Consciousness & Social IQ – Page 34 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/10/222009/10/22

Review: Hidden Truth–Forbidden Knowledge

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Censorship & Denial of Access, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Has Warts But On Balance, Best Available Overview

October 22, 2009

Steven M. Greer

I elevated this book from four to five stars in part because I know some of the people to whom the author refers (e.g. Admiral Mike Cramer, referred to by name; and John Petersen, author of Out of the blue: Wild cards and other big future surprises : how to anticipate and respond to profound change, who is not named but described in obvious terms), and because it is the best available review for the public.

This book will seriously annoy those who consider themselves scientific rationalists (e.g. Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and those who tend to look askance, as I do, and the kum-ba-ya hand-holding crowd BUT–and this is a big but–I absolutely consider this author and this book to be totally credible, and as annoying as the inner spirituality conversations at the beginning and the cosmic spirituality conversations at the end are, this book is a MUST READ for any serious person who cares about the future of humanity and the Earth. I take some of this with a grain of salt, but I want to meet this person, learn more, and believe he is on a righteous path of truth for the good of the larger group, humanity.

Here are my fly-leaf notes:

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2009/10/222009/10/22

Review: Disclosure–Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Censorship & Denial of Access, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Available Free Online, Better in Hard-Copy

October 22, 2009

Steven M. Greer

I read this book online, where it can be found for free, and in retrospect, now that I have read Hidden Truth: Forbidden Knowledge, regret not buying it to have my notes and the physical book in my library.

The bottom line on this book is that it is a less than perfect but still incredibly valuable and serious effort to place before the public the testimony of individuals who have been involved in the government and contractror programs to both conceal from the public what we do know about extra-terrestial beings, vehicles, weapons, communications, and energy systems; and to impose on the public a fear of extra-terrestials that is completely unfounded and simply another “Big Lie” intended to perpetuate the military-industrial complex.

I strongly recommend the Disclosure Project, and especially its meetings when offered, such as the 24-26 October 2009 meeting in Arizona.

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2009/10/182009/10/18

Review: 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Phenomenal Overview, Reference, Exceeded Expectations

October 18, 2009

Glenn Croston

I bought and read this book along with Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health and Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job.

This book is everything I could have wanted and more–it exceeded expecations. For each of 75 “opportunities” sorted within eleven chapters it provides a summary table (Market Need, Mission, Knowledge to Start, Capital Rquired, Timing to Start, and Special Challenges, along with a multi-page discussion and a variety of “sidebar” elements that vary but generally address Related Trends, In the Long Run, Green Leader, Industry Information, Information Resource, Eco-Tip, or Eco-Issue.

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2009/10/182009/10/18

Review: Careers in Renewable Energy–Get a Green Energy Job

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions)

Formula Book Well Executed, Superb But “Lite”

October 18, 2009

Gregory McNamee

I read in multiples. See my reviews of 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference as well as Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health for the snap-shot on this round, and at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blogs, use the Reviews menu to access my 49 reviews on Environment (Problems) and my 57 reviews on Environment (Solutions), all with links back to the Amazon page for each book.

This is a 4 in comparison with many other books, and was disappointingly generic and “lite” in the resource sections, BUT this is BEYOND 6 STARS if you do not have a college education and wither will not get one (see chapters on Solar, Wind, and Geothermal) or are just going into college (see chapters on Bioenergy, Hydro, Buildings, and Energy Management)….so I give it a solid 5 over-all. This book is NOT for “mid-career” folks with degrees looking to switch tracks.

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2009/10/162011/10/22

Review: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Excellent Primer, Narrowly Focused, Provokes Reflection

October 16, 2009

Richard Heinberg

I was tempted to limit this book to four stars because it fails to properly recognize, among many others, Buckminster Fuller, e.g. his Critical Path and it provides only passing reference to such foundation works as Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update and Human Scale, but place it at five stars for two reasons: 1) excessive negativity by other reviewers; and 2) a superb primer for the public ready to get past Al Gore's hysteria, the venom surrounding The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, and connect in a very easy to read and understanding elementary counterpoint to The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity.

Another important reason for attending to this book and respecting its author, apart from him many prior works including the globally recognized The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, is the endorsement of two of the top ten (in our view) in this arena, Lester Brown (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)), and Bill McKibben (Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future).

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2009/10/132009/10/13

Review: Global Ethics–Seminal Essays

4 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Education (General), Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Important Essays, Left Me Blase

October 13, 2009

Thomas Pogge and Keith Horton, Editors

The three best things I can say about this volume:

1) A heroic work that carefully selected important essays on global ethics from the past 40 years (the book itself, Australian in origin, is published for the first time in 2008).

2) Part of a Paragon Series on Philosphy that is utterly mind-boggling–if only they would make it digital and provide some visualization tools and navigation tools, they could be on to something HUGE.

3) The editors make a very substantive case to the effect that poverty is the central ethical issue of our time. This corresponds to the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Opportunities, whose report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, concluded that poverty was the greatest threat to humanity, easily rising above infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, proliferation, terrorism, and crime.

Other aspects of this book that captured my attention and tie in elsewhere:

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2009/10/07

Review: Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

My Head Hurts–Time for a Black Caucus on Black Power

October 7, 2009

Houston A. Baker

My head hurts. After enjoying and reviewing Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics yesterday evening, I was not anticipating the firestorm of erudite adjective-laden brow-beating that this author delivers. Minus one star for beating several (black) horses to death, and as Reviewer Carter notes, not without meriting some of the same himself.

First off, this is a book that had to be written and must be read. There are, amidst the “wordier than thou” broad brush critiques, some real gems, some really engaging turns of phrase. It is unfortunate that the nature of the inquiry demands fairly personal explicit attacks on avowedly great black intellectuals, but there is some meat here.

Page 104: “Centrist territory is a rhetorical demilitarized zone where honest, committed, and historically informed proclamations on cause and effect regarding race, culture, morality, and gender in the United States can be studiously avoided, fudged, or simply made to suit the audience on hand.”

High points for me as a reader (white, Hispanic, seriously-angry populist):
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