I don't know whether to laugh or cry when our politicians and bureaucrats make the following statements, 'We need more refineries', 'We need more natural gas pipelines', 'We need more electric power transmission lines'. Such simple solutions to very complex problems are sure to fail. The only statement they got right, but for the wrong reason is, 'We do need more natural gas pipelines' because we should be using natural gas instead of oil where ever possible.
    Change each statement into a question 'Why don't we have more... The first response to all three is, 'Not in my backyard'. If they are going to be built, they must be in someone's back yard. Who is going to volunteer. The second response is 'Will there be enough electricity, natural gas, or crude oil to justify building them. The third response is 'Will there be a market for the products.'
    During the last energy crisis, the electric utility industry learned that it was profitable not to build more electric power plants. They could earn more money when they encouraged their customers to conserve electricity and their customers saved money by doing so. The same is true for natural gas and oil industries as well. Also, following the previous energy crisis, the oil industry learned that we can use less oil, our oil consumption dropped from 20 million barrels of oil per day to 17 million barrels of oil per day as we reduced the weight of our cars. We don't need eight miles to the gallon vehicles, so why should the oil industry build more refineries, when the industry knows we could conserve and make additional refineries unnecessary and a waste of money.
        We are right back where we started, we are consuming 20 million barrels a day of crude oil because we went back to being energy hogs. This is the fourth time we have gone through large price increases in crude oil, can't we learn. We don't need two ton plus vehicles to transport one person to any destination. We don't need four wheel drive vehicles on super highways. We don't need a pick up truck to transport a bag of groceries. We don't need eight hundred plus square feet of living space per person in a home, we don't need to air condition an entire house when we only use about three rooms, and we certainly don't need to air condition an empty building.
    When we build such large homes, does anyone ask, 'Where are we going to get the energy in thirty years to operate these large homes?' Oh, you are not going to live in them that long! Well who is going to buy them if they can't get the energy to operate them?
    Does anyone have any idea how many people would go hungry if any large city went without electricity for more than three days? We don't have an energy crisis, we have a knowledge crisis.
    What would you call people who are intelligent and have the data, but don't analyze it or they analyze it and their response is incongruent with the result of the analysis?
    A politician's attention span last only until the next opinion poll, industry's attention span is as long as the next earnings report, and a bureaucrat must be politically correct, so who is going to educate the public?
    As the world population increases and everyone uses more energy, we will not have enough energy for everyone, we will need to switch to alternative energy sources. We can't do that in a few years. We need at least ten years, maybe twenty, to build the new infrastructure. We must conserve our fossil fuels now, we must deplete our fossil fuels gradually so we have time to phase in alternative fuels so our economy will not crash while we wait for the new infrastructure to be built.
    I don't want our economy to crash, but if we don't start using our brains we will have a depression that will make the 1930 depression look like a Sunday school picnic.
 

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   We have witnessed four large increases in the price of oil. The first was caused by a panic among the leaders of Saudi Arabia to a report about the correlation between the amount of new oil discovered and the amount of drill pipe required to find it. The trend indicated that no new cheap oil would be found in the near future and they were giving their oil away.  For many years following World War Two the price of Arabian oil never went above $1.25 a barrel. The second was caused by closing of the Suez Cannel during the middle east conflict. The third was an attempt by OPEC to get their members to stick to their production quotas because all of the OPEC countries  had over spent on social programs and as their populations grew their oil income fell short of their expenditures. The fourth was the result of OPEC actually doing what they said they would do on oil production.
    Each time there was a public out cry, "They can't do that to us; The government should do something; The oil companies are price gouging us." If I hadn't been laughing I would have cried at the sheer stupidity. Shortly after the last price increase a friend of ours became angry when I said what I though about the situation. She claimed that it was all a government conspiracy to raise oil prices. I almost said, "Cheap oil is not one of the Ten Commandments."
    Most people have no concept of the excellent job our industries and distribution companies do for us. Also, most people have no concept of how vulnerable we are to any disruption in our distribution system. Stop and think, don't you marvel at the tons of food, fuel, and supplies that arrive on time every day all over our country at very low prices. Food goes from the farm to our tables in less than two days. Gas and electricity are at our finger tips. Gasoline less than an hour away and home heating oil and propane can be delivered the same day. Clothing and other articles are available at the nearest store. True, most of the efficiency is driven by economics, but it is still a marvel.
    Back to oil, do you realize how much oil we use every day, almost 20 million barrels, that's 840 million gallons. The number is staggering. To put it in more personal terms, we consume 3 gallons oil every day for every person in our country. Remember, we don't consume every gallon personally. Our distribution system and industries must use oil to deliver all the goods and services we expect each day, we must count the oil used by all of our trucks, trains, planes, cabs, etc. in our consumption total.
    Do you have any idea how much oil is in inventory and how much it costs to hold it in inventory? A little over one week of consumption is in inventory and at $25 a barrel and at six per cent interest the cost is over $500,000 a day. To that the cost of all the infrastructure must be included, the capital cost of all the terminals, storage tanks, refineries, service stations, and other buildings used to carry out the industry operations, plus the cost of all the people involved. Now we are talking millions of dollars a day and some people are complaining about $2 a gallon gasoline!
    Another thing, do you know how long it takes for a barrel of crude oil to go from the well to your gasoline tank? For oil produced in the U.S., a little over three days. For oil produced outside of the U.S. shipping time must be added. Oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela needs a day to about a week, from the Persian Gulf about three weeks.
    Now consider this, each of the large ships hold about 2 million barrels of crude oil and because we produce less than 8 million barrels of oil a day of our own oil, we must import six large ships of oil every day. Now if there is a disruption in the supply of oil from any one of our sources can you imagine what effect it would have on the supply of oil available and the price you would have to pay because of that disruption. Also consider changes in demand caused by price changes.
    Here is an example, the sharp price rise this spring caused people to drive less and by June the price of gasoline began to decline. Why? Well, if six large ships are coming into port every day that two million barrels has to go some where. If demand changes faster than the delivery time of the large ships, what happens to the supply. When demand dropped by six per cent in June, the ships from the Persian Gulf were already on their way and when they arrived, the supply of gasoline exceed demand by 2 million barrels, so the price went down so people would use more gasoline so the oil industry had room in storage for the next ship. Can you imagine what would happen to the price of gasoline if inventories were low and one of the large ships was late?

