Slosh, Slosh, Slosh!

"John! What's happening to the US economy?" asked Matthew.

"Why do you ask?" replied John, his head still fixed towards the TV in the corner. He was more interested in the basketball game. The world of economics is far too much of a headache to discuss when there are much more exciting things to occupy our minds.

"I have a strange feeling," said Matt, not wishing to end the conversation, but knowing that he had to get his father to focus for a minute on what was concerning him.

John screamed, his face was all smiles, and he laughed, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" The Wizards had just won the game. He turned to his son swivelling his chair around. "I'm all ears."

Matt smiled and grabbed the remote. There as a swift click and the TV fell silent after a few crackles of static showered the room.

Matt resumed his discussion, "Something is not right with the economy. It's serious dad. There is something that is wrong with our economy. We are not being told how dangerous the present situation really is."

John nodded, for he knew that Matt was an intuitive. He knew that Matt could sense that the world that they had come to know might just possibly be in for a very rough ride. How rough John could not imagine since his perspective was focused on the immediate need to save enough for a reasonable living out of his pension.

"The problem is," said Matt, "That many people are like you. They have had an idea that they could save for a reasonable pension and enjoy the fruits of their hard labour over the past forty or more years. You are from the baby boomer age and you expect that you will have a good retirement income much like grandad and grandma did. I don't see it. I am very worried about whether we will have enough jobs and whether inflation will come because of the huges rises in energy prices everywhere."

John's smile had lasted for a long while since he was still ruminating over the Wizard win. He suddenly realized that Matt had a genuine concern, but he did not want to discuss that concern. He did not understand what was happening to the US economy any more that Matt did. "I hear that our exports have picked up and that our trade with the rest of the world isn't as bad as it used to be," said John without thinking very deeply. He neglected to comment that he was finding his weekly pay check did not go as far as it had, and that it was more difficult to set aside the amounts need to add to their pension.

"Dad! Don't you see it?" Matt's voice had gone up a notch and his face revealed his frustration. "You are in a dream world. If the stock market takes many more hits and it is almost certain that it will, then share prices can fall badly, and you lose much of the capital that now represents your pension. People had gone into property after the stock market weakened, then they went into commodities, such as wheat and soy beans. Where will this end? I, for one, am not confident that the stock market will be a sound investment over the next ten years."

Matt was thinking about what he had read in the Wall Street Journal that whether you gain or not on stock prices will be up to how lucky you are. Sure there will be winners, but there will be more losers!

Matt thought aloud, " Dad! If you sell your shares and take the money and put it on deposit with a bank, you are also in a bind because as I see it, we have the emergings of an inflationary period. The interest rate on your deposit will need to keep up with inflation, but what I am seeing is that interest rate on deposits not keeping up with inflation. People don't realize how dangerous inflation can be. People are so used to the Fed keeping things so that inflation does not happen, but the Fed failed on house prices, it failed on energy prices, it failed on the dollar exchange rate, and won't it fail now on interest rates?"

John fell silent, and the two of them just looked through the living room window at the activity going on outside.

Matt continued, "Inflation in China is running pretty high. We have been enjoying all those cheap Chinese imports. What if that ended? With the dollar so weak, we would not be able to buy as much as we have over the last decade. Our economy is turning very slowly, but maybe that turn is too slow. Maybe, we are in for a very long period of adjustment lasting over a decade!"

John thought for a moment and said, "Perhaps, the Fed will raise interest rates. That will help reduce the risk of inflation by reducing the money supply growth. Albeit, house prices will suffer and property will not be such a money winner. Houses will always be a good investment over the longer term and perhaps we can shift back to people buying their own homes, but aware of the interest rate risks. That might not be such a bad thing."

Matt responded, "Well, you are right. If interest rates were to go up, it would help some people, but it could be very hard on business people, who are looking to grow the economy through more sales."

"But, people need to save for their pension years," said John. "It makes sense to raise interest rates. That would make consumption of all the unnecessary junk we buy less attractive."

Matt replied, "You are much older than I, so you see the need for higher interest rates to slow down inflation, but I think that the economy will slow down without the higher rates. Perhaps, we have overdone what needs to be done. People will not buy as much because their houses are not going up in value so rapidly. House prices are even falling. That will slow the spending of some people down. What home owners should be doing is locking in on interest rates that they can afford, so that they can get a handle on their cash flow each month. I am not so sure people will do that. It requires a big shift in attitude, especially for people of my age group, in their thirties. Some lenders are still saying spend, spend, spend. There are many people who are doing well. Do you think most people will be able to figure out a good strategy?"

John wished to answer quickly, but he thought about it. "Matt, my question is whether energy prices are going to make my pension years a nightmare. The Fed has focused on property values and the credit crisis caused by borrowing at risk money rates. When will people realize how luck they are the Fed took action. Things could have been much worse, and the thing is not over yet. The piper has to be paid some time, even if it is in the future."

"Dad! All the signs are there that because of the need to redirect the economy towards lower energy costs, we will see many businesses and divisions of companies based on the older energy-wasting technologies go out of business. My thinking is that if you invest wisely in companies with energy-saving technology, their share prices will do better. The problem is that the failing companies will try to buy their way into such technologies. That may be good, but if you invest then you need to wait until after such takeovers and mergers, then sell."

John answered, "Playing the stock market is a very risky game. People think that they are so intelligent when they experience substantial gains. In reality they are more likely to have been very lucky. The stock market is very risky and is like a form of gambling. I think, however, that you are right. We should all think about reducing our use of energy. That will produce a profit for the whole economy and we may all come out winners."

Matt frowned. He had not expected that the conversation would lead to anything so optimistic. "Dad, we still have the proble that inflation may take hold and interest rates may need to rise in order to stem inflation. Can we live with that?"

I Don't Think You Realize How Big the Universe Is

Two friends are walking through a meadow looking up at the sky and across at the hills beyond. They glance at the blossom of meadow flowers scattered joyfully around them. They watch a brown cow chewing its selection of grass. They hear the sheep in the distance on the slopes nearby. A crow caws in the distance, and a butterfly darts ahead of them through the tall grass.

Says one to the other, "I repeat! I do not think that you realize how big the universe actually is."

She repeats, "That is a statement that I know to be true. You have no idea how big the universe actually is. Well, perhaps, you think that you do, but you really don't. How do I know?"

Continuing she says, "I know that you have no idea how big the universe is because you are a human being thinking with a human brain. Let me tell you that the human brain cannot conceive of the actual size of the universe."

She pauses and looks at her friend who in the silence takes a deep breath and smiles crazily. They hear the crow and look towards the tall forest. They breath deeply and the girl sighs. She takes a deep breath and says, "You don't believe me do you. Ah! You are afraid to admit that you do not grasp what I am getting at. Or, is it that you have never really tried to imagine how big the universe actually is. Let me ask. What is the worst headache that you ever had? Well multiply that by a billion billion times and see if you can imagine the pain."

The young boy again smiles at his friend. He has other things on his mind, but all she can say is, "The fact is that we as humans can in no way imagine the scale of things around us let alone the scales that are involved in the universe. What is truly amazing then is that we have the arrogance to believe that we can use what we think of as powerful machines to tell us what we are made up of. We presently have no idea."

The girl is rather beautiful and the young man knows it. He is willing to tolerate a lot, but this rudeness of his friend is annoying. She won't stop and says, "The fact is that human beings are so ignorant of reality that they do not even know that they are ignorant. Such is bliss as they say. We are in bliss and it is because we are so terribly stupid."

"Who are you calling stupid?" he asks.

"Oops," she says, followed with, " You are terribly smart, you ass ...."

"Can I be honest?" she asks.

"Yes! Well, perhaps," the boy replies trying to be nice.

"No!" the girl says, and adds, "You are fooling yourself. You think that there are things that you can know, but you are fooling yourself. You live with the illusion, delusion, or whatever you wish to call it that you can know. That is a stupid thing to think. The reality is that you are not equiped to know. You think that you are, but your reality is that you are not. What's more, you may never be."

"I don't believe you," he replies. Smiling the boy says with complete confidence, "There are some things, I know, and I know how big the universe actually is. I really do."

"No, you don't," she responds, "You never did, and you never will. You are too stupid to and you always will be too stupid to. The scale of the universe is the scale of what we know to be too big to comprehend. We fool ourselves into thinking that we do understand, but we don't and we never will. For millions of years we will fool ourselves into thinking we can comprehend the scale of the universe, but we never can. It is impossible for us to really understand. We are confined to our part of the universe, that which we can grasp and understand, but that is all. We are complete ass.... when it comes to understanding the scale of the universe. Believe me! That is the truth and we deceive ourselves if we think otherwise."

