According to LubosMotl's blog on 22 August 2005:
"... The Stanford experimental group around Alan Kapitulnik has found no deviations from the Newtonian gravitational law. They have improved their limits on a new force at 20 microns - a force that they parameterize as a Yukawa force - and published a paper about it, namely hep-ph/0508204. According to the newest rumors, the Washington group will also confirm a negative result. ...".
This is in sharp contrast to LubosMotl's 6 June 2005 blog entry.
Angelo Bassi says, in, quant-ph/0504214,a Book Review of Quantum Theory as an Emergent Phenomenon CambridgeUniversity Press (2004) by Stephen L. Adler:
"... why do we not see ... macroscopic superpositions? ... The standard answer ... is ... when a micro-system interacts with a macro-object and creates a superposition of different macroscopic states, the unitary evolution given by the Schrodinger equation is immediately followed by a reduction process which randomly drives the superposition into one of its terms, with a probability distribution given by the Born rule. This ... so called postulate of wavepacket reduction ... does not tell us in a clear, precise and unambiguous way under which circumstances a system evolves according only to the Schrodinger equation and in which other cases also wavepacket reduction occurs. ... Adler's book ... proposes ...[that]... quantum mechanics is not a fundamental theory of nature but an emergent phenomenon arising from the statistical mechanics of matrix models with a global unitary invariance. ... Adler's book ...[uses]... trace dynamics ...[which]... is formulated in terms of a trace Lagrangian and trace Hamiltonian generalizing the classical Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism to a phase space of noncommuting variables; contrary to quantum mechanics, no a priori commutation relations between the matrices are assumed. ... The statistical mechanics of the trace dynamics is set up: the analog of the classical Liouville theorem is proven, the canonical ensemble is analyzed, showing how average quantities can be computed. The author next shows how under plausible assumptions an effective theory stems from the statistical mechanics of the canonical ensemble, which is equivalent to quantum mechanics: the key idea is that global unitary invariance implies the existence of a conserved Noether charge, the equipartition of which gives rise to the canonical algebra of quantum mechanics. More specifically, the effective variables-matrices qreff(t) and effective conjugate momenta-matrices preff(t) of the emerging theory are shown to evolve under a unitary dynamics and to satisfy the quantum commutation relations, with the constant appearing in the commutation relations identified with hbar. ... quantization naturally emerges from the statistical mechanics of the underlying dynamics: the quantum-like dynamical variables qreff(t) and preff(t) are the result of thermodynamic averages over functions of the true variables qr(t) and pr(t). ...... In the final part of the book the author considers the effects of statistical fluctuations around the averages ... While thermodynamic averages give rise to the quantum framework, i.e. basically to the usual Schrodinger equation, fluctuations around the averages show up as a stochastic modification of the Schrodinger dynamics precisely of the type considered within the context of spontaneous collapse models.
According to these models there is a unique dynamical equation both for microscopic and macroscopic systems: in the microscopic case, the dynamics practically reduces to standard quantum mechanics, while in the macroscopic case it reproduces classical mechanics and in particular predicts that in measurement-like situations wavefunctions of macroscopic measuring systems do not remain in a superposition of different states corresponding to the different outcomes, but spontaneously reduce to just one state, with a probability which is almost identical to the Born probability rule, as predicted by the postulate of wavepacket reduction. ... the reduction process ... is embodied in the modified Schrdinger equation. ...
... physical systems ... are represented by matrices with no a priori commutativity properties, whose dynamics, which in general is neither unitary nor local, should describe all physical phenomena. The quantum mechanical behavior of microscopic systems is recovered as a result of the thermodynamical analysis of the fundamental dynamics; the emerging quantum dynamics is governed by a modified stochastic Schrodinger equation which reproduces the standard Schrodinger evolution at the microscopic level, but at the same time implies that macroscopic objects are described by wavefunctions which are localized in space and obey the classical laws of motion ...".
In his book Quantum Theory as an Emergent Phenomenon CambridgeUniversity Press (2004) , Stephen L. Adler says:
"... quantum theory is an emergent phenomenon arising from the statistical dynamics of an underlying matrix model. ... Our approach may ... have connections to ... string theory ... matrix models ...
