boys and girls	Advanced breeding of animals and plants, extraction of fats and oils from vegetables, fruits, and seeds; extract animal fats from carcasses and meat; work in nursery caring for small children 1-2 years old
5.75	7.75	The geometry and mathematics of Pythagoras, several proofs of his theorem, the Pythagorean solids, the harmonics of vibrating strings and the physical basis of music; geometry applied to navigation, astronomy, building and surveying; the technology of glass, glass blowing	Construct the Pythagorean solids, use several approaches to making dodecahedron and icosahedron; construct navigational computer, advanced abacus; construct glass bottles, mirrors, parabolic mirror; finish sailing ship	Human health and the Greek medical tradition, Aesculapius and Hippocrates; a healthy mind in a healthy body; physical culture and optimal health; diet, exercise, and health	Gardening and preparation of food for optimal health, an exercise plan for lifetime health, strength, and energy; construction of a glass still; care of young infants

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
5.00	7.00	The story of Zarathustra; how he changed the Persian people and how they went on to create the world's greatest empire until conquered by Alexander; the Zoroastrian religion and myths in detail	Analysis of ancient Persian history and religion; write a story of how Persian history might have been different if the religion had been different	Ethical analysis of Zoroastrian religion and ethical system, strengths and weaknesses, and how it was doomed to failure	Ancient Persian art, architecture, music; analyze and reproduce style according to your own feeling about this culture; do a group project expressing ancient Persian civilization
5.25	7.25	The story of Confucius and his teachings and how they changed China; the books of Confucius are read, discussed, and compared to the philosophy of Lao Tse; the interaction of Taoism and Confucianism in Chinese history is discussed	Written analysis of each of the books of Confucius and stories about Confucius; an analysis about Lao Tse; writing of imaginative stories about life in China; essay on how you personally feel about Confucius and Lao Tse	Ethical analysis of Confucianism and Taoism as ethical systems, as ways to knowledge, and the civilization they produced; what was right and what was wrong and predictions	Ancient Chinese art to Tang dynasty, analyze and reproduce style in sculpture, painting, and music; use Chinese style to express your feelings about classical Chinese culture in group art project
5.50	7.50	The story of Buddha and his teachings and how they changed India and the East; emphasize the basic ethical nature of Buddhism and its tolerant compassion toward others; show how Buddhists became psychosocial specialists and stopped innovating in the natural world; compare to Hinduism	Write essays on the meaning of Hinduism and Buddhism and how they relate to you; how Buddhism and Hinduism relate to each other, how you would feel and act if you were suddenly put into a Buddhist or Hindu society; give evidence for and against reincarnation, what impact these societies have on the world, predictions	Hinduism and Buddhism in light of the evolutionary ethic and the eight Ethical Principles; the historical impact and consequences of those religions; the ethics of the caste system; why Buddhism is more successful as an export; common Aryan origins of Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism	Experience directly Buddhist and Hindu meditation and its comparison to autopoiesis; Buddhist and Hindu art; draw mandalas of your own, sculpt in Buddhist and Hindu style, make up mandalas, learn to play Buddhist and Hindu music; perform dances, do art works expressing how you feel about Buddhism and/or Hinduism
5.75	7.75	Early Greek history to Thales; the Iliad and the Odyssey; the story of Thales and Pythagoras and how they laid part of the foundations of Western civilization; the rational and mystical as reflected in those two men; Thales and ethics; Pythagoras and religion	Write an essay on the ethics of the characters in the Iliad and Odyssey, the ethics of the mythical characters and gods, the attitudes toward women and their role in Greece; make up a Greek-style myth of your own	The warlike Aryan tradition and how it led to Greek culture, the obsession with domination and personal freedom, the oppressiveness of a slave-based culture, the extreme military specialization of Sparta; why a love of truth and intelligence is not enough if there is no love for others	Geometric art using Pythagorean and Greek principles, composition of music using Pythagorean theory of harmonic scales; begin a sculpture project in the Greek style; Greek music and dances including those of Sparta

Children require a lot of experimental activities, preferably as part of semi-serious play. Children are strongly influenced by adult influences and opinions at this stage, and are eager to build and display competence in a manner that will impress adults and older children.

It is an adult's task to design a learning sequence that educates, strengthens, and trains the wide capacities of a child, and allows for the development of both competence in designed areas, and for self-expression in a manner that allows for open-ended development of competence.

Dangerous children are dangerous to a decadent and corrupt society. In such societies, power and wealth gravitates to those closest to the seats of power -- where it is jealously guarded.

Dangerous children, on the other hand, constantly come up with all kinds of ideas, inventions, innovations, questions, and constructs which continually threaten the always delicate balance of power between the haves and have-nots.

