My wife and I just had our tenth Christmas together!  It’s not a silver anniversary, a bronze anniversary, or even a carbon graphite anniversary or a lightweight high-tensile titanium anniversary, but still something I’m quite proud of.  Especially since my wife & I still get mistaken for high-schoolers!

This Christmas was spent in Los Angeles  – a significant difference from the proper frigid north that we’re used to — my having grown up in the beautiful state of Maine.

Our first Christmas as an engaged couple back in ‘99  (pictured below) was a lot more like it – a biting 10 degrees out, crystal clear.  No snow (unusually) but still cold enough to give you a proper red nose.

The above photo was taken in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia — an hour or so outside of Washington, D.C.

Hopefully, in the photo I’m able to produce for our upcoming 20th Christmas, we’ll look just as much like little kids as we do here.

Anniversaries are wonderful opportunities to look back over life and determine what you did that was good, and what you’ve done that you’d like to change for the future.  But for things like this, I’m right now tempted to look at what went right, as my wife and I are probably about 10x better friends now than we were when that Harper’s Ferry photo was taken.

You log on to your MSN home page or Yahoo portal, and just about every day there’s a new article blathering on about how “…statistically speaking, it’s actually official that couples will lose all interest in one another by the time they’re together for 3 years, and will statistically start trying to have an affair by the time they’ve been married for 5.  So, if you’re really unethical with your relationship, it’s perfectly normal!”

I just think that’s a load of BS, statistically speaking.

Communication is the single thing I’d have to say has made my marriage wonderful, and is the magic ingredient I’ve noted in just about every other couple I’ve known as well, which has stayed together through thick and thin.   It’s most effusively and effectively communicated, I think, in a lecture by  L. Ron Hubbard in the State of Man Congress lectures, entitled “Marriage” which I think sums it up better than anything.  It’s all about communicating and having an association with your partner which is entirely bereft of “withholds” — a Scientology term for things you’ve done that you don’t want to talk about.

It may be uncomfortable sometimes, but communicating and talking about even those things that you don’t want to say has saved my marriage more times than I can count.

As such, I’m positive I have a formula that will most assuredly be producing another photo 10 years from now, and another 10 and 10 from that.

 

As anyone who has studied Scientology will tell you, it’s immensely important to learn the subject at a proper gradient, studying the materials in their proper sequence.   It’s one of the major breakthroughs L. Ron Hubbard made when he developed Study Technology (something you can learn on a free on-line course).  

Unfortunately, when it came to the most basic Scientology Materials, it was not always the easiest task to pick your way through what a proper “gradient” was, as there as no map to tell you which book to read first or next.   The result was, for many, choosing a first Scientology book by its cover, and only finding out if it was the wrong gradient by digging into it and either getting through it — or not. 

Fortunately for all of us, an immense amount of work was put in to charting and mapping all of the Scientology & Dianetics materials, all of LRH’s thousands of lectures, and arranging them in a sequence where ANYONE can just pick up their first book and study it, and know precisely what their next book is so as to gain a full and usable understanding of Scientology. 

 

Scientology Materials Guide Chart

That map is the Materials Guide Chart. It shows all Ron’s books and lectures with a full description of their content and subject matter so you can find exactly what you are looking for and precisely what you need.

Since each book and lecture is laid out in chronological sequence, you can see how the subjects of Dianetics and Scientology were developed – just by studying this chart.   

I can tell you personally that after being in Scientology since 9 years of age, and reading every book under the sun totally at random, it has been the most revealing thing to simply study these materials in sequence. 

It’s much like when I first learned about computers — I learned all about hard drive spindle speeds and frontside-bus overclocking before I even knew any of the basics of what made a computer tick.  It made for no ability to evaluate what was important data, and what was just an aside.  

Right now I’m midst my second time going all the way through The Basics books & lectures.  I’m listening to the Thought, Emotion & Effort lectures and am again just floored.   Nonstop, I’m finding data that I can use to change fixed conditions in life and handle pieces of my day-to-day relationships and work that I never thought I could change. 

