From Foreign Policy:

The director at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had this to say:

Nothing is clear, yet. For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran.


From Kevin Drum

I have finished reading Integral Spirituality, and it has generated a lot of thought, especially for what this blog is about.

Since this blog is titled Integral Practice, I'd like to comment on some of the challenges of Integral Practice - or practice in general - and then also contrast this to how it would relate to Integral Research.

Good Integral Practice is - to a degree - the output of good integral research.

If one's starts with the normal method of bringing a new practice into existence -

a.  There is an idea, sometimes free-floating, sometimes based on a need.  ("I'm missing the divine in my life.  What should I do?"  "Say, how does this spiritual practice that opens up the revelations of the Divine to me, relate to the world of science, that produces the electricity I use on a daily basis?  Well, I have this idea of the 4 quadrants - maybe that is relevant?")

THIS particular blog, is more concerned with Integral Practice as it relates to:

a.  Pointing to the best practices for challenges in a normal life.
b.  Pointing to resources that help fulfill these practices.
c.  When possible, pointing to other's  evaluations that will help readers decide on new practices.
d.  Pointing out resources that create communities of integral practice.
e.  Using this site to entertain integral ideas.
f.  Using this site otto track - well, anything I want, but new things in technology that also contribute to a better, or at least more interesting life.

But the thing is, good practice is resting on a base of:

a.  Good theory, backed up by
b. Good research, data, that backs up the theory. 

So it becomes necessary to delve into some of the theoretical underpinnings occasionally - although personally, I don't want to "live" there, as the maps are not the territory.  I want to explore the territory.

As I've mentioned here before, I think some of the Wisdom of the Crowds, Web 2.0, and peer-to-peer functionality, will eventually cause a revolution in the data gathering capacity of "good research, good data".  While this hasn't happened yet, when the tools are there for anonymous (yet accurate) self-reporting on various exercises, practices, etc, that then feed into various analytical engines -

this particular revolution will be wondrous.  The silos of the solo researcher, analyzing data in his university office, where only he has access to data, will be replaced by global google analytical tools fed data from a variety of sources.