"Suppose that you are right," the boy replies, "What then?"

"Then we begin to understand something about who we are and how remarkable we are. We begin to understand how remarkable our world really is. We begin to have awe and wonder. We begin to have respect and we begin to understand how truly lucky we are just to even take one breath in our universe."

The Challenge of Our Inner Vision

We might be forgiven, if we did not know better. I have often heard the comment that so-and-so believes such-and-such, or even worse that so-and-so believed such-and-such. Who really knows what they believe when, or what someone else believed when.

History shows that it is best to keep your true beliefs well hidden, and most, perhaps, all people do. The consequences of revealing to the public what you truly believe are enormous. The results are greater than what most people can endure. So it is that many people hide away their true beliefs well within their brain.

You would think that this would be enough to save them from condemnation by others. The reality is very different. One of the truly revolutionary ideas of Jesus of Nasareth and the simple message of Christian teaching was that it did not matter that you believed something that was not part of the existing creed of what you were supposed to believe. The historical Christ took it upon himself to announce that you need not believe in all the mumbo jumbo of what the church of the time was trying to tell you. He was a revolutionary in the art of inner vision and freedom from guilt.

Jesus proclaimed that all you had to have was faith in yourself and that the love you nurtured for yourself would transend all other beliefs and habits. Once you loved yourself, he declared, it is possible to love others. He realized that creating an inner vision of love for oneself rather than fear for what others thought or might do, would transform the way people conducted their daily lives. The results would bring about a world that had respect and purpose. Jesus the man saw that it was possible to create a world in which there was joy and happiness. Jesus the man never said that he was special, but that he had a message of love and a method of building self respect that would lead to joy and happiness, an inner and outer vision, a challenge for the whole community.

So that is how the sermon on the mount stated that all you had to do to be loved was to love yourself, have respect for yourself. Then, with the love that you have for yourself, do unto others what you would do for yourself. What challenges us always is this inner vision that we have of ourselves.

It is very difficult to love another person, if you don't have enough love to respect yourself. Once you lose personal self respect, you lose almost everything that gives joy. If you do not experience joy, then you need to think about your inner vision and how you may change the way you regard or treat yourself. To repair a poor self image, you can follow a simple rule.

The rule that will repair and heal your self image is that of doing something for another person that respects that other person's integrity and self image. By taking that step of helping another person regain their dignity or build their self image, you heal your own self image. This is because to consider another first requires that you change to a giver rather than a taker. The self image of a giver is always higher than that of a taker. This is the challenge of our inner vision.

The Problem with Paradoxes and Coincidences

The problem is that they occur and sometimes coincide. Such was my day. I had been thinking about the pentagon discovered in our universe that some scientists think represents the shape of the forces acting on the microwave background. It would appear that if you leave our universe in a cosmic sense, that you may enter it at the same time. The shape of things is five side and can be conceived in three dimensions, but that is only the start. The dimensions bend themselves around and come back at you in a strange way.

The points I wish to make in this blog are not to discuss the recent discoveries, but to discuss the mathematical coincidence and paradox that has just occured. It would seem that I have been selected to ride a crest of coincidences that I do not understand. You won't either, but here goes.

I was thinking about the large picture and the five sided object because I wanted to illustrate a level of abstraction for the higher organization of the big entity. I swear what happened should not have happened. It would seem that my law of association became operative. Why I do not know. Can you help? Perhaps!

The thing is I was drawing not thinking about mathematics, but my drawing was to conceive of the big everything, which I shall build from the universe. There are many universes that fall into categories of magnaverses and miniverses. These make up the multiverses and all the multiverse make up the omniverse. The College of Light that Wuh attends is located somewhere in the omniverse. Likewise there are pods: unipods, magnapods, minipods, multipods and omnipods. Associated with the universe is a big bang, but there are many big bangs and as I said before many many universes making up the magnaverse and miniverses of the multiverses. Its all very confusing to you perhaps, but makes sense to me! I explain more in my Wuh Lax series of books.

What does a creature of the omniverse look like I asked myself. They exist, but how do you draw one. I am still not sure, and for several hours tried to draw one. I have never seen one though I sense them. Now you think I am being rediculous. Well no more than Zeno, it would appear. I did not know anything about Zeno before an hour ago, but thats the personal mystery. Zeno and I share similar ideas, and these are described in the book by Joseph Mazur entitles 'The Motion Paradox'. I had completely forgotten that I had this book and there is no reason why I should pick it up and start reading it. Some process, perhaps from the College of Light drew me to it and I opened it and started reading it. Let me go back further in time.

Earlier my drawings of the omniverse focused on a five sided figure. I drew one and worked out the angles as being 72 degrees, five adding to 360. But I wanted a three dimensional object so I was playing around with the numbers. If you do, you will find that 72 is divisible by 12 going into 72 exactly 6 times. Now what I had thought would be better would have been a six sided figure, but that is not the way the universe seems to be organized, at least at the microwave background level and what happens to originate from the 'big bang', which I don't think was an event anyways, but that is another story.

My question was how does one get a five sided figure like a cubic. Possibly, our universe is packed tightly together with a host of other universes, or even other 'our universes.' Why five sides. I still don't know, but that has not eliminated six and twelve as we have seen the number 72 can be factored. My preference is for multiples of three. I do not like the metric system very much. Too illogical! Or, is it. We note the five sided figure.

Pressure and number are involved in the resulting five-sided cubics of our universe, or universes. Strange all this. In any event, I must try to close the circle, by saying that I started reading Mazur's book and by page sixteen, I was into a discussion of a pentagon five side figure with 72 degree angles and the like. The cosmic figure that was familiar to the Greeks results in a five pointed star. My earlier questions regarding what the universe may look like are contained in the notion of the mathematics of the cosmic star. I still ask the question, why not six sides, but have a feeling that both five and six are connected to cubic figures density, pressure, mass in a very specific and interesting way.

The coincidence for me was the linking of art, mathematics, science and books into a short time frame. I was surprised that I found page sixteen in Mazur's book and it discussed the very issues I was challenged by in my search for a representaive drawing.

You will recall that I have claimed that light is stationary and everything else is moving. Well Zeno shows that motion is impossible, hense the paradox. We sense that everything is moving, but in reality nothing in our universe moves. As Mazur discusses, the world is either made up of one thing or an infinite number of things.

Horses for Courses, Courses for Horses

A former boss often used the phrase 'horses for courses.' The idea is that not everyone will find that a particular environment or a particular situation suits them. If you find yourself in such a negative or slow paced world, perhaps what is wrong is that you are misplaced in some way.

Moving to another place or situation may improve your ability to perform. Hoever, an alternative to that may be that you need to change your environment in some way so that you perform better, or you are happier. Such a change is 'courses for horses.' You are building a course on which you will have greater chance of winning.

Knowing which type of course, you will find better suited to your skills is often an enormous task. It is increasingly difficult for people to see into the future with confidence that they are following a long term strategy that will lead to success. As the world matures, it is becoming a maze of opportunities and potential dead ends.

One thing is certain and that is the need for balance in one's goals. It is increasingly difficult to pick the horse and the course for that horse. This is because our world increasing requires specificity in processes and goals.

Specificity

In the past, nations and people made mistakes that now seem weird. For example, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Italy fought the first world war. We look back on this history and find it puzzling.

Why would rational nations do such stupid things?

Why would so-called intelligent human beings go to war and destroy so many lives and so many things that they had worked so hard to achieve?

Was the world so bad that war was necessary?

When we examine the past, it seems that peoples and nations stumbled into destruction. We can't say that wars were productive, we can only say that they happened and that because of them much that was good was destroyed for ever.

We can see that wars and fighting are a consequence of historical events, but we cannot clearly see the processes that led up to the events that produced the wars. We live with the consequences of war and destruction, but we are not free from them.

We may agree that war is bad, that it should not be a solution, but we are very poor at working out a strategy that will avoid war. If ever the mathematical butterfly effect has potency, it seems to be evident in process of moving towards the imbalance that teeters the world into war on a regular basis.

