Left to right: Kia, Naomi and Alan Scherr.

Today is my debut at Newsreal, the blog magazine founded by David Horowitz to expose bias in the media and fight totalitarianism in all its forms. My first post there begins as follows:

A year ago, on November 26, my friend, Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter Naomi, 13, were murdered in the restaurant of the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai by one of the 10 Islamic terrorists conducting attacks at several carefully selected locations. Over 200 persons were murdered and more than 308 wounded in the attacks, which lasted from Nov. 26 to Nov. 29.

Two television documentaries recently commemorated the attacks: HBO’s “Terror in Mumbai,” narrated by Fareed Zakaria; and PBS’s “Mumbai Massacre,” which is an episode of the series, “Secrets of the Dead.” I have to admit, I could not bear to watch them.

But, as a writer in the political opinion niche, I know that one of the reasons you seek to be the one who tells a story is to assemble the evidence and craft a narrative that provides the conclusions you reach with the emotional and logical foundation for their acceptance — and to defeat or crowd out alternatives.

Read the rest here — I conclude my piece by introducing the Maharishi Effect to the marketplace of ideas of how to fight terrorism. I do not know of any other writer who is explaining the use of this technology, which is unique because it has been demonstrated scientifically to work to reduce acts of war and indicators of social negativity such as crime, sickness and accidents; it does not require any belief or faith to work; and it works with as few as one percent, or even as few as the square root of one percent, of a population applying the technology regularly.

This is a video from 1990 of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation program, explaining how the Maharishi Effect can create peace and positive trends. The Maharishi Effect begins when any given population has at least one percent practicing the Transcendental Meditation program twice a day, or the square root of one percent of a population practicing the TM-Sidhi program, which includes yogic flying, in a group.

I learned the TM technique in 1974 and the TM-Sidhi program in 1978. Yogic flying is real — one of the women in my class was in her sixties and could not bend her legs at the knees due to arthritis, but I saw her fly up and forward with her legs straight out in front of her in a few hops that took her about 10 feet across the foam we used for our yogic flying technique.

Neither the Transcendental Meditation technique nor the TM-Sidhi program are a religion. They are effortless and very pleasant to do. I consider the money I spent to learn these programs to be the best and most successful investment of my life. These techniques are unique — nothing else is comparable, or has comparable positive results.

No other meditation or personal development program has been as studied as the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs. I recommend checking out the Web site of the foremost researcher on the TM technique and Maharishi Effect, Dr. David Orme-Johnson, who is an absolutely brilliant and wonderful man of the very highest integrity. (It includes letters from people of a variety of religions who have learned the TM technique and affirm that it does not conflict with their religion.)

I bring this up due to the anger, hurt, grief and sadness flowing in the wake of the mass murder at Fort Hood by Army psychiatrist/Muslim extremist Maj. Hasan. We don’t need everyone in the U.S. to practice the TM technique, but your individual life does get better when you do, and with large enough numbers to trigger the Maharishi Effect, you change the trends of society for the better in measurable ways.

Find out more, and where you can learn the Transcendental Meditation technique at TM.org.

If you can’t find a qualified TM teacher, leave a comment here and I’ll help you. I will not, however, put up with complaints that they charge a fee to teach you the technique. Prior to Maharishi’s founding an organization to teach this technique in 1958, the price was to become celibate, be male, find and join the right ashram and give up all your worldly goods. So the current price structure for instruction represents quite a discount. This is a technique that reliably, pleasantly and systematically will take people who practice it consistently to the highest levels of enlightenment — it is worth the money! Plus, once you have the desire to learn the TM technique, it really can be amazing how your luck improves and the money you need for it comes to you, even when it seems impossible.

Bonus: Maharishi explains how to produce permanent peace — there is serious science about this, this is not about airey-fairey attitudes:

The woman singing “I kept on turning the handle,” a song from the point of view of a silent movie camera operator in 1913, is Joanna Seaton. She is the lovely and charming wife of my friend, Donald Sosin, who is a famous composer, arranger and accompanist for silent movies. Donnie and I met on a course in the Catskills that was required back in 1977-78 in order to learn the TM-Sidhi program, which culminates in learning yogic flying. Our paths didn’t cross again until August 2006 on an advanced course for yogic flyers in Bethesda, Maryland. Now, thanks to e-mail, it is easy to keep in touch.