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    Flashing red and white lights brought my thoughts back to where they should have been. A quick glance at the speedometer told me the reason for the lights. I'm a very competitive person, I hate to lose. The thought of losing money to a speeding ticket galled me. I slowed, put on the brakes, pulled on to the shoulder of the highway, and waited.
    My attention turned to the actions of the officer. I looked into my mirrors, but I couldn't see him, soon a bright flashlight beam scanned the interior of my car. In this era of drugs and road rage, the reason for all the bright lights was obvious, an officer needs all the advantages possible. An officer shot during a routine traffic stop is a frequent story on the nightly news. Occasionally a driver is shot by mistake when the officer misunderstands the drivers intentions.
    "May I see your drivers license." I couldn't remember which pocket, I tapped first one then another until I found my wallet. I handed him my license, he looked at it. "Were you paying attention to your driving?"
    "No." I was returning from my weekly duplicate bridge game, my partner made four errors during the session and I was reviewing each hand to make sure I had not made any mistakes and I did, I made one mistake, I violated a bridge maxim, I let my partner make a mistake. I could have played my cards in a different order, if I had done so my partner would not have had the opportunity to make a mistake and we would have come in first, instead I gave him a chance to make a mistake and he did and we came in second.
    "Do you have any violations on your record?"
    "Not to my knowledge."
    "One moment please." The officer returned to his vehicle and after short time returned, "I'm going to let you go with a warning this time, be sure to pay attention from now on." He returned my license.
    "Thank you," and he left. The officer was courteous and efficient as usual, I was back on the road in less than three minutes. I was mad at myself, I had made the same mistake twice in the same night.
    Where I live it would be very unlikely that an officer would misunderstand my intentions and shoot me, but that is not the point. The police are our partners, they try to protect us from ourselves. We should NEVER give them the chance to make a mistake no matter how small that chance is because the results could be a lot worse than second place, it could be disastrous. Now I have another reason to obey our laws, NEVER GIVE YOUR PARTNER A CHANCE TO MAKE A MISTAKE.

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RICHARDS RESPONSE   to prayer in school would add virtue and value to our students
 

    Prayer cannot create virtue or value by itself and if prayer is not a part of a persons value system, a prayer by any other person is meaningless. Prayer never solved a problem, prayer may allow an individual to attain the proper state of mind to define and solve a problem, but prayer never solved a problem. This type of error contributes to such places as Israel, Ireland, etc. Each side praying that they live long enough to kill their enemies, is that type of prayer virtue or value?

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    If we are to eliminate terrorism, we must eliminate the errors that allow terrorism to occur. One error is the fallacy of justification. Some religious, philosophical, or political fundamentalists, such as the Arab, Jew, Irish, pro life, etc. use their interpretation of their religion, philosophy, or politics to justify their actions. This is a very major fallacy, our actions should justify our religion, philosophy, or politics not the other way around.
    We will have terrorism until this error is eliminated, a very difficult task, the United States, for example, has been perpetuating the fallacy since 1776 and the Jews for over 3500 years. If you use your religion, philosophy, or politics to justify your actions you are a hypocrite, you are not true to yourself, you are externalizing your value and how could killing some one justify your religion, philosophy, or politics?

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    Most people do not understand, there is not a conflict between science and religion because science knows it can not answer all questions and science has a mechanism for change. In fact, science divides questions into three groups. Those it can answer, those it can never answer, and those that it may be able to answer but cannot do so without spending an unreasonable amount of resources. Questions such as, 'Does man have a soul?', 'Is there a God?', etc., science does not even attempt to answer because science knows it can not.
    There is a conflict between religion and science because most religions attempt to answer all questions and most religions do not have a mechanism for change except for minor procedural items. Most of the time the only way to effect a change in a religion is to create a new religion and generally creating great animosity. Because of these defects I must conclude that all religions were developed by man not God and therefore we will never have a one true religion.

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    Notice, I used the word accept and not believe. Science does not believe a scientific theory or law, science accepts them if they fit the data, if they don't they are rejected. A scientific theory or law must also meet two additional criteria, they must be repeatable and they must predict. I don't know of any religion that meets the last two criteria. For me, religion must restrict itself to answering the questions that science knows it cannot answer and creation science is a sham.
    Now, let me tell you how the title of this comment came about for me. I cannot explain why the thoughts came as they did all I can do is retell them as they happened. Each comma and period in the material below was followed by a pause in my thinking, some times for several minutes.
    One day I was sitting at the beach reflecting on the latest blow up in Israel. All I could do was shake my head at the stupidity, I could not believe what the Jews or the Palestinians were saying. I did not believe either side now, I did not believe either side in the eighties, or the seventies, or the sixties, or the fifties, or in 1947 when I studied the creation of Israel by the United Nations in high school.
    If I didn't believe the Jews then why should I believe the Jews at any time, was their word like a fine wine, does it get better with time. NO! Then why should I believe what they wrote over 2000 years ago?
    'Seek the truth and the truth will set you free.' 'In God we trust.' I stopped attending Sunday school at age twelve because the little old ladies were not teaching what the Bible said, they were teaching me their belief, I couldn't even call it their interpretation of the Bible, they were not telling me the truth and I didn't go to church again until I was married.
    Now the same thing was happening again and as far as I was concerned neither side was telling the truth. When I replaced the word 'believe' with 'trust them to tell the truth' in my above thought process the whole basis for a literal interpretation of the Bible or of any religion, for that matter, came crashing down.
    You can accept evolution and keep your Christian faith if you are willing to give up a literal interpretation of the Bible. All evolution is doing is explaining what happened between the time God spit in the dust and creation of man.
    Now the parable 'Foxes have holes' took on a new meaning, one that had been discussed in our adult Sunday school group many times. Jesus was not talking about a place to rest our heads. He was talking about our ability to determine the truth. Together with my knowledge of logic, Godel's theorem, the uncertainty principle, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, etc., I knew that we can never know anything for certain.
    Think of it this way, Truth is at the top of a circle and ignorance is at the bottom, on one side place belief with faith above it and on the other side place think with knowledge above it. From ignorance we can approach Truth from two different directions but we can never reach it because of our inherent limitations. It also means we can never mix science and religion when we try to approach Truth. They must forever remain on their separate paths in our thinking.
    'The New has come, the old has passed away' and 'No one can live by the letter of the law, we must live by the Spirit of the law' also took on new meaning. When religion conflicts with science we must change our beliefs and or faith because the conflict means that our belief and or faith was moving away from the spirit and toward the letter and no one but God can know the letter.

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    I become very perturbed when a web site causes my old communicator to abort because it could not handle the bells, whistles, or glitz used by the web site. I have been working with computers since 1964, I wrote my first program in 1967 and I have learned that the value of data produced by a system is inversely proportional to the amount of bells, whistles, and glitz used to present the data.
    The bells, whistles, and glitz should aid in the rapid, easy, and accurate conversion of data to information and if they don't do that, they are pure crap (return to 'Thoughts' and read 'Data and Information are they Synonyms' and 'Data processing'). If I wanted to work with crap I would clean out a dairy barn and put it on my garden, that way it would be of some use. I certainly don't want to work with crap on my computer, TV is about all I can stand.
    When bells, whistles, and glitz are used to an extreme the output is devoid of content and has an insidious side effect, the uneducated assume the bells, whistles, and glitz are the content. Scientists have been decrying the dumbing down of America for decades and the misuse of bells, whistles, and glitz are contributing to this result. The same criticism can be made of the advertising, the marketing, the media, and the entertainment industries.

