We asked:

Can we ask a few questions.
1) How did you get your training to be the Shinto Priest?

2) Who trained you?
2a) was it difficult to become the Shinto Priest? (we heard it wasn't easy, but you have done it)

3) Who signed your license?

4) Do you need a license to conduct rituals like in Japan or is it OK to just make it up?

5) Can I be a Shinto Priest also ?
5a) Can you give me a license too?
5b) Would I have to train (it would be hard for me to go and train so can I have it now)?

6) What grade Shinto Priest are you?

Arigato! I eagerly await your responses...
kurtaikido
longevityaikido.com

You replied:

I have received questions asking about me. I will try to answer some of them here.

1) What training have you received?
A) None. There are no Shinto Shrines within a days drive of where I live. So there is no one to teach me. Everything I am learning is from books, the internet, and talking to other people in the Shinto community. I feel it will still take me many years to be more than just a beginner.

2) Do you have a license?
A) No. You are not required to have a license in the USA to open a Shrine, church, etc. You are only required to have a business license, in most states, if you want to be tax exempt.

3) Can I be a Priest too?
A) Yes. I feel there is no reason you cannot learn on your own. Now saying that I must point out that this is a life long decision I am making. I use the title Priest at this point only to let people know I am running the Shinto Shrine. I still feel I have a long ways to go to earn that title.

4) Do I have to learn Japanese?
A) You have to know some to be able to say the names of the Kami and the prayers, known as Norito. As fully speaking, reading and writing Japanese, I feel no. Just as other religions have been translated over time to be taught around the world, Shinto can also.

5) Will you offer training?
A) Yes. One of my main objectives it to spread the worship of the Kami all over the world. In the future I will offer classes in person and online to anyone wanting to learn. I do not feel the worship of the Kami should be limited to certain Shrines and/or families, I feel it should be open to everyone. Man or Woman.

That is all for now...

Thank You.

So I say:

Mr. Trammell, I’m very disappointed
I’m very disappointed in your answers to the questions our Longevity Aikido Group posed to you.
Basically Mr. Trammell, you have no respect for the Shinto World!
Rules exist... for instance, there is a rule about handling Harae Gushi...as the lay person you may learn (operative word learn) to purify yourself but you may not conduct Harae to purify others. If you had respect for the world of Jinja Shinto you would not dismiss it's rules and thousands of years of traditions because you were lazy or egocentric.
You name yourself a priest with no credentials or first-person training in the profession you are assuming. Similarly, if you had the deep interest/passion for Aikido, and no opportunity to train
you would not start by naming yourself Shihan, and then teaching your assumed misinformation to others. Do you really think that all there is to understanding Shinto can be taught from a book or the internet?
What a shame it would be for someone to naively think what you are doing is in anyway authentic or even functional Jinja Shinto! Or anymore than a personality/ego masking
itself in its imagination only!
Basically your thinking on this matter is garbage.
If you must invent your own thing, why not make-up your own name for it, rather than assigning attributes to Shinto that are erroneous.
I would suggest to you, Mr. Trammell, that you find authentic training even if you find it difficult or costly to do so.
aiKiDo kurt
Chief Instructor
Longevity Aikido Group