[ In the sci.physics.strings thread Re: Speculation: E6 and26-dim string theory, kneemo (kneemo@physicsforums.com) said on2004-05-15 05:00:07 PST, with respect to my work on E6,Strings, Branes, and the Standard Model: "... A Matrix theorysuch as Tony Smith's would then be a nice formulation of (bosonic)M-theory (as Susskind refers to the 27-dimensional theory) ...".]
... if quantum theory is an emergent phenomenon, then the sought for unification of gravitation with the quantum field theoretic standard model may not involve "quantizing" gravitation. Rather ... one should seek a common origin for both gravitation and quantum field theory at the deeper level of physical phenomena from which quantum field theory emerges. ...
[ Such a common origin could be Spin(8) leading to U(2,2)MacDowell-Mansouri Gravity and the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) Standard Model,as in the D4-D5-E6-E7-E8 VoDou Physicsmodel. ]
... our framework leads to not one but two copies of quantum field theory, corresponding to the eigenvalues +/-i of ieff; we have not attempted to assign a physical role to the second copy, nor to the additional "off-diagonal" degrees of freedom corresponding to the parts of the underlying matrices that anticommute with ieff. ....... in real Hilbert space ... the second copy of quantum field theory is absent. The reason is that in real Hilbert space ieff cannot be diagonalized, and so itself plays the role of the imaginary unit of the emergent complex quantum theory. ...
... the off-diagonal degrees of freedom ... couple to the spacetime metric in a manner similar to the first copy. Hence they act as source terms in the Einstein field equations, and thus may be relevant for the questions of "dark matter" or "dark energy" ...".
In his book Super Cosmos 2005, Jack Sarfatti says:
"... the phase transition from normal metal to superconductor ... is precisely the kind of "BCS" breakdown of perturbation theory that characterizes ... I claim, ...[the transition]... from false globally flat vacuum without ODLRO to locally curved vacuum FROM macro-quantum coherent ODLRO when the "temperature" falls below the Planck temperature ...... I say that the "Higgs Ocean" field and the Einstein-Cartan tetrad field are not independent from each other as everyone else today assumes without question. The tetrad field emerges bottom up from the "stiff" world hologram long-range macro-quantum coherent "Goldstone Phase" of the Higgs Ocean field. When the robust phase of the Higgs Ocean field goes incoherent, then the non-trival warp field part of the tetrad vanishes and we are back to the pre-inflationary unstable false vacuum of massless spin 1/2 & spin 1 quantum field theory of globally flat 1905 Special Relativity without any gravity and rest inertia. The symmetry group of this unstable vacuum is the 15-parameter conformal group of Roger Penrose's theory of massless twistors described in his book "The Road to Reality". ... The nice feature of extra space dimensions ... is that it can give us the Abdus-Salam strong short-range gravity that we need to model the lepto-quarks as Wheeler "mass without mass" and "charge without charge" micro-geon Kerr-Newman-Burinski solutions of pure vacuum with exotic cores of dark energy and dark matter on the scale of 1 fermi or less. We may not need supersymmetry ...
... Gravity totally disappears at the Planck phase transition! All inertia disappears. We are back to the pre-inflationary unstable chaotic globally flat Minkowski vacuum. All rest masses disappear! That's why quantizing guv is unrenormalizable. ... All attempts to re-quantize emergent ODLRO fields fail, e.g. quantum gravity is unrenormalizable! ... Therefore, all attempts at "quantum gravity" must fail! ...
... my theory of the virtual electron-positron bound state ODLRO vacuum condensate ... brought ... Andrei Sakharov's1967 conjecture for the emergence of gravity from zero point vacuum fluctuations ... to completion. ...
... My 1969 He4 ground state ODLRO supersolid prediction actually observed at the University of Pennsylvania only in ~ 2003 is the model of the Diff(4) covariant "world crystal" "aether" of Hagen Kleinert's disclination-dislocation model of curvature and torsion. ...
... On Feb 5, 2004, at 6:05 PM, Tony Smith wrote ...[ about]... Dennis Schmidt's 1981 sci-fi book "Satori":
"... Here are the excerpts ...[Bishop:] "The establishment of the Power saved the Earth from destruction by the forces of regression." ...
[Dunn:] "Bullshit. The Power IS the force of regression." ...
[Bishop:] "The Power is all the knowledge mankind has gathered in its lifetime, used wisely and carefully for betterment."