The Dangerous Child: Curricula Part II

In modern government education, students are meant to be receptacles of a consensual wisdom. They are meant to accept and conform to the consensual wisdom du jour, as communicated by designers of government school curricula.

Many children are destroyed by this approach, falling by the wayside without having achieved the correct credentials for a modern pigeon-holed success. Of those who "succeed" in government education, very few will have anything uniquely significant to contribute to the shaping of a better world or better society. The uniqueness and creativity of almost all those who pass through the system will have been processed out and disposed of.

Children who are too creative, who think "outside of the box," who ask too many questions that are difficult for factory trained teachers to answer -- these are very dangerous children. It is best for the system if they would simply drop out . . . .

More of the John David Garcia early childhood curriculum:

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
4.00	6.00	The concept of the wheel; smelting metal from ore; making a simple calendar from astronomical observations; counting and use of Arabic numbers to 1,000 for calendar making, time-keeping, and other uses	Making a potter's wheel and using it; making an advanced bellows driven by a pedaled wheel to heat a charcoal, earth, and clay oven; making a spinning wheel, a sundial, a simple loom	Advanced gardening; the making of cloth from plant and animal fiber; advanced care and management of sheep and goats; gourmet cooking with spices and herbs using ovens; making more advanced permanent shelters of wood and stone	Spinning fiber; simple weaving of cloth with no loom; wheat and corn cultivation; making bread with & without yeast; breeding sheep and goats with seasons; training dogs; constructing small stone and wood huts
4.25	6.25	More advanced metallurgy; the saw and how to use it; how to cast bronze tools, nails, the chisel, and metal hammer; advanced use of wheels; simple arithmetic; adding and subtraction with Arabic numbers; simple geometry	Construction of wheeled push carts; construct bronze tools and show how inferior they are to steel tools; use steel tools in all construction; use pick and shovel and push cart to build small irrigation system and buildings; show how arithmetic and simple geometry help construct these projects	Group design of large irrigated garden, suitable for self-sufficiency of 16 persons; advanced looms and weaving; advanced animal husbandry and selective breeding of sheep and goats; care of chickens and cattle	Construct and plant garden; advanced cooking and preserving of food; fermentation to produce alcohol, distillation of alcohol with copper still
4.50	6.50	Advanced bronze-based metallurgy and smelting of other similar metals; identify related ores and other rocks; simple glass technology; building an oxcart from wood, leather, and bronze; simple multiplication with Arabic numbers; more simple geometry, right triangles, and the circle; advanced calendar-making & time-keeping; how to make a simple boat with sail and oars	Smelt and cast advanced bronzes and similar metals; make and cast glass sheets; make mirrors of metal and glass; build an oxcart; show how arithmetic and geometry are useful; use detailed astronomical observations to make a better calendar, and show how arithmetic and geometry help; build a small sailing and rowing boat	Show how to use a simple plow and fertilizer to prepare land; show how to make fertilizer from minerals and organic substances; show how to cross-pollinate and hybridize plants and trees; show how to use advanced fermentation techniques to produce wine and alcohol; discuss effects of alcohol as preservative and drug; storage and preservation of grain	Advanced agriculture and gardening projects; make fertilizers, crossbreed and hybridize plants; grow grain and grapes; ferment to alcohol, distill alcohol, use alcohol as a fuel and preservative, use as disinfectant; cultivation of yeasts, and advanced baking
4.75	6.75	More advanced arithmetic and geometry, division of numbers, simple fractions; creation of more advanced sailing craft, the ideas behind a horse-drawn war chariot, the compound bow with metal-tipped arrows, how to construct the two-person war chariot and its relationship to the oxcart; the Babylonian abacus theory	Show how arithmetic and geometry contribute to following technologies built by groups; build a more advanced sailing craft; build a war chariot using steel, wood, and leather; show how much more difficult it was with only bronze; build compound bow with bronze-tipped arrows; practice with bow until expert, and practice with war chariot	Domestication and use of the horse as a biological machine, special care and breeding required by horse, horse behavior and anatomy, equipment for controlling horse and how to make it	Horse training and use for farming and pulling chariots, speed comparisons, training horse for chariots and bareback riding