Everything is caricatural here. I take a plane to see my father on his death-bed and up there in the clouds, in a raging storm, I overhear two men behind me discussing how to put over a big deal, the big deal involving paper boxes, no less. The stewardess, who has been trained to behave like a mother, a nurse, a mistress, a cook, a drudge, never to look untidy, never to lose her Marcel wave, never to show a sign of fatigue or disappointment or chagrin or loneliness, the stewardess puts her lily-white hand on the brow of one of the paper-box salesmen and in the voice of a ministering angel, says: "Do you feel tired this evening? Have you a headache? Would you like an aspirin?" We are up in the clouds and she is going through this performance like a trained seal. When the plane lurches suddenly she falls and reveals a tempting pair of thighs. The two salesmen are now talking about buttons, where to get them cheaply, how to sell them dearly. Another man, a weary banker, is reading the war news. There is a great strike going on somewhere - several of them, in fact. We are going to build a fleet of merchant vessels to help England - next December. The storm rages on. The girl falls down again - she's full of black and blue marks. But she comes up smiling, dispensing coffee and chewing gum, putting her lily-white hand on someone else's forehead, inquiring if he is a little low, a little tired perhaps. I ask her if she likes her job. For an answer she says, "It's better than being a trained nurse." The salesmen are going over her points; they talk about her like a commodity. They buy and sell, buy and sell. For that they have to have the best rooms in the best hotels, the fastest, smoothest planes, the thickest, warmest overcoats, the biggest, fattest purses. We need their paper boxes, their buttons, their synthetic furs, their rubber goods, their hosiery, their plastic this and that. We need the banker, his genius for taking our money and making himself rich. The insurance man, his polilcies, his talk of security, of dividends - need him too. Do we? I don't see that we need any of these vultures. I don't see that we need any of these cities, these hell-holes I've been in. I don't think we need a two-ocean fleet either. I was in Detroit a few nights ago. I saw the Mannerheim LIne in the movies. I saw how the Russians pulverized it. I learned the lesson. Did you? Tell me what it is that man can build, to protect himself, which other men cannot destroy? What are we trying to defend? Only what is old, useless, dead, indefensible. Every defense is a provocation to assault. Why not surrender? Why not give - give all? It's so damned practical, so thoroughly effective and disarming. Here we are, we the people of the United States: the greatest people on earth, so we think. We have everything - everything it takes to make people happy. We have land, water, sky and all that goes with it. We could become the great shining example of the world; we could radiate peace, joy, power, benevolence. But there are ghosts all about, ghosts whom we can't seem to lay hands on. We are not happy, not contented, not radiant, not fearless.
We bring miracles about and sit in the sky taking aspirin and talking paper boxes. On the other side of the ocean they sit in the sky and deal out death and destruction indiscriminantly. We're not doing that yet, not yet, but we are committed to furnishing the said instruments of destruction. Sometimes, in our greed, we furnish them to the wrong side. But that's nothing - everything will come out right in the end. Eventually we will have helped to wipe out or render prostrate a good part of the human race - not savages this time, but civilized "barbarians". Men like ourselves, in short, except that they have different views about the universe, different ideological principles, as we say. Of course, if we don't destroy them they will destroy us. That's logic - nobody can question it. That's political logic, and that's what we live and die by. A flourishing state of affairs. Really exciting, don't you know. "We live in such exciting times." Aren't you happy about it? The world changing so rapidly and all that - isn't it marvelous? Think what it was a hundred years ago. Time marches on....

- Henry Miller
THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE

The Science of Stickiness Revealed

Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.comTue Sep 2, 9:40 AM ET

When looking at inventions like Post-its and duct tape, one might think we've got the science of stickiness down pat. But experts are still trying to understand the details of how stuck things get unstuck.

Recently physicists discovered there are two distinct ways for adhesives to release their grip, with no middle way and no smooth transition. A sticky substance can either act like a liquid or like a solid, it turns out.

"The goal of the study was really to try to understand the intermediate state between what happens when you have a sticky liquid and when you have a sticky solid," said researcher Costantino Creton, a physicist at the École Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris. "We found there was no real continuous transition in behavior but a very sharp change from a very solid-like behavior to a viscous fluid behavior. We were surprised that there was no intermediate regime."

An example of a liquid adhesive would be honey, while a Post-it Note represents more of a solid adhesive. The difference is in the way the material deforms, or bends, to reach into the nooks and crannies of the surface it sticks to.

The researchers were interested in investigating adhesives that seemed like more in-between choices, such as duct-tape, which is ostensibly a solid, but can deform a lot like a liquid.

So Creton and colleagues Julia Nase and Anke Lindner, also at ESPCI, set about creating various adhesives that seemed to range along the spectrum and observed them coming unstuck under a microscope. But when they tested each material, it fell squarely on the side of either solid or liquid.

For two things to stick together their surfaces must come in contact as closely, and at as many points, as possible. Once their molecules become extremely close a force called the van der Waals force kicks in, which produces an electromagnetic pull between the molecules as their electrons start interacting and adjust their orbits so as not to repel. It's named for the Dutch scientist Johannes Diderik van der Waals.