What can we Learn from Our Unnecessary Wars

The first thing that seems to emerge from the experience of war is that it does not lead to a better world relative to what would have been possible without war. War is like the slide. War pushes the world down and makes the climb up more difficult. Although war may change the lists of people active in the world and may change leadership of events, it does not mean that the world overall has improved over what could have been. War leads to a disconnect from the past as if the past did not have a contribution to make.

The alternative to war is housekeeping or reorganizing. In fact, the alternative to war is what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. It is a realization that humans are creative entities and that they can produce very rapid change for the betterment of all mankind, and they can do it very quickly. What they do not need to produce change and improvement is a destructive war.

Creative destruction is a peaceful process of reorganizing. It produces the change that wars are faught over, but it produces the cahnge more effectively and with less total stress in the world environment. Underlying creative destruction is the notion that all change is a result of disequilibriums in the world arising from its nature. The nature of the world is non-linear and potentially destructive. In order to achieve creative destruction and at the same time positive change, the world needs to understand the role of work and the fuller dynamics of investment.

All people that are born into the world can have a role to play in building 'courses' in which they as 'horses' can run. The thing to realize is that there is enough space and places for everyone should we as a world decide that maintaining our world in balance is our overriding goal. We can all share and live in a greater world, but we need to participate and have an effective role. Where the leaders fail us now, is in not telling all of us that we are important and giving us 'all' the hope that we all need to be significant.

The world needs to have goal setters that will create the dynamics of investment into areas that we think are impossible. We know intiutively that all things are possible, but we need to have investment of time and energy into processes and ways to make all things possible. First of all, we need to raise everyone's level of living, not just the levels of people who are lucky enough to be born into specific communities.

Being Specific About Process and Why Things Fail

We are all guilty of taking shortcuts. It is economy to think that there may be a cheaper way to accomplish something and much to gain if we find that alternative. In our thinking we do the same, we follow a heuristical approach to problem solving using a subset of what we intuitively know is the full process. These acts of economy may have the appearance of being successful, yet at the crucial time fail to satisify all the criteria originally established as the formula for consistent success. Thus, our search for economy can lead to failure. It may mean that we are never successful even though we could be.

Failure as a Weakness in Processing

In life, we set goals that will move us to a different situation level of achievement. For those that would think of themselves as successful those goals are beyond what they have already achieved. Such people ratchet up their goals a knotch to reach a higher level of success from that which would be experienced in the normal course of things under an existing regime. Each time the goals are set higher, the processes needed to reach those goals become ever more specific and additional processes are added to avoid or eliminate failures.

This does mean that some people are very successful almost all of the time. The reason is that they set their goals at a lower level and engage in processes that will have consistent success and involve little risk. Nevertheless, for those willing to set higher goals, there is the possibility of defining goals differently or being more specific as to the quality of outcome that is to be regarded as success. Only by setting more specific goals can one establish the more specific demands on the processes and inputs that are needed to reach the more specific goals.

Longetivity or the Goal of Living to be One hundred Years Old to be a Centinarian

An example, would be the setting of a goal for exercise. One would rarely achieve a higher target of exercise without thinking about how that higher target were to be achieved. The goal of increased exercise may be part of a larger program in which a higher goal might have been set, such as a goal to live to the age of 100 years. Thus, within one goal there may be other goals that are necessary milestone to the success of the overall goal of living longer. The fact is that some people may seem obsessed with minutiae because they have set very high overall goals that others can't even dream of.

We may even poke fun at people because they seem peculiarly fussy about details. What we may not know is that such behaviour is indicative of higher goals, or goals set well above the norm. We may also be aware of people who seem obsessed or distant. Again, we may not be aware that such people are likely to have hidden goals, private goals that they do not discuss with us. Perhaps, such goals are due to an illness that they are struggling with or a fear that they have which dominates their thinking. It is very awkward when we think we understand people, but have no idea od their goals nor the circumstances within which they must struggle.

National and Nationalist Goals

History is full of stories where some nations pursued goals that set them apart from others by being beyond anything that had been previously achieved. When nations behave strangely they engage in specific activities to such an extent that the composition of activies seems biased or specialized. Specialization of a consequence of setting higher goals for achievement. We may ask what the goals are and be suspicious if we are not told. Like in the case of people, nations led by governments set goals. These goals are for the community or for people within the community and may, or may not, be evident to neighbours. In working towards new goals, people and nations establish strategies that they feel will be successful. These strategies may or may not be declared openly.

As a country, we may become aware of strategies when we see evidence of change that seems premeditated. For example, we may assume that a group has adopted a new strategy were we to see increased use of very specific resources that would not normally be used, or when we see greater care being taken to achieve specific goals, such care being evident from new standards or different ways of doing things.

The Science in Religion

All religion contains science, and surprisingly enough even those religions that deny the role of science probably contain a hefty amount of science hidden within them. To determine what the science is within a given religion one has to ask very specific questions. The first is to ask what the purpose of the religion really is. If the religion has no real purpose then it is not a religion. All religions have a purpose. You just have to identify what that purpose is.

The Purpose of a Religion

Generally, a religion has a story about the world that it wishes its participants to understand and to use as a guide for future actions and thought. The story is generally not verifiable in the sense of being scientifically identifiable as some shared peer tested law, but that does not rule out such stories. There may be many stories in a religion. The purpose of a religion is to use its stories as guides for the adherents of the religion in their future thoughts and actions.

Some religions adapt so that the stories can be updated, questioned, peer reviewed, and reshaped in all sorts of ways. Other religions do not allow the story to be revised and strictly forbid a liberalization of the story in light of what is seen and understood by its adherents. In such religions, the story is not open to interpretation, but must be used in a way that continues the methods of the past very specifically.

Why and How Dawkin's Misses the Point about the Existence of Religion

Some writers, such as Richard Dawkins, have the mistaken impression that religion in their lives can be somehow avoided or not used. This is a great misconception of what religion is all about and why everyone uses religion whether they realise it or not. What Dawkins is really saying is that he does not like the story of previous religions, listen to my story and use it as your new religion.

This is a perfectly normal response to hearing a story that you do not believe and you then try to invent your own story. In reality, we all, everyone has their own stories that they extract from their religions and they use a subset of the book of stories as their own religion. Thus, a Christian is not just a Christain, but someone who has looked into the books of Christianity and has selected those stories that form the basis of personal religion. This is human and natural because we have only limited capacity. In fact, for the Christians, it is almost expected. There is only one story that needs to be believed and the others can be used or discarded at will. The Christian story is 'love thy neighbour as thyself.' The other stories are discardable. Thus it is that a youngster can understand Christianity. It is too simple to forget. All the other stories one can dispose of. They are unnecessary to the religion.

Using Science to Create a New Religion

The relevance of Richard Dawkins as a scientist creating a new religion is that he is saying that his religion does not believe in war. It sounds like a great religion to me. Perhaps, if Dawkins told the story a bit better, he might do a lot of good. For example, were he to say that he had a law that would prevent wars for all time, we could all adopt this story as part of our religion and we would be enhanced by it. The problem with scientists that study biology or physics is that they are often not trained in religion and have no idea what religion is. More often they are not trained very well in history either, and is that not the lot of most of us. If Dawkins seems to flounder in his ideas, it is because they are stories that he has yet to develop into a religion that we can admire and add to our own. Why you ask should we?

Anything About the Future is Mythology

If you were able to hold all things constant except for the things that you wish to project into the future and then make a projection about the future, you may came pretty close. Nevertheless, the process of projection is what prophets do. Prophesy is the art of telling a story or stories about the future. All communities have prophets, myth spinners. The best politicians are prophets because they communicate well, the spin a story about the future, and they are credible, at least for now, because they are the best stories in town. When there is huge uncertainty about the stories that the politicians spin, we lose faith and we don't vote for them. We abandon their temporary religion.

This is why some religions are temporary. Many stories or myths arise during extremely uncertain times and in such times the stories are very hard to believe. To believe the mythology of the politician in uncertain times requires a huge amount of faith. Thus, it is that religions rely on faith. That faith may be temporary or long lasting. Faith in the Christian message of 'love thy neighbour' has been more long lasting than many other faiths.

Religions, forecasting, prophesizing, projecting, guiding are all about having a story on which people have faith. The amount of faith that they grant is partially due to their not having alternatives to chose from.

In the modern world, religion is likely to grow by leaps and bounds as life becomes more and more uncertain as more and more alternative stories guiding people into the future about. Out of all this confusion however, the single story of love thy neighbour as much as thyself will survive. Perhaps, man will add to that mythology and ask that one love ones neighbourhood and neighbours and much as one loves oneself and home. The bigger the neighbourhood the better since man needs to love his own world in order to guide and build worlds in the future that take into account the ecology of his environment and the guidence needed to preserve that ecology.