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     Sadly, too many people are not aware of the insidious and dangerous side effects of  political, philosophical, and religious stories. When ever we try to teach anyone anything, even in jest, words are very imperfect vessels to convey our thoughts. Also when we try to teach someone anything we are imperfect in our ability to teach and to predict what some one will learn from anything we try to teach them because we are to focused, to narrow in our view, and to limited. Most of the time the other person will learn much more than we intended and many times not what we intended at all.
    For example, the Bible can be divided into four parts, the old testament into three: God to us, God with us, God for us, and the new testament is God in us. An ancient Hebrew would be aghast at the cracked pot story. How could anyone with a flaw even approach God, they would have to be purified, only the unblemished could go before God.
    This is the trap so many of the born again Christians fall into, the Bible is without blemish; therefore the Bible is with out error and unchanging and they refuse to admit or choose to deny that the late writers of the Bible are 180 degrees out of phase with the beginning writers, alcohol for example, there many others. The Catholic Church made the same mistake only they converted the unblemished theme into infallibility.
    Now, the Christian should be shocked by the implication of the cracked pot story that God 'uses' people to accomplish God's goal. This same error is committed through out the entire Bible, especially Pilate and Judas. This subtle and I would hope unintended meaning is why so many young people reject the Bible, most don't even know why they reject the Bible because they learned the unintended meaning subconsciously and they are completely unaware of their objection. They object to the unfairness of the unintended meaning. Young people have a very strong sense of fairness, they have not lived long enough to know that the world is not fair, never has been and never will be.
    These subtle themes are very dangerous because they reduce our objectivity, increase our bias, and worst of all increase our prejudice. Look at our country, we object to OPEC decreasing the amount of oil we consume and increasing the price we pay and object to the rest of the world saying that we should reduce our CO2 emissions, how dare they, we have the God given right to consume and pollute as much as we want after all we are the 'choose people', we're number one. This is a subtle theme from our heritage. We have many more and very few people are aware of them.

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    We ignore the GIFT, the gift of the three greatest miracles because we take them for granted. We have studied the first two (physics, biology, chemistry, etc.), but not the third even though we use it every day. Let me explain.
    Look around, what do you see? You see something; the sky, the earth, the trees, the bushes, the grass, the man made objects, etc. You see the greatest miracle of them all every time you open your eyes or use any of your senses, you sense SOMETHING instead of NOTHING.
    Our senses respond to a very minute number of bits, we ignore the vast bulk of the material resources all around us all the time and in turn we ignore the message of the bits to which we do respond because they have always been there, they are not novel, we have sensed them before.
    We take the second greatest miracle for granted also, life. How can we take life for granted. Don't you ever pinch yourself and wonder? How can you look around and not get excited and jump up and down with joy?
    Non material resources, experiences, love, thoughts, ideas, solutions, knowledge, information, data, etc., are the third greatest miracle.
   Let me use seven words to describe the third greatest miracle, four resources and three activities. The resources are: bit, data, information, and knowledge. The activities are: assignment, intelligence, and wisdom. I'm quite sure you are familiar with five of the words and I'm equally sure you are not familiar with two of the words.
    A bit is any sign, signal, symbol, etc., the smallest quantity of a resource that can be recognized by a system, it is one unique attribute of a resource. For our eyes, one photon can be a bit, for our nose and tongue, the smallest number of molecules, for our ears, the smallest number of vibrations in the air, that will cause a nerve signal to be sent to the brain. Also, our alphabet, punctuation marks, music, art, etc., can be a bits.
    Assignment places a value on one or more bits to represent something else. For example, to the letters C A T, we assign the value cat, to the letters D O G, we assign the value dog. Why do I use the word assignment instead of the word definition. Because the word assignment is a broader, more general term. Most of the data we create is non verbal and obviously I can't describe them, but I can describe some data elements that are in between verbal and non verbal. For example, the faucet, OFF, we assign the value of no water, ON, we assign the value water. The same is true of the light switch, ON, means light, OFF, means dark. When we assign a value to one or more bits we create data.
    Information is created by the intelligence activity when it analyzes three or more data elements containing the minimum dimension for information, subject, verb, object equivalent data.
    Knowledge is created by the wisdom activity when it analyzes information.
    I hope you noticed data is very distinct from information. Data is not information and information is not data. They are NOT synonyms.
    An incident with a coworker convinced me the distinction between data and information was more than an intellectual conclusion. By choice, I use a red pencil to mark errors because the red contrasts very well with the black and white of the page preventing uncorrected errors. But my coworker missed my red circle around an error I found in his report and he distributed his report with a major error, much to his embarrassment. When I saw the uncorrected error, I went to him to find out why he had missed my circled mistake on his rough draft. He exclaimed, "I can't see that, I'm color blind, I can't see red! It appears black, I can't see the contrast you can!"
    Obviously, his bits were not the same as mine so his data and information could never be the same as mine, but it is also true for people with normal vision. Our eyes can only detect three wavelengths of light yet our brains 'see' all colors. We can point to a color chart, the bits, and we can assign an agreed value, a name, to each color creating data, but the color on the chart is not the information the brain 'sees'. The brain creates information from data, it cannot 'see' the color on the chart, it only 'sees' the nerve signals, the data from the eyes corresponding to the intensity of the three wavelengths of light, the bits the eyes can detect. The color, the information, the brain 'sees', is not the bits the eyes saw. The color, the information, my brain 'sees', is not the same as the color your brain 'sees'.
    If you doubt this, ask anyone who has replaced a fender on a car how many people agree that it matches or watch two women trying to match the color of a skirt and blouse.
   Oh, how much we take for granted.
    A brain can choose one or more bits and assign a value based on experience and create data. If the same brain has an intelligence activity it can create information from the data and if it has a wisdom activity as well, it can create knowledge from the information, KNOWLEDGE of the GIFT of the three greatest miracles.
    I have a conjecture as to why we empathize with anyone facing a life threatening event. First, we don't want it to happen to us and second, we would want someone to help us, but neither is the main point. The main point is we are subconsciously aware of the GIFT and we don't want anyone to lose the GIFT.
    A man once said, 'If the will to live was not innate it would be the worst of all possible conclusions'. I hope you will agree with me that because of the GIFT it should be replaced with, 'If the will to live was not innate, it would be the best of all possible conclusions.'
    Now do you realize what we have and why life and living systems were created? Only a living system with the assignment, intelligence, and wisdom activities can KNOW.
    We participate in the GIFT of the three greatest miracles, we are SOMETHING not nothing, we are ALIVE, and our brains can choose one or more bits, assign a value based on experience, can analyze data, (subject verb object equivalent data, the minimum dimensions of information) and create information, can analyze the information and create KNOWLEDGE, knowledge of the GIFT, knowledge of the three greatest miracles.
    Now you are consciously aware of the GIFT of the three greatest miracles, now you are aware of the power we have, use it wisely.

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    Until more people understand the difference between data, information, and knowledge, the science Vs Religion debate will continue. Science is not against religion, science by its very nature is against ignorance, so when a religion is stupid, the people involved will feel threaten by science.
    Science is neutral on religion because science can not determine the validity of the God question. Science can neither prove nor disprove such statements as 'there is a God', 'man has a soul', etc. Such statements have 'chosen' validity and are true only in a given value system. In other words, we can choose a system in which they are true.
    Some statements are 'fixed truth', some are 'variable truth', and some are 'chosen truth'. For example, 'we must eat' is a fixed truth, it is fixed by our biological system as being true. 'I am hungry' is a variable truth, it is true when we need more energy and false when we do not. 'I ate bread and butter' is a chosen truth, it is true if I did eat bread and butter and false if I didn't, I choose to or not.
    The scientist must always remember that an atheist position is no more tenable than a religious position, neither can be proved true or false.
    Some religious people need to learn that their truth is chosen (I wish I knew how to teach them), it is only true in their value system (their belief system) and therefore violates our constitution to teach it in our public schools and all laws allowing creation science to be taught should be repealed.  Most people think of religion as being 'good' and therefore ignore the down side of religion. (Return to 'Thoughts' and read 'Religion')
    Some statements can be proved to be true and some statements can be proved to be false and some statements can not be proved either true or false and the ability to know the difference is the mark of a educated person, and that's what our students should be taught.
 