[Dunn:] "The Power controls knowledge, keeps it under lock and key. It's stopped the gathering of any new knowledge and totally destroyed the scientific effort ... It lives off the wisdom of the past, has a stranglehold on the present, and by killing science, it kills the future." ...
This reminds me [Jack] of people we know who run the Cornell e-print archive ...
[Bishop:] "We have enough knowledge ... the Power protects us from ourselves. It gives the people that part of the knowledge they need to make their lives better."[Dunn:] "What if further research would uncover a new theory, one that might make vast areas of current theory obsolete?"
[Bishop:] "Impossible ... Unthinkable. Such a thing cannot happen."
[Dunn:] "Do you realize ... that if Sarfatti and Aspect had blindly accepted Einstein's dictum that the speed of light was the limiting velocity in the universe, they never would have conceived or proven superluminal connectedness, and we wouldn't even be here? Tachyons never turned up, spinning black holes gave random destinations with no way back, and sublight velocities simply took too long. Only the Sarfatti-Aspect effect gave us the key to the stars … the Power owns and controls science now. But it's a dead, useless thing you own. ... Only freedom can revive it."
[Bishop:] .".. what was ... this vaunted science you cherish so much, based on? Human reason! ... As if the conscious, rational mind was the major driving force in human history! ... ... Even within science itself there was a protest against the iron rule of reason. Quantum theory punched the standard view of reality full of holes. Men of foresight and wisdom like Heisenberg, Bohm, and Finkelstein tried to make their comrades see the error of their ways. But it was too late ... Ruin came down on all alike ... If the Power had not come along when it did ... the destruction would have been complete. ... The Power ... is the simple faith the people have in us that provides the strength we need to control science and transform it ... into the gentle and beneficent Knowledge. It is the faith mankind gives us that allows us to give them peace and security and happiness in return."
Wow! I [Jack] had never read that far. Obviously the "Power" was Werner Erhard a kind of American Demagogue Cult Leader now largely forgotten. ...
... Tony Smith then wrote on Feb 6, 2004:
"A review of Satori, Kensho Novel #3 of 4, by Dennis Schmidt (Berkeley 1981). Unless otherwise noted, quotes are from the book.On a web page36 the Wanderling says:"
"Satori is the spiritual goal of Zen Buddhism. (in Chinese: wu.) Satori roughly translates into individual Enligthtenment, or a flash of sudden awareness. ... A brief experience of Enlightenment is sometimes called Kensho. ... In describing the Enlightenment of the Buddha and the patriarchs, however, it is customary to use the word Satori rather than Kensho, the term Satori implying a deeper experience. The feeling of Satori is that of infinite space.""Ben Holmes has written a review of the book Satori. I quote the back cover."
"Satori - The Earthmen are coming... For a thousand years the men and women of Kensho have been evolving a way of living, a civilization that combines technology and spirit in a fashion that the visionaries of old Earth could hardly imagine as the two essential parts of a healthy whole, rather than as deadly enemies out to destroy each other. In another century Kensho would have become invulnerable to the violence of Earth, but the starship bristling with fearful weapons ... is orbiting the planet now. Is there no alternative but to submit to the conquerors? Must the New Humanity return to the sad old ways of Earth? There is one possible way out - but if it fails, the people of Kensho will pay the price of annihilation." "Earth is controlled by an est-like Cult of the Power. The Bishop of the Power is interrogating a human named Dunn on a starship from Earth that is threatening the humans of the planet Kensho as shown in the excerpts from the book above. The humans of Kensho must compete against this Earth-based spaceship that has not only weapons that can incinerate a planet, but also machines used by the Power for mind-control that can gather all the data in a mind and then record, correlate, and analyze all that data and then imprint on that mind new data consistent with the Power. However, the humans of Kensho have developed mental structures, "groups of neurons attached to each other in what seemed to be a closed feedback loop", that allow them to live in symbiosis with Mind Brothers, each of which is a 3-space/4-space-time projection of a 'single creature... from another, higher dimension."The same idea of a hyperspace intelligence is in Jacques Vallee's "Fastwalker" and in Carlo Suares' "Eight Propositions."This is where my [Jack's] physics model of consciousness using telepathic "signal nonlocality" comes in. Signal nonlocality violates micro-quantum theory which is only a limiting case of a more general post-quantum theory. Martin Gardner explained an early version of my theory in 1975 in "Magic and Paraphysics" that Dennis Schmidt may have read?
