No Miracles Here


Book Description

This probing comparison of two struggling company towns, one in Japan and one in the United States, offers valuable urban revitalization lessons. The author compares urban revitalization efforts in Flint, Michigan, the declining automobile industry town, and Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, home of the largest coal mine in Japan, from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. Striking similarities emerge, both in the way redevelopment policy is made and in policy content. For example, both cities work to create new jobs, attract tourism, and diversify their economic bases. Despite these similarities, there are also differences that help the Japanese do a better job of managing socioeconomic decline. Notably, the Japanese system is better suited to effecting incremental improvements in local socioeconomic conditions, while the American system often takes the big gamble that, if successful, dramatically improves conditions. This gamble, however, can also result in a failure to reverse a city's economic decline. No Miracles Here finds that although Japanese and American cities rarely achieve truly successful revitalization, the Japanese have been more successful at avoiding the pitfalls of bad redevelopment policy.




The Star Gate Archives


Book Description

Star Gate is the largest funded program in the history of psi research receiving about $19.933 million in funding from 1972 to 1995. Researchers from SRI International, and later at Science Applications International Corporation, in association with various U.S. intelligence agencies participated in this program. Using the remote viewing method, research focused on understanding the applicability and nature of psi in general but mostly upon informational psi. Volume 1: Remote Viewing (1972-1984) and Volume 2: Remote Viewing (1985-1995) include all aspects of RV including laboratory trials and several operational results. Volume 3: Psychokinesis focuses on laboratory investigations. Volume 4: Operational Remote Viewing: Government Memorandums and Reports includes an analysis of the applied remote viewing program and a selection of documents that provide a narrative on the behind the scenes activities of Star Gate. In a total of 504 separate missions from 1972 to 1995, remote viewing produced actionable intelligence prompting 89 percent of the customers to return with additional missions. The Star Gate data indicate that informational psi is a valid phenomenon. These data have led to the development of a physics and neuroscience based testable model for the underlying mechanism, which considers informational psi as a normal, albeit atypical, phenomenon. The Star Gate data found insufficient evidence to support the causal psi (psychokinesis) hypothesis.




Assembly Bill


Book Description