Kings, Poets, Sages, Gods, Prophets and Stars - What Gives?

In our earthly existence, we deal with what we know as best we can with the tools that we are offered to us or that we acquire by whatever means are open to us. We can deal with our world because of our senses and the tools these senses enable us to use. Our challenge comes when we are asked to go beyond our senses and beyond anything that we know how to manipulate with our senses. The temptation is to forgo our individual task of using our own senses and assume that we can gain by assumptions about sensations rather than the actual sensations themselves.

Secure Environments for Learning

This strategy may serve us well when it comes to very dangerous things or aspects of our world that have negative consequences when we try to put ourselves into the role of testing. If some one tells you that you cannot fly, you tend to assume that the statement is correct because if you tried to fly and failed you might end your life. Nevertheless, you might want to test the statement with a safe test where you run no risk.

Much of the extensions of our senses in new worlds is through very safe tests that we design ourselves. Many of our safe tests involve copy cat behaviour. Imitating others is a fairly safe way to extend one's sphere of experience. The problem with copy cat learning is that although it may be fairly safe, it may not represent the best that we can achieve. That depends on who or what we imitate; who or what we put our trust into.

The Leadership That We Acknowledge for Our Non-experience

For the most part our framework of trust comes through our parents and local community. As we mature, we include many more influences in our subjective lists of who and what we trust. Out of the long list of those we respect for their contribution to our understanding, we finally acquire the idea that there are specialists who lead the way in different skills and areas of knowledge. These experts and specialists wax and wane in their influence over people. A number of things stand out.

In our complex world, we do not normally have freedom to choose who we imitate, follow or accept as leaders. Most often these choices are made by others for us and we tend to be pushed, influenced, badgered, or forced into acceptance of the ideas of others whom we have not tested for ourselves.

We tend not to have any freedom of choice yet go about our daily lives as though we did. The majority of people are deluded and live in a fantasy world in which they have no control over anything meaningful in their lives.

Gaining Freedom by Joining a Small Group

This is the great realization of teenagers who for the first time have the courage to face up to the tremendous forces that shape their thoughts and experiences. Lacking any power over their individual actions, they collect together into small groups where their influence and testing can take place independent of the larger community.

Within the small group, there may be some freedom, but again that freedom may also be an illusion and the group be under the influence of an individual or individuals whose fantasies are a delusion.

The Risks of Getting it Wrong

For many the social aspects of belonging to a group outweigh the strategy of getting a valid perspective of one's world. Thus, it is that a mentally deficient child can be persuaded to carry a bomb and blow themselves up, killing many innocent people. Thus, it is that Ben Laden can laugh, or chuckle to himself about those that committed suicide in the September 911 atrocities. While the Koran's original words cannot be reexamined, it is possible for young men to die under the illusion that they will be served maidens when in reality they would receive grapes.

Worlds Without Mass or Size

In an earlier blog, I wrote about a universe in which light did not move and everything else was moving. In our measured universe, light has zero mass and scale invariance. Light, as it happens, has many of the interesting properties of unparticles in what has been called the unparticle world by Professor Howard Georgi of Harvard University. Georgi's ideas may help cosmic model builders propose an explanation for some of the real mysteries afflicting the explanatory power of modern physics.

What is interesting about the speculations concerning unparticles is that the unparticles proposed are scale invariant. The unparticles would be matter, but they would behave under very different rules from what we experience in our particle intensive universe.

If we search for such matter, we have a problem detecting it because it does not appear as particles. However, unparticles may influence particles and it is possible that we may detect this influence by means of powerful Large Hadron Colliders, and the like. Physicists are puzzled by their inability to detect the source of much of the energy and mass in the universe.

Scale invariance is an attribute that relates to laws governing the length or energy of an entity under different scales. It has different connotations depending on what aspect of physics is under review.

Curves can display scale invariance and one that is often found in nature is that of the logarithmic spiral. If the spiral has very specific and unusual properties, it is a golden spiral. The properties of the golden spiral are not that common in nature and don't add any particular advantage.

The mathematics of fractals has scale invariance as an important contribution to our understanding of natural phenomena.

The Problem with Energy Prices

Once long ago, I did a study of European energy use and real economic growth that showed its real annual growth rate average of 6 percent, yes 6 percent, seems impossible now, was achieved by real average growth rate of energy consumption of 17 percent, also a seemingly impossibly high figure! Small wonder then that when these numbers or the real effect of these numbers were absorbed by those owning crude oil, there was a shock that eventually resulted in the oil cartel. Of course, Libya was the country providing the oil!

The world has not reacted to the link between energy use and economic growth in a way that realizes high economic performance in advanced economies. Instead, the emphasis of policy makers has been on the risks of inflation arising with expansion of the money supply. The link between money and inflation was understood, but the link between real economic growth and energy production was not.

I produced a short thesis at one of my universities using factorial analysis in which the energy factor dominated real growth and the professor, a Harvard trained individual failed me on it saying that it was not economics. He threatened to fail me all together if I did not write in my exams exactly what he had taught in class.

The idea was that economics could not be a science of the world in which one actually thought! I passed my year, but I realized that I did not belong in university economics programs where one did not think, but instead produced meaningless mathematical theory or restricted empirical analysis that said yes to what the conventional wisdom would support. Don't swim against the current stream was the mantra if you wished to graduate with a decent recommendation.

The world is in a worse mess now, and real thought has not occurred. Economic policies that emphasize low inflation will not produce growth, nor will it solve the energy supply problem. The reason is that to solve the energy problem, the price and profit mechanism as an incentive will not work directly.

It will work indirectly, but that will take time because governments are more interested in promoting and financing shoot-em-ups than in helping third world countries and solving issues of starvation and disease. Look at how the US and UK have slashed the energy research science and physics budgets while spending more on uniforms and meals for troops.

What will work is the dynamics of the copy cat mechanism that I researched at Cambridge University. What governments need to do is pick a winner such as battery driven vehicles or green concrete and go for it in the biggest way without any concern for inflation. Spend, spend, spend on selected technologies like they do for the Olympics and make a huge loss. The cost does not matter.

What will happen is that private interests have to follow or go out of business. If governments produce something and really produce the best of that something, not the communist worst something, but the best, the capitalists will follow. The resulting inflation will be in the technological volcano of the sector the government chooses to spend its money. Once the innovate product is well established and there are no competitors, the government then cuts its losses and auctions the business off the highest bidder without giving protective monopoly rights. This will result in copy cat industry following. The whole shebang is now in the private sector and the costs the private sector were unwilling to bear at the beginning are what they truly were in the first place a social cost to the community. If the community wants a higher real economic growth rate and something soon it can get it b y a mix of private and public enterprise.

The caveat is that the government has to spend in the appropriate direction of technology if it wishes to reap rewards that really benefit the wider community. Unfortunately, the spending now is for stuff it will not privatize well or when it does leads to shoot-outs, such as shoot-em-up technologies that when they do filter into the private sector set such a monstrous example that we continue in the mess that we are in. Why teach companies to proce shoot-em-up or blast-them-away technologies when we can get them entrepreneurs into build-em-right and save-the-starving technologies.

Millionaires in a Row

The world is full of copy cats each one of them trying to become a millionaire, and if they do thinking that they have discovered something special about themselves that makes them in some way superior.

In an earlier blog, I wrote of the weakness in the ideas about the law of attraction as put forward in book written by several authors and entitled The Secret. Obviously, publishing is one of the easiest ways to become rich. One of my former bosses used to remark that the Catholic Church became wealthy from its publications, and he is right.

At the 2007 book fair in London, England, I met a surprisingly shy publisher by the name of Matthias Schmeltz, who wants to be known as the millionaire maker. Now if you want to make him a millionaire, you would fail because he is probably already a millionaire, and he proclaims to have the secret to making millions, becoming rich beyond your imaginings.

Researching successful ways to making money

If you want to make loads of money, I am the one to ask, and if you do it within a reasonable period, at least, I will give you the secrets I have learned for free. These secrets I could put right now into this blog, but I prefer to spin my pearls out over time. Let me say that the rules for making money and profit have to do with the laws of association and not with the emphermeral laws of attraction as expoused so vaguely in The Secret.