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
4.00	6.00	Reading stories in personal terms about the possible prehistory of the Sumerian people; vocabulary development and the practical use of grammar	Write stories of fiction and personal activity using only alphabet; show how convenient it is to know when a sentence starts and ends, and how punctuation prevents misunderstanding	The ethics of larger groups; how it is possible for several octets to cooperate if they have common rules and objectives; how ancient civilizations were slave-based and ruled by priestly bureaucracies	Students construct rules and goals of cooperative behavior in order to build large-scale projects, buildings, irrigation systems to benefit hundreds of persons
4.25	6.25	Realistic but fictionalized history of the founding of Sumer and how Sumerians created their culture up to the time of the invention of writing; show how the religion and its ritual became overwhelmingly important, and how by controlling food the priests controlled people, warriors, and kings	Write stories of fiction and personal activity; write essays on behavioral ethics; use proper punctuation for clarity of ideas and teach correct punctuation for students; have students ethically analyze in writing the history of Sumer and show what might be wrong	The ethics of individual rights; show that taking rights away from individuals for a larger group damages the group it is supposed to help; show how creativity is important to progress and how liberty is important for creativity	Students study Sumerian art and try to express their own feeling about Sumer in ceramic figurines similar to the Sumerians; stone sculpture project; reproduction of Sumerian relics and artifacts
4.50	6.50	Read a simple non-fictional history of Sumer, show their writing and accounting systems and note their defects; show how clay as prime resource led to cuneiform; endurance of clay records; read full accounts of Sumerian myths, including Garden of Eden; Gilgamesh, and Noah	Write an analysis of Sumerians' history and their collapse; write an analysis of their myths and what they mean; write your own myths to communicate the same ideas as the Sumerian myths; write a creative story of your own choosing	Ethical analysis of the rise and fall of Sumer, the ethical nature of the conquerors of Sumer, their strengths and weaknesses, the weakness of theocracy and hereditary aristocracy, why these entropic systems went on for so long	Creative synthesis; high Sumerian art compared to art of conquerors; artistic group project to communicate the rise and fall of Sumer through music, painting, sculpture, and dance
4.75	6.75	Read a simple world history of the Ecumene from the fall of Sumer to 600 BC; show how little progress and creativity there was until then; show how Aryans spread Sumerian civilization to the entire old world and possibly to the Americas; read literary examples of each major culture	Write an ethical analysis of each major culture and why they could not significantly improve on Sumerian civilization; write an analysis and interpretation of their literary works; write your own story to express what you feel about this period of history	An ethical analysis of the Sumerian religion and those that followed; show how ethical vitality in primitive cultures can lead to conquest of more advanced civilizations; show how religions that seek reward for ethical behavior are destructive; show how it was necessary to invent morality	The art forms of Babylon, Egypt, Crete, pre-Confucianist China, and India; make your own version of these art styles; improvise music on the instruments of these times; do a group art project on this period of history

Source__John David Garcia

The main thrust of Garcia's curriculum is the instilling of both creativity and ethics. There is a great deal of practical, didactic, and theoretical substance as well. But the thrust of the program is the training of children who can think and do for themselves within a careful ethical framework.

Of course, the ethical framework that Garcia taught is not the same ethical framework that is dominant in the government school systems, in higher academia, in popular culture, in the mainstream media, or in society in general.

As a result of its uniqueness, one would not expect children who are trained with the Garcia approach to adopt the helpless, irresponsible, lifelong adolescent posture of so many who graduate from the government system. These children would be different. And they would be dangerous to the dominant powers of the established thoughtways.

The Dangerous Child: Curricula Part I

For the world of the future to be a world of infinite possibilities, there is a need to grow a succession of new crops of dangerous children. It is not likely that most conventional western people will understand the connection between the one and the other, or the need.

Western nations have allowed themselves to become trapped in a web of social and governmental strangulation. Debt and demographic decline are ganging up with psychological neoteny, academic lobotomy, media zombification, and a general lack of substance and grit. Government dependency is growing while opportunities and possibilities for independent action and enterprise are shrinking.

These problems will not solve themselves at this stage, for society as a whole. But there will be pockets of opportunity and competence that can flourish if there are enough competent and dangerous children who can work together to hold off the general disorder and decay on a local and regional basis.

John David Garcia was a philosopher, inventor, scientist, and social/educational theorist. Over the next few postings here, I will excerpt portions of Garcia's daring curriculum for a new kind of school and training program. This is a program that if put into play might well help to create the beginning of a new crop of dangerous children. Dangerous children can not only see what is wrong with their worlds -- they can also do something about it.