Recently Donnie sent me an e-mail telling of his adventures with his wife and son, who is one of the smartest and kindest persons I’ve ever met, and I moseyed over to YouTube to see if there were any videos I could share. I chose this one because I am utterly charmed by the wicked humor of this song and how beautifully and wittily Joanna sings it.

Joanna’s performance was part of “Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto” in Pordenone, Italy, in October 2008. Donnie accompanies her on the piano.

I learned the Transcendental Meditation technique way back in February 1974 when I was in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. I’ll say more about its comprehensive benefits another time. Right now, I’ll say that my late life partner, Margaret Ardussi, was a highly respected TM teacher and that buying instruction in the TM technique was the best investment I’ve made in my life. I shudder to think what my life would have been like without it. (Notice I didn’t say “would be” — that’s because without the TM technique I probably would not have survived my 20′s.)

There are seven steps to learning the TM program, which was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The first is an introductory lecture, which discusses the benefits of learning the technique for you as an individual and for society and the scientific research on these benefits. The second is a preparatory lecture, which discusses the origin of the technique and how it works. For people who decide to learn the TM technique, following the preparatory lecture there is a short personal interview with a certified TM teacher. In the fourth step, usually a day or two later, you are instructed in the TM technique.

Steps five, six and seven are are group meetings with all the people instructed on the same day. In the step five class, the TM teacher gives instructions and answers questions to ensure everyone is practicing the technique correctly. In the step six class, the TM teacher explains the mechanics of how TM works in more depth than step two because now he or she is talking to people who have experienced it. In the step seven class, the TM teacher explains the characteristics of higher states of consciousness and how they develop. (I’ll be writing posts about that.) Oh, and there’s a free life-time follow-up program, too.

A couple of the things people sometimes worry about when they first learn the TM technique is whether they can look at their watch while practicing the technique (yes, no problem) and how to deal with distractions.

So, back in 1974, when the teacher leading my follow-up classes was asked, “What should we do if there’s a fly?”

He smiled and said, “Maharishi says, ‘In this meditation, we swat flies.’”

It makes me smile every time I remember it. I can’t think why I keep thinking about it every time I’ve watched the news over the last couple of days, though.

P.S.

I almost forgot — the price to learn the TM technique has been temporarily reduced! And there are couples’ and family rates and student rates and senior citizen rates — really, I don’t know how the organization is able to function with such low rates.

I have absolutely no patience with people who complain that if TM is so good, why does it cost money, or cost so much money, or whatever. The original price of the TM technique was to be a man, give up all your worldly possessions, be celibate and join an ashram. THEN, hope that the guru leading the ashram knew the technique AND would teach it to you.

P.P.S.

The TM technique is effortless and very pleasant to do. It does not require you to sit a certain way. You do not have to change your diet. It works whether or not you believe it will work. It is unique among meditation techniques, which is explained in the second lecture. It is NOT a religion and does not compete with any religion. The foremost researcher on the effects of the TM program on the individual and society is Dr. David Orme-Johnson and he has letters about practicing TM written by people of different religions here.

P.P.P.S.

Tomorrow I will resume my regularly scheduled programming aimed at persuading CBS to FIRE DAVID LETTERMAN. I’ll also be writing a post explaining what mobbing is and why what Letterman is doing is really inciting a mob, not doing comedy.

I first met Nancy Lonsdorf when she was a medical student at Johns Hopkins University in the 1970′s. We were part of a small group who practiced the yogic flying technique of the TM-Sidhi program at the Transcendendental Meditation Center in Pikesville, Maryland, near Baltimore.

Now she is Dr. Lonsdorf and she has spent most of her medical career as an expert in Maharishi Ayur-Veda, which is the revived form of ayur-veda, the traditional medical system of India. She is an extraordinarily brilliant and gifted physician. When she had her practice in Washington, D.C. and Margaret and I saw her, I always thought that she brought the best of both Western medicine and Maharishi Ayur-Veda to bear on every medical problem she considered.

Margaret — my late life partner — was with me for one of my appointments with Dr. Lonsdorf in the 1980′s when Dr. Lonsdorf was taking my medical history and asked me whether or not I ever had PMS. Now, you have to understand that Dr. Lonsdorf already had taken my pulse using the ayurvedic technique for evaluating very precisely what imbalances you are experiencing. That means she knew the answer to that question perfectly well. She wanted to know if I knew it. However, I was unwilling to admit to PMS.

Consequently, after staring at me intently for a few moments, Dr. Lonsdorf swung her gaze to Margaret and asked, “Well, does she?”

Margaret said, “Yes!” a little too fast for my taste, and added a vigorous nod.