Just email me at pennydrop@wuhlax.co.uk with your request, and I will share my secrets to how you can also become a successful millionaire plus.

What is wealth?

As a reader of economics, I was taught that there is a wealth effect within an economy which helps it grow. The wealth effect acted to spur consumption by whoever thought they were wealthy, and this had the ultimate effect of growing an economy through effective demand.

What happened was that the 'weathier' person borrowed to buy things and the money that was spent went on through the multiplier income effect to grow the economy. We read that most of the wealth in an economy is in the hands of a few people, or at least is not in the hands of the vast majority.

This means that these wealthy people can help an economy to grow if they spend their money on currently produced consumer goods. Problem is that there is a limit or saturation point at which even a rich man refuses to spend more money on specific articles of current manufacture. There is a tendency of rich people to spend their money on things that are not currently produced. This means that the wealthy do not really help the economy to grow very much, or at least less than if the riches were more widely distributed. Yes, but there are catches.

The catches have to do with prices and the locations where you consume the things you buy, and whether what you buy is produced now or much earlier in time, and whether you can take the thing you buy whereever you want to take it.

If people from Mexico keep coming into the United States, this is a great thing for American economic growth, because the statistics will show that more is being produced and more is being consumed. This is how America is presently growing. While the rest of the American economy may be shrinking, the influx of Mexican tourists is booming. America, the richest country in the world is having a tourist boom serviced by Mexican visitors. It may even be good for Mexican growth, but as we all know there are economic catches.

The Glitches of Richs

One important glitch of the rich is that you cannot take what you want to consume with you. What this means is that all you really do is raise the price of the thing that you wish to buy and this in turn means that you save the thing in the place where to you bought it. This is particularly the case with buildings. You cannot take them with you. You are rich beyond your imaginings, but your houses and your hotels remain where they are.

I have an admiration for the rich people because they do so much good for the economy in terms of preserving the past. Rather than mulch up history and vanillaize it, the rich are able to preserve it for future generations by putting the price of past objects beyond the reach of those that you destroy them. In my opinion most of the past, not all, is worth preserving, and it is the rich that largely perform this function. Much of the wealth of the rich is in objects that were created in the past. This is a wonderful thing.

Forest preservation as a use of wealth

What I am not happy with is economic growth by destruction of the past as it is accrued in the form of old trees and forests. If I had my way, I would ask all the wealthy people to buy a forest and preserve it for the future. This is no idle comment.

I think an older tree is worth a million dollars, but greatly undervalued. This is where the economics of value is not serving us very well. It is because the wealthy are not buying into the forests that need to be preserved. One way to encourage preservation of the forests would be to have no inheritance tax on forest preserves that were dedicated to the nation.

In fact, if a farmer were to assign part of his property to the planting of forests, the farm should receive a comparable reduction in inheritance tax.

My idea would be that forests could be owned, but like religions be free of tax. The forests could be developed along guidelines that preserved them for the nation so that they could:

• be used to encourage an out-of-doors lifestyle that did not destroy the natural beauty of the woodlands,


• be widely available in every form of neighbourhood urban or rural so that getting to a preserved forest could be walkable or a bike ride for many people,


• be a part of all urban and rural development with trees preserved within neighbourhoods reflecting the attitude of respect for nature rather than the dominanc eof nature,


• be a part of a community reward system, so that those who preserved forest to be shared by the community would be honoured with a community award that could be aggregated to a provincial and ultimately a national award, and that complete exemption from taxes be awarded to the individual or corporation that won the national annual forest preservation award.

The above is only a start of my ideas on the economics and policy opportunities of how to handle wealth in a new capitalism that preserves as well as creates. For capitalism to preserve it needs tax incentives which the community can award. By tying up capital in forests, we would help preserve our trees while giving the wealthy an opportunity to consume their wealth in a highly economically productive and socially productive way. As a wealthy person, it would be an honour to have a forest preserved in one's name that would last, and last, and last generation over generation.

The Universe May be Like the Earliest Video Games

This is a difficult one to get your head around philosophically and conceptually, but not impossible. What if you were living in a round room and it had four doors? Two of the doors are left handed and the other two are right handed.

Stepping out

What if when you open a right handed door to leave the room and as you opening it, a left handed door on the other side of the room opened. As you step out of the room on one side, you step into the room on the other except that your whole being is reversed. Your right hand is on the left side and your left hand is on the right side. You progress through the door and enter by the other side only everything about you is on the side opposite to when you left.

Suppose that you have no awareness of the second door opening into the room as you step out. When you arrive back in the room, you find that you are completely comfortable with everything in the room and treat it as completely normal, not registering in your mind that you have stepped out and come back with everything about you completely mirrored.

Portals for life coming into our world may depend on your actions as a human being

Suppose now that when you step out of the room, you return not through the door as before, but you enter it from within a plant pot that is sitting on the other side, but this time when you enter you are not a full human being, but the beginnings of the life of a seed that will grow into a plant within the plant pot.

Suppose that you are not aware that you were ever a human being. Suppose that as you left the room as a human being you turned off the light, so that when you returned as the seed of a plant the room was dark. Suppose that no one turned the light on, and you as a seed never germinated, but remained dormant.

Reflections of mirrors in our universe

One of the interesting findings of highly technical observations by scientists, the new explorers of our universe, is that there are many mirrors and reflectors in our universe. We are not aware of most of them. They can impact on our lives in strange and wonderful ways.

In nature, we find that many things are mirrored. The things that are mirrored tend to have greater scope that the things that are not mirrored. For example, we have a right and a left hand. These are like mirror images of each other.

In many respects, the mirroring that has taken place is a limit to the possibilities of what we observe visually as our universe.

Awakening

Normally, every time that you go to sleep, you wake up to find that everything that you remember is exactly the same as when you fell asleep. Your brain can not tell you about any differences between the world that you experienced when you went to sleep and the world you experience when you wake up.

This is rather comforting because it reflects a continuity of human experience.

What if when you are sleeping, you have a dream and the dream takes you somewhere that you do not recognize as you are having the dream. This dream world is a wonderful world in which you see your parents, who have long since passed away in your real world. In your dream, you are able to talk to the ones who you miss in your real life. You exchange ideas and experiences with them. They continue to be part of your life even though they are in your dream world and no longer part of your daytime experiences. When you awaken the next morning, you don't remember much about your dream, and you may even forget that you ever had a dream, but your brain knows that you had a conversation with your 'dead' parents. Your brain has created a world that helps you cope with your life without the ones who are no longer part of your living observable world.

Demand and Supply of Property

It is interesting to watch the expectations of those riding off the recent boom in house prices in the US and the UK. In both countries, there has been an enormous amount of captial put into the creation and revamping of property. If the amount of such investment is excessive what results is a downswing of activity until demand picks up to bring overall demand for property in line with long term needs. Whether these needs may be somewhat higher than in the past is an interesting question. Needs are an essential ingredient to the equations that bring about a balance in supply and demand.

If policy makers wish to reduce the potential for inflation they can do this by actions that influence either demand or supply, or both. Watch for US policy makers desperately try to get Americans to save more and thereby reduce their debt. The policy of lower interest rates did not reduce debt, but made the debt situation over the longer term much worse than it was. However, by increasing the supply of new properties, the policies enable the authorities to dig a hole for themselves in terms of their range of choices in the future.

It will not be possible to lower interest rates to spur real demand for houses. The effect will unfortunately be to lower the exchange rate and to push the economy towards inflation without growth. What do you think the economy has been experiencing for the last thirty years!?

Coffee Mate?

For those seeking to lose weight and be wheatfree, finding something wheatfree to go with coffee can be a bit of a challenge. My own solution starts with emphasis on the Dr. Sears 'zone diet' that targets an even balance between calorific quantities of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. The zone bars sold as part of the diet are mostly free of wheat, but it is always well to just check on the list of ingredients to be sure. Coffee for me is inseparable from reading and concentrating. While at home, I will have a coffee in the morning.

At home

Zone bars are made in a factory environment that may handle wheat, so if you have to be 100 percent wheatfree, its best to make your own bars at home with the pure natural, and organic ingredients. I like to have a small piece of dark chocolat produced under the Fair Trade guidelines, such as Green and Blacks organic dark 70 percent bittersweet chocolat. Rich dark chocolate helps set your mood to cheerful, and if you can tolerate it, the bars with much less sugar are probably better for you.

Everything is much easier at home. What I do is purchase the zone bars that one can find in many grocery stores within the nutrition section.