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    I have had several such experiences in my life. I have divided them into three groups. The first group I tend to discount because the experience occurred after seeing the object or place. The second group I was able to describe the object or place prior to seeing them. The third group occurred during a dream or shortly thereafter. These last two groups I give full value. Unfortunately, I can’t remember all of them.
    Most of my experiences in the first group occurred shortly after I bought my first car, from sixteen to twenty one, and usually while I was driving. I would see an object or landscape and I would swear I had seen it before, but it was the first time I had ever been there. The second and third group occurred all through my life, but the second, mostly during my younger years.
    The second group was the same as the first group, but I was able to describe the object or landscape before I saw them. One such experience shook me. I can’t remember the place or time, but I do remember it. My brother and I and two friends were driving on a dirt road near lake Michigan. Sand dunes and trees blocked our view of the lake. As I drove into a small clearing I pulled over and parked the car and said, “Over those dunes on our right is a small creek.” My brother responded, “How do you know, you’ve never been here before?”
    “Go over the saddle between those two dunes and see for yourself.”
    “OK, lets go.”
    The others got out of the car faster than I did and were half way up when I said, “If you cross the creek near the trees you will find stepping stones, green, reddish, and blue. The green ones are covered with alga, they are slippery so don’t step on them, but the reddish and blue stones are OK because they are dry. The reddish stones are in a diamond pattern with the blue stones around them.”
    I was disturbed and couldn’t believe what I was saying and stood still for a while. I could picture the scene I was about to see. When I reached the top of the saddle the others were running up and down the bank on the other side of the creek, exploring. The scene matched my earlier picture.
    We explored the creek to a small swamp, not in my vision, and explored down to the lake and the beach on both sides until we were hungry. We returned to the car and drove to find a place to eat. The others never said a word about my vision then or later, but it was a major event for me, one I can still remember, at least most of it.
    Many years later I tried to find the same spot, but I couldn’t. The old road had been abandoned, a new asphalt road built further from the lake, the swamp drained, and houses covered the dunes between the trees, I couldn’t recognize it.
    I had three other major deja vu experiences, all of the third group. The first occurred when my sister’s first child, she had four, died. Mickey was born with a heart defect, if he had lived until he was five the doctors were going to do heart surgery, he never made it.
    I had talked with my sister several times over the next several years after Mickey was born, but Mickey’s heart condition was never mentioned. One night I awoke from a dream, I couldn’t remember the dream. As I lay trying to remember the dream, I bolt upright, “Mickey’s in God’s hands.” My sister called the next morning, Mickey died silently during the night without any prior warning symptoms. Again, I was disturbed.
    The second came many years later, by then my deja vu experiences didn’t disturb me. My sister and her husband were visiting his old homestead. She had told me they would stop and visit on their return. During their visit, she called and told me, “We have an emergency and have to return home immediately.” That’s all she said and hung up. Obviously, she was disturbed.
    That night I had another dream which I couldn’t remember and again as I lay there trying to remember the dream I bolt upright and said, “Roxie’s in God’s hands.” My sister called the following evening and told me the rest of the story. Roxie won her first bout with leukemia but not the second, two years later, at age thirty.
    The third came several months later. This time I had a recurring dream every night for more than a month. I was riding with my brother in his convertible on a mountain road. The switch backs were hairpin curves and steep. With each switch back the curves became tighter and steeper until the car turned to the right and flipped over and we fell through empty space. At this point I woke up.
    Nothing happened when the dream stopped so I didn’t think very much about it, but I still wondered what it meant and why it had recurred so often.
    About six weeks later our daughter’s husband, John, was killed in airplane accident. My wife and I stayed with her  after the funeral and went to the inquest with her.
    When an eye witness told his story during the inquest the dream returned as he spoke. John had gone flying with his brother in a modified racing plane. The eye witness saw them take off, heard the engine sputter, saw the plane go into a steep stall, turn right, and fall straight down in a slow spin. John’s brother broke the spin and almost recovered from the stall dive before they crashed, another five hundred feet of elevation and they would have landed safely.
    I have never been able to answer the question,  what was this dream trying to tell me? Many people have asked this question. I seldom dream or at least I don’t remember dreaming, maybe that’s why I place so much emphasis on the dreams I can remember.
    The first dream I can remember occurred during a tonsillectomy at age six. The doctors used ether and while I was under a five point star rotated around its center, its three line perimeter was blazing white light everything else was black. Why a dream, why a star, for a six year old?
    I have had several minor deja vu experiences since John’s death, but not a major one. Over the years I have heard other people tell similar stories so I know I’m not alone and they like me came to the same conclusion, God was trying to communicate with us. I can come to no other conclusion.
    I’m well aware of how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion from limited data sets. Especially conclusions drawn using the lowest order discernate. A discernate is a member of a hierarchical set of the following operators: counting, measuring, comparing, observing, and experiencing. For some questions, such as, the God question, the only discernate we can use is experience.
    For me the God question was answered early in life and I have never been able to determine which came first my answer to the God question or my adoption of the systems approach to thinking or a melding of both through time.
    Because most of our thinking is at the non verbal level and we have great difficulty translating our non verbal thoughts into verbal format our accuracy is low; therefore we can never know for certain what God is trying to communicate to us.
    We chose the bits, we assign the value and create data, and we create the information. This is why I am a theist, but anti religion. Every religion I have studied is certain. From my experiences and education, i.e., the uncertainty principle, Godel’s theorem, relativity, quantum mechanics, logical semantics, etc., we can know very little for certain; therefore I must reject all religions.
 

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    Some of the values we accept are values forced upon us by well meaning people. They usually call it religious education when it is really religious indoctrination, I call it brainwashing. Such values, forced upon young children, are very difficult to change. Does the child really have freedom of choice after such indoctrination?
    My parents ignored my religious education and I’m thankful because that allowed me to choose my own faith. From what I have observed that is the best thing a parent can do for their children.
    Many fallacies would disappear if religious education was not allowed until after high school graduation. Children would be in a better position to judge for themselves. Religious education by its nature is very biased. Alternatives are never mentioned and errors are never disclosed because the religion is always the one true religion and it contains no errors.
    In my younger years I studied many religions and I never found any that did not contain many errors and never did any religion offer any alternative to its point of view. If the younger generation is not allowed to challenge the older generations point of view, except superficially, the errors of the older generation will be perpetuated forever.
    Most people think of religion as being ‘good’ and therefore ignore the down side of religion, a topic I have discussed many times.
    Since religion has been the major impediment to the educational development for centuries, I can not support even the most trivial possible perpetuation of this impediment. Since most of the alternatives to public schools are parochial and the children would receive a religious education by default, I can not support school vouchers.