Whereupon Dr. Lonsdorf turned backed to me and again fixed me with her gaze and said with a dry smile, “I think I’m going to go with the more objective observation.”

I should add that ayurvedic management of those symptoms very greatly improved my life and well-being.

Now Dr. Lonsdorf practices in Fairfield, Iowa, so I love it that she is using teleseminars to give people wider access to her knowledge. You will definitely get more than your money’s worth from her seminars on April 25 and May 9 (both at 9 am PDT/12 noon EDT) on “How To Stay Young, Healthy and Beautiful with Ageless Beauty Detox.” To get more information and register, go here. If the times are not convenient for you, the registration price includes downloadable recordings of the talks, which are scheduled for 70 minutes each, so you can still hear them.

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(NOTE: It would be very helpful if some of y’all would click the “Donate” button to help me buy about $100 in materials I’d like to use to explain the coding theory you need to know to understand why the origin of life is an axiom of biology just as the origin of matter is an axiom of physics, chemistry and astronomy. Thanks.)

My father is Hubert P. Yockey and I edit his work, so I really am an authority on this topic. In fact, I’ve been thinking that since what I have to say on the origin of life and Darwin’s theory of evolution is unique, I should write a lot more on the topic while my father is still alive to consult and ensure that what I write is correct and leave mocking Obama to others for the nonce.

These thoughts have coincided with Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs getting denounced by Glenn Beck this week for calling the Tea Partiers extremists, which I agree is an assertion that has no foundation and is malicious.

I’ve only dropped in on Little Green Footballs on a handful of occasions and Johnson never answered when I asked to be registered as a commenter. I’ve only glanced through his coverage of the advocates of Creationism, and Intelligent Design, which is re-branded Creationism, trying to get their religious dogma written into science textbooks and taught in public schools at the expense of public tax dollars.

By the way, the origin of life and evolution are two completely separate considerations. As my father has pointed out (pp. 119-120, Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005), Darwin specifically said his theory of evolution had nothing to do with the origin of life:

But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal [The first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, classically thought to have been due to Moses] term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter. (Darwin, 1898, HPY emphasis)

My father was among the first group of scientists to see the application of information theory to biology in the 1950′s — in particular, his paper on the application of Shannon’s Channel Capacity Theorem to molecular biology — and he organized the third-ever scientific conference about it in 1956 and edited the book of papers presented there, Symposium on Information Theory in Biology, edited by Hubert P. Yockey, Robert Platzman and Henry Quastler, Pergamon Press, 1958.

Dr. Quastler organized the first two conferences on information theory and biology and the field would be significantly farther along if he hadn’t committed suicide in 1963 the day after coming home and finding his wife dead in their home (from natural causes, as I recall). It also would be farther along if my mother had been sane and supportive of my father’s work instead of the chainsmoking, alcoholic borderline that she was. I am devoted to my father because he is the one who took care of the three of us children and protected us in an era where divorce was not an option because no matter how awful a mother was, she always got custody. My father resumed his work on information theory after my younger brother, Eric, was killed in a car accident on August 22, 1973.

Dad has been in the position of Mercutio in the debate on the origin of life — “a pox on both your houses” — because he has worked to demonstrate which scenarios must be rejected as scientific because they can only be asserted on the basis of faith. He trusted the courts to enforce the separation of church and state and keep creation scenarios based on religious dogmas out of the public schools and university science classes. However, as a scientist, he saw that the scientific scenarios of chance and self-organization also were based on the dogma of the secular religion of communism, dialectical materialism, and did not survive true scientific scrutiny and therefore could only be maintained on faith.

And what my father constantly has said about faith is that it has a place in religion but not in science, citing Socrates that the means of removing illusions is “counting and measuring.” (The full quote is in Dad’s book cited above and here, on page 5 of the reply to the FTE amicus brief he wrote for Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005. FTE is the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, which distorted my father’s work and attempted to appropriate his scientific reputation in the book at the center of the trial, Of Pandas and People. I will post about that tomorrow or Sunday. BTW, if you buy my father’s book, I would really appreciate your purchasing it through my Amazon Associates advertisement located on the right underneath the newsfeed column. I take care of my father and do not have any other job to support myself or pay my own expenses.)