In the US, I have found that Green Fields and Trader Joes both have excellent selections of zone bars. You can also find selections at many drug stores, such as JVC. In Canada, I have found selections at Loblaws, Independents, and Sobey's.

Canadian grocery chains do not yet include a major that is as good as Green Fields or Trader Joes, but the Bulk Barn and many smaller independents might have a selection, especially near cities, such as Toronto.

In England, zone bars are not yet well established, but you can sometimes find them at Boots. If you go to Sainsburys, you will find that they have a selection of wheat free bars that focus on fruits and nuts. In my opinion, these are generally more tasty than zone bars, but probably do not follow the zone guidelines, so beware of hidden calories, especially in the wonderful fruit bars ... to die for!

You will find that the Canadian bars have a different sweetness about them. I am not sure what produces this effect, but you may find that you like both the US and Canadian varieties. I prefer that offered to the US market, so I will drive across the border to by zone bars there!

At the Bookstore

In Canada, Starbucks are frequently located at your local Chapters, so this is really handy and very corrupting. The Canadians have this really wonderful blueberry oat bar that is fantastic as a meal substitute while having coffee. Don't hesitate!

In the US, Starbucks probably do not have any wheatfree food offerings, so it is a waste of time to search. If you find out different, let us know. That is a big drawback to living in the US. You better move to Canada, even though you will be leaving Borders and Barnes and Noble behind. Or maybe not, these chains are pretty mobile. I don't know what to say to cheer you up. Complain, perhaps.

In the UK, you don't need Starbucks because there are many other good coffee houses around. Cosca has really wonderful wheatfree offerings, especially their brownies. Wooah, are they good, and they melt in your mouth. The coffee is excellent as well. I have not found wheatfree stuff in UK Starbucks, but there may be some.

Obama and Snow

I am not American and don't get to vote. My political suppositions and views come from north of the border (Canada) and across the Atlantic (UK), even though I lived in America for over 25 years.

Snowflakes

If you are American and live in an area of the country that has recently had a significant snowfall, you may notice, after I have twigged your interest in the phenomenon, that snow can pile only so high on a branch. How high it builds up depends on the width of the branch. Take any point and land snowflakes on that point and what determines the height that the snowflakes build up is the size of the area under the snowflakes. If you want height and mass in terms of snow you have to have significant area on which to drop your snowflakes. What does this have to do with Obama, apart from the fact that he is black and snow usually is white?

Votes are like snowflakes landing on a branch. What you need to understand is what the branch actual represents, and see that the branch is part of a much larger tree. The winner is the one that can build a network of branches like a tree that people can land on and feel comfortable. Votes will arrive on those regions where people feel most support for their interests. How high the pile is nevertheless depends on how wide the branch is destined to be and how strongly it conveys the interests of voters casting their support.

A Fiddly System

The way the American electoral system works is very much a world of its own. It gets a job done, but it does it clumbsily and to an outsider not really very well. Already some states such as Florida and Michigan where Hilary has stronger support have to engage in great diplomacy in order to have representative impact during the nomination process. This seems fiddly and silly.

Even if a candidate is nominated for the presidential race and then wins most votes, the result is not a clear win. We have seen cases where a presidential candidate receives more votes and yet is not elected as that president of United States. Who becomes president depends on the electoral college. This is the world of American politics.

You don't really know until the last delegate votes are counted who will win party nomination. If anyone thinks the future President Obama is a shoein, one must take into account that although he may be the best thing for America, better than apple pie, he is not going to find the task of attaining the tallest pile of votes anything like a snowfall. The physics and the numbers just aren't there.

Impressions of Front Running Candidates

From what we have seen of Obama, and what he has said one could be encouraged to think that the rest of the world would welcome him with open arms if he were to win the American election. For those outside the United States, Hilary and Barack would be a wonderful breath of fresh air. I think the US dollar would strengthen and the economy would rebound if either were elected simply because outsiders would take a greater interest in America. Under BUsh leadership the country is seen from the outside as a bit war-mongering and religious fanatical. There is much suspicion that the American political process was bought by big oil interests.

Despite everything that we think, Mike Huckabee could become the next president of the US. I have my reservations about anyone who believes in things that don't really exist, and its not just a matter of faith. It is a matter of association and inclusiveness. To disassociate oneself from key communities on the basis of religion is not supportable. It is possible to be religious, but for a leader to deny the role of science and to be insensitive to the demands for research in key medical areas is not comforting for me.

Even in my mythological world, the fisher king who wish to lead his community goes down to the stream and catches the salmon, which translated means that leadership is to be based on knowledge and the salmon is the food of the brain that leads us to process thought more clearly. Even ancient peoples realized the importance of eating omega 3, and the role of orators, but they were skilled at testing the leadership qualities of those who would lead. Though many people think myths are fine, nevertheless, people seek leadership qualities that bode well for making sound decisions. This does not rule out Huckabee, but it perhaps makes the challenges for him to unite the scientific and religious communities much greater.

McCain would make a much better president and would bring a tremendous amount of wisdom to the office. He has a grasp of the 'flow' of American politics in the sense of being able to direct the country out of the mess Bush has managed to create. He seems to think clearly on issues and has a way of getting at the hidden agendas.

America in the case of Barack Obama finally has an opportunity to elect an intelligent and thoughtful human being who may bring about corrections in science, employment, immigation, and energy policy that are badly needed. As a new American president, leadership of the country by Barack would be a very good. One wonders, however, whether he would become a target for those that like to conspire.

Who would be better Hilary or Barack? Hilary is a known leader and she has brilliance that has not been tapped. She has to develop strong skills and knows her mind. She would make the best leader of all the candidates, democratic or republican, and she has a husband who is a known first man. Can she keep him in line?

Why is it an issue whether Hilary or Barack are nominated. If Barack is nominated and wins the election, it would be strange that Hilary is not actively supporting him. Barack has the ability to unite the country in ways that Hilary can not. It's not just that he's black, but also that he challenges conventional wisdoms that need to be challenged.

Party Conventions

The democratic party convention is an opportunity for the future President Obama to be elected by democrats. He has the potential to change the very nature of America's image, while redirecting the country's political, international, and diplomatic performance for the benefit of all.

Obama would take a few years to get his footing, but would bring something wanted in American leadership and perhaps tip the balance towards greater self respect in the black community, which is what it needs.

If you don't see that George Bush has been a second rate and strangely biased president, you have not really studied the price of oil and what that is doing to your pocketbook. Exxon just made record profits of many billions while people in Africa starve and die of aids.

Plant a Tree

I am cultivating a strong distaste for unnecessary straight lines. This may be the artist in me, but whenever I see a straight line, the word ignorance comes to mind. Why should ignorance be associated with linearity?

Have you ever thought that when you draw a curve on paper it is made up of many small straight lines? When we first start out to build something or create something knew, we often begin by thinking linearly. When wee do, we are taking the first steps in a much grander design.

My shock when looking at the world around me in the year 2008, is that there are so many straight lines. To my brain, the words, ignorant, ignorant, ignorant, keep coming up with each sight of a straight line. Its as if the world is just starting out and is so stupid that it cannot get past the straight line. Where I really get agitated is where I find that the straight line mentality destroys something superior in terms of design and thought. To my mind, its as if we as humans keep moving the world towards ignorance and ineffectiveness.

One of the most beautiful roads that I was able to drive over the past few weeks was a curvilinear road that actually respected trees driving around them rather than over 'them removed.' Its not man that is powerful when man builds a straight road. It is man at his worst. You only have to look around you and see the ugliness of the world men are creating while at the same time they are destroying beauty and intelligence. Yes! Planting a tree would be a first step towards intelligent man. Planting a tree where there are now highways would be a very smart move, but lets face it, mankind is pretty damn ignorant.

The Irony of Business As Usual

Have you ever sensed that the world is in a disconnected state from its own reality. You will mainly get this feeling when you experience two very different activities of people that are going in opposite directions at once.

Yesterday, I watched a video produced by a master yogi filmed in the canopy area of the Big Island of Hawaii. There Hayward was standing in the midst of the jungle praising the merits of healthy living. The only problem was that in the background one could first hear the chain saw cutting into one of the most beautiful of the tall trees that have up to that moment survived the actions of man. My greatest surprise was when I could very distinctly hear on the same tape the crushing sound of the big tree falling while Hayward was telling me of the merits of breathing deeply. To my mind the sound of a tree being felled is the worst sound of all, even more devastating than the sound of canon or explosive fire. In contrast, the sound of someone breathing deeply must be the most beautiful of sounds. In the killing of the tree there is death, in the breathing of air there is life.