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    Much has been written about 911 and the Bush-bin Laden connection, but why has the outcry been mostly limited to the victims of 911. Why hasn’t there been a national outcry?
    Because our nation is an immature, self righteous energy hog. It’s our God-given right to consume as much energy as we want. Didn’t you know, it’s one of the ten commandments that we have cheap oil.
    The self righteous will never admit they made a mistake. How could they? They are right. By the same token, they will never change. Why should they? Their way is the only way.
    The immature follow the crowd, never think for themselves; therefore they never gather data, analyze it, make an evaluation, or decide a change is necessary. Why should they? The majority is always right.
    How can anyone criticize our president he exemplifies all of the above attributes, after all he’s one of us.
    We are so arrogant. Our way of thinking, our politics, our philosophies, and our religions either explicitly or implicitly, state that we are the chosen ones, we are privileged.
    I was very disappointed with the State of the Union Speech, it is an example of our arrogance. Conservation was only mentioned once and no mention of coming problems.
    Until our country matures, the only way we will change is when a crisis forces us to change -- our history doesn’t indicate otherwise or offer much hope. If we don’t get our act together soon, about five years, we will crash our economy and it will make ‘29 look like a Sunday School picnic. I don’t want our economy to collapse because that would increase the probability that our nation would collapse.
    Why five years? WHO recently estimated the world population at 6.6 billion and it will be greater than 8 billion in five years. According to my calculations to feed that many people will be the first major test of our survivability. Also in five years we will be going into a sun spot maximum, major droughts tend to occur in the years around a sun spot maximum. Along with global warming if we  have a major drought we will be forced to change our diet plus some other things if we are to feed all those people. When these changes become apparent, we will crash our economy because markets are driven by perception. Markets worry about what will happen next.
    Our country has done little to help the rest of the world bring our population under control. We don't have much time and our resources are limited, so space exploration will have to wait. If we don't start soon, it will be too late.
    People are unique, but we are not privileged. We must control our population, our energy use, etc. We must learn and obey the laws of the biosphere or all else is an exercise in futility.
    The longer I live the more agitated I am becoming. I want our grand children to have a chance. We must change our way of thinking and our life style if we are to survive. Are we ready for what is coming?

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    More than thirty years ago I had a very strange dream. In the dream I had a very restless night. I awoke just after sun rise to find myself on a very alien planet. The sun looked like a California orange, I could look directly at it without any difficulty. The sky was a deep purple and the sand, gravel, and rocks around me were an even deeper purple almost black.
    Because of the early morning shadows, I could see very little detail. I sat up and watched the sun rise, not a cloud nor any color, just an orange sun slowly rising in a purple sky.
    When the shadows shrank, I stood and looked at where I had slept. I had carved out a bed in a windrow of dark purple sand. It was very comfortable because it conformed to the shape of my body.
    From the angle of the sun I knew it must be winter in the northern hemisphere, but I wasn’t cold. I held my hand perpendicular to the sun, but I couldn’t feel any heat. I wore a ‘T’ shirt and shorts, but my boots were odd. Then I realized that I was wearing a clear plastic globe over my head. I looked again at the odd boots and I could see two plastic tubes attached to the inside of each sole and looped through a attachment at the top of back of each boot and then to an attachment at my belt on each side. The tubes joined in the middle of my back and two tubes went into a filter and then one tube went into the plastic globe in the back near the top. With each step filtered air was pumped into the globe.
    With the inspection of my clothing complete, I looked at my surroundings. I could see my foot prints in the sand. I climbed a small hill to my left and from the top I could see my foot prints in the sand for as far as I could see.
    I had been traveling south in a dry river bed, a very wide river bed, I continued my journey. The gravel in the river bed was mostly pea gravel, but about every mile a mastiff jutted out of the sand, ten to fifteen feet high, jagged and stark.
    The hills to the east were small, consisting of small rocks and sand, and the land around them was very flat. The hills to the west were much higher and much steeper, almost an escarpment. The strata of the rock layers were easily seen. I could not see beyond them.
    After walking about a hour, I could understand why I had a restless night. As far as I could see in any direction I could not see a living thing. No trees, no bushes, no grass, not even an ant. I had never seen anything so desolate.
    Soon, I became hungry. Without thinking I opened a pouch on my belt, removed and swallowed a small pellet, took a sip from my canteen, and waited until my hunger left me. That action spurred me to take inventory. I had a large number of pellets, but my canteen was only half full. I had to find water soon.
    I continued my journey and absent mindedly looked at my wrist watch, it obviously had a built in radio. I pushed the talk button and said, ‘Hello’ and waited. I adjusted the volume on the small speaker, but the only answer I got was static.
    I walked until noon, always looking for any sign of life or water. I stopped on a small rise, rested on large rock, swallowed a pill, dank a sip of water, and continued. I walked until dinner and repeated the same routine. An hour before sunset, I stopped, found a sand windrow, carved out a bed, lay down, and watched the sun set behind the high western hills. As it did so, a small notch in the rocks let one small shaft of sunlight beamed across the sky. Now I could see the dust. The shaft of light sparkled with millions of small diamonds, so many that the shaft became fainter and fainter until it blended in with the rest of the dark black sky. No moon and not a star was visible, I could not see a thing not even the back of my hand.
    I repeated this same desolate procedure for six more days. On the third day, another very large river joined the one I was traveling, at least it broke the monotony, but only for a moment. I drank my last sip of water at dinner and didn’t know what to do. I was almost in panic mode as I went to sleep. I didn’t know how much longer I could go.
    The next morning as I scanned the western hills looking for a sign of life or water an unusual prominence caught my eye. I swore that I had seen it before, but how could I, I had never seen such desolation, not even in the ‘Bad Lands’ on earth. I could not get it out of my mind, I could not go to sleep, I tossed and turned and finally dozed off just before sunrise.
     I awoke the next morning when sunlight came through my bedroom window and from that day on I never forgot the stark desolation of that dream, I never felt so a lone, before or after.
     Now comes the rest of the story. Several days ago out of the clear blue, I knew where I had seen that prominence before, we had stopped at small park on the east side of the Mississippi south of the Ohio river and looked across the river at it. The dream was about how our world would end if we didn’t change our ways.
 