		Physical		Biological
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Physical Theory	Physical Practice	Biological Theory	Biological Practice
1.00	3.00	Cause and effect	The lever	The human body	Body care
1.25	3.25	Clubs and poles	Modifying trees and branches	Animal bodies; small domestic animals	How to care for a pet
1.50	3.50	Different stones and their properties	Using stones	Edible plants and their properties	Gathering edible plants and mushrooms
1.75	3.75	Shaping stone	Building simple stone tools	Edible animals and fish	Hunting and fishing
2.00	4.00	Shaping wood with stone	Using stone tools to modifu poles and clubs	Food preparation and preservation	Cleaning and preparing small game and fish using bone, wood, and stone
2.25	4.25	Handling fire	Use of stone and wood to control fire, use of fire to harden spear points	Advanced food preparation	Cooking vegetables, fish, and meat on open fires
2.50	4.50	Advanced fire handling and control combining wood and stone tools, theory and design	Hafted axes and choppers are made; stone fire carriers, simple weaving and knotting of vines and leather	Elementary tanning and use of bone, vines, and vegetable fiber	Skinning animals and fish, preserving leather, advanced cooking. preparing vines and vegetable fiber
2.75	4.75	The bow and fire-making	Making bows and starting fires	Advanced food preparation; advanced tanning and bone work	Advanced cooking; clothes from animal hides; use of sinew and thongs; hunting with dogs
3.00	5.00	The use of clay and the bow and arrow; design of simple rafts	Making and baking clay pots on an open fire; making and using simple bows and arrows	Advanced food preparation including drying, smoking, & curing; health care	Cooking, drying, and smoking with clay pots; preparing and using medicinal herbs and poultices
3.25	5.25	Advanced paleolithic stone work of knives and axes; advanced bow making; advanced clay work without wheel; large rafts	Making stone tools to make other stone tools; making advanced bows and arrows; bellows and advanced pottery; building a large raft as a group project	Gathering seeds and planting edible plants; basic first aid	Gardening; preparing soil and cultivation; practice of first aid
3.50	5.50	Neolithic tools; construction of shelters; advanced counting; how to make a small dugout canoe and paddle	Construction of simple neolithic tools; the use of tally marks and stored pebbles; building a small dugout canoe and paddle	The biological need for shelter; building of lean-tos and simple teepees; clothes for extreme cold; simple agriculture	Construction of lean-tos and teepees; more advanced gardening; making bone needles and a parka
3.75	5.75	How to construct advanced neolithic tools and work stone and wood; more advanced counting and Arabic numbers to 10; how to build a large dugout canoe	Building advanced neolithic tools; working wood, simple carpentry, building semi-permanent structures; advanced tallying systems; building a large dugout canoe	How to make boots and moccasins from leather and plant fiber; how to know when to plant and when to harvest; taking care of goats and sheep	Construction of complete wardrobes of leather, plant, and animal fiber; more advanced gardening and animal husbandry

		Psychosocial		Integration
Avg. Level	Avg. Age	Psychosocial Theory	Pyschosocial Practice	Integrative Theory	Integrative Practice
1.00	3.00	How to communicate	Exchange of information	Ethics of personal obligation	Free-form drawing and painting, simple songs
1.25	3.25	Clubs and poles	Repeat same message from different source	Truth and lying, paleolithic stories	Free-form drawing and painting, paleolithic stories, drums
1.50	3.50	Games of information	Teams for sending and receiving messages	Advantages of cooperating vs competing; paleolithic stories	Songs, dancing, drawing, painting, telling stories
1.75	3.75	Making pictures for information communication	Drawing picture stories	Obligations of making oneself understood	Free-form art, stick-figure drawing for stories
2.00	4.00	Advanced picture stories	Making up stories with pictures	Ethics of separating fact from fiction; paleolithic stories	Wood carving and free-form painting; paleolithic stories created and drawn
2.25	4.25	Picture symbols which stand for complex events	Team communications games and "charades" using picture symbols	The difference between a symbol and the thing it symbolizes; paleolithic stories	Charcoal drawing on bark and stone; universal religious symbols; creating stories
2.50	4.50	Advanced picture symbols and counting	Making up stories by stringing together picture symbols which everyone can understand	Creation myths of paleolithic people	Making up creation myths and testing them
2.75	4.75	Rebus writing combined with picture writing	Making up stories with rebus and picture writing	Advanced creation myths of Native Americans and some religious beliefs, symbols	Native American art and what it expresses; free-form art for what students value
3.00	5.00	The notion of an alphabet and sound symbols	Stringing sound symbols together to make a word	The religions of native Americans and the evolutionary ethic	Percussion instruments, music, carving, dance, and art to express religious feelings
3.25	5.25	Reading advanced paleolithic stories with evolutionary ethical theme	Writing simple stories and accounts using alphabet, rebus writing, or pictures as desired	The importance of separating truth from fiction in our writing to avoid misleading others	Late paleolithic art and religion; student's expression of his own feelings about them
3.50	5.50	Reading stories and history of early neolithic life with evolutionary ethics theme	More writing of stories and accounts using alphabet, rebus writing, and pictures as desired	Simple analysis of neolithic culture and religions in light of the evolutionary ethic	Neolithic art and stone carving; clay figurines; self-expression of students
3.75	5.75	Reading more complex stories of neolithic life about religion and creativity in ancient Jericho and Mesopotamia	More writing of stories and accounts using alphabet and rebus writing, but no pictures, show difficulty of communicating numerical concepts over 10	Analysis of why neolithic culture advanced so slowly before the beginning of Sumer; the energy that went into religious ritual & the corrupt priestly bureaucracy	The flute and harp and the neolithic music possible for them; advanced neolithic art and religion; self-expression in all art media

