Truth For A Change
2.21.2006
Was I too hard on Harold? The birthday theory
Watching today the Conversation with Harold Channer and me I felt uncomfortable about how hard I came down on him. I was reacting to an inner sense that his questioning was destructive, distracting, and needlessly doubtful plus having heard from so many people complaining about his interruptions and longwinded rambling. So I did let him know I wasn't happy with his style of interruption. But I think I wont over the top calling him names.
I have had several very long conversations with Harold about his interrupting and last night I had another long conversation with him at his place about his interviewing and conversation skills. When I complained that he resorted to the same pet phrases with each guest, like "blowing in the wind" and "history is a nightmare" and Fukiyama's end of history, I was surprised with his defending it that it was new to each guest. But it is not new to your audience I came back with, only to hear him say that he didn't care what his audience felt about it. That took me aback bigtime! Producers are supposed to care about that, I felt. But Harold felt some justification like artists that don't try to please anyone but themselves, and by just focussing on that they produce great art. Harold also alluded, last night, to his approach to conversation as like the spontaneous improvisation of jamming in jazz. To that I said that improvisation required genuine spontaneity and not rehashing old riffs, old pet phrases, old shtick. After the show Harold telephoned to say he wanted me to email him my birthday trip to study, which I am about to do.
At my request Harold passed the phone eventually to his partner Margie and she told me she felt that I gave him a needed kick in the butt about his interrupting, that just about all his guests do after doing a show with him.
Here is what I am going to send him, but without the diagrams which I can't pick up with a cut and paste, so I will have to urge you to go to
http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html for the complete version
A Theory for the Significance of Birthday by Joseph Friendly
Birthday is too important to leave to the archaic premises of astrology.
Birthday is important because the sun is so important in our environment
and timing and order of experiences are so crucial in human neural development.
It is argued here that birthday provides us a very useful compass to sort human
natures like the Periodic Table sorts the chemical elements with rows and columns,
a solar compass to help us get our bearings in the confusing human universe, the
basis of a new psychology and a new approach to philosophy.
[ Please go to http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html]
The envelope of energy that we receive day by day in the course of a year from the sun varies as a huge sine cycle, one cycle per year, with a range of amplitude, all positive, from about 150 calories per square centimeter per day in December to about 800 or more calories per day in June, the maximum ranging from about 700 to 900 calories depending on latitude.
Individuals of different birthdays, which amount to different phase angles of
the annual solar energy sine wave, will experience systematically different looking 3-month and 12-month environmental profiles with respect to the sun.
Birthday is important not because of what happens on the day of birth, but
because day of birth happens to be a mathematically profound index of systematically
different environmental patterns with respect to the sun when our neural systems are
known to develop their individual forms of organization, integration.
Either the human nervous system has evolved to respond to these
systematically different solar environmental patterns which correspond to a basic
mathematical dimension: phase on the annual solar energy sine envelope, or it has
not! I claim, "Of course it has!" in the tradition of Copernicus urging us to
center upon the sun for understanding what's going on.
Most animals have particular times of year that they are born characteristic
of their species. Their characteristic personalities can be seen as a result, in
large part, of each species experiencing particular environmental patterns as it
develops its neural organization. What makes human nature mysterious are human
females having about 12-13 eggs ripening throughout the span of each year and
conceptions and births occurring throughout each year.
The argument here is to see this as a system evolved to maximize the variety
of ways of organizing human neural systems: A full variety of ways of dealing with
situations and making sense.
What is the likely physiological mechanism for the birthday effect?
According to a review article (1997) in the Journal of Biorhythms by TA Wehr of the
NIH Dept of Clinical Psychobiology,
“The human retinohypothalamic-pineal (RHP) axis
is capable of detecting changes in the length of night
and in producing the melatonin message
which other animals use to trigger seasonal changes. …
It is not yet known whether or how human systems respond
to the seasonal melatonin message.”
As for whether human systems respond, from my observing for 40 years
birthday effects in adults including extensive contact with thousands of customers
in my You Can Help Manhattan moving company ---at some point learning their
birthdays--- talking at length about their own love life and their parents’ marriages
and how they got along with siblings and bosses, friends, etc., along with talking
about their traits and such other things as their politics, tastes, interests,
beliefs, it seems apparent there exist out there patterns of traits in the birthday
spectrum which astrological generalizations about character undertake to allude to.
As for how human systems respond, that is, what mechanism relates melatonin
signaling to character differences, from my observing differences in the adult, what
is apparent is there are systematic differences in neural programming architecture
of the very systems responsible for overall integration and organization.
Also, not only length of night as sensed by the RHP axis, but direct solar
energy levels sensed by the skin and other organs and the indirect effects of
seasonality, in the natural and even social environment, may also be the stimulation
we respond to, to differentially program us in early human development how to deal
with the variety of situational differences in life.