No one can tell me that the felling of a tree is necessary in today's world. That would be a monstrous statement. There is no reason to kill trees to make more space for man to live. Such is the total disconnect of partial and misguided thinking that people don't see that trees have a right to life as much as people. Would that our people could realize this and give our forest friends, the wild birds, lizards, and pigs, a hope and freedom from human ignorance.

Hayward said to me, when asked by me, what could we do about the bad things that are happening to our beautiful canopies, 'plant a tree.'

Timelines in Volcanic Ash and Confabulation

Dorothy and Colin, you would have been proud of me. I am not sitting idle while I am on vacation. You are such wonderful role s for healthier living, being as you are so very fit at the age of 70 plus. Its because you are doing all the exercise and eating things that retired people should do, play tennis, golf, walk up and down hills, exercise and eat quality food.

I do not have your keen sense duty for doing all of what is healthy, but at least I recognize the need and have a willingness emerging from within my weak being. Staying healthy throughout one's entire life is quite a feat, but I suspect that most can achieve it with a little help and loads of common sense. Needless, to say, if you are healthy, you owe a lot to your parents. Indeed, parents, the greatest gift that you can give your children is a means of staying healthy, and it won't be by confabulating.

Common sense is all you need also to see that the volcanos of the Pacific Islands are telling us loud and clear that the earth is many billions of years old. I believe that the number is in the rocks of Greenland and South Africa that are over 3.4 billion years old. Humans have been around for a fraction of this time, if you think time exists as a flow of events and change resulting from processes. To say something is such and such an age is making all sorts of assumptions, but we are prepared to live within a range of error. To say that something did not exist when we have verification that it did, is, needless to say, potentially harmful and the grossest form of confabulation, people's imaginations running wild!

Its also very sensible to see forms of civilization as existing in full swing before the Egyptians decided to send Abraham's people on their way East. Putting a date on Biblical events is largely confabulation. How does all they all jive with the aging of the earth as put forward in the extreme interpretation of the Bible. Well anyone one with a little sense can see that they do not, if it is assume the time span of the earth is much shorted that it really is. Unfortunaely, much of the dating in the Bible does not really stand up to close scrutiny. What are we to make of that?

Well, nothing much. Its hardly surprising given that it is human nature to ability to confabulate. Confabulate? What's that? Well, put very simply, it is a revision of history by following our preferences and inclinations of what history actual was with what we think it should be or want it to be. It's very much like wishful day-dreaming about the past. We block out all the nasties, if we feel good about ourselves. Or, we can block out of the wonderful events, if we feel bad about ourselves. What we remember about history is thus very selective because of our wonderful abilities to confabulate. Everyone does it, without even realizing, we are doing it. Often the results are very harmful as they create barriers betwen people getting along rather than bridges.

In the short term, we can notice how children will confabulate about their parents, or parents about their children. Will the person who remembers the truth stand up. Oops, there is no one! No, there is no one who remembers the truth because the truth is confabulation. Thus, the Russian newspaper or the religions magazine that has as its mantra, the 'truth', don't really. They are confabulating the truth to suit their mood and the tone they want to set for their readers. Reality is that those that say they speak the truth probably confabulate the most. Hense, this is what you need to do.

If some one says they have or speeak the tructh, you need to verify that they have or speak the truth. Too many witnesses go before the juries of this world with confabulations of the truth which give very slanted views. To verify the truth seek it from as many sources as you can and take into consideration mood swings and that it is normal human behaviour to confabulating. Speak to your priest or minister and ask for the un-confabulted version of their doctrine and see or hear what you get as a response. Remember that monasteries will say one thing and the centralized priests will say another. For my money, I would go with those in the monasteries. They may be closer to earth!

'What the Bl...p Do We Know' As a Mantra

Its become sort of common place these days to denigrate established ideas with the notion that there is something within easy reach that will replace them. That this is not the case comes as a surprise to those who were not aware of the traditional views in the first place. This usually means young people.

It is understandable for the new crowd to go high on expectations, but the problem arises that these expectations and euphoria may lead to very irrational result. In the initiate to new aspects of science and religion there are always going to be expectations of great truths and wonderful things to happen have been fed by elements of science and religion that are still very uncertain. The best approach would seem to be to learn something of current science and religion before jumping onto the Bleep wagon.

Irrational ideas emerge during periods of rapid change. In the current period of emerging extraordinary change resulting from already irrational approaches to science and religion from the leadership of the Bush administration, we may experience an enormous resurgence of the irrational. In the background, lurks the disaffection with reasoned solutions and experience because of the profligacy and solution vacuity of current US economic, science, health, and educational policies.

We can all hold our breath that we are not entering another round of flight from the dollar as gave such an impetus to the ruination of the middle class, the ordinary student coming out of college, as occured in the mid-1970s. It is just possible that the current decision makers are steering the world economy into a dangerous period of stagflation that no nation can afford and that will bring about an end to dreams of economic independence worldwide. By independence, I mean freedom from debt burdens that stifle innovation and invention.

While America has the world focused on oil, the main focus should be on water resources. Watch for the slight of hand that shifts towards stealing these resources through the use of existing economic and military advantages. One can see the potential results by searching for enormous lakes in Asia that no longer exist except as deserts and wastelands. There is an enomous potential for desertification in the decade ahead before the world is enlightened enough to see the excesses of destructive energy intensive technologies. Grow corn to create energy, but don't put something into the ground that is thirty times as dangerous to our precious atmosphere. Yes! What the bl..p do I know. Not much!

Blogging from Turtle Bay In Hawaii and the Arnold Palmer Course

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my priorities are all a twist when it comes to golf. This morning, I walked along the coast of the North West of Hawaii's island of Oahu. Not far from where we are staying is the wonderful course designed, I understand, by Arnold Palmer. Was I attracted to the golf course first? Well no!

Following my flawed personality, I spent a wonderful two hours of early morning light walking along the beach, which is a wonderful light sand mixed with very sharp rocks which are either coral or what's left of volcanic rock. As the sand is so light in colour, it seems to be coral, which is born out a closer examination. Another, bit of information is that there are what appear to be clusters of many types of rock within hardened sandstone, or ash. A closer examination of the rocks reveals that they are a multitude of different types of sea organism and coral, probably thousands if not millions of years old.

Captain Cook Could not Run Away

For those that are not aware, the islands of Hawaii used to be called the Sandwich Islands after the English Lord that financed the Cook explorations. It is unfortunate that Captain Cook died on the beach of one of these isalnds, but hardly surprising because the sand is so soft underfoot that it is almost impossible to run away. Captain Cook would have no chance of escape by foot because he would have been so tired trying to get only a few feet along the coast. As it was, I found my morning walk was very tough going, and soon sought the grass inland from the beach. This is when, Ane and I found hole 14 of the Arnold Palmer designed golf course. I can only say, wow! What a magnificent course!

It reminded me very much of the old course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The green was enomous and in front of it and within it were more than a dozen sand traps. The grass was fast, very low cut, and beautifully manicured. Amazing!

As we walked along the green, there they were, the many lost golf balls of artful golfers. In all, I found seven. Anne found one. "Hurry," I said knowing my personality flaw. "We have got to escape this place!" My concern was, of course, that we would find so many balls that when returning home the plane would not be able to take off because of the wieght, or worse still that I might not be able to afford the weight surcharge.

Shortly afterwards, we found a tennis court and were able to play tennis for several hours. Boy, life is hard when you are on vacation!

Getting it Right

If you have ever speculated about anything, you will realize how difficult it is to get something right when you are working from very partial information. Recently, I engaged myself in the process of trying to understand why the Roman legion which was supposed to be in Dumnonia, the Second Augusta Legion at the time of Boudicca's rebellion, did not come to the rescue of the Romans attacked by Boudicca in the east of England near London or Colchester. In fact, what happened was that instead the forces that had just finished their slaughter of peoples on the Isle of Mona in North West Wales were redeployed in the rescue attempt of fellow Romans, but only too late. They were in fact out for revenge, and the locals were also out for revenge. The fact that the history of the period was either lost by the Romans or deliberately suppressed makes it very interesting historically, but no one, yet, really knows what actually happened. My attempt at reconstruction is a struggle.