"Kensho symbiotic humans see the Earth Power mind-machines as 'Primitive ... the mere gathering of large quantities of data hoping some pattern will automatically emerge ... a crude version of empiricism ... At first blush it seems to make sense. But ... collections of data are just that, collections of data. Until they're put into some kind of meaningful order, they're useless. So naive empiricism was replaced by the techniques of developing a hypothesis first, and then looking for the specific facts that prove or disprove the conjecture' … With their mental symbiosis, Kensho humans could survive where the Earth Power men and mind-machines could never reach: 'The abyss, the void ... where solidity disappeared, time halted, and ... the self splintered into ... fragments. The world, the universe, simply evaporated like a wisp of morning fog.'" ...".
In e-mail conversation during April 2005, I [TonySmith] wrote to Jack:
"... Jack, it seems to me that your "... Theory of Everything for Everyone ..." is closely related to a hybrid of NJL (Nambu-Jona-Lasinio) and MCDM (MacDowell-Mansouri gravity) as follows:NJL is Nambu-Jona-Lasinio with T-quark condensate playing the role of your "... negative energy virtual electron Dirac Sea [that] is unstable and forms the Higgs Ocean with the Vacuum ODRLO PSI ... B = ( Lp / 2 pi ) "dArgPSI" ...".
The Lp emerges from NJL as the compositeness scale of the T-quark-antiquark pair HIggs condensate and MCDM is MacDowell-Mansouri gravity in which he 4 anti-deSitter translations form the metric of Einstein gravity, just as you say "... B is also the ... local gauge potential from local gauging of T4 to Diff(4) ... Einstein's emergent curved space time is from the EEP g(curved) = (I+B) (Minkowski ((I+B) ...[where]... The Einstein-Cartan Tetrad 1-form is e = I+B ...[and]... I = Identity ..." with I corresponding to the Minkowski Rotations and Boosts.
YOUR COMBINATION OF NJL AND MCDM WITH B AS BOTH PSI AND T4 IS AN ORIGINAL DEEP INSIGHT THAT (AFAIK) NOBODY ELSE HAS EVER SEEN.
AFAIK everybody working on NJL has ignored the possibility of getting gravity from it and everybody working on MCDM has ignored the possibility of a fermion condensate as the origin of B, so that your combination of NJL and MCDM is an original useful deep insight.
Tony
PS - Note that my use of NJL is somewhat oversimplified. Pure NJL is non-renormalizable, but by adding gauge interactions and a 4-Fermi interaction (gauged 4F NJL) you get renormalizability. Further, you can eliminate the need for the 4-Fermi interaction by going to an 8-dim Kaluza-Klein NJL, and such an 8DKKNJL is really quite realistic (see for example hep-ph/0311165 by Hashimoto, Tanabashi, and Yamawaki). As you might expect, I like 8DKKNJL because it shows how your model and my model are mutually consistent and fit together nicely.
PPS - Your "... toy model with G / H = S1 ..." might in a more nearly realistic version be G / H = Spin(2,3) / Spin(1,3) = anti-deSitter / Lorentz. An even more realistic version might be to use G = Spin(2,4) = SU(2,2) = Conformal Group, which would lead to Segal's conformal stuff ...
PPPS - Since I think that your construction of gravity from the B of I+B is equivalent to MCDM, and since MCDM is well known to produce spin-2 gravitons, I think that your model DOES IN FACT EFFECTIVELY HAVE SPIN-2 GRAVITONS. However, you are correct when you say "... Quantized Gloldstone vibrations in argPSI are not spin 2 gravitons ..." because the NJL Goldstone bosons are the Higgs bosons (NOT gravitons). ...".
