Roger Nelson

GCP blog

This (archived) page is the repository for the occasional updates I have been sending to the GCP mailing list every two or three months over the years.

GCP/EGG Update December 4 2006

The time passes so quickly. I think it may be more than two months since my last update, and you may wonder what has happened. All is well, and the remarkable network of volunteers contributing time and energy continue their commitment. Occasionally someone asks how long I expect to keep the GCP running. Perhaps a good goal is 2012, the famous Mayan calendar date.

One thing I've been busy with is the Society for Scientific Exploration. It's a favorite organization, and I'm the program chairman for the SSE 2007 Annual Meeting. You all are invited. The SSE meetings are open to the public, and are an opportunity to see science at its tolerant best, examining the growing edge of what we know about the world. If you are not a member of SSE, please consider joining. Associate membership is open to everyone who is interested in our mission, namely, to provide a forum for scientific work that flows outside the main stream. There's more info on the meeting at: 26th php

Several upcoming articles and programs present aspects of the GCP. A TV movie, The Science of Peace that is now filming, includes us. Another movie, called The Joy of Sox, started with the psychic communion of (Boston Red Sox) baseball fans and players and quickly grew to look broadly at consciousness fields, coherence, and resonance. thejoyofsoxmovie.com A new magazine called Make (from O'Reilly Media) has a feature on the GCP/EGG project in an upcoming issue. I'll put it on the GCP Media Information page when available. Make is at makezine.com.

I've also been fielding questions and requests for interviews concerning the Globalorgasm project, which is promoting a unique coming together of love and peace. They said we (the GCP) were participating in an event on December 22 involving as many people as possible having an orgasm while thinking of peace. I put a gentle disclaimer on the GCP site, and asked them to correct their site, but I think it is a delightful, creative notion. globalorgasm.org

The data continue to show about the same level of subtle correlations, while Peter Bancel's analyses are gathering the threads into a coherent picture. We are working on papers detailing this revealing overview. We were unsuccessful in a Bial grant application to help, but the work goes on thanks to the generosity of individuals.

A couple of recent events in the formal series are noteworthy: We decided to assess the Super Radiance Yogic Flying program organized by the Transcentental Meditation organization in August and September as a formal event and found a -2.5 sigma effect. The result is consistent with the claim that mass meditations produce a calming effect on the environment. Not so strong (but a pleasant surprise to me) was the 1.3 sigma effect for the US election results. Maybe more evidence for an experimenter effect? I admit delight that there will be a shift toward balance in the US congress.

High recommendations for Bobby the movie. See it to understand how close we come, sometimes, to the compassion and love that is our destined path to full humanity. There is beauty in the movie. It shows leadership of a kind we long to see again. The movie includes original footage and powerful excerpts from speeches. Here's a sample:

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet....What we need is not division; what we need is not hatred, but love and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice toward those who suffer within our community, whatever their color or faith. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
— (Robert F. Kennedy)

Make gentle the life of this world. This is the holiday season, and I send my best wishes for gentle sharing with family and friends. Love goes far.

Roger

GCP/EGG Update September 8 2001

Five years ago I wrote something optimistic about how quiet it was in the world—then Sept 11 happened. One's optimism takes a hit now and then, but it is still the best attitude I can come up with. Before I go on—or rather, before you go on, please be sure to let me know if you don't want to be on this mailing list for occasional GCP/EGG updates.

Lots of recent travel. To San Diego for the AAAS symposium on time reversal or retrocausation. To England for visits to ancient monuments, and to Sweden for the Parapsychological Association annual meeting. In San Diego, I presented a paper, co-authored with Peter Bancel, on recent earthquake analyses showing an anomalous precursor response. See GCP.AAAS.06.pdf. In Stockholm I presented a paper summarizing the eight New Year celebrations the GCP has monitored. Available at GCP.PA.06.pdf.

In England, Lefty and I traveled with a group interested in crop circles, but we also visited Avebury and Stonehenge. Avebury is a remarkable place, one of the largest and oldest of the stone circles. I was there collecting Field REG data, and also participated in a large meditation event that was coordinated and synchronized with groups around the world. In two visits to the part of Avebury prepared for the event, the REG data showed significant deviations, and GCP data collected during the same time showed a non-significant positive trend. A brief report is linked from the results table. It is event number 220. I must say that although I do have a science-oriented attitude, the real measure of this ancient center is in a more personal response: I loved it there.

The GCP has decided to go ahead with an idea that has been discussed for a long time, namely to collect at least two, and maybe as many as five trials per second instead of one. This will allow some new analytical work that bears on mechanism, and also gives an opportunity to keep some data sequestered for comparitive analysis 6 months or a year later, enabling a new level of testing for reliability and assessment of a special class of theoretical models. This work will depend on a successful proposal for new funding, so your positive regard is most welcome.