But I’ll tell you — I would not even be able to have any of the “oh, my God…”, life-shifting epiphanies about life if I hadn’t had a foundation of knowledge given by the earlier books. 

Conversely, I have buried myself in “advanced” Scientology books only to be befuddled or confused, as I was missing the data just before it that explained the whole thing. 

So, for anyone looking to get involved with Scientology – I’d heartily recommend getting the free Materials Guide Chart that you can get from the Bridge website, and see where you should begin.  I think it will answer a lot of questions for you.

On a post just made here, Scientologists are banding together to finish donating sets of books to libraries throughout West Africa.  Only Ghana and Nigeria remain, per the map which you can get from Bridge Publications Library Campaign.

I figured I’d write a little further on this, however, as I have a special place in my heart for West Africa, for a number of reasons.

A promising young face in Ghana

Firstly, I know from comments I’ve had on my blogs that there is tremendous interest in West Africa for Scientology.  They are a people that, with education and proper tools for organization, ethics, study, and morals, could really transform themselves into an extremely productive and vibrant part of the world.   And they’re also a people that know that what plagues them is a long spiral of violence and that could be handled with Dianetics & Scientology technology, were they to have the technology for such.  All the more reason to get the Scientology Basics into maximum accessibility by placing them in every library in the region.

But to illustrate why West Africa, I’d have to say you’d want to watch the presentation of the International Association of Scientologists Freedom Medal to Mr. Tim Bowles, at this year’s IAS Anniversary event.

If you’ve not seen this, take a trip in to your nearest Church of Scientology and check it out.  It’s really quite moving.

But if you get International Scientology News, you’d see this lead-in, which illustrates the matter:

“Between Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone lies a place very close to hell.  It’s a place where they’ll say even God gave up, and there’s no language adequate to convey the horror.  This is where “blood diamonds” were mined.  This is where adolescent killers were created.  This is where rape became a weapon of war, and rebels hacked off the hands of twenty thousand villagers to stop them from voting.  Then again, this is where the crimes now legally qualify as an insult to all humanity.  Even today, if you tell them you’re working for human rights, they’ll wish you good luck and show you the door.”

Following this is the moving story of Mr. Tim Bowles and the magnificent and courageous work he’s done in Ghana and Liberia in the name of human rights.

Again – see the event itself in your Scientology organization if you haven’t already, but it definitely makes me think how much could be done if this people really did have an education, and a way out of this mess available to them.

All the more reason, from my perspective, that we get all the help we can get to finish off those final 12 libraries in Ghana and 125 libraries in Nigeria, so that the technology of life is indeed available to these people.  Leave a comment on this blog, or just write straight to the people at the International Scientology Library Campaign to find out how you can help.

I just have to say that the new WordPress admin UI rocks.

I used to much prefer using tools such as Flock and LiveWriter to do my blogging, but now it’s just such a joy to log in to such a diabolically deliberately designed admin UI, that I’m now back to just posting right in the interface.

It’s fast, it’s attractive, and makes me feel like a pro blogger, using it.  Hats off to the UI developers who created it.

It’s unfortunate that on Blog Action Day, I end up with little to no time to pound out a good blog post.  I’m a busy boy today.

Fighting Poverty va Education: Scientology Volunteer Ministers in India

I did happen to throw something on one of my other blogs, though, on the Personnel Efficiency Course originally developed by LRH in Dublin, Ireland, and how the technology of study, of communication, and the other technologies covered in the book, “The Problems of Work” can totally hit at the core for why poverty exists in the first place.

Don’t take this as anyone else’s opinion but my own, but it’s been my observation that at the core of situations of extreme poverty, is the basic educational level and organizational skill of the individual that is the determining factor of an area being in poverty or not.  Yes, there is the government — that is of course a factor. Yes, a suppressive government can cause big problems.  But if the individual’s educational level is low, if he himself does not know how to get himself educated and productive, you’re going to have problems, as poverty itself is only an index of one’s abilty or inability to produce products that can be exchanged.

And best of all, in my view, this can indeed be addressed.  That’s why I was stressing so hard the importance of these new free on-line Scientology courses, as anyone can now just pick it up and himself learn how to get effective and productive.