In a subsequent April 2005 e-mail, I [Tony Smith] wrote toJack:
"... Jack, here are some more details about MCDM: According to Freund in chapter 21 of his book Supersymmetry (Cambridge 1986) where chapter 21 is a NON-SUPERSYMMETRY chapter leading up to a supergravity description in the following chapter 22:"... Einstein gravity as a gauge theory ... Whether the gauge group be the Poincare or the [anti-] de-Sitter group, we expect a set of gauge fields w^ab_u for the Lorentz group and a further set e^a_u for the translations, ... Everybody knows though, that Einstein's theory contains but one spin two field, originally chosen by Einstein as g_uv = e^a_u e^b_v n_ab (n_ab = Minkowski metric). What happened to the w^ab_u ? The field equations obtained from the Hilbert-Einstein action by varying the w^ab_u are algebraic in the w^ab_u ... permitting us to express the w^ab_u in terms of the e^a_u ...". The w do not propagate ... We start from the four-dimensional de-Sitter algebra ...so(3,2). Technically this is the anti-de-Sitter algebra ... We envision space-time as a four-dimensional manifold M. At each point of M we have a copy of SO(3,2) (a fibre ...) ... and we introduce the gauge potentials (the connection) h^A_mu(x) A = 1,..., 10 , mu = 1,...,4. Here x are local coordinates on M. From these potentials h^A_mu we calculate the field-strengths (curvature components) [let @ denote partial derivative] R^A_munu = @_mu h^A_nu - @_nu h^A_mu + f^A_BC h^B_mu h^C_nu ...[where]... the structure constants f^C_AB ...[are for]... the anti-de-Sitter algebra .... We now wish to write down the action S as an integral over the four-manifold M ... S(Q) = INTEGRAL_M R^A /\ R^B Q_AB where Q_AB are constants ... to be chosen ... we require ... the invariance of S(Q) under local Lorentz transformations ... the invariance of S(Q) under space inversions ... Were it not for the assumed space-inversion invariance ... we could have had a parity violating gravity. ... ...[ AFTER A LOT OF ALGEBRA THAT I WON'T TYPE HERE ]... we shall see ...[that]... the action becomes invariant under all local [anti]de-Sitter transformations ...[and]... we recognize ... the familiar Hilbert-Einstein action with cosmological term in vierbein notation ... Variation of the vierbein leads to the Einstein equations ...".Tony ...".
In an e-mail reply in April 2005, Jack said:
"... > What happened to the w^ab_u ?Easy, that's Shipov's torsion. ...".
In LubosMotl's 20 August 2005 blog interview, FranziskaMichor said:
"... In humans, the mutation rate per base is about 10^(-10) per cell division, and the human genome consists of 3 billion bases, so it's less than one mutation per cell division. ...".
and I commented:
"... I am interested to know if there is a deep reason (perhaps evolutionary) why the human mutation rate of 10^(-10) mutations per base per division is so close to the inverse of the number of bases in the human genome, 3 x 10^9. ...".
My current thinking is that the mutation rate 10^(-10) may befixed by the laws of physics/chemistry, so that:
According to an article by Joel E. Cohen in the September 2005issue of Scientific American:
"... The year 2005 is the midpoint of a decade that spans three unique, important transitions in the history of humankind.
- Before 2000, young people always outnumbered old people. From 2000 forward, old people will outnumber old people.
- Until approximately 2007, rural people will have always outnumbered urban people. From approximately 2007 forward, urban people will outnumber rural people.
- From 2003 on, the median woman worldwide had, and will continue to have, too few or just enough children during her lifetime to replace herself and the father in the following generation.
The century with 2000 as its midpoint marks three additional, unique, important transitions in human history.
- First, no person who died before 1930 had lived through a doubling of the human population. Nor is any person born in 2050 or later likely to live through a doubling of the human population. In contrast, everyone 45 years or older today has seen more than a doubling of human numbers from three billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion in 2005. The peak population growth rate ever reached, about 2.1 percent a year, occurred between 1965 and 1970. Human population never grew with such speed before the 20th century and is never again likely to grow with such speed. Our descendants will look back on the late 1960s as the most significant demographic event in the history of the human population ...
- Second, the dramatic fall since 1970 of the global population growth rate to 1.1 or 1.2 percent a year today resulted primarily from choices by billions of couples around the world to limit the number of children born. ... Never before the 20th century has a fall in the global population growth rate been voluntary [ as opposed to plagues, wars, etc ] ...
- Finally, the last half a century saw, and the next half a century will see, an enormous shift in the demographic balance between the more developed regions of the world and the less developed ones. Whereas in 1950 the less developed regions had roughly twice the population of the more developed ones, by 2050 the ratio will exceed six to one.
... By 2050 the world's popuylation is projected to reach 9.1 billion, plus or minus two billion people, depending on future birth and death rates. ... humans are already growing enough cereal grains to feed 10 billion people a vegetarian diet. ... ".