For the differential programming I suggest we look to the brainstem and its
flowering top the Hypothalamus and Thalamus, which have the role of together acting
like a computer’s CPU: Central Processing Unit, processing our neural information
from the body’s senses and organs and from senses in the head among the various
neural organs and back to the body’s muscles, nerves, and various organs.
In other words, what we think of as the workings of the brain is popularly
attributed to the cortex, but the cortex seems to function more like computer memory
than central processor. The surprising point here is that the Thalamus and
Hypothalamus are positioned to optimally present themselves to the sun: the
thalamus with its 2 petals or wing-like structures on either side of the pineal
gland in the path of light through the eye region, and the hypothalamus in closest
proximity to the pineal, right behind it, as if Evolution were providing opportunity
beyond only RHP melatonin signaling for solar energy variation over time to directly
affect neural processing parameters.
Apparently, Nature's plan for the human species was for a methodically
universal variety of neural programming according to birthday: A full variety of
different human natures, different approaches to reality, viewpoints, to evolve in
competition and cooperation with each other.
Birthday turns out to be the long sought key to untying that knot known as
the mystery of Human Nature by revealing that human nature is actually a circular
birthday spectrum of different human natures. The circle is not mere metaphor. The
circular geometry well approximates actual biological forces by corresponding to
phase angle on the annual solar energy sine wave experienced by the individual as
result of birthday.
Each part of the whole circle, each birthday group, should best be studied
individually as a particular form of human nature with its own physiology, its own
forms of neural integration and ways of making sense.
Angular relationships among the various birthday groups on the circle turn
out to provide useful basis for generalization. From the 40 years’ observation I
have concluded people with birthdays 6 months apart generally tend to appreciate
each other and this is the best combination for friendships, partnerships, and
marriage, while people of birthdays 3 months apart tend to contradict and annoy one
another.
Astrology has come to the same conclusion, but introduces additional
variables in terms of celestial events like motions of the planets and moon that
create contradictions among generalizations serving the function of fudge factors to
provide excuses when sun sign generalizations alone happen to fail.
I have concluded birthdays of parents is an important second order variable
for refining birthday generalization.
Compared with other factors science has studied in the human domain, the
huge annual solar energy cycle is in a class all its own, with such a huge
variation, over 400%, that phase on this cycle ---which amounts to birthday--- can
be considered a very strong force in individual development.
Significant birthday differences have been reported occasionally in the
scientific literature. My own survey of about 5000 with a specially designed
questionnaire demonstrated birthday differences in response to such questions as,
Do you like to argue?
Are you a good card player?
Do you have much of a temper?
Are you more idealist than realist?
What has been lacking is a plausible theory consistent with contemporary science
for how birthday might play such a role in human development. There is so much data
in terms of birthday that can be analyzed once the usefulness is contemplated.
Eventually we may learn of the birthdate effect as a whole people, together, by
watching on TV several people of the same birthday, their similarities and
differences pointed out by expert questioning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Frequently asked questions:
1. What about other latitudes, like the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: For what surprisingly little land actually there is in the Southern Hemisphere’s Temperate Zone it would be necessary to make a 6 month shift in birthday generalizations to match solar environments and birthday characteristics observable in the Northern Temperate Zone.
This provides a valuable opportunity to test the theory here proposed, whether there is observable this 6 month shift of birthday traits. For Equatorial and Arctic latitudes there would be predicted different human characteristics.
2. Isn’t time of conception important?
Answer: We are dealing with a system of human differentiation that has evolved with both birthtime and time of conception playing a role. I have no data by way of observations to suggest what effect an early or late birth makes compared with a normal gestation period. The isolation in modern hospitals from the natural environment, particularly that pre-maturely born neonates experience for a month or more seems unfortunate and cries for correction.
3. How does this fit in with biorhythms?
Answer: I have definitely observed individuals experience a time of problematic relation to their environment such as vulnerability to illness and accident, a general tiredness, even a tendency to conflict with associates, in the period 2 weeks before the birthday and 2 weeks before the point 6 months from the birthday, which is most extreme on the first day of these 2-week periods.
This contrasts with how biorhythms are figured, neglecting entrainment of birthday with current year which is argued here, and simply counting 23, 28, and 32 day periods all the way back to time of birth.