A few days ago I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth, the film of Al Gore's campaign to persuade as many as possible of us to recognize the environmental situation. It is, as Lefty put it, not a movie, but a Predigt German for sermon. This is a compliment, not a complaint, for it is clear that we need to be lectured to, and sermonized, and plied with every available persuasive means. Al Gore is really impressive, clear as a bell. He's pushing us to take an active part in shaping a more positive future.

One of my favorite organizations is the SSE, which I recommend you consider joining to help support the only general forum for scientific topics that stretch the boundaries of what is accepted as science. The website is www.scientificexploration.org. It fosters creative, out-of-the box thinking. For example, a few days ago I received a description of the Life Force Summit, which is the work of SSE members. The summit will bring together people who intend to do something practical and direct about making a positive future. life-force-summit.com.

The list of groups working with such intent could be long, but we are most of us already linked into organizations and possiblities that give us a place to put our energies. A consolidation giving meta-access to life-affirming efforts of this kind called the Hitchiker's Guide to Awakening is under construction at universal-awakening.org.

Be well, and as you have extra time and energy, give it to the future.

Best, Roger

GCP/EGG Update July 4 2006

It is just a chance thing that I decide to write an update note on the Fourth of July, the independence day holiday for the USA. Well, perhaps not just chance. It has been a while, and events conspire to give the impetus just now. And I'll admit that the symbolic note inspires me because the USA is my country and it seems this day is witness to deeper problems than we have seen over most of its history. Like most people, I love the ideas enshrined in our declaration of independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

People around the world have admired the principles of the American revolution, but they, along with a large proportion of Americans are concerned with what appears to be an erosion of those principles justified by a war on terror that is itself terrifying in many ways. I pray that our principles will be brought to the fore again, and soon.

The GCP is eight years old now, and still running strong. The bottom line statistic for the series of formal tests of the hypothesis of correlation with global events has a probability of a few parts in a million. Beyond this, we have, thanks to Peter Bancel and William Treurniet, and others, some new perspectives that go beyond the basic analysis.

Peter and I have been working on earthquakes, which appear to produce an effect on the GCP network beginning about 8 hours before the quake—but only if the quakes occur in areas where people are affected, not in the oceans. A powerpoint of my presentation to the AAAS in June is at AAAS2006.pres.ppt A published version with much more detail will be ready soon.

My next travel is to Avebury and Stonehenge with a group of people planning a Great Meditation in which people all around the world are invited to join. The time will be July 22nd, 2006 at 11:00pm British Summer Time, with preparations beginning an hour earlier. I plan to collect FieldREG data at this event and others over a few days, and we also will look at the GCP data, as we have in the past: For details in English or German, you can go to Avebury 2006

Following that, Lefty and I will go to Stockholm, for a little time preceding the Parapsychological Association annual meeting. I'll present the analysis of 8 years of New Year's data, which shows a very striking pattern of decreased variance a few minutes before midnight, which then relaxes back to normal after the New Year's bell has rung. ny98-06.var.8yr.gif

The number of events that seem likely to affect the GCP is large, but we look at only a few, attempting to sort the major ones from the constant flow. Surprise and uniqueness are big components of what matters. We looked at the data for the news release concerning Zarkawi's death, as a formal event. An accompanying explorations pictured the time he was killed. It is pretty striking. As always, we have to remember that the effect size is so small that single event analyses are not reliable indicators, but even so ... zarkawi.death.gif

Now if we could only picture the death of war. Would that not be nice? It would be a surprise, and unique for sure, and it would evoke compassion and celebration in huge measure. Let's imagine how a graph of that moment would look.

Best, Roger

GCP/EGG Update June 27 2006

I just finished the analysis for the terrible earthquake disaster in Indonesia. The last news I saw indicated more than 3000 dead and 15000 injured. The EGG data show a strong response, and there is a tentative suggestion in the data of a precursor of a couple of hours—something I have been focusing on recently. You can see the analysis by clicking on the name in the last item of the formal results table at

The possibility of precursor responses is the topic of a paper I will be presenting at the AAAS meeting June 19-22 in San Diego in a symposium on retrocausation organized by physicist Dan Sheehan. Several others from the anomalies research field will be presenting, and I am looking forward to this somewhat unusual opportunity to present our findings in a mainstream venue. There is a little taste of the data we have at earthquakes. No certainty about this, but the indications justify further examination, and I hope to interest other scientists.

At the Society for Scientific Exploration meeting June 8 in Orem, Utah, I will talk about data mining as a potentially valuable approach to the GCP/EGG data. We have a background of formal hypothesis tests, but there is reason to believe that we can learn more by expanding the perspective to ask less formal, but still focused questions. The database appears to have more structure than can be seen through our usual analyses, and data mining tools help reveal this.

