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Years ago, I was inspired by Flemming Funch’s great piece which I have previsouly shared with NPD readers. Here is a new video treatment of his work. May this video go viral and reach the soul of humanity from which it comes. As always, please click on the link at the bottom of this e-mail to view the video.
Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype “Transition” car-plane had completed an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year. ”With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream,” said founder Carl Dietrich.
The two-seater craft, which has the rounded features of a Fiat 500 and collapsible wings, is on presale for $279,000 and some 100 vehicles have already been ordered.
While many companies have successfully built a flying car, none have succeeded in producing more than a handful of models. But things have changed since the clunky Curtiss Autoplane hopped and spluttered into action in the early 1900s. New materials and computer-aided design mean today’s flying cars are cheaper and lighter to build. They also look more like “Blade Runner” than “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
The successful test flight has given hope to aficionados that this staple of science fiction is a step closer to reality. ”Is it going to be like the Jetsons with everyone driving one in five years? No,” admitted Winfield Keller, vice president of The International Flying Car Association, a trade group. ”But we are getting to the point where 10, maybe 15 years from now that the people owning and operating (them) will be everyday people.”
In the meantime manufacturers hope they can build something that appeals to border security agencies, the police or the military, as well as hobbyists. Terrafugia is targeting pilots looking for a bit more flexibility and fewer hangar fees. Spanning 90 inches (2.3m) the same as a car, it fits into a normal-sized garage, before unfurling a 26 foot (8m) wingspan. The Transition, they say offers unparalleled freedom of movement, with a range of 490 miles (787 kilometers) and without the need to check bags.
But to take advantage, would-be owners will need to have both a driver’s and pilot’s license — with a minimum of 20 hours of flying time. The craft needs 2,500 feet (762 meters) of runway for takeoff, meaning pulling onto the shoulder and escaping the traffic is not really an option. ”The Transition Street-Legal Airplane is now a significant step closer to being a commercial reality,” the company said.
At least two other companies are racing to bring an autoplane to the market. Dutch company PAL-V has tested a prototype gyrocopter-style car. It hopes to now build a full production prototype and to have the first deliveries by 2014. California-based Moller International has built a personal vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, although it requires a little more training to operate.
My friend, Wade Frazier is arguably one of the most knowledgable people on the planet when it comes to free energy having lived a cycle of getting a highly efficient heat pump to market and it’s consequences as well as researching the subject in depth. Wade continues to inform to a small audience that wants to get to the truth in a sea of misinformation and deception and do what they can to get this technology where it belongs-in the hand of the many. The following piece is part of a large collection that Wade has shared at Project Avalon.net and his site, A Healed Planet.net. Be forewarned, once you visit Wade’s site, you may go down a rabbit hole and spend hours exploring. But that’s a good thing. 
It is time once again to reiterate my intention for my public FE work. I have done it several times, and each time I say it a little differently, so that the point can get across, because it is obviously a difficult concept, even when people are trying to understand. It took me many hard years to arrive at my perspective, and I sympathize with people who have been influenced by all the scientists, inventors, and promoters who have dominated this subject for many years. I am not taking their approach.
The analogy this time will focus on the automobile. What are cars good for? What are their transformative effects on societies? What are their costs and benefits? The conversation can stray into the metallurgy for making lighter, stronger engines, or valve design, radiator design, gear ratios, or the various ways that fuel can be introduced and combusted. Those are important scientific and engineering issues, but they generally have tangential impact on the discussion of what a car is good for and how it can transform a society. Technical types can discuss why cars get the MPGs they do and how that can be improved. But anybody who discusses the technicalities of high MPG carburetors, without an understanding that the corporate imperative is to keep MPGs low to help the oil companies, is missing the dynamic’s most important part. High MPG carburetors do not mean anything in a corporate culture that has effectively banished them:
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/advent.htm#carb1
The world’s best engine does not mean anything:
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/energy.htm#glimpse
in a world where such disruptive technologies are shelved and buried by the score, even if they ever get to the point of becoming a market threat (which rarely happens).
Dennis discovered the hard way that Washington’s electric companies were not really interested in energy conservation,
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/energy1.htm#run
even when their propaganda said so:
http://www.ahealedplanet.net/energy1.htm#whoops
To continue reading this informative piece, click here.
Paradise or Oblivion details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.
The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world’s people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.
Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today.
*This is NOT the “major motion picture” that The Venus Project is working towards but rather is a 52 min. documentary to introduce the aims and proposals to new people. Paradise or Oblivion will be released in March 2012 and we will post a link to the documentary as soon as it is released.