Joseph Friendly
joefriendly@earthlink.net ¶ 12:03 PM 2 comments
I have had several very long conversations with Harold about his interrupting and last night I had another long conversation with him at his place about his interviewing and conversation skills. When I complained that he resorted to the same pet phrases with each guest, like "blowing in the wind" and "history is a nightmare" and Fukiyama's end of history, I was surprised with his defending it that it was new to each guest. But it is not new to your audience I came back with, only to hear him say that he didn't care what his audience felt about it. That took me aback bigtime! Producers are supposed to care about that, I felt. But Harold felt some justification like artists that don't try to please anyone but themselves, and by just focussing on that they produce great art. Harold also alluded, last night, to his approach to conversation as like the spontaneous improvisation of jamming in jazz. To that I said that improvisation required genuine spontaneity and not rehashing old riffs, old pet phrases, old shtick. After the show Harold telephoned to say he wanted me to email him my birthday trip to study, which I am about to do.
At my request Harold passed the phone eventually to his partner Margie and she told me she felt that I gave him a needed kick in the butt about his interrupting, that just about all his guests do after doing a show with him.
Here is what I am going to send him, but without the diagrams which I can't pick up with a cut and paste, so I will have to urge you to go to
http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html for the complete version
A Theory for the Significance of Birthday by Joseph Friendly
Birthday is too important to leave to the archaic premises of astrology.
Birthday is important because the sun is so important in our environment
and timing and order of experiences are so crucial in human neural development.
It is argued here that birthday provides us a very useful compass to sort human
natures like the Periodic Table sorts the chemical elements with rows and columns,
a solar compass to help us get our bearings in the confusing human universe, the
basis of a new psychology and a new approach to philosophy.
[ Please go to http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html]
The envelope of energy that we receive day by day in the course of a year from the sun varies as a huge sine cycle, one cycle per year, with a range of amplitude, all positive, from about 150 calories per square centimeter per day in December to about 800 or more calories per day in June, the maximum ranging from about 700 to 900 calories depending on latitude.
Individuals of different birthdays, which amount to different phase angles of
the annual solar energy sine wave, will experience systematically different looking 3-month and 12-month environmental profiles with respect to the sun.
Birthday is important not because of what happens on the day of birth, but
because day of birth happens to be a mathematically profound index of systematically
different environmental patterns with respect to the sun when our neural systems are
known to develop their individual forms of organization, integration.
Either the human nervous system has evolved to respond to these
systematically different solar environmental patterns which correspond to a basic
mathematical dimension: phase on the annual solar energy sine envelope, or it has
not! I claim, "Of course it has!" in the tradition of Copernicus urging us to
center upon the sun for understanding what's going on.
Most animals have particular times of year that they are born characteristic
of their species. Their characteristic personalities can be seen as a result, in
large part, of each species experiencing particular environmental patterns as it
develops its neural organization. What makes human nature mysterious are human
females having about 12-13 eggs ripening throughout the span of each year and
conceptions and births occurring throughout each year.
The argument here is to see this as a system evolved to maximize the variety
of ways of organizing human neural systems: A full variety of ways of dealing with
situations and making sense.
What is the likely physiological mechanism for the birthday effect?
According to a review article (1997) in the Journal of Biorhythms by TA Wehr of the
NIH Dept of Clinical Psychobiology,
“The human retinohypothalamic-pineal (RHP) axis
is capable of detecting changes in the length of night
and in producing the melatonin message
which other animals use to trigger seasonal changes. …
It is not yet known whether or how human systems respond
to the seasonal melatonin message.”
As for whether human systems respond, from my observing for 40 years
birthday effects in adults including extensive contact with thousands of customers
in my You Can Help Manhattan moving company ---at some point learning their
birthdays--- talking at length about their own love life and their parents’ marriages
and how they got along with siblings and bosses, friends, etc., along with talking
about their traits and such other things as their politics, tastes, interests,
beliefs, it seems apparent there exist out there patterns of traits in the birthday
spectrum which astrological generalizations about character undertake to allude to.
As for how human systems respond, that is, what mechanism relates melatonin
signaling to character differences, from my observing differences in the adult, what
is apparent is there are systematic differences in neural programming architecture
of the very systems responsible for overall integration and organization.
Also, not only length of night as sensed by the RHP axis, but direct solar
energy levels sensed by the skin and other organs and the indirect effects of
seasonality, in the natural and even social environment, may also be the stimulation
we respond to, to differentially program us in early human development how to deal
with the variety of situational differences in life.
For the differential programming I suggest we look to the brainstem and its
flowering top the Hypothalamus and Thalamus, which have the role of together acting
like a computer’s CPU: Central Processing Unit, processing our neural information
from the body’s senses and organs and from senses in the head among the various
neural organs and back to the body’s muscles, nerves, and various organs.
In other words, what we think of as the workings of the brain is popularly
attributed to the cortex, but the cortex seems to function more like computer memory
than central processor. The surprising point here is that the Thalamus and
Hypothalamus are positioned to optimally present themselves to the sun: the
thalamus with its 2 petals or wing-like structures on either side of the pineal
gland in the path of light through the eye region, and the hypothalamus in closest
proximity to the pineal, right behind it, as if Evolution were providing opportunity
beyond only RHP melatonin signaling for solar energy variation over time to directly
affect neural processing parameters.