In an8 August 2005 truthout web article, Dynamic UrumqiConfounds the West in Many Ways, William O. Beemansaid:
"... The city looks like lower Manhattan, with skyscrapers risingalmost in front of one's eyes. But, surprise! This is Urumqi... capital of China's western Xinjiang ... autonomous region. Thecity, a century ago a major stop on the Silk Road, is flourishingagain with economic activity doubling every year. Thecity is becoming the mercantile trade capital of all of Central Asia,and there is not an American in sight. ... America's lack ofknowledge about this region may prove disadvantageous in theimmediate future. From January to June 2005, Urumqi measured importsand exports at 5.44 million tons, an increase of 25% over the sameperiod last year. This represented $3.368 billion of trade for thesix-month period. Trade for June 2005 alone was double that of June2004. The city is clean and bustling 24 hours a day. It is clearly ashopper's paradise, with huge bazaars everywhere. One "bazaar" isnothing but a four-storey building full of small offices representingevery possible Chinese manufacturer or distributor of consumer goods- from cashmere shawls to computer chips. Of US companies, only Nikeis present. All the signs in the complex are in Chinese, Russianand Uighur, a member of the Turkic family and the officiallanguage of Xinjiang. Outside, trucks create perpetual traffic jamsas they pull up and are loaded full, speeding off to Novosibirsk,Almaty, Bishkek and Dushanbe. Dozens of buses full of shoppers fromother Central Asian capitals are also loading up with floods oftelevisions, DVD players and satellite dishes. ... Some buses headfor the Urumqi International Airport, which now carries more cargothan people. ... Now that the first road ever is open intoland-locked Tajikistan, huge amounts of goods are transported everyday for the six months of the year that the route is open beforewinter snows fall. ... I spent a day with friends in a beautiful citypark where we climbed a big hill to several pagodas on the top, hadour pictures taken with a snake and a monkey, and drank chilled fruitjuices while looking over the cityscape with its looming buildingsrising from the Xinjiang steppe. The Urumqi international bazaar, ahuge caravanserai complex with a giant minaret in the middle, isanother pleasure palace awash in tourists - primarily Chinese fromBeijing. Every cuisine in the world is common fare, and meals ofRussian pelmeni (dumplings), Indian-inspired samosas (meat filledpastries), and Uighur hand-pulled noodles are common. ... The ethnicChinese from the great Eastern capitals have moved into the city in abig way, appropriating land and dominating the commercial markets.The native Uighurs, who are Muslim, view them as unwelcome colonists.Opposition to the Chinese through groups such as The UighurLiberation Organization, and the Xinjiang Liberation Organizationpredates al-Qaeda by decades. These groups have staged periodicattacks on Chinese government facilities in the region with tacitpublic support. ... The United States has backed into thiscontroversy by detaining some two dozen Uighurs captured inAfghanistan at Guantanamo Bay. Too late, Washington realized thatalthough the members of these groups are Muslims, Islamic ideologyhas little to do with their opposition to the Chinese government.Although Washington would like to release these prisoners since theyhad nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, no country will takethem. The Chinese view them as potential terrorists, and they areunwelcome in any other neighboring Central Asian country. ... The USCentral Command claims that its sphere of influence extends to theChinese border, but Xinjiang, Urumqi and the Uighurs may prove thelimits of American power - both military and economic. ...".