In the meantime, if you are not familiar with the work of Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, here is a link to his highly informative newsletter and The Venue Project site. Fresco is one of the most brilliant minds of our time and his visionary proposals make total sense. He just raised funds to hire a screenwriter to develop a feature film that can inform the world that a solution exists to humanity’s challenges. This film cannot arrive too soon. Like Buckminster Fuller before him, the world is fortunate to have his brilliant mind and heart in service to life. NPD will continue to update readers on Jacque’s progress as it means our progress.
by Richard Tarnas, PhD and Dean Radin, PhD
From Institute of Noetic Sciences
Ed. Note: There are few scholars in the world better equipped to evaluate where civilization is headed than eminent professor of philosophy and cultural history Richard Tarnas. In the following dialogue, excerpted and edited from the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ teleseminar series, Shifting Paradigms, IONS Senior Scientist Dean Radin talks with Dr. Tarnas about the notion of paradigm shifts and what is required for a society to make such a leap. To read a chapter from Tarnas’s book, Cosmos and Psyche, go here.
Radin: In your first book, The Passion of the Western Mind (1993), you explain the context in which we find ourselves, how we got where we are. Most people most of the time don’t think much about why they believe the things that they do and why society works the way that it does. In your second book, Cosmos and Psyche (2006), you use an enchanted view of reality, in a sense, to show why some of the aspects of traditional astrology are actually quite useful in seeing where we are and where we are going.
Tarnas: I wrote The Passion of the Western Mind as a kind of overview of the history of the Western worldview up until the late twentieth century. I wanted to try to see the larger paradigm shifts that took place and the major factors that were at work in forming our current worldview. We really can’t understand ourselves or the present without having a good grasp of the historical factors that shaped us. I love that sentence from historian Daniel Boorstein: “Trying to understand and create the future without knowing the past is like planting cut flowers.” We need a sense of our roots. The Passion of the Western Mind gives that kind of overview.
It’s particularly focused on the West, starting from the ancient Greeks, because that’s the cultural worldview that is so fundamental in shaping the global context today. For better or worse, modernity is the most powerful influence on our global civilization now, and that history goes from the ancient Greeks up through the Roman period, right through the medieval era to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, and so forth, up to the modern and postmodern periods. In my first book, I attempted to see the big picture as well as the ways in which a culture’s philosophy, religion, and science interact in any given era; it will shape the worldview, the cosmology, the notion of the divine, the notion of our understanding of the human self and its place in the universe. All these things constitute a worldview. So, in that book, I sought to understand that evolution of consciousness as well as I could.
My second book, Cosmos and Psyche, is actually the reason I wrote the first book, which served as a kind of prelude and a foundation to the second one—I’ll go into that in a second.
But perhaps we might want to engage some of the larger issues that go into paradigm shifts and why a culture seems ready or ripe for a major change of vision at a particular time? What makes a difference?
To continue reading this penetrating interview, click here.
Three upcoming IONS events:
“Conscious Aging” Telecourse
On January 18th, IONS begins its next 8-week educational program, “Conscious Aging,” facilitated by Kathleen Erickson-Freeman, IONS Elder Education Program Manager, and featuring experts in the field of conscious aging. Sessions will take place on eight consecutive Wednesday evenings from 5–7pm PT through March 7th. The course is $75 for IONS members and $235 for nonmembers (you can join for as low as $35!); low income rates are also available. To register, go here. Next on the schedule: “Buddha’s Brain: Taking in the Good” with Rick Hanson, PhD, from March 14 – May 2. More details coming soon…
Spirituality and Psychology Conference
February 17–19, 2012
Menlo College, Atherton, CA
The third biennial ATP-ITP Spirituality & Psychology Conference will bring together clinicians, therapists, spiritual guides, faith-based and healing practitioners, academics, and researchers to explore the promises and pitfalls of the spiritual path. Join keynote speakers Roger Walsh, Shauna Shapiro, Jeanne Achterberg and a host of luminaries including Jim Fadiman, Arthur Hastings, Olga Louchakova, and David Lukoff to examine the nature of spiritual illusion while we seek the wisdom and health benefits available in spirituality. Enjoy workshops, presentations, music, ritual, yoga, meditation, drumming, and social networking. For more information and to register, visit www.regonline.com/spiritualitypsychology.
Noetic Film Experience
From psi research and positive psychology to meditation, mythology, and personal transformation, IONS’ first Noetic Film Experience will have something for everyone. Join us March 9–11, 2012, at the IONS EarthRise Retreat Center where we will celebrate the power of film while sharing our experiences via panels, receptions, and Q&A with filmmakers and scientists. The lineup is coming together, and additional films just booked include The Dhamma Brothers, a powerful documentary about the introduction of meditation techniques into a high-security Alabama prison. Finding Joe, which explores the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell and his focus on The Hero’s Journey. May I Be Frank, the inspiring story of a troubled man whose life starts to change when he meets the folks at Café Gratitude. Something Unknown, considered by many to be the best film on parapsychology research ever made.
And this just in: Jean Houston will be joining us to introduce and discuss her new movie, A Passion for the Possible, premiering at the festival! Go here to register or for more information.
For sponsorship information, contact Matthew Gilbert at mgilbert@noetic.org.
