Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Baha'is: Forecasts I

This is Part I of an anticipated series of posts trying to forecast future trends and events which may impact Baha'is. Who are Baha'is? Literally, the word Baha'i means follower of Baha'u'llah. For our purposes, the Baha'is are those who say they are Baha'i. Most Baha'is, including the author, are members of the Baha'i Faith, a world-wide community. The much smaller remainder consists of individuals and smaller "splinter" groups, many of which have one or more points of disagreement with the Baha'i majority.

Similar to investors in the financial markets or clinicians examining patients, systematic and appropriate evaluation of performance is required to make informed forecasts. For investors, this is known as "fundamental and technical analysis" of various asset classes such as stocks, bonds and commodities. For physicians, it is the patient history and physical and mental status exams. The present rather informal methodology is partly based on available internet content on the Baha'is.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Gold is Money

Gold and silver are money. Do you have any of this money? Might be a good idea to have some of this real money in this period of historic economic upheaval. This applies to everyone including Baha'i community members and institutions.

Perhaps you are like me and have spent years in intellectual pursuits without any regard or knowledge of what money is, in fact, and how the economy actually works. Thus, in "Further Reading" to the right, there are several sites -- such as GoldSeek, Market Oracle and DollarCollapse, where you can start to get educated. We don't want to live through what may be economic suffering and travail of biblical proportions in complete ignorance, now do we?

Moojan Momen's "Marginality and Apostasy..." Article

Moojan Momen's "Marginality and Apostasy in the Baha'i Community" Article in the journal Religion has received lots of attention, including the delightful response of Alison Marshall here.

Much has been written about this controversial article, and if I may, here are some points that I have not seen covered.

1. In this commentary, Religion is depicted as a prestigious academic publication. But I wonder. Is it peer-reviewed? For a time, I served on the editorial board of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, in which I had previously published a social psychology research paper. I've also done peer review for Brain Research, Archives of Neurology and others. Now, if Religion is peer-reviewed, I tend to think that the review was insufficient in this case. Why?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Let's find some gold and/or truth

I've been a member of the Baha'i Faith since 1963 and the title of this humble blog is one of its corner-stone teachings. I have many interests including finance/economics -- such as trading the commodity and other markets, computing -- as the author of the HotBasic compiler, entertainment producing, and of course the development of the world-wide "Baha'i movement", so to speak. My predominant work activity has been as a researcher and medical school professor teaching Neuroscience. Enough said. Let's get going.

Oh, lest I forget: buy gold/silver and take physical possession...ASAP.