The studies and all the activities of the day are integrated so that the child knows what it will be doing and why. Children who wish to follow a different path will be encouraged to do so. After consulting with the child, the home room teachers are obligated to accommodate the elections of each child and try to arrange the child's day so as to maximize the child's creativity, keeping the child in safety, and not imposing any activities on the child.

During this period the children are introduced to ethics and why we have an obligation to never do anything to harm anyone, including ourselves, why we should always try to do our best to increase our own creativity and the creativity of everyone with whom we interact. The concept of "creativity" is discussed with all the students, and they give their own opinions on the subject.

The child is introduced in very simple terms to what is creativity and what is harm. The concepts of harm and creativity are discussed by the teachers with all the children in each circle. The children are introduced to the concept of patience, and why we should always wait for our turn. They are taught how to show respect for each other, their teachers, their parents, their siblings, and everyone else.

These lessons are combined with free drawing, painting, and simple songs. The children are taught about the themes they will be studying during the day in physical, biological, psychosocial sciences, as well their integration through ethics, humanities and art. The themes of fire, water, air, earth, the human body, the school, the home, the family, our neighbors, positive and negative emotions, the sun, colors, ego, and ecology are all touched upon and integrated with the sciences, ethics, humanities, and art. This process will continue during all future days of study at SEE, except the discussions shall become more sophisticated and comprehensive. _JDG Lifetime Curriculum

It is important to teach ethics at the same time as one is teaching a child to be competent, conscientious, persistent, and dangerous.

The coming crop of dangerous children will be most dangerous to any society that attempts to restrict their freedoms and opportunities unjustly. Sic semper tyrannis.

More on the JDG curriculum in the near future. We will also look at other alternative curricula which may help make your child dangerous, in a good way, in a way that your lives may depend upon some day.

Unschooling: "Growing Without School" -- Beyond Childhood Competence

Almost every parent wishes their children to become skilled, competent, confident, accomplished adults. But almost no parents in the modern world understand how to help their children to achieve such a happy result. Instead, parents almost inevitably turn their children over to the governmental school system, with increasingly dismal results.

John Holt wrote several books on the state of modern education and its alternatives -- including "Unschooling" and "Growing Without Schools". Besides his books, he founded and published "Growing Without Schools" magazine. Growing Without Schools has provided free access to 24 years of the magazine's issues.

Holt was particularly interested in how to endow children with the competence to face the challenge of an ever-changing world. He understood that children developed this competence themselves, when given the opportunity. Unfortunately, modern government school systems represent the antithesis of the ideas that Hold discovered and wrote about.

The video above was presented at a homeschool conference by parental practitioners of "unschooling," with their own children.

Al Fin educational theorists are grateful to John Holt for his contributions to the field of childhood competence. But if children are to help build a better world -- and not to simply keep the current world from collapsing under its own weight -- they must go beyond mere competence.

Our children must be allowed to learn to become not merely competent -- but to become truly dangerous. Dangerous to whom or what? More about that in future entries.

...All Zombies Now ....

Effective total brain control -- or zombification -- depends upon a fine enough level of control, or resolution, over the pertinent brain centers. Early methods of brain control depended upon the crude tools of pharmacology and macro-electromagnetic stimulation. But we are on the verge of a level of fine-grained brain control which puts us within reach of our goal: total world domination!

Quantum Dot Cell Controller

By harnessing quantum dots-tiny light-emitting semiconductor particles a few billionths of a meter across-researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new and vastly more targeted way to stimulate neurons in the brain. Being able to switch neurons on and off and monitor how they communicate with one another is crucial...

...Doctors and researchers today commonly use electrodes- on the scalp or implanted within the brain- to deliver zaps of electricity to stimulate cells. Unfortunately, these electrodes activate huge swaths of neural territory, made up of thousands or even millions of cells, of many different types. That makes it impossible [to achieve the level of brain control to achieve complete zombification. (Ed.)]