In July Lefty and I will join a group including Ron Russell and Joachim Koch for Project Avebury 2006. More information is at invitation to join in our Great Meditation on July 22nd, 2006 at 11:00pm British Summer Time.

At the Parapsychology Association meeting in Stockholm in August, I'll focus on data mining results for the last 8 New Years Eve events. I may have a chance also to talk about one of the most interesting developments in this vein. Bill Treurniet, who is the author of the EggAnalysis suite, has been exploring event echoes and FFT power spectra for some GCP events at treurniet.ca. As Bill says, more work is required, but the presence of large spectral peaks immediately following selected events is additional support for the hypothesis that the EGGs respond to significant events.

Old and much loved computers are vulnerable to wear and tear, and I had to finally accept that my main workstation, which began its continuous run in 2000, would have to be replaced. The complexities of recovering all the data and programs from my old system, plus setting up raid disks and various unfamiliar hardware bits took a long time but is nearly finished. The new machine is fine, but we're still getting to know each other.

I hope all goes well for you and yours. And I hope you hold a positive vision for the world at large. The data say this actually matters. Remarkable. What we envision has creative power. We need to use it well.

Best, Roger

GCP/EGG Update March 18 2006

It has been a long time since my last note, and there is a lot to tell about. I was traveling in India from December 10 to February 12, and doing catch-up since then. The EGG network stayed healthy the whole time I was away, producing its unrolling tapestry of data. I had little access to the server, so I couldn't register and analyse formal events as they happened, but did note a few, including the Hadj stampede (which, tragically, is a repetition), the giant mudslide in the Philippines, and the Golden Dome bombing in Iraq.

Of course there was New Years, the eighth in our long-running series of formal analyses of the transition, and there's a new twist. We did a thorough assessment of the last seven years to determine what effects are most consistent in the data around midnight, and in what timezones they are strongest. This data mining was used to formulate a refined hypothesis to apply to new data. As before, there are two tests, one that compares two measures that have shown consistent trends leading up to midnight, and one predicting a drop in variance to a minimum at midnight, and we use only 13 timezones with large populations. As the Results table shows, for 2006, one outcome was positive, the other negative. Links give more detail (in progress) for those interested in the data-mining approach.

And if you are interested in exploring the data yourself, we have a new package for downloading and analysing data from the GCP archives. The software was created by William Treurniet and is called EggAnalysis. More information and a download link at egganalysis This is a user-friendly application for Windows, in which you can specify the date and time for a data segment to examine. Analyses similar to our primary formal tests are automatically produced in graphical form, and there are options for several other perspectives on the data. William even included a facility for random music driven by the data. He is open to suggestions and will welcome feedback. This is definitely cool—especially for those with a hands-on interest in looking at the data.

We have new eggs Bermuda, Taiwan, South Africa, and Spain, and we're working on one in Chile. The number of active eggs remains about the same, between 60 and 65. Occasionally an egg host needs to drop out of the network for some reason, but is remarkable to consider that many of the hosts have participated for several years, some from the beginning of the project in 1998. They are all listed in the table at egghosts. The world map showing the eggs' placement has been updated and corrected, thanks to a note from Hawaii. Feedback really is helpful.

In addition to the egg hosts, there is a long list of people, more than two dozen, who have contributed major chunks of time-consuming work to the project. It goes without saying that the GCP wouldn't exist without them, and I know I speak for everyone reading this when I say we are grateful. There is a listing of Production Credits with their names at programming

Our time in India was rich in more ways than I can tell here. I have made a webpage with some travel notes that touch on the most striking experiences, as well as hundreds of pictures, many with annotations—more to be done. I had a digital camera and often took 50 or 100 photos in a day. Of course only a few are good, but they have a story to tell. Take a look if you have some time to while away.

While there, I gave formal talks at six places with a range of perspectives from academic to scientific to spiritual. In India, I felt a greater freedom to go beyond the data to talk about interpretations and implications. That is partly because I was preaching to the choir and suggesting ideas that are part of the ancient teachings familiar in all the major Indian religions. (An aside: tolerance and respect for many spiritual modes is a beautiful quality of Indian life.)

For the next months, my schedule includes a talk March 28th to a Princeton Unitarian group, the SSE meeting in Salt Lake early June, a AAAS symposium on the physics of time in late June, San Diego, a possible visit to Avebury in July, and the PA meeting in Stockholm in August. I'll hope to meet some of you when paths cross. The GCP, represented by Peter Bancel, will show up as a bit of scientific leavening in a National Geographic TV special looking at Prophesy. I don't know the dates, but they originally intended to air in March or April.

There is more to tell , but we all get too much to read, so I'll end this with a wish for good health for our planet as well as for all of us. Tall order, given the imbalance of power and wisdom in the world today, but every one of us has the power to add a little wisdom to the scales. And we will.

Best, Roger