Most surfaces do not stick naturally because on the microscopic level, they are not really smooth, so their molecules don't really come in contact with each other in many places. When you add an adhesive in between them, it molds itself to fit into all the little spaces between molecules, coming in close enough range for the van der Waals force to take over.

Things become unstuck when the surfaces are pulled apart and air intervenes between the adhesive and the surface, breaking the bonds between the molecules. But this process happens differently for liquids and solids.

"If you try to remove a solid you have a fairly thin slice of air that comes in between the solid and the surface, like a crack, that does not involve much deformation of the solid," Creton told LiveScience. "If you go on the liquid side, you have a very extensive deformation - the adhesive itself changes shape."

In the liquid case, the air enters in finger-like blobs throughout the adhesive, but with a sticky solid, the air penetrates through one long sliver at the edge between the adhesive and the surface.

"I think the main difference is that in the solid case the air is only at the interface and in the liquid it's really everywhere," Creton said.

Neither solid or liquid adhesive is universally stronger, though they both have their ideal uses, he said. For example, if you want to stick something to a smooth, clean piece of glass, a solid adhesive will work best, but a viscous liquid adhesive will stick much better to something like your hand.

"It really depends what surface you want, and how clean it is," Creton said.

The researchers detailed their findings in the Aug. 15 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
Video: Sticky Spider-Man Technology Move Over Elmer's: New 'Geckel' Glue Redefines Sticky Quiz: Great Inventions Original Story: The Science of Stickiness Revealed LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

Ex-Tenn. professor guilty of passing military data

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press WriterWed Sep 3, 3:20 PM ET

A federal jury convicted a retired University of Tennessee professor Wednesday of passing sensitive information from a U.S. Air Force contract to two foreign research assistants from China and Iran.

The case marked the first time the government used the Arms Export Control Act to crack down on the distribution of restricted data, not hardware, to foreigners in a university setting, prosecutors said.

Jurors deliberated about six hours over two days before finding plasma physics expert J. Reece Roth guilty on all 18 counts of conspiracy, fraud and violating the export control act. Roth and his attorney Thomas Dundon of Nashville avoided reporters outside the federal courthouse seeking comment.

The verdict "should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted U.S. military data to foreign nationals," said Patrick Rowan, acting assistant attorney general for national security.

"The illegal export of such sensitive data represents a very real threat to our national security, particularly when we know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their military development," Rowan said in a statement from Washington.

Prosecutors said Roth allowed the two graduate students to see sensitive information while they researched a plasma-guidance system for unmanned aircraft.

Roth, 70, testified last week that he didn't believe he broke the law because the research had yet to produce anything tangible. He said he received only about $6,000 from the contract.

He faces up to 160 years in prison and more than $1.5 million in fines, although lead prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney William Mackie said he could get less. "This is not so much a matter of punishment as it is about holding him accountable for his actions," Mackie said.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 7.

The charges involved work performed from 2004 to 2006 on two Air Force contracts by Roth, graduates students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran, and university spinoff company Atmospheric Glow Technologies Inc. of Knoxville.

Prosecutors presented several documents suggesting research by Roth's university laboratory and Atmospheric Glow Technologies was restricted. Roth attempted to keep the sensitive research with an American graduate student and the rest with a foreign student, but eventually the data was shared.

Roth also was accused of taking reports and related studies in his laptop to China during a lecture tour in 2006, and having one report e-mailed to him there through a Chinese professor's Internet connection.

The university became aware of the problem in 2006 when Roth tried to hire Nourgostar to replace Dai in his lab after Dai graduated, and the university turned him down because of export control concerns.

Federal agents seized materials from Roth's office and took his computer from him at the airport when he returned from China.

Atmospheric Glow Technologies, now in bankruptcy, recently pleaded guilty to 10 counts of exporting defense-related materials and Roth protege Daniel Sherman has pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Sentencing in those cases in still pending.

"We believe the vast majority of universities and professors are careful with what they are doing," Mackie said. "By bringing this case we are trying to underline that when things go wrong, they need to be addressed."

University of Tennessee spokesman Jay Mayfield said the school is working hard to comply with the export control act, but would have "no comment about Dr. Roth."