...An alternative, says the UW team, led by electrical engineer Lih Y. Lin and biophysicist Fred Rieke, is to use quantum dots-tiny semiconductor particles, just a few billionths of a meter across, that confine electrons within three spatial dimensions. When these otherwise trapped electrons are excited by electricity, they emit light, but at very precise wavelengths, determined both by the size of the quantum dot and the material from which it is made... The experiments, says Lin, show that "it is possible to excite neurons and other cells and control their activities remotely using light. This non-invasive method can provide flexibility in probing and controlling cells at different locations while minimizing undesirable effects." _SD

In other words, complete zombification is almost within our reach.

Of course we will continue to follow the progress of cruder tools such as deep brain stimulation, transcranial dc stimulation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. (Summary PDF review of earlier tDCS research)

And we will continue participating in the OpenEEG project, in order to perfect our remote EEG brain state viewer -- to use in conjunction with our remote quantum dot cell-level brain controllers.

Naturally, we expect our informants to keep their eyes and ears open for any news we may be able to utilise. We can make it worth your while, particularly if you have your eye on someone that you would like to zombify for your own personal use. ;-) But tell no one what you have read here!

We stand on the verge of a brave new world. A greener, cleaner, more orderly world, without all the confusion and cacophony of modern global capitalism, freedom of religion, rule of law, and free markets. Either you are with us, or you are a zombie.

Laggard Science of Artificial Intelligence Belatedly Discovers Embodiment

Researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the University of Zurich are challenging the basic underpinnings of artificial cognition research. The implications of their research -- if they are correct -- may shake the AI establishment to its roots.

...the notion of intelligence makes no sense outside of the environment in which it operates.

For them, the notion of embodiment must, of course, capture how the brain is embedded in a body but also how this body is embedded in the broader environment.

Today, Pfeifer and Matej Hoffmann, also at the University of Zurich, set out this thinking in a kind of manifesto for a new approach to AI. And their conclusion has far reaching consequences. They say it's not just artificial intelligence that we need to redefine, but the nature of computing itself. _MIT Technology Review

The researchers of Zurich have stumbled upon the concept of intelligence as having evolved within a complex and dynamic environment. While their ideas are likely to be dismissed by devotees of "algorithmic cognition" and "designed intelligence," these concepts actually appear rather obvious and elementary to anyone with a biological background, in addition to computational and cognitive training. One might even ask: "What took you so long?"

...Pfeifer has been shouting from the roof tops for several years, with some success, about the role that shape and form play in biological computation.

But today he and Hoffman go even further. They say that various low level cognitive functions such as locomotion are clearly simple forms of computation involving the brain-body-environment triumvirate.

That's why our definition of computation needs to be extended to include the influence of environment, they say.

For many simple actions, such as walking, these computations proceed more or less independently. These are 'natural' actions in the sense that they exploit the natural dynamics of the system.

But they also say it provides a platform on which more complex cognitive tasks can take place relatively easily. They think that systems emerge in the brain that can predict the outcome of these natural computations. That's obviously useful for forward planning.

Pfeifer and Hoffmann's idea is that more complex cognitive abilities emerge when these forward-planning mechanisms become decoupled from the system they are predicting. _MIT TR

Implications of Embodiment for Behaviour and Cognition

Artificial intelligence has been trying for the "easy score" ever since its founding, in the aftermath of World War II, and at the beginnings of the long-simmering cold war. But devoting one's resources to the easy score means that the deep underlying concepts are often neglected. And so it was and has been for over half a century. Advanced computing has been incredibly helpful over that time frame, demonstrating continuous progress, but there has never been a clear path to AI from anything coming out of computer science.

It is not clear that the Zurich researchers have gone beyond the insights of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks. But the fact that at least some AI workers are willing to think outside the box, is a hopeful sign.

Brain Hacking: Homebuilt tDCS and More

Stuart Gromley sits hunched over a desk in his bedroom, groping along the skin of his forehead, trying to figure out where to glue the electrodes. The wires lead to a Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab, a toy covered with knobs, switches, and meters. Even though he’s working with a kiddie lab, Gromley, a 39-year-old network administrator in San Francisco, can’t afford to make mistakes: he’s about to send the current from a nine-volt battery into his own brain.