Since science is about counting and measuring, not faith or dogma, this means religious people have no business dressing up their dogmas as science to force others to believe them and to appropriate public money to proselytize for them in public schools. Likewise, while science may be able to disprove certain dogmas, such as the earth being the center of the universe, scientists have no foundation for claiming science disproves the existence of God — I was about to continue by saying that science cannot address the existence of God because that is a matter of faith. Then I remembered that science is going to be able to address various aspects of the existence of God — or, perhaps, more accurately, the experience of God — when there is a larger pool of subjects in the higher states of consciousness called “enlightenment.” I will explain higher states of consciousness tomorrow. But even when sufficient subjects are available, scientists will not be able to address whether or not God exists, but rather, only the physiological correlates associated with a subjective experience of God.

Over the course of his work on the origin of life, my father is the one who has shown that it is unknowable, as Charles Darwin and Nils Bohr predicted. Something that is true, but which cannot be derived from anything else, is a starting point for reasoning called an axiom. The origin of life is an axiom of biologybecause it is unknowable. That is what should be taught about the origin of life. All the other scenarios for the origin of life rely on faith or miracles, which is why my headline says, “Pretty much everyone is some kind of creationist except my father.”

P.S.

Just about everything I know about LGF and Charles Johnson is in this story from the Christian Science Monitor, which I just read.

I am a Wolverine, in the University of Michigan, “Hail to the Victors Valiant” sense, so when the Wolverines meme got rolling, it caught my eye.

I think it started on Feb. 14 with a National Review Online list of the top 25 conservative movies here, which listed Red Dawn at number 15. In this movie, Soviets attack in the U.S. and a group of high school kids fight them and I gather their battle cry was “Wolverines!” because that was the name of their school’s football team. (I haven’t seen the movie, but see the clip below.)

Our dear studly Robert Stacy McCain added his own nominations here and then Moe Lane weighed in here on Stacy’s take on NRO’s list calling Red Dawn “awful,” BUT the movie must have some kind of hold on Moe’s imagination because he added this fateful “P.P.S.”:

WOLVERINES!!!!!

And the meme was off and running.

Tea Party people: this is your battle cry: “WOLVERINES!!!!!”

Stacy explains here:

Conservatives are now a guerrilla resistance. Harassing the enemy — staging raids and ambushes that prevent him from enjoying his conquest at leisure — is basic to guerrilla resistance. If we are doomed to destruction, as least let it be said that we died fighting. But those who never fight, never win.

In a word: “Wolverines!”

It has been picked up by The Bloggess, although totally by serendipity after someone sent her a Wolverine doll that is inflated through a stem positioned in Wolverine’s crotch, as you can see here at her “Good Mom, Bad Mom” blog at the Houston Chronicle.

But then the dear Bloggess took it into her head to rally the world via Twitter to cry, “Wolverines!” here and such is her charismatic leadership that it was a top trend on Twitter in an hour.

What can I say?

WOLVERINES!!!!!

P.S.

I gave dear Stacy such a glowing testimonial this week that I have to admit I long for him to include me with his other testimonials in that gap right under Little Miss Attila (DO. NOT. GO. THERE!) and just above Sean Hackbarth, like this:

“Stacy McCain — the envy of every man … irresistible to women.” A Newly Conservative Lesbian with Really Big Breasts

P.P.S.

Stacy has put me in his Blogroll as Cynthia Yockey, which is enormously generous and warms my heart.

P.P.P.S.

However, karma has gotten busy with Stacy for denouncing gay marriage so often this week that Google Ads served up a display ad featuring a bare-chested, hot man, and the headline, “Find sexy gay singles in your area!” just now when I went to his site. I would LOVE to know if any of my readers go there and see it, too! Come back and tell!

Update: Cuban Diva visited Stacy’s site, The Other McCain, this afternoon (3/15/09) and e-mailed the screenshot below of what the Google gods of karma do to gay marriage denouncers:

Karma's a bitch (with a sense of humor): gay dating site ad screen capture from The Other McCain, 3/15/2009.

The media embargo must be up!

Entertainment writer Mike Ragogna has the scoop at HuffPo about the concert slated for April 4 in New York City at Radio City Music Hall organized by filmmaker David Lynch and featuring Sir Paul McCartney and “Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Moby, Ben Harper, and Sheryl Crow, along with Donovan, Paul Horn, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love, a bunch of surprise guests, and hosts David Lynch, Russell Simmons and Laura Dern.”

“… Under the David Lynch Foundation’s banner of ‘Change Begins Within,’ this special benefit concert is intended to raise funds to teach one million children meditation–and that includes 10,000 at-risk students around the New York City area.”

The rest is here.

No, the Transcendental Meditation program is not a religion.