In a1 August 2005 Pacific News article, Go East, YoungMan -- Follow the New Silk Road, with editor's notesaying "... Young Muslim men from Central Asia are traveling to Chinaseeking economic opportunity -- and finding it. The United States mayfind itself watching an important axis of trade and energydevelopment from the sidelines. ...", William O. Beeman said:
"... As the United States greets the Islamic world with increasingfear and hostility, China is embracing it with an astonishingenthusiasm, and young Muslim youths are responding in increasingnumbers -- in effect creating a modern Silk Road culture. Youngpeople in the Middle East and Central Asia, long oriented towardRussia, Europe and North America, are beginning to discover that abrighter future lies to the east, in China. The boom in trade andtechnology in China promises to make that nation the great economicengine for the world. This promise is exerting a powerful pull. Chinahas first-rate universities, tremendous employment possibilities andeconomic opportunities that look increasingly attractive compared tothose in the West. The price is right, too. Education and trainingare inexpensive compared to the United States and Europe. At a topU.S. university, a foreign student might pay $25,000 per year intuition. At Beijing University, the same student could pay $2,500 orless. Add to this the fact that security issues in the West have madeit increasingly difficult for young Muslims to obtain visas for workor study. Even if they are able to get the documents that would allowthem to study, travel or do business in New York, Moscow or Paris,they face increasing discrimination from officials and the public.The city of Urumqi in the Xinjiang autonomous region of Western Chinareflects this new migration. This ancient city is now an astonishingboomtown, with a skyline of tall buildings that makes Urumqi looklike Chicago from a distance. With more than $5 billion in trade lastyear, and trade figures doubling on an annual basis, the city is amagnet for the chronically unemployed youths of Central Asia. Siamakis a 24-year-old Kyrgyz man who works in a pharmacy, translatingbetween Russian, Uighur, Kyrgyz, English and Chinese for thethousands of traders exporting Chinese pharmaceuticals. ... "TheChinese are making everything," he explains. "I think this is thebest place to be to learn about electronics." ... Now that the firstroad ever is open into land-locked Tajkistan, huge amounts of goodsare transported every day for the six months of the year that theroute is open. ... In Beijing, Muslims from Central Asia and theMiddle East are showing up in increasing numbers. Iran has a boomingtrade with China, and there are regular flights between the twonations. Bagher has been in Beijing for more than 10 years. He is anaficionado of Beijing opera, and is a successful trader in tea. "TheChinese don't care what I do with my private life," he says. "Theymay be hard on their own citizens who protest, but I am free to liveas I like." Despite ethnic and economic tension between Han Chineseand Uighurs, Islam as a faith is widely tolerated in China, wheremany Muslims are ethnic Chinese. Islamic supermarkets dot thecityscape north of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there are asmany Arab, Persian and Central Asian customers today as Chinese.Mosques throughout Beijing create a welcoming atmosphere for thesenew pioneers from the Middle East. Right now the number of CentralAsians and Middle Easterners staking out a future in China is small,but there is no question that the numbers will grow as news of thegreat opportunities in the East spreads. As human ties between theregions strengthen, the natural resources of the Middle East andCentral Asia will increasingly flow to China, rather than the West.The cross-fertilization of cultures that once made the Silk Road theeconomic engine that ran the world is about to be reborn, and theUnited States and its allies are in danger of standing on thesidelines watching the caravan move on. ...".
As of 2005, USA Central Asianpolicy has been to get influence by having a big military base inUzbekistan, while the Chinese Central Asian policy has been tobuild the mercantile center at Urumqi, which is becoming the de factoeconomic center of Central Asia, with the languages of trade beingMandarin, Russian, and Uighur(Turkish). The trading table is betweenthe Chinese and the Central Asians: the Chinese bring to the tablecomputers, automobiles, refrigerators, cell phones, etc.; and theCentral Asians (including Iran) bring oil, gas, minerals, etc.For example, theIranian Oil Bourse (IOB), if it begins operations on schedule inMarch 2006, would facilitate trading inoil without using USA-dollars.
In 2007, Greater New FellowshipMissionary Baptist Church had grown to about 400 members, and hadplanned to expand its buildings and parking, and filed for expansionwith the Board of Zoning Appeals of the City of Cartersville.Unfortunately (in my opinion) objections have been filed against theexpansion, which objections seem to me to be motivated primarily byracism. I filed with theCity of Cartersville and its Board of Zoning Appeals some commentsabout the objections (here is a pdf fileof some comments). After extensive discussions between the May2007 and 18 June 2007 meetings of the Board of Zoning Appeals,including detailed explanations of plans by GNFMBC architect JimCroft and GNFMBC Pastor W. J. E. Coombs, careful explanations ofcommunity dynamics by Winston Strickland, constructive ideas fromneighbors Thomas Champion and Becky Champion, as well as presence atthe 18 June 2007 meeting of NAACP attorney BedeliaC. Hargrove and NAACP representative Dr.R. L. White, Jr., the Board of Zoning Appeals approved theexpansion. We are hoping to move forward with the expanding ministryand hopefully bringing diverse parts of the neighborhood togetherinto harmonious efforts for neighborhood improvement.