Gromley’s homemade contraption is modeled on the devices used in some of the top research centers around the world. Called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the technology works on the principle that even the weak electrical signals generated by a small battery can penetrate the skull and affect hot-button areas on the outer surface of the brain. In the past few years, scholarly research papers have touted tDCS as a non-invasive and safe way to rejigger our thoughts and feelings, and possibly to treat a variety of mental disorders. Most provocatively, researchers at the National Institute of Health have shown that running a small jolt of electricity through the forehead can enhance the verbal abilities of healthy people. That is, tDCS might do more than just alleviate symptoms of disease. It might help make its users a little bit smarter. _Phoenix

Rob Zammarch

...tDCS [is] a way to tease apart the mechanisms of learning and cognition. As the technique is refined, researchers could, with the flick of a switch, amplify or mute activity in many areas of the brain and watch what happens behaviourally. The field is "going to explode very soon and give us all sorts of new information and new questions", says Clark. And as with some other interventions for stimulating brain activity, such as high-powered magnets or surgically implanted electrodes, researchers are attempting to use tDCS to treat neurological conditions, including depression and stroke. But given the simplicity of building tDCS devices, one of the most important questions will be whether it is ethical to tinker with healthy minds — to improve learning and cognition, for example. The effects seen in experimental settings "are big enough that they would definitely have real-world consequences", says Martha Farah, a neuroethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. _Nature

A very dangerous homemade hack for tDCS: Don't try this at home!

Ingredients:
One (1) brain, inside skull
One (1) 9-volt battery
Two (2) wires
Two (2) damp sponges

Instructions:

Attach battery to wires, attach wires to sponges, attach sponges to skull, one over each eyebrow. Simmer once a day until mental health reaches a firm consistency.

It sounds like something you dreamed up in the basement with your stoner friends in high school. (In fact, you may actually have done so.) But transcranial direct current stimulation is the hottest thing to hit the improvisational health management scene since acupuncture. A growing body of evidence suggests that sticking a battery onto your head could hack into your brain's operating system and make life generally more worth living. Think of it as Norton Utilities for the mind.

That's not an oversimplification of the process. tDCS is literally that simple. The total cost of a treatment is less than $5 of parts from Radio Shack and a sponge. No prescription needed. No needles, no pills, no insurance companies, no weird hormonal fluctuations, no commercials saying "I'm glad [drug of choice] has a low risk of sexual side effects!"

An analysis of the pros and cons of tDCS yields fairly impressive results.

PROS
Improved hand-eye coordination
Better memory
Less depression
Recover from brain damage
Less senility
Me talks nice like teacher
Better memory
Control seizures
Cure migraines
Become superior human, crush puny unenhanced inferiors, survive apocalyptic "rise of the machines"
Better memory

CONS
Could end up looking stupid
Small, but not entirely absent, chance of permanent brain damage _longecity

It would be smarter to use more sophisticated devices, following more practised protocols. People will need to proceed with caution, and share insights and mistakes, so that mind hackers can move ahead safely toward their goals.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London studied people with normal math skills using a noninvasive technique called transcranial direct-current stimulation, in which scalp electrodes emit current that modulates neural activity. The team focused on the right parietal cortex because it contributes to spatial and math­ematical thinking. This brain region shows abnormal re­sponses in children with developmental dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects math skills.

Over the span of six days the inves­tigators applied current over the volunteers’ right parietal lobe for 20 minutes at the beginning of training sessions in which subjects learned to associate numbers with arbitrary symbols, such as triangles or cylinders. After practicing, subjects were rapidly presented with pairs of symbols of different visual sizes (using larger or smal­ler fonts), and they had to choose the physically larger one as quickly as they could. In some of the pairs, the physically larger item rep­resented a smaller magnitude—for in­stance, a huge symbol meaning “two” was paired with a tiny symbol representing “five”—­and that mismatch could cause a delay in reaction time because subjects must override their impulse to choose the greater number.

By the fourth day subjects who had their right parietal cortex stimulated became slower for mismatched trials as compared with matched trials, just as adults are when they respond to real digits. But participants who did not receive the same pattern of stimulation showed no difference between these trials, suggesting they had not internalized the symbols’ meaning. The results indicate that right-hemisphere stimulation helps people learn numerical symbols.

The superior performance lasted for six months—a long effect that suggests the method may someday benefit those with developmental dyscalculia, says study co-author Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Oxford. _SciAm

Different locations for the electrodes should yield different results from tDCS. The science -- and the hacking -- has barely begun.

[Michael] Weisend, who is working on a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency programme to accelerate learning, has been using this form of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to cut the time it takes to train snipers. From the electrodes, a 2-milliamp current will run through the part of my brain associated with object recognition - an important skill when visually combing a scene for assailants.