And that, I think, is a much better long-term solution to poverty than just a few more tons of rice or water brought to a needy village.  Remember the old saying about teaching a man to fish?

Full Screen Website Button on Dianetics Website

One feature that escaped me on first inspection of the new Dianetics Video Channel Website is the little “fullscreen” button on the top banner of the site.

I’ll have to be dead-honest, I’ve been on the web since 1994, with my first browser as Netscape 0.9 on Windows 3.1.  While I have seen full screen videos on YouTube for some time, this is the first time I’ve seen an attempt at a full-screen website.

Now, for a media-centric website like this one, where you have something like 60 different videos on Dianetics, all done in 16 languages, and so much other assorted Flash content, I can definitely see the use case for wanting to do the thing full screen.  Try it — as long as you’ve got a decently fast computer with a decent video card, it’ll roll just fine.  My box that I’m writing on right now is an AMD Phenom quad-core box, so it does have enough grunt to move all of the media around the screen.  It chugs a bit on my Apple PowerBook G4, but fine.

My question is as to how many other people prefer such a thing.

I’ve had countless discussions with designers and programmers who get into the whole “rez” argument with me.  I.e., I show them the Google Analytics that shows that x percentage of people are running with a 1280px wide screen, therefore we should be able to design for screens that are that wide.  Then, I get the argument that nobody in their right mind runs with their browser at full-screen, and most people then still only see 800px in their actual browser window.  Then there are some people that do the good old “F11″ trick and run full screen.

On the most up-beat site I run with the most media, the stats I show are:

current statistics on screen resolutions

The above stats would clearly make you say “we can TOTALLY dump the idea of designing for 800×600!”  – but my question is how many of those 1024×768 people or 1680×1050 people are looking at a maximized browser?

Not I, as I have dual 1280×1024 flatscreens, so a maximized browser for me would be a bit unusable:

dual-screen screenshot -- why I can't run my browser maximized

I’ve not seen any conclusive evidence either way, as to what people run, in the main.  I never run my browser maximized, so that’s my own polarized view of the universe.   Curious as to what others think, though!

For anyone looking to explain to others what Dianetics is, what the different books of Dianetics are, and what parts of life that it addresses, this was previously an ordeal of paging through the Dianetics website trying to find text might explain it to someone new to the subject.

Now it’s dead-easy with the new Dianetics site, as there are literally videos that explain every facet of the subject, including new videos that individually explain the other introductory books of Dianetics, including Dianetics: The Original Thesis, Dianetics: Evolution of a Science, and Self Analysis.

Dianetics Video Channel Sitemap

Now, the best tool for someone looking to promote Dianetics on the net (either by sending emails to friends or blog post like mine here) is the new sitemap.   Despite the fact that Dianetics is an all-flash website, you can deep-link to various parts within the website easily, using the sitemap.

This includes features like the new individual book videos, the individual video stories of people who have used Dianetics, videos with excerpts of the Dianetics audiobook, and the Extension Courses available for Dianetics.

The new look inside feature of the Dianetics site lets you open up and read an excerpt of the Dianetics Book

But perhaps the neatest feature that is available from the new site, I think, is the ability for one to quickly see a video description (in any language) of each of the beginning books of Dianetics.  I personally find myself explaining Dianetics to people all the time, even if it’s just to the person that sells me server motherboards — so having a video that does this for me is excellent.

The Video Explaining the Self Analysis Book

These videos (and actually, all this content) is currently in 16 languages on the website.  I hope it will soon be more, too!

Right now, the Dianetics site is in English, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, French, Hebrew (!), Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish.

Have a look!