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    Two young evangelists knocked on our door and of course they wanted to convert me to the one true religion. During the course of the discussion, I told them 'How it happened for me' and one of them said, "Very interesting." As usual I don't think very fast and didn't respond. She continued by asking, "Don't you think the men of the Bible are inspired?" Again I didn't think fast and didn't respond. She went on about the truth of the Bible to which I told her the Bible had too many errors to be the word of God. She ended the conversation with, "You must be a scientist," as if being a scientist was a dirty word.
    Later, after reflecting on the conversation, I came up with the following.
    How can that be, Jesus said, "Seek the truth and the truth shall set you free." So how can being a scientist be a dirty word. Doesn't a scientist seek the truth? Scientists evaluate different alternatives, have you ever know a religion to evaluate alternatives or even mention them?
    When she said, "How interesting," I should have said, "The truth is not in you," because she was not interested in what I said. When she said, "Don't you think the men of the Bible are inspired?" I should have responded, "And you and I are not? So why are you placing so much importance on a document that was written so long ago, don't you listen to God?"
    We must remember our limits, the finite cannot know the infinite; therefore we cannot know God's word, we can only know 'of ' the word. We certainly cannot remember the whole truth, so how could we write the whole truth. All of our documents are limited no matter who wrote them, all must be tested. Every thing we hear or read must be checked.
    Our knowledge is limited, we can only 'know' what we can test. To accept as true what we can test to be false is not faith, it's stupidity. God didn't call us to be stupid, God called us to be faithful. Because of our limits, to be faithful means we must seek the truth. Other wise we fall prey to  people who constantly twist the truth to gain their own ends.
    Another major error often made when preaching about the Bible, is that it is consistent. The Bible is not very consistent, let me point out a few trends. If you read the Bible piece meal the trends are hard to discern, but if you have a good memory and you read the Bible from beginning to end you may discover the following. Most were pointed out to me, but sacrifice, punishment, and God's activity were not, I had come to those conclusion before some else mentioned them to me.
    God to us, God for us, God with us, God in us. Sacrifices went from humans to large animals to birds to plants to Christ to nothing. Punishment went from extreme compared to the crime to 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' to forgiveness. Male power descends and female power ascends. What about the consumption of alcohol?
    Let me end with the trend that I think is most important. In the first books of the Bible God is very active in human affairs and God's activity in human affairs decreases with each additional book until the letters, where God is not active at all. Now why is God's activity so important to me, because in the first books of the Bible, God's activity is centered around telling the Jews to kill sinners and helping the Jews kill their enemies. The Bible ends with 'Love your enemies and forgive sinners'. What a turn around.
    God never told any one to kill another.
 

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    How long does it take to gain consensus and mobilize a nation, a world?
    If the man in the street waits until the meteor can be seen instead of listening to the astronomers it would be to late to do any thing.
    When I first went hunting and fishing, my brother and I would be alone in the forest or the river. Later I could see another person with every step I took. I stopped hunting and fishing more than thirty years ago because there were so many people in my favorite spots. My father and grand father had made the same complaint, now I understand.
    Many places where we hiked and camped are now covered with houses. If the DNR didn't plant fish there would be very few fish in many rivers and lakes. We have more than enough deer because they are living in town where they can't be hunted and are eating flower beds and corn from surrounding farm fields.
    Two things may protect us from ourselves, AIDS and the free market. AIDS will decimate Africa and South East Asia over the coming years, reducing population growth until it is brought under control. And while we decry the loss of jobs, the free market may be doing us a favor. The single most important factor in reducing population is the increase in the status of women. As our jobs go over seas, more women will be working that ever before outside of the home. As more women work there will be a tendency for them to have more buying power which in turn will increase their status. With an increase in status women tend to have fewer children.
    We made some progress when we started to recycle and made our cars more efficient. The US population growth is below even the most optimist projection of the sixties. We have removed lead from paint and gasoline. The ozone hole is shrinking. The Alaskan salmon has made a come back.
    Since 1980 we have retrogressed and my calculations indicate that we are in trouble, if not this coming sun spot maximum what will happen at the next one eleven years later when our population will be over or approaching 20 billion.
    I originally made my calculations because I couldn't believe the numbers that were put forth at the time, there was no agreement. My calculations are simple, it's the assumptions that are difficult. I took the arable land from the encyclopedia multiplied by the corn yield per acre and by the kcalories per bushel and divided by 2000 kcalories per person to find the number of people that could be fed (2200 for men 1800 for women). At that time my estimate was 22 billion people eating corn three meals a day. That's field corn not sweet corn.
    Why corn, because it yields the highest calories per acre except for rice and this assumes we can supply enough water to grow the corn. Rice will be grown where there is plenty of water and the other cereal crops will be grown where there is not enough water for corn. All cattle would be gone and most of the hogs, maybe a few chickens, goats, and sheep would still be left. We would not be able spare any grain or water for cattle.
    Now this sounds like a grossly simplified estimate, but when I refined it for different crops, growing season, water, fertilizer use, etc., the number didn't change very much. The amount of arable land and yield per acre made the most significant changes, both of which cannot change very much and we are losing land every day to our cars, homes, etc. Except for rice all other crops and animals decreased the number of people that could be fed. We don't have much to work with, plus the food fish population is in dire straits, only three species are holding their own.
    I have seen sleepy towns like Lansing and Colorado Spring grow to over 300,000. I have watched the farm land around Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles disappear, I have flown over them many times. The wilderness shore line of Michigan's lower peninsula is almost gone. The cherry orchards of Traverse City have been relocated to make room for houses, etc.
    I have seen the population of our country grow from 151 million in 1950 to over 330 million in 2000 and the world population grow from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 4 billion in 1980 to 5.5 in 2000 to and 6.6 in the fall of 2003.
    So I ask, how can I be optimistic? People are not paying attention to what is happening to our environment. The media and the politicians are in never never land. Even the scientific community is low keyed.
    So what can I do? I'm attacking what I think is the largest impediment to change, that is, our false assumption that we are the chosen ones, we don't have to change, the world was created for us, the world has to change for us. This false assumption creates an attitude that permeates all our thinking and activity. Look at what we are doing, we are behaving as if tomorrow will be the same as today, it's business as usual.
    Well, wake up people, the world is changing and it is changing faster than most predictions. The Yellow and Rio Grande rivers have stop flowing in some parts for some period of time. A quarter of the arctic ice sheet has melted. The ice shelves around Antarctica are disappearing. Glaciers around the world are disappearing. The air and ocean temperatures are rising. So is the carbon dioxide level of each. Water tables are dropping and the battle over water rights is getting more heated, etc.
    If we have a major drought or some other natural disaster, how many people do you think will be coming across our borders. The disaster doesn't have to occur in our country, we live in a global community. Not to help our neighbors would invite world wide epidemics. We must help our neighbors so we will not be flooded with people we can't feed.
    We will need all the oil and natural gas we have to make fertilizer, pump water, and transport our food. We must slow down the world population growth and hydrocarbon consumption so as to put off the day of reckoning as far into the future as we can, so our technology can catch up with our population.
    If we don't do it soon, it will be too late, the population meteor will hit us.