I am concerned, however, by the huge drop in population that occurred at the time of the Roman incursions into Britain. We might assume, as do many historians that the population was only one million instead of four million. If I assume four million, I want to know where the three missing millions of people disappeared to. I am not happy that they may have been forgotten in history, nor do I doubt that they, in fact, existed. The estimates of local people living at the time of the Romans arriving are much higher than the numbers at the end of the Roman period, unless, we are all missing something. One explanation is that the locals vacated realizing that the Romans were bent on the slaughter of all religious peoples. The Romans were embarrassed by there prior losses on the Eastern front and it would be no stretch of the imagination to think that they scared the 'piss' out of the island people, devotees of druidism, who as a direct result decided to evacuate en mass.

We have some evidence that some of the people living in Britain came from the continent and were very afraid of subjugation by Roman forces. We must therefore consider that many of the people that ended up in Scotland were relatively well endowed technologically, as in the case of knowing how to live in a cold climate, build shelter, feed themselves, organize and cloth themselves.

It seems to me, that the traditional explanation for Boudicca's rebellion may be missing the fact that she may have been aware of the imminent attack by the restrengthened Romans at Mona, the druid island, and may have been motivated to divert attention back towards her and away from the druids. The Roman leadership had switched from a military to an economic and religious fanaticism that focused extremely harsh solution to the British problem! These Romans were absolutely wicked by modern standards of warfare by no little stretch of the imagination. As in the case of the later tactics by Henry II in the hundred years war, noone was left living to tell the story. The numbers of people killed were immaterial to those doing the . Possibly, the Romans stationed in Dumnonia were occupied and the whole of Britain was struggling to divert the Romans from slaughtering their Druidic leadership.

In the received versions of history, we get the Roman slant on things which suggests that the Druids were rather diabolical and Rome was doing everyone a favour. This is also the position of the Roman church as it evolved. We may, however, be missing the obvious fact that the druids were very nice thank you and did not deserve to be wiped off the face of the early world map by any stretch of the imagination. We must not make the mistake, however, of judging them the same way that we can now judge the acts of the Romans of that day.

What history omits is the many attempts at genocide by the Roman forces in Britain and the continent. It is my theory that the population of Britain fell propitiously as the Romans arrived because people feared a second Veneti type genocide. Where did all these nice people go. Its fairly obvious that they may have taken their coracles and made it fast for Cumberland!

The Romans seemed to be proud that they slaughtered over a million people in order to gain control of Gaul. Did they slaughter three million in Britain, or did many of these people escape and eventually put a certain end to the Roman Empire? If one looks at Hadrian's wall, one gets the firm impression that there were more people North of Roman Britain than is commonly defined. The wall is much more of an effort than the weak fencing that USA puts up between it and Mexico. The Romans were, indeed, frightened of the people in the North, to the extreme, if we take on board the idea that their numbers were small and that they were backward.

Who was King Arthur? The Scoop

For many years, I have been reading about the British legendary King Arthur. I am even, at this very time, writing a book as part of my Wuh Lax novel series that will present the idea that King Arthur actually existed, but was lost in history. The name of my novel is Wuh Lax and the Lost King.

Where my story differs from many others is in the conclusion that historians were hiding something. By that I mean, Roman, Ecclesiastical, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Norman historians and writers were hiding something important. The Celtic writers were shouting and shouting who they thought Arthur was, where he lived, what he did, and why he was important to them. But, they did not write much down and got confused. This is where I step in to end the hiding and the confusion, or a least, suggest something rather interesting.

Its not totally my idea, but the others before me won't quite express the story in the way I do. This is because my story pulls the carpet from underneath the DaVinci code, Holy Blood, Charlemagne people, and all that rubbish about the son of Jesus Christ starting an European royal blood line.

That continental story is too far fetched and really does not hold water under close examination. DaVinci may have been clever, but he was not that clever. His paintings may have hidden some secrets, but they were more misinterpretations and prone to misrepresentation than some people would have you believe. No! I think I have the real scoop, and its not such a stretch of the imagination as the other stories you have been reading lately. My story is based on Vespasian and has a fantastic ending. Stay posted!

The Death Portion of the Microsoft Based Software Industrial Cycle

One of the most difficult tasks in economics is the forecasting of destructive cycles in new technology. The economics scientist and historian Joseph Schumpeter frequently wrote about the underlying cycles within industrial society that bring about irreversible technical change. He used the term creative destruction and he saw it as a process in which capitalism contained within the very strands of motion which forced radical departures from previous industrial structures.

Industrial Innovation Cycles of Creative Destruction and Opportunity

We saw such change and the industrial revisions that were wrought upon languages and hardware in the computer industry of the 1970's, which was dominated by computer companies that are now only residues of their former selves. It has been more than twenty five years since the commercial computer industry was hit by the introduction of the software of Microsoft and the microcomputer of IBM. Neither of these innovations were new or superior technologies, but they pushed forward a massive sociological and sweeping industrial cycle of innovation of proportions that the world had never seen before.

The World of Bill Gates as Viewed by an Macro Economic Historian

The company of Bill Gates, who I met at the time, being in the business of picking industrial winners, was shrewd enough to realize that its business was that of publishing and enabling. Bill therefore chose to maximize market size by means of a broad approach to industrial reform that was staggering at the time and strongly resisted at every level and within almost every industry, especially those that had vested in the use of very large processors running very awkward software.

A scientific analysis of economic industrial history, as I found out at the University of Cambridge in England was resisted by mainstream economics professors that could not cope with the idea that technology was a fundamental component of economic management even at the macro level. This notion is still resisted at the peril of those industrial nations who focus on theories of money economics and inflation failing to deal adequately with issues of employment and industrial change. The science of economics as it now stands is glaringly inadequate as an integrative field to merge the processes of a changing knowledge base, innovation of technology, industrial restructuring and money.

The results are examined as one would examine migration. Oops, industry just migrated from our former industrial base. Wonder what caused that. As the ill grounded economist would say, "Gee, I am not sure whether my economic ideas can tell you what to do about this. Guess you should inflate the housing market and then steel oil and blow something up. That should create more jobs, especially as we clean up the mess afterwards."

The economics theoreticians are still plying their medicine without comprehending the real technical forces at play and how to incorporate these into economic science. Thus, when there is a structural crisis, the real problems of enabling balanced industrial change are slipped behind a curtain of silence and politics determines the outcome, not science. Such an approach will produce a desert in the former industrial economies and an enormous underachievement of potentials. The real success of Bill Clinton was to appoint an advisor that also knew something about industrial change, look what happened, when the advisor left!

At the time of the introduction of the IBM PC, there was both software in the form of the MP/M system and hardware in the form of Techtronix systems, but these were never innovated in the way that could initiate a whole industrial cycle of creative destruction. Bill Gates at the time in 1981/2 talked to me several times as I presented myself as an Excel Developer. We had long discussions about the future of the BASIC language, which he claimed could be adapted to do almost anything and I argued that it should be, encouraging him to engage in the project of making BASIC available everywhere as a tool that everyone associated with computer processing could use.

As an economist, I could see that BASIC was a wonderful language tool that if published properly could revolutionize software development and bring about enormous change, at the time unthinkable. In the same discussion, which went on so long that his assistant had to pull him away, Bill and I talked about languages for a new era of microprocessors that I claimed would replace the single INTEL processor, rather a clugger, but aimed in the right direction. Bill claimed the processor was up to the task, but I was defiant and said that he needed to introduce language that would enable several processors to talk to each other and do specialized tasks.

This was an easy step for me to make logically, as an economist, because of Adam Smith, but technically Gates was reliant on INTEL's offering and his ownership of a single processor language tool. Getting multiple processors to talk between chips and within chips was very primitive, if you remember how the PCs and INTEL chips were configured in 1981. In fact, no company, not even the military suppliers had developed the appropriate language tools. The Motorola 68000 chip was technically superior to the INTEL chip, but the INTEL chip had attempted to integrate graphics in a way that was novel and interesting at the time albeit insufficient when compared to what Tektronix was doing. But, Tektronix was not innovating and Miscrosoft was. Both had the BASIC language and potential technology, but one was feeding from miltiary contracts. Oops!

Why Is the Language of Computing Changing and Where is It Going

The enormous revolution of the present day microcomputer industry arises from the use of a common language by device users and hosting providers. Google and Linux are the tip of an iceberg floating towards the Microsoft Titanic. Watch out for rips in strategy.