Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Getting Started with SCIY

Ron — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:59:47 -0700

1) SCIY is a continually updated free webzine: No registration or login is required unless you wish to comment on our articles and/or receive email notification of new articles and comments. New articles are displayed on this SCIY title page, called the 'Main Page' or 'Home'. Scroll down the page to see short excerpts of the latest 10 days of articles, listed in reverse chronological order. (Italicized excerpts are quoted from the article, non-italicized are introductory comments by the poster.) Click on the "more »" links to continue reading articles that interest you. (Tip: Click on the titles in the "Recent Articles" list in the right-hand column to view the 15 most recent articles or in the "Recent Comments" list for the 10 most recent comments.)

2) Use Firefox as your browser: SCIY is best viewed using the latest version of Firefox, the superb open-source web browser. You can download a free copy of the latest version here. We've optimized SCIY for Firefox's default preferences, but check your settings by opening Firebox's 'Preferences' panel, and looking at your 'Fonts & Colors/Advanced' panel (under the 'Content' tab). Please make sure the:

   a) "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" option is checked
   b) "Minimum font size" is set for 11, and
   c) "Default Character Encoding" is set for 'Unicode (UTF-8)'.

(Please continue reading the rest of these instructions by clicking on the 'more' link.) ...

SCIY announces three new features

Ron — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:50:38 -0800

SCIY today announced three significant new features:

1) All Articles
2) IY-related Books
3) See Full Text of Recent Comments

Suggest articles to post on SCIY here

Ron — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:26:36 -0800

SCIY Readers are invited to suggest articles they'd like to see posted to SCIY by posting comments (replies) to this article.

Please include a hotlink to each article you suggest.

Thanks,

~ ron

SCIY Founding Editor

SCIY's Founders, Administrators and Editors

Ron — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:28:19 -0800

SCIY is provided as a free service to all. Anyone is welcome to read SCIY with no signup required. The founders, administrators and editors of SCIY are engaged in the study and practice of Sri Aurobindo's "Integral Yoga," a non-sectarian spiritual path toward realizing "a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity."* - Our aspiration for SCIY is to foster inclusive scientific, cultural and spiritual research that serves this realization. We invite those who share this aspiration to join us.

SCIY's original founders (in September 2005) were Ron Anastasia*, Debashish Banerji, Rich Carlson, and Rod Hemsell. Rich chose to resign in early 2008.

SCIY's Senior Editors (have Administrative privileges)

Ron Anastasia** (ronjon, Founding Editor)
RY Deshpande (RY Deshpande)

SCIY's Editors (have Article posting privileges)

Debashish Banerji (Debashish)
Kim Anway-Anastasia (Kim)
Rod Hemsell (Rod)
Vladimir Yatsenko (Vladimir)
Ulrich Mohrhoff (Koantum)
Prapanna Smith (Prapanna)
Rakesh Gade (Rakesh)
William M.H. Kötke

The "posts" on SCIY are analogous to the articles in a typical paper magazine, and the comments are similar to "Letters to the Editor." Those who wish to post comments to our posted articles are required to create free "Reader Accounts" (and provide bona fide email addresses so as to prevent spam bots from functioning).

A small group of volunteer "Editors" has the ability to post articles to SCIY. They all have relevant professional level backgrounds, HTML skills and English language competence to choose or write articles that meet our quality standards.

If you are interested in becoming an SCIY Editor, you are welcome to begin posting comments to existing articles so we can get to know you and the potential contribution you could make to SCIY.

Click here for more information re the background of SCIY's Current Editors.

* SCIY is hosted on BlogHarbor.com, an independent, fee-based ISP. Ron is the "Owner" (BlogHarbor's term) of SCIY, meaning that he initiated SCIY on BlogHarbor and has been the sole funder of BlogHarbor's monthly hosting fees since then. One advantage of this arrangement is that SCIY can remain free of the distracting and often intrusive advertising of ad-based blogs and forums.

** Ron is the final arbiter of all disputes and the final authority re all administrative decisions, including the assignment of Administrator and Editor status, the banning of troublesome posters, and the deletion of articles and comments non-conforming to SCIY's groundrules. Note that this private, fee-based status differs from the large ad-supported public blogs and forums such as Google's 'Blogger,' MSN's 'Spaces', and Yahoo's 'Groups.'

SCIY's Category & Topic structure

Ron — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:12:52 -0800

SCIY is a webzine (an online multimedia magazine), with many different Categories and Topics being explored. For example, this article is posted within a subTopic called "Getting started," which is a "child" of a Topic called "HOW TO USE SCIY." And that Topic is a child of a Category called "INTRO TO SCIY," one of our 5 main Categories. This may sound a bit complex at first, but you'll soon find that it sounds more complicated than it actually is. Here's how it works: ...

WORD VERIFICATION

Ron — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:05:36 -0800

This will come up when you’re ready to post a new comment. It’s a system to prevent machine driven comment spam.

It works because character recognition computers can't easily read the digitally distorted verification word, which prevents them from accessing the commenting system. - Just type in the verify word.

.. Backgrounds of SCIY's Administrators and Editors

Ron — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 17:14:24 -0800

SENIOR EDITORS (have administrative privileges)

Ron Anastasia (Founding Editor - "ronjon")
Ronjon's academic background is in cognitive psychology (Berkeley & Harvard), theoretical physics (U.C., Berkeley), and appropriate technology & system dynamics computer modeling of complex systems (MIT). His Ph.D. (Cand.) is in Humanistic Sciences with a focus on the interactions between consciousness changing practices and the development of sustainable values and lifestyles in the context of the world problematique. (”World Problematique” is a concept created by the Club of Rome to describe the set of crucial problems now facing humanity – including environmental & climatic, political, social, economic, technological, psychological and cultural factors.)

Ron founded several small high-tech companies during the 80s and early 90s in areas of personal computer training, holistic healthcare and appropriate technology. His ventures included the world's largest personal computer training center in the early 80s, a widely-used computerized holistic health blood analysis method during the middle 80s, and in the early 90s a photovoltaic R&D company which set a new world's record for solar cell efficiency using high-energy lasers for dopant implantation.

For the past 10 years Ron has been doing consulting and research around the world for various non-profit organizations. His passion has been working with intentional communities which integrate art and science with philosophy and spirituality into practical new models for sustainable development and human unity. He has worked closely with Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti, an experimental arcology in central Arizona, where he was the Co-Director with Michael Gosney of the biannual Paradox Conferences and wrote the Introduction to Soleri's coffee-table book What If? Collected Writings 1986-2000. He then lived half-time for three years at the Federation of Damanhur in the foothills of the Italian Alps while researching its fascinating work with esoteric physics. Ron's work is now focused on the international community of Auroville in Pondicherry, India, where he has lived for 2-4 months per year for the past several years.

EDITORS (have article-posting privileges)

Debashish Banerji (Debashish)
Debashish Banerji, Ph.D. (Indian Art History, UCLA). Former president of East-West Cultural Center and Sri Aurobindo Center, Los Angeles. He is a well-know teacher of Indian spiritual culture. He is a Faculty member of The Gnostic Center in India and the University of Philosophical Research (UPR) in Los Angeles, California and the Education Coordinator of UPR. He also curates art exhibits and lectures frequently on Integral Yoga in the US and India.

Richard Carlson. The Usual Suspect.