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    The problem of literalness was made very clear to me during discussions in my advanced German class. Knowledge of the German language was a requirement for all chemistry majors because much of the chemical literature was written in German at that time and to understand all the details of an experiment it is necessary to read the original documents describing the experiment or to have someone translate the documents for you.
    Now there is a danger if someone does the translation for you, in every language some words and phrases can not be translated, there are no equivalent words available in your language; therefore the translator must choose from the words available, those words in his judgment that come the closest to the meaning of the other language. Unless you do the translation yourself how do you know the translator used good judgment, how do you know the translator didn't miss one or more innuendoes or connotations. You don't, you can't, it's impossible to know.
    This leads to the primary error of a literalist. By definition a literalist interprets each word in isolation, out of context, which means the meaning of all connotations, idioms, metaphors, hyperbole, allegory, etc., are ignored.
    Many foreign students were in my advanced class, they were being taught German in English. Many times our professor, who was fluent in seven languages and could think in three, would explain the German to a student in his native language.
    For me it was almost a mystical experience to listen to three languages being spoken and watching the face of the student as an understanding took place and say, 'Oh'. Almost always the 'oh' would be followed by a lively and joyful discussion. In order to bring the class back to the lesson, if the discussion didn't end quickly, our professor would end the discussion with, 'Until you can think in a language without translating, you can never completely understand the message.'
    Now I ask you, how can you accept a literal translation of the bible? I can't because I know the translators have made mistakes, many of them, and some of them have been important to the true understanding of the message. Why do you think there are so many different versions of the bible? Because the translators can't agree.
    Let me remind you of a change made recently. Do you remember, 'Faith, hope, and charity ...' it was changed to 'Faith, hope, and love ...'
    Now let's compound the problem. If we have several documents, all written about the same time but differing, how do we know which one is correct?
    Also, we can learn the ancient languages and we can read the ancient documents and translate for ourselves, but how can we check the original translation, the person who received the message from God. How do we know they passed on the correct and complete message?
    Now let's consider the worst error of all, the ERROR OF ALLNESS. A literalist is more apt to make this error than a non literalist because a literalist examines every verbal construct in isolation, out of context, and rush to judgment, a conclusion. It is this bull headed rush to judgment that leads to making the wrong assumptions.
    For example, 'Go forth, be fruitful and multiply'. That's ALL there is to the message and because the statement does not contain any delimiters they assume we are to multiply indefinitely and indiscriminately and any other assumption THEY choose.
    But if we defer judgment and include many other statements about being a good steward, we can come to a much more accurate assumption and closer to the truth, that is, being finite and living on a finite planet, we must limit our population to some finite number because if we don't we will bring about a catastrophe that will prevent us from being fruitful and thereby not being good stewards.
    Remember, when we read or hear a sentence the information we gain is always more because we filter the sentence through our history. The previous sentence is a simple explanation of what is happening, now let me give you a more general explanation. When a system analyzes data to create information, the system analyzes all the coordinates of the data as well; therefore, the information will always contain assumptions, innuendoes, and connotations not in the data.
    To avoid making assumptions, never analyze a statement out of context unless it contains a delimiter for every aspect of the statement. If not then include the number of context statements that will supply the delimiters for the statement and all of the context statements.
    Now, add the fact that except for the letters, no document was written sooner than thirty years after the event. Do you trust your own memory that long? Why do you think Jesus preached for the spirit and against the letter of the law. It should be obvious, we can't know the letter, it's impossible, we're not God.

    From the definition of a system and its corollaries, a system is said to be successful if it attains a goal; therefore, the only required attribute of an evolved system is that it be effective. In other words it must be able to survive. It may have other attributes, such as, efficient, equal, perfect, fair, honest, beauty, true, logical, etc., but they are not required.
    Also, remember that all of our systems of rules are evolved systems, such as, our system of laws, our economic system, our ethics, our morals, etc. We have applied the attributes of truth, honesty, logical, true, etc., because we have learned that if the systems aren't, conflict between individuals will arise. (Please note, learning, language, and knowledge are evolved systems, but are not a part of this discussion. Learning is also recursive.)
    We have struggled through the ages to determine if our systems are fair, logical, consistent, etc., but because our systems are evolved systems, we don't know how the rules came about and as a result we are incapable of determining if our systems meet our desired attributes. Therefore I don't understand how any individual, even one having minimal knowledge, could examine our world, our bodies, our brains and claim that we were created in God's image or that all of the other ancient statements are true.
    I'm not really anti religion, I'm anti stupidity. We are being stupid when with a little effort we could have done better, much better or with a little effort we could have known better, we ignored knowledge because we were too lazy to obtain it or we intentionally ignored knowledge because it was counter to what we want to believe.
    From the scientific literature, I'm coming to the realization that we have not evolved far enough yet, our psyche needs a religion. Prayer, meditation, and spiritual endeavors enhance our immune system and increase our life span. What I would like is a new religion.
    Let me return to my German professor's statement, what I wrote is not his exact words, I can't remember his exact words, he spoke in German, but I can remember his message.
    We must eliminate exactitude and the bull headed rush to judgment from our thought, we are not listening to the message. Until we eliminate the idea that we can know exactly what we are supposed to be doing, we know exactly the right way, we know our way is the only way; our very survival is in jeopardy, we will tear our society apart arguing over trivialities, over stupidity.
    God didn't call us to be stupid, God called us to be faithful to the spirit of the message.
 

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    Here are my suggestions for what we should do. First, energy. You have heard all the usual things. Insulate, weather strip, heat at 68, air conditioning at 74, recycle, car pool, use solar, wind, etc.
    Now comes the difficult part, we must give up part of our life style. We must spend money and lose jobs. Yes, we must give up the car and the pick up truck or at least the gas guzzlers we now drive. Drive the most fuel efficient vehicle when ever you drive, combine trips, never idle your engine, except at stop signs. When you know you will have to wait at a traffic light or stop sign, coast into it, it will not cost any time, but it will save a small amount of fuel. Don't travel during peak traffic hours.
    If your mail is delivered daily use the mail not one of the express services. Buy groceries in quantity so you can avoid making extra trips to the store. Don't buy things you don't need, especially things that are fuel expensive to transport like bottled water, pop, etc. Buy dried foods, cereals, beans, rice, etc., in other words don't transport water. Be careful about concentrates, sometimes they use more energy than transporting water.
    At this point I want to make sure you realize that I didn't say, "Stop using your vehicle." What we need to do is to reduce the use of our vehicles and drive more efficiently. Reduce and be more efficient can be applied to all our energy consuming activities.
    We will have to give up motorcycles, ATV's, personnel water craft, snowmobiles, and power boats for pleasure and recreation. We will have to use TV and the internet instead of attending public functions, such as, ball games, movies, races, meetings, etc., unless we can walk or ride a bike. Even public transportation will have to be limited, to and from work or for food, medicine, etc. We will have to down size our homes and other buildings. Reduce our lighting. Eat less beef, yes, it is the largest polluter of the foods.
    All of the above will be hard to do and take time. We should accelerate the pace by placing tax penalties on all energy consuming activities and tax incentives on all energy saving activities, including recycling. I don't understand why the politicians think we should make money on recycling.
    Put a revenue tax on all oil at ten cents per gallon, one cent per kwatt-hr for all electric usage above 400 kwatts-hr per month and two cents on all usage above 800. Five cents per ccf of natural gas above 1000 per year and ten cents above 2000. Make the landlord pay the penalty for energy used in buildings. Give tax incentives for wind, solar, etc.
    No exemptions, not even for government agencies, everyone must pay the penalties, bureaucracies are budget driven, the penalties need to be seen on their budgets. I have heard people say we must make the penalties so as not to hurt the poor. All and every inflation hurts the poor, directly or indirectly, it can not be avoided, so why create unneeded rules or bureaucracies, use the ones we have.
    I recommend we start slow so we don't shock our economy and so we have time to adjust, then we should increase the penalties and incentives on a set schedule so everyone can plan and act accordingly.
    Our society is organized around the automobile. I recommend that everyone keep track of all car expenses and calculate an average cost per mile. Add to it the purchase price of the vehicle divided by the number of miles you expect to drive the car. Then record the number of miles you drive to all your usual destinations and calculate a cost per round trip.
    Now you can avoid one of the most common mistakes we make in our country. We make frequent trips to save pennies and waste dollars driving to save them. Next time you are about to drive to save money on a purchase, subtract the cost of making the trip from your estimate of how much you will save.
    I have seen people spend two or more dollars on car expenses to save fifty cents or less on a purchase. Many times you can save money by paying a higher price by purchasing closer to home and driving a shorter distance.
    A radical change I would like to make, is to change our calendar. Make every month thirty days, six day per week, with December having six weeks except during skip year when the last week would be dropped to bring our calendar back into agreement with the vernal equinox.
    The advantages of this change would be multiple: many more work schedules could be mapped on our work week allowing much more efficient use of the work force, our buildings, and our factories. Our income would be reduced, we would work less and play more and I know most people would enjoy more weekends. If we would be willing to have even smaller incomes by working less hours per week, we could employ more people and reduce transportation.
    I know the biggest objection, a bull headed rush to judgment. Do you really think God would object to us going to church more frequently, every sixth day, and more often, 61 times instead of 52 per year, I don't think so. For more on this subject read my comment on 'Literalness'.
    It's this bull headed rush to judgment, a conclusion, that I fought with for more than twenty years of my working life, so when I retired I never missed my work and I loved my work, I like to analyze, to solve problems, and to implement solutions. I can't remember a day that someone didn't say, "You can't do that because...",  they rushed to judgment before they evaluated.
    Can you believe this, our marketing department statistician, asked me for help. Each month, using a desk calculator, he estimated sales by salesman, by product, by month for the next year based upon the last five years of sales history, an excellent task for a computer, many repetitive calculations on data all ready available to the computer. I wrote a small program and a whole month of work was done in two minutes. "You can't do that." "Why?" "Because I won't have anything to do."
    I will guarantee that if you rush to judgment you will never change. Next to ridicule, it is the most powerful deterrent to critical thinking, your brain will shut down and you will not be able to create any new solutions, no new ideas.
    As long as I'm digressing let me add: there are three basic ways to make a change. The way most people like, is like the Japanese, get a consensus and then implement the change. But the Japanese have been doing it for centuries, they are masters at it. It is a long, slow, tedious way. Our country is too impatient, we won't wait that long. The second way is to shock people and when they recover, tell them what they have to do. This way is quite fast, but it leaves everyone uncooperative and with a bad feeling. The third way is to make the change and never tell anyone. Very few people will notice and the rest will think it has always been done the new way.
    I used the last way every chance I could; however, those chances were few and far between and I don't see how we could possibly use it for the problem that's coming. We will have to use a combination of the first two.
    Another obstacle that has to be over come is that most of the rules we follow are arbitrary, but most people think they are written in stone. A solution can not be implemented if people will not realize that we can change the rules, at least the ones we created.
    What I'm trying to do is to make changes as fast as possible without disrupting our economy, that's why the tax penalties and incentives should be increased slowly, so our economy has time to adjust. If our economy crashes it won't be pretty and it will not help us reach our goal.

