Fire The Grid

The "Fire The Grid" event set for July 17 2007 brought a huge number, perhaps 10 times as many as for similar events, of notes from around the world, interested in notifying me of it and asking whether we would look at it as a GCP event. We decided early that it would be included in the formal series, and specified exactly the time defined by Shelley Yates in her presentation and descriptions. Here is an example email, which has the necessary information and some interpretations that help explain how the event is of importance:

Some of you may have heard of this, some may not. But it is simply this:

On July 17, at 11:11 Greenwich mean time (7:11 EST) there will be thousands, perhaps millions of people who will attempt to heal the planet by raising their own energy vibrations and sending them out to connect with those of others.

To join, you don't have to pray or meditate (although if that's what makes you happy, bring it on...:-) Simply engage in anything that brings you joy: listen to your favourite music, hug your children, walk your dogs and let the joy of life fill you up. Thank the universe for this special moment and imagine yourself spilling over with a brilliant light that you send out to connect with that of others.

The idea is this: Everything in the universe has a vibration. When you feel down and depressed, your vibrations are low. With all the problems that are facing us, humanity and our environment, we have all become preoccupied with our difficulties and their associated fears. Slowly, our own and our planet's vibrations have become depleted.

If we can all raise our vibrations at the same time, we can raise those of the Earth and start the healing process. Give it a shot! You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

To raise your vibrations on a daily basis do this:

- Be in the moment For instance, we all have put food in our mouths while being distracted. Taste it, feel it filling you up and savour the sensation. Do this with all things as often as possible.

- Give thanks to the universe, even if it's just for a great parking spot

- Love and forgive yourself.

- Live your life to enrich that of others

To learn more about Fire the Grid, you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqUAluDvuU4

Or visit:

http://www.firethegrid.com/eng/home-fr-eng.htm

The formal event was defined as the one hour period from 11:11 to 12:11 GMT on July 17. The Chisquare is 3731.7 on 3600 df, for p=0.062 and Z=1.542. This is in accord with the prediction, and is marginally significant.

Below, we provide exploratory analyses that give some context for the formal analysis, since so many people are interested. It is important, however to understand that single events are not expected to answer the subtle questions we ask in the GCP. Because the average effect size is small (Z ~ 0.3) we cannot generally interpret single events with reliability; we need repeated tests of the same type of hypothesis. That having been said, we see that the Fire the Grid event has a positive outcome, consistent with the prediction, and indeed shows a larger deviation than the average.

I encourage people interested in this and other occasions that bring us together to meditate or pray for a better future to trust your/our feelings and direct perceptions of the effects. The GCP analyses are a very interesting adjunct, but they should not be seen as a test of the intent or success of the gathering of minds for good purpose.

The full day of July 17 (UTC) is shown in the next graph, with the hour-long Fire the Grid (FTG) event marked. While the cautions about interpretation of single analyses apply here also, it is interesting to note that the FTG presents a notable "spike" of positive trend on a rather consistent day-long background trend that is negative. For a larger context it is instructive to look at a long term trend analysis that shows some suggestive correlation with polling data that in turn may reflect our communal state of mind. Here too we see a general trend that if regarded as the "true" expectation would make positive deviations more impressive.

Again, we do not believe it is appropriate to interpret single events even though it is tempting to do so when the "picture" looks good. The signal to noise ratio is way too small, and to make claims based on any single experiment in this domain is potentially misleading. It happens in this case that the FTG event is one in a decent size collection we have assembled over the years, and it is consistent with the general outcome. Good stuff, but just the beginning of learning about the stuff.

Numbers Engaged

We have modestly persuasive evidence that the effects in GCP data are a function of the numbers of people engaged. When millions are likely aware of an event and likely participatory in some sense, the effects are larger and more reliable. We don't have an objective count and have to rely on estimates and best guesses for the most part. The Fire the Grid event provided an opportunity to look at web-based counts, as a step toward a useful measure of N. Here is what Google and YouTube looked like over the time around the FTG event.