Shime/choke from behind on a seated person vs. Aikido technique SANKYO, a hard jitsu wrist/kote application, with shiho nage throw and reverse grip pin. photo stop-motion

choke from behind vs. Aikido

Blackwater Hit Squads: What Was the CIA Thinking?
By ROBERT BAER Robert Baer 2 hrs 57 mins ago

The other shoe has dropped. CIA Director Leon Panetta, it turns out, ran up to Capitol Hill in June not simply to confess that the CIA had a secret assassination program it never implemented but rather to confess that it had subcontracted the job out. As first reported by the New York Times on its website on Aug. 19, the CIA hired Blackwater to help with a secret program to assassinate top al-Qaeda leaders. Although no one was assassinated before the program was ultimately shelved - and the Times reported that it's not clear that Blackwater was engaged to do anything more than assist with planning, training and surveillance - Panetta must have been horrified that the CIA turned to mercenaries to play a part in its dirty work. It's one thing, albeit often misguided, for the agency to outsource certain tasks to contractors. It's quite another to involve a company like Blackwater in even the planning and training of targeted killings, akin to the CIA going to the mafia to draw up a plan to kill Castro. (Watch TIME's video "Robert Baer on the Risks of Chatter.")

I suspect that if the agreements are ever really looked into - rather than a formal contract, the CIA reportedly brokered individual deals with top company brass - we will find out that Blackwater's assassination work was more about bilking the U.S. taxpayer than it was killing Osama bin Laden or other al-Qaeda leaders. More than a few senior CIA officers retired from the CIA and went to work at Blackwater, the controversial private security shop now known as Xe Services. Not only did those officers presumably take their CIA Rolodexes with them out the door, but many probably didn't choose to leave until they had a lucrative new contract lined up. But more to the point, Blackwater stood no better chance of placing operatives in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the al-Qaeda leadership was hiding in 2004, than the CIA or the U.S. military did. (Read "Terror Interrogations: Can the CIA and FBI Work Together?")

This leads to the question of what the CIA saw in Blackwater that the public still has not. Even before the company was expelled from Iraq after a Blackwater security detail in 2007 allegedly shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians, the contractor for unclear reasons had taken over security duties that CIA staff employees used to carry out. Last May in Kabul, four Blackwater contractors reportedly shot and killed two unarmed Afghans; Blackwater whisked the four out of the country before the Afghans could investigate. The State Department has also relied heavily on Blackwater in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the years.

There may even be a darker side to Blackwater. This month, a former, anonymous Blackwater employee filed a sworn statement in federal court in Virginia claiming that Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince (who is no longer involved with day-to-day operations of the company), was involved in the murder of at least one informant who reported to federal authorities on his company. The allegation, first reported by the Nation magazine, was part of a civil suit filed by several Iraqis for the company's alleged abuses in the country. Blackwater has denied the claims, calling them "anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive assertions."

Still, the CIA has maintained its various Blackwater contracts, which run from protecting CIA operatives in the field to loading Hellfire missiles on Predator drones. And none of this is to mention that as soon as CIA money lands in Blackwater's account, it is beyond accounting, as good as gone.

If the Obama Administration ever hopes to get a handle on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the countries around the world where the "war on terrorism" has been fought, it's going to have to figure out what happened to the billions of dollars spent on contracts. So far the Obama White House has been happy to work with the Bush Administration's contracting mess. In Afghanistan today, the company that supervises Blackwater is a British security called Aegis, which is headed by a notorious British mercenary. Afghans are a people that do not take well to mercenaries.

Even more troubling, I think we will find out that in the unraveling of the Bush years, Blackwater was not the worst of the contractors, some of which did reportedly end up carrying out their assigned hits.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower. U.S. "war on terror" eroded rights worldwide: experts
By Laura MacInnis Laura Macinnis Mon Feb 16, 11:22 am ET

We'll need to retreat into the land. We'll need to melt into the crowds. We shall be among but apart. We shall be without and apart: the many. Our language must be nonsense; so clear, precise. Our face will be of the many, yet wholly distinguishable. The cry shall be for harmony, unity, and apartness. Indistinguishable. Like bacteria we must devour that which is dead and diseased, excreting vitamins in the defying process. Protective of that yet pure, of that yet to come…

02/08 in the midst of an eclipse