    Second, our population problem. People equal pollution. We should change our tax laws to allow only two dependent deductions for children, allow all adopted children to be claimed as dependents. Change all social programs that aid children to be limited to two children, again exempting adopted children. In other words, do not give any tax deductions or welfare assistance that would encourage more than two children per woman. Sorry, no breaks for second marriages.
    Birth control pills should be free for any woman who wants them. Vasectomies should be free for any man who has two healthy children and mandatory for all sex offenders, if for no other reason than to ensure that if there is a genetic cause it will not be transmitted to the next generation.
    Abortion should not be used for birth control, but again it should be mandatory for rape and incest for the same reason as for sex offenders and it should be available for the health of a woman. Tubal ligation should be free for any woman who has two healthy children. Sex education, parenting, and family planning should be a high school requirement.
    My definition of sex education is much broader than most and I will not expand it here except to say, we need to eliminate the male chauvinistic attitude that women are here for their gratification. One reason I appear to be anti religion is because all religions are male chauvinistic, at least to some degree, mainly because they were written by men, and religions perpetuate male chauvinism.
    Many women are male chauvinists. Until recently I was puzzled by this, but if you notice that women favor young boys and men favor young girls, you will also notice the instinctive awareness of the importance of the opposite sex to the individual. Now many women are aware of this importance at the rational level, where as, most men are not.
    The hand that rocks the cradle will never rule the world because that is not her priority, if it was she wouldn't be rocking the cradle. Besides, rocking the cradle, the nurture of our children, is the most important activity we can under take, ruling the world is trivia, an ego trip. A ruler is nothing more than the measure of the stupidity of the kingdom. Now, to be the leader of the world rather than the ruler, that would be important.
    Male chauvinists have a mental block and will not be able to understand the full meaning of the following:

    1. Women are the way they are so they will become pregnant.
    2. Men are the way they are so women will become pregnant.

   Our country should embark on a major assistance program to any country that asks for help with population problems. Rather than give money, I would rather give birth control pills, condoms, medical training and supplies, teacher training, etc. We should not withhold aid because of ideological differences. We should do everything we can to improve the status of women, improve pre and post natal care. Improve child care. Improve educational systems, women must be educated.
    In short, do everything we can to improve the life expectancy of children so women will not feel the need to have more than two children. If we can reach the two children per woman goal it would put our replacement rate below our loss rate and thereby slowly reducing our total population and our energy consumption and our pollution.
    This is not an unrealistic goal. Many industrial countries are already below the 2 per woman rate and South America has made steady progress toward the goal. Africa, the middle East, and India are the only areas way above the goal. Our country would be way below the goal if it weren't for immigration, legal and illegal. So, you see there is hope.

    Third, the most difficult task of all. We must change our ideology. Our ideology as evolved from that of our forefathers to one of more is better, bigger is better, more, more, more...bigger, bigger, bigger...
    We must realize that we are finite beings living on a finite planet; therefore our population must be finite. I don't know what the number should be, but I'm guessing about 2 billion, a number we passed many years ago. We should move all people except those necessary to extract strategic resources, from the tropics, out of the disease zone and get ready for the next ice age. We should only produce what is needed, we should only have what we need. We should use any excess for our next big adventure, space.
    Learning is and should be a life long occupation, earning a living should be a minor avocation. Part of our time should be spent helping our society, we don't need things, we do need family, friends, and neighbors. We need social interaction. We need an exchange of ideas.
    Retiring to the lap of luxury, living a life of idleness is a recipe for death. From what we have learned, we must stay active or die, use it or lose it.
    Let me explain my greatest fear. Most functions in the biosphere do not follow a shallow linear curve, they follow an exponential or a stair step curve. Our science is not advanced enough to predict where we are on any stair step curve. We may be up against the rapid change part of the curve and not even know it and we will have little or no warning that the change is about to take place. If we trigger a transition from one step to another we will not be able to stop it. We can't flip a switch on the wall and start over. We must live or die on the new level.
    Two such stair step curves are the current flow of the deep polar current and the location of our climate zones. Both of which are a function of global warming. We are contributing to global warming so we can mitigate our contribution. Most people carry insurance on their lives, their homes, their cars, etc. Don't you think it prudent to carry insurance on our biosphere?
    Let's bring our population and pollution under control, then let's learn how to build a better society, then let's go to the stars.

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