And, speaking of Seth Godin, I just got this one off his blog post on raising money for charity, which I thought particularly nice:

If you send a nasty email, there’s a real human being on the other end who gets it.
If you flame in a forum, you’re wasting real people’s time.
If you spam someone, you’re really only making yourself look bad.
If you write IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS it sounds like shouting.
If you want something to happen your way, try asking instead of demanding.
If you give, you’ll probably wind up getting, too.
If you blog just to pick fights, don’t be surprised when people don’t trust you.
If you collaborate, say thanks.
If you’re independent, say no thanks.
If you like someone, tell them.
If you don’t, walk away from the computer.
If you’re giving feedback, lead with just one good thing.
If you’re getting feedback, realize that the person must care a lot to have sent it.
If you goof, apologize.
If you apologize, mean it.
If you smile, mean that too.
If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
If you do like something, spread it.

But far far more important:

Give people a break.
The break you probably deserve yourself.
People are out to do good, 99% of the time.
You probably are too.
Say thanks out loud and a lot.
Try making someone’s day.
Chances are they’ll make yours in return.

I just happened to look, and my last post on the new Scientology Volunteer Ministers Courses was my 200th post on this WordPress blog, and took me over the 90,000 page view mark as of mid-day today.

Well, that’s not so bad, I guess, from something that occupies about 30 mins of my time each week.  Shows you how powerful a tool these great blogging engines like WordPress are.

Though I am no Seth Godin or Debbie Weil, having a blog that you work away at every so often can teach you more valuable lessons on blog writing & blog management than simply reading one of the aforementioned authors’ brilliant missives.

For example:

Write At Least Every Other Day:

I have found repeatedly that you can keep your blog’s statistics buoyant by simply writing an article every other day.  Let your blog stay stagnant for a week or so, and you’ll come back to find a totally vacant blog that nobody visits.  Write every other day, and you’ll find even your crusty old articles getting a ton of traffic all of the sudden.   Various people have their theories on how RSS pinging and the velocity of new inbound links can then up your rankings on this and that, but when it comes down to empirical observation — just writing an interesting post of some sort on some subject, on a regular basis, makes for good & continual traffic.

When you think it or see it, blog it:

This is something I’ve been ever-glad to tools like Flock and Microsoft Live Writer for, is it makes “impulse blogging” much easier to do. Example:  I was debugging a friend’s 3DS Max computer and found major problems in getting 3D Studio Max to work on Windows Vista.   So, I wrote like a single-paragraph blog post on it.  Must have been timely, as that one post on getting 3DS Max to work on Vista ended up getting around 30,000 page views right after posting, due to showing up #1 when people Google for “3ds Max Vista”.   Other posts have met with similar interesting side-effects, including random listings on the front-page of LinuxWorld or being #1 on a particularly good set of Sphere back-links — none of which I could have predicted before doing the blog post.

After one of my last doozies, I wrote a little post on driving traffic to a site with Web 2.0 tools, something that could definitely stand an update.

Interested, though, in some feedback on what others have found effective in making a blog productive for you!

The Scientology Volunteer Ministers are now offering free on-line courses based on the Scientology Handbook, so that anyone, anywhere in the world, can immediately take advantage of the immense amount of know-how available in that book.

New Scientology Volunteer Ministers On-Line Course

There are 19 individual Scientology courses available on-line, including:

• The Technology of Study
• The Components of Understanding
• The Dynamics of Existence
• The Emotional Tone Scale
• Communication
• Assists for Illnesses and Injuries
• Answers to Drugs
• How to Resolve Conflicts
• Integrity and Honesty
• Ethics and the Conditions
• The Cause of Suppression
• Solutions to a Dangerous Environment
• Marriage
• Children
• Tools for the Workplace
• The Basics of Organizing
• Targets and Goals
• Investigations
• Fundamentals of Public Relations

Each of these courses allows you to download a PDF version of the illustrated Scientology Handbook booklet covering each of these sections, and then walks you through practical exercises that ensures you can use the data that you studied.

Scientology VM Courses allow you to read the full PDF versions of the Scientology Handbook booklets and then do practical assignments based on these so you know you can use the data.

All of this is then supervised by staff from the Scientology Volunteer Ministers center, who will make sure you get through, and can use the data you studied to better your sphere of influence and improve conditions in the area around you.

If you’ve ever been looking to get involved in Scientology and want to see what it can do for you, try one of them in an area of your life you are interested in handling — they’re free, and can be done in the space of a full afternoon.  Give it a try!