The mild electrical shock is meant to depolarise the neuronal membranes in the region, making the cells more excitable and responsive to inputs. Like many other neuroscientists working with tDCS, Weisend thinks this accelerates formation of new neural pathways during the time that someone practises a skill. The method he is using on me boosted the speed with which wannabe snipers could detect a threat by a factor of 2.3 (Experimental Brain Research, vol 213, p 9).

Mysteriously, however, these long-term changes also seem to be preceded by a feeling that emerges as soon as the current is switched on and is markedly similar to the flow state. "The number one thing I hear people say after tDCS is that time passed unduly fast," says Weisend. Their movements also seem to become more automatic; they report calm, focused concentration - and their performance improves immediately.

It's not yet clear why some forms of tDCS should bring about the flow state. After all, if tDCS were solely about writing new memories, it would be hard to explain the improvement that manifests itself as soon as the current begins to flow. _NewScientist

Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists are plodding along in the dark, far more than they will admit. The establishment would like to be able to control potentially transformative and disruptive technologies such as tDCS, and other possibly effective brain boosters. But that is not likely.

Near Term Plans of the Seasteading Institute

From Russia and the Middle East to western Europe and the United States, dissatisfaction with politics and politicians has led to protest, conflict and, in many cases, violence. But it doesn't have to be that way, according to a US think-tank _SciAm

As long as the Seasteading Institute remains small, and its plans relatively inconsequential, it will not present a threat to the powers that be. Even with the backing of a successful venture capitalist such as Peter Thiel, seasteading will remain small and relatively ineffective -- in terms of meeting its stated goals -- until it gathers enough support structure and enough of a following to present a threat to the current order.

Humans, Apes, Addicts, and Microbes: Common Thread

The common thread that links life on Earth is the thin thread of DNA that coils, circles, and works its way through the generations, through the species, changing the face of the planet as it evolves.

Economist
Our brains are formed by our genes, working through the environment. Some genes control an entire platoon of other genes. The genes that determine how our brains grow and function are still evolving. If these "commander" genes evolve, remarkable changes can occur over a fairly short time span. The human species appears to be changing on a more rapid time scale than most scientists are willing to accept.

...human beings have suites of genes that probably cause their brains to be “plastic” and thus receptive to change far longer (to the age of about five) than is true for chimps or monkeys (whose brains are plastic for less than a year after birth). Moreover, Dr Khaitovich was able to work out how the expression of these modules of genes was co-ordinated, by looking at the switches, known as transcription factors, that turn them on and off.

Indeed, by comparing modern genomes with their discoveries about Neanderthals Dr Paabo’s group has found that the regulatory process for one of the modules came into existence after the modern human and Neanderthal lines separated from one another, about 300,000 years ago. _Economist

Of course, it does no good to have brains that are more plastic, if the caregivers of young children do not take advantage of that period of plasticity to give the children skills, competencies, wisdom, and knowledge that will serve them well throughout their lives.

Some people may be born at a tremendous disadvantage, genetically speaking. Addictive and criminal behaviour appear to be at least partially heritable. Societies deal with these problems in different ways. There is always room for improvement -- beginning with the acknowledgement of the genetic component.

Humans have turned a corner in understanding their own genetics. They can now re-program the genes of living humans, and are on the verge of re-programming the genes of embryos and zygotes. Artificial evolution, in other words.

Humans are also making progress toward understanding the complex genetics of their environments -- the microbial world in which they are immersed. We live in microbial soup, which is quite difficult to sort out with the old genetic tools that required culturing organisms before their genomes could be sequenced.

Now, scientists can extract individual genomes out of the common slurry, and sequence these mystery guests.

To extract individual genomes, Armbrust’s PhD student Vaughn Iverson exploited skills that had he gained as a computer scientist designing video compression technology at Intel in Portland, Oregon. He developed a computational method to break the stitched metagenome into chunks that could be separated into different types of organisms. He was then able to assemble the complete genome of Euryarchaeota, even though it was rare within the sample. He plans to release the software over the next six months.

It’s a different tack from that taken by early marine metagenomics efforts, which began in earnest with Craig Venter’s Global Ocean Sampling effort in 20032. “Our survey offered a broad-stroke picture of microbial diversity and the dominant players in the world’s oceans,” says Kenneth Nealson, director of the microbial and environmental genomics group at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California. “This clever approach demonstrates that they can pull out the sequence of uncultured organisms — information we need to get a clue as to how microbes share limiting resources in the ocean.” _Nature

We finally understand that it is necessary to understand the full complement and range of genomics, genetics, and epigenetics in which we live -- and how we interact with this milieu in order to work out our lives.

Genetics and evolution have been underrated and ignored by most human intellectuals. But no one -- including these neglectful intellectuals -- is ignored by the genetic universe we inhabit. Not one living thing.