Apparently, Nature's plan for the human species was for a methodically
universal variety of neural programming according to birthday: A full variety of
different human natures, different approaches to reality, viewpoints, to evolve in
competition and cooperation with each other.
Birthday turns out to be the long sought key to untying that knot known as
the mystery of Human Nature by revealing that human nature is actually a circular
birthday spectrum of different human natures. The circle is not mere metaphor. The
circular geometry well approximates actual biological forces by corresponding to
phase angle on the annual solar energy sine wave experienced by the individual as
result of birthday.
Each part of the whole circle, each birthday group, should best be studied
individually as a particular form of human nature with its own physiology, its own
forms of neural integration and ways of making sense.
Angular relationships among the various birthday groups on the circle turn
out to provide useful basis for generalization. From the 40 years’ observation I
have concluded people with birthdays 6 months apart generally tend to appreciate
each other and this is the best combination for friendships, partnerships, and
marriage, while people of birthdays 3 months apart tend to contradict and annoy one
another.
Astrology has come to the same conclusion, but introduces additional
variables in terms of celestial events like motions of the planets and moon that
create contradictions among generalizations serving the function of fudge factors to
provide excuses when sun sign generalizations alone happen to fail.
I have concluded birthdays of parents is an important second order variable
for refining birthday generalization.
Compared with other factors science has studied in the human domain, the
huge annual solar energy cycle is in a class all its own, with such a huge
variation, over 400%, that phase on this cycle ---which amounts to birthday--- can
be considered a very strong force in individual development.
Significant birthday differences have been reported occasionally in the
scientific literature. My own survey of about 5000 with a specially designed
questionnaire demonstrated birthday differences in response to such questions as,
Do you like to argue?
Are you a good card player?
Do you have much of a temper?
Are you more idealist than realist?
What has been lacking is a plausible theory consistent with contemporary science
for how birthday might play such a role in human development. There is so much data
in terms of birthday that can be analyzed once the usefulness is contemplated.
Eventually we may learn of the birthdate effect as a whole people, together, by
watching on TV several people of the same birthday, their similarities and
differences pointed out by expert questioning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Frequently asked questions:
1. What about other latitudes, like the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: For what surprisingly little land actually there is in the Southern Hemisphere’s Temperate Zone it would be necessary to make a 6 month shift in birthday generalizations to match solar environments and birthday characteristics observable in the Northern Temperate Zone.
This provides a valuable opportunity to test the theory here proposed, whether there is observable this 6 month shift of birthday traits. For Equatorial and Arctic latitudes there would be predicted different human characteristics.
2. Isn’t time of conception important?
Answer: We are dealing with a system of human differentiation that has evolved with both birthtime and time of conception playing a role. I have no data by way of observations to suggest what effect an early or late birth makes compared with a normal gestation period. The isolation in modern hospitals from the natural environment, particularly that pre-maturely born neonates experience for a month or more seems unfortunate and cries for correction.
3. How does this fit in with biorhythms?
Answer: I have definitely observed individuals experience a time of problematic relation to their environment such as vulnerability to illness and accident, a general tiredness, even a tendency to conflict with associates, in the period 2 weeks before the birthday and 2 weeks before the point 6 months from the birthday, which is most extreme on the first day of these 2-week periods.
This contrasts with how biorhythms are figured, neglecting entrainment of birthday with current year which is argued here, and simply counting 23, 28, and 32 day periods all the way back to time of birth.
Joseph Friendly
joefriendly@earthlink.net ¶ 12:03 PM 2 comments
2.11.2006
Truth For A Change with Joe Friendly
Party time Sunday at 106th Street Park?
I didn't mention a time when I put at the end of Friday's program, Feb 10, an invitation for a Sunday party February 12 for viewers of Truth For A Change at the park on Broadway and 106th Street and now several inches of snow are predicted! I'll be there from noon to 4, more or less, to meet anyone who takes me up on the offer.
Any comments on Friday's show with Sharin? A friendly revolution?
Give me a call at 212 864 2828 and we'll see what else we can come up with to meet and talk. ¶ 11:20 AM 0 comments
I didn't mention a time when I put at the end of Friday's program, Feb 10, an invitation for a Sunday party February 12 for viewers of Truth For A Change at the park on Broadway and 106th Street and now several inches of snow are predicted! I'll be there from noon to 4, more or less, to meet anyone who takes me up on the offer.
Any comments on Friday's show with Sharin? A friendly revolution?
Give me a call at 212 864 2828 and we'll see what else we can come up with to meet and talk. ¶ 11:20 AM 0 comments