No, the Transcendental Meditation program is not a cult.

The TM program is not a religion because it does not require you to believe anything. You do not even have to believe the TM technique will work in order to learn it and practice it successfully.

The most authoritative resource on the Web regarding the facts and myths about the Transcendental Meditation program is run by Dr. David Orme-Johnson. It is called TruthAboutTM.org. There Dr. Orme-Johnson debunks myths and discusses scientific research about the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program, which is by far the most-researched program for the development of consciousness, something he is uniquely qualified to do as the editor of five volumes of collected research about the TM program, which total 3,732 pages and make a stack about a foot tall.  (Buy all five for only $350.00!)

Dr. Orme-Johnson also is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed, published scientific papers on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program. In addition, he is a qualified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program.

For people who continue to assert that the TM program is a religion or cult, despite the facts that its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, specifically said it isn’t, and that you don’t have to believe anything and can come and go or start or stop as you please,  so that it is missing the defining criteria religion-wise and cult-wise, Dr. Orme-Johnson addresses the question here and also by providing letters from the following religious leaders (with their permission):

Andean Path
Shaman Maliku Aribalo, November 4, 2008

Catholicism
Father Leonard Dubi, December 1, 2008
Father Thomas R. Miller, June 17, 2008
Father Cletus Stein, October 2, 2008
Sister Carol Wirtz, August 25, 2008

Islam
Mohammad Haghverdi, December 24, 2008

Judaism
Senior Rabbi Allan Green, June 27, 2008
Rabbi Michael Shevack, November 12, 2008

United Methodist Church
Reverend Jonathan Chadwick, November 4, 2008

Unity Church
Reverend Don Lansky, June 30, 2008

I am bringing this up because I will be discussing topics related to the Transcendental Meditation program on this blog, including enlightenment and the Maharishi Effect. The Maharishi Effect is the name of the phenomenon that groups of TM-Sidhas practicing their advanced meditation program together have been shown to produce positive effects at a social level, such as reduced crime and acts of war. This is important because the positive effects were, (1), created by a small group of people (the square root of one percent of the surrounding population is the threshold number to generate the positive effects), and (2), everyone else got observable benefits without having to do the TM-Sidhi program themselves, which is HUGE because it is unique in NOT forcing everyone to toe a particular line in order to produce positive results to a host of otherwise intractable problems.

Boo-yah, y’all!

I feel urgent about bringing this up because of the number of Muslims who are taking seriously their religion’s requirements to convert or kill everyone who is not their brand of Muslim and the stricture that they are to use whatever deception is required to advance their religion.

I feel urgent about bringing this up because, when I was a Realtor in Silver Spring, Maryland, one of my colleagues, a German woman in the Potomac office of my company, was honor-murdered in her Potomac home by her Muslim obstretician husband.

I feel urgent about bringing this up because my friend, Alan Scherr, a former teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program (see! I told you it’s easy to leave!), and his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, were among the six Americans murdered in Mumbai by Islamic terrorists on the night of November 26, 2008.

I feel urgent about this because my father and I escaped being blown up by a bomb made domestic terrorists by no more than 10 minutes on March 23, 1970, when we were driving home on Rte. 1 from my bassoon lesson in Baltimore with the principal bassoonist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Gerald Corey. I heard the explosion and felt the shock wave that shook our house. (Which also means, BTW, that I take a very dim view of Bill Ayers’ bombings and his on-going wish that he had done more.)

I feel urgent about this because you cannot kill hate by shooting it.

And the recent war in Gaza is just the latest illustration that you can’t kill hate by appeasing it or negotiating with it.

These are the things that are driving me to discuss the Transcendental Meditation program and the Maharishi Effect in this blog. Because, you know, discussing becoming a conservative lesbian doesn’t push me far enough beyond the pale.

Sigh.

Oh, if you want to learn more about the Transcendental Meditation program, you can find an authorized teacher nearest you in the U.S. by filling out the contact form here or get more information here.

My personal connection to the Transcendental Meditation program is that I learned it in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Feb. 2, 1974. It helped me recover from the loss of my younger brother in a car accident on Aug. 22, 1973. I learned the TM-Sidhi program in 1978 (“Levitate in ’78!”).  My life partner from Sept. 25, 1984, until her death on Dec. 7, 2004, from complications of multiple sclerosis, was artist and TM teacher, Margaret Ardussi.

Here is a brief explanation of how the Maharishi Effect works by Maharishi himself from an interview with a reporter from the Boston Globe in 1990: