Rising Water Levels

The water beside Lake Huron looks spectacular without the breeze, like glass. Those of us who notice will see that the Lake's water level is visibly higher than last year. Huron is an interior lake, but it's history will reflect what is happening elsewhere. The amount of water that will make a lake as large as Huron rise a meter is enormous, but that is what seems to have happened on less than three years. We are not worried about rising water here so much but are we mistaken to be so calm?

Maybe the muons are falling on our landscape and seeding low cloud formations. We see more rain these days here in Huron woods region. That is better than the lack of rain experienced where they normally see more rain, the maritime regions of British Columbia. What about the forest fires of Austrailia and BC!

Generally, water levels globally could be rising despite the building up of ice in Antarctica. The Artic ice is melting and we assume this to be a consequence of higher levels of co2. Might this also be due to sun spot activity peeking in the latest upward swing.

The earth is bombarded continuously by large energy particles and we don't have much insight as to the effects and cycles!

The Hard and the Easy: Why the West Needs to Think About the Direction of Economic Growth and Choose the More Difficult Path.

Unemployed technology and technologists not the banks are at the route of our economic ills. Overemployment in easy tecnologies of construction have been the wrong direction of growth by many economies. Short term profits and capital gains are not the way to run an economic system. There needs to be leadership towards the development of new industries within hard technologies rather than the easy peasy products that is driving western economies into penury. Growth by inflation in housing sectors and rralestate speculation is no way to manage an economy. Low interst rates indicate failure to choose the right direction of economic growth. Governments appear to be addicted to corruption of the politicians who have become specators of inflation rather than working to increase employment in new more difficult industry. Where is the leadership in spending taxes raised fr gambling, drugs, housing inflation, co2 pollution of or environment? Where is the incentive to keep people employed in the more difficult agricultural practices that are environmentally friendly? Who is directing the directions of economic change into the more difficult industrial or agricultural paths that we need to explore?

Is the New Gun Registry System a Pipedream?

This new UN gun registry covers all weapons and comprises a massive database system that can be used by law enforcement officers worldwide. Every weapon has a finger print. The new database stores that finger print before the weapon is sold to a member of the public or delivered to the military. All weapons manufacturers in all member countries of the UN must provide the information to the worldwide database before the weapon is sold.

This new system to be announced in time by the UN's new crime prevention unit has the capability of tracking down every new and existing registered weapon to its victim if the projectile or bullet is retrieved. Even in a wartime scenario the innocent victim of killing by a soldier can be traced to the soldier's weapon. The system will save lives if only because the criminal will know that use of a weapon will be traceable by an international police or UN agency.

The new database to be implemented requires that every existing owner of a weapon be registered. All weapons of soldier will be registered under the new system. This information is to be kept in a central database for access worldwide by police forces and military law investigators worldwide over the Internet. Any weapon that does not match its registered finger print will be confiscated and destroyed.

All weapons worldwide will be registered whether for military or civilian ownership. The new system will require of member countries of the UN to provide timely real time information. An country that does not provide such information is to be boycotted.

Don't believe everything that you read.

The Mathematics of Panic and the Mexican Swine Flu Pandemic

No one yet knows for sure, but the evidence is building that the Mexican flu pandemic is real and that it has had a three week gestation period beginning in earnest possibly during for the first week of April 2009. It may have spread out through people travelling away from the breeding wastes of several large swine farms at La Gloria near Mexico City. That is only an hypothesis. The big question is that, given present deaths in Mexico now stand at over 150, how long will it take before similar numbers appear in other communities across the globe. In other words, how long before you or I no matter where we live can expect to see the virus in our community. And, then how fast will the numbers of serious cases climb in Mexico as a potential pandemic gathers speed.

I have to say that the pandemic seems more than potential and that is why the potential for panic is as great as the potential for pandemic.

A rough calculation based on a three weeks gestation period for an area that has been saturated with the flu virus mutating and evolving suggests that not all those that have the swine flu virus will have the virulent strain. In fact, many case of the virus already reported around the world will have strains that have not yet evolved into a killer strain. They may never evolve into a killer strain and indeed may provide a means of protecting people from the killer strain or strains when these eventually arrive.

My very rough calculations of percentages for what they are worth would preliminarily suggest a 5 percent mortality rate out of those that have actually caught the killer strain and get seriously sick. This means that the figure for the total number catching the swine flu virus with all the other less dangerous strains could be a much smaller proportion, say less than 1 percent. This is just a wild speculation for setting out the arguments that a panic response may be more serious than the spread of the killer varus itself, at least initially, and if we are very lucky we may get immune to the killer strain by catching the non killer strain. Being or getting sick from the swine flu does not mean you will die. We do not know what the proportions are or will be. Some people may be already partially protected from less dangerous forms. We do not know what will protect from the killer forms.

As regards alarm, one should realize that those that will catch swine flu may be very large indeed, again I must emphasize may be, since mathematically we have no way yet of telling people more than that. This will lead to panic, and panic is morel Ikey than pandemic of the killer strain. As I read it, a pandemic of the swine flu virus is not the same as a pandemic of the killer strain the swine flu virus. Thus, you will probably survive the pandemic if you are reading this article, however you should be aware than you may still panic, and the panic may be more dangerous than the part of the pandemic of the swine flu virus that is not the killer strain. If you can understand that then you have the gist of my comments.

It is possibly the case that once people in your community have contracted the swine flu virus, you, yourself, will catch the virus in about three weeks even if you try very hard to avoid it. Be aware that many people may have to have the non-killer strain before it has evolved into a killer strain. Averaging everything out, the average person is safe, but there is a good chance lots of people will get very seriously ill around you.

Just keep your cool and do what you think will maximize your chances of surviving the worst. Get food and drink together for the long haul, get anti-viral cleansers, get loads of tissues and bags to dispose these,. Read as much as you can about how to protect your family and your community. Above all, do not panic. Survive by using your wits, and do unto your neighbour as you would they do unto you.

The New Stereotypes and Why They are Damaging

I see the creation of new stereotypes as a social process to give human beings comfort that they are addressing the ills of their world. The real problem is that the new stereos, many of them associated with bankers and banking, do nothing to help our situation other than appease our inclinations towards negative attitudes.

In essence, the main players in the unfolding of the financial crisis were innocent of a knowledge of wrong doing. Most were people being pragmatic within their perceptions of what the rules of the economic games being played out. They did not realize that the senior supervisory managers of the game were ignorant of the ultimate effects of the market game processes or had their heads in the sand. Our stereotype is, however, different in that we have cast them, all banking industry people, as willing participants in games of deception. That these stereotypes do not really apply to the vast majority of people in the financial world is too often forgotten in the rhetoric of politicians and housewives alike.

We have been through many histories of destructive stereotyping that has led to massive amounts of injustice to innocent parties. What we all have to presently endure is that the approaches of economic analysis that are presently in place worldwide are not sufficient to the task of understanding economic processes. The whole science of economics has to improve beyond its own stereotypes.

It is no longer sufficient to use the mathematics of economics to solve economic problems. There needs to be much more empirical and information gathering in economic analysis of forms that take into account the real complexities of economic and social structures. We are far down the ladder of solutions and need to climb into realism. Our shortcuts of analysis are damaging our people and communities.

The Continuing World Economic Crisis as Mistaken Identity

The problem with understanding economic problems is that there are many ways to analyse an economic situation. The leaders of the G20 have resolved that a multi-pronged approach aiming to end the liquidity crunch while amending the rules under which banks operate should do the trick. Do their efforts represent a real solution or are we seeing the playing out of another drama of ignorance about economic processes?

A feature of the G20 proposal is that it partly addresses the demands of Gordon Brown for stimulus while partly addressing the demands of European leaders for reformation of the banking system. It is wonderful rhetoric, but does the rhetoric contain the solution, or might one ask in all sincerity whether there is at this point a solution. In my view, this rather depends on your point of view and how you see the economic processes playing out over time relative to what you consider your ideal.

Its obvious that the main target of community leaders should be to minimize inflation while maximizing real growth in new directions such as to resolve other crises that humanity faces. The measures proposed in the G20 statement of intent will go some of the way towards resolving the different crises, but what will play out will be huge differences in emphasis in different countries because of their respective competitive situations and whether they are the initiators of the crisis or the unfortunate recipients.

One has to ask the question why the credit crunch. If one gets the right answers then it is possible that solutions may be found. However, if one asks the wrong questions or looks at the economic processes incorrectly, one can easily foresee a continuation of 'issues' rather than their resolution. In my view the wrong people are reviewing the financial processes and probably getting it wrong. This is not because they are not brilliant in the field of economics or finance as presently defined, but because the whole science of most economic analysis is built on mistaken identity based on stereotypes that no longer apply. Partly, we are all to blame because we believe or have faith in mathematical analysis as the end of the story rather than thorough examination of the details through time.

Mathematically, we can examine the economic problem from a macro or micro economic perspective. In conventional macro economics, it is not obvious that there was rampant and destructive inflation. What was overlooked was the disjoint between short term financing and long term need. The gap between the two was bridged by a false and failing macro economic approach. What was needed was a measure of processes of inflation that are socially divisive.

This was definitely overlooked by the IMF whose role it was to have such an indicator. Do you think they will advise on the correct measure of inflation the second time round. I don't, and that is a real problem for the world! Their macro economics approach is presently insufficient to the task. They need to get a better measure of inflation and act accordingly.

Another aspect of the G20 communication is that there needs to be changes in the rules of banking. This we would all agree. The problems we have identified are associated with leveraging, hedging, borrowing short and lending long (in all environments of immediate, short and long term financial markets), debt burden creation by not limiting loans to weaker segments of borrowing, arm chair banking at it very worse, disregard for prudent loan management. All these are, however, to misidentify the real problems, which I believe will be allowed to continue unless they are understood for what they are.

Economists are prone to forget the very close connections between stock market activity and money market activity. When both markets are structured in such ways as to produce instability from their very nature, this does not augur well for the economic system as a whole. I believe that the structural problems of the financial system have not been identified or are being ignored while the focus is on the effects of bad structure not the elements of bad structure that need to be address.

Yes, my dears, mis-identification is the order of the day, and habit persistence of bad habits will govern the greater mess me will be forced to endure.

The Case For Christ - A Review of Lee Strobel's Book

Lee Strobel is a well known and highly respected reporter, who has written many books about why Christians should continue to believe in Jesus Christ as their saviour and as authentic.

In my view, his case for Christ book has to rank among the best on the subject of the authenticity of Christ. His book outlines the failings of much serious research work over two recent decades to get a clearer picture of Christ beyond what was known thirty years after his death and carefully vested for inclusion in the New Testament over the century afterward.

The reader will find that Strobel's book is extremely well written and its conclusion very clear, namely that Jesus Christ lived and rose from the dead in a way that we would today regard as supernatural. The Christian story is of a miracle, a series of supernatural events that cannot be explained away by recent research. On the contrary, much of current work on the historicity of Christ that seeks to present an alternative view to that presented in the early days of Christianity fails on almost every count.

One is given such wonderfully presented information by Strobel as to conclude that it is worth every one's time to begin reading the Bible, if they have in the past failed to do so, because what Jesus says and does may indeed be supernatural and unique in the history of mankind.

Read Strobel's book and judge for yourself. I think he makes mincemeat of many weaker and falser claims by those wishing to destroy Christian faith.

Why the Present World Financial Crisis is an Opportunity

President Obama and world leaders came through yesterday and presented a wonderful opportunity for the young people to develop a new world order with a soundly based future that properly takes into account the numerous failings of excessive or rampant market growth.

My own research suggests that companies, and the human beings that drive them forward, are by-and-large opportunistic or paranoiac copy cats. Life is a competitive race in which people are likely to neglect the needs of others and they charge forwards to higher and higher levels of pleasure and satisfaction. Fear, as well as, fervour and lust are at the base of aggressive behaviour.

By change from competition towards competitive cooperation or cooperative competition, we can move closer towards more ideal forms of market and social development that recognizes our basic desires, but at the same time curbs our worst appetites. That is what communities and community communications could be designed to achieve. It would be much better for religions and companies to recognize that they cannot be overall winners. Organizations need to come to terms with living in a cooperative but still competitive environment. When governments recognize this, organizations can recognize this and eventually the people within the organizations can recognize this. It means that we need to have a human bill of rights that all governments, all organizations and all human being can be held to task on.

Once we have reached the goal of cooperative competition between human beings, we can expand our bills of rights to include all living creatures. There is room enough for every living creature once we get cooperation as a norm between human beings.

The Evolving World Economy

A consequence of the mistakes made in the financial sectors of New York and London would seem to me to be that their time of dominion is rapidly entering a new phase. If Britain and America engage in meaningful reforms of the financial structures, there might be hope of their lasting well into the future, however, the force of old habits and prior commitments to financing long term goals with short term money does not auger well for their futures.

The winners in our financial crisis should be those that can think into the longer term, not the thieves of our futures. There has to be a way for governments to redirect thinking towards long term views that build in low risk approaches to financing. It would better to have slower growth that is well founded in innovation and good judgment than to have inflationary growth that rushes into the future faster and faster as it heads towards a poor or tragic outcome.

What is Natural?

At a time when we see and hear so much about Charles Darwin and his wonderful life researching and discovering the origin of species, it is quite natural that one should ask what is natural. Well, we could say that what is in the past is natural. How far does that take us? Most would probably think that it does not take us very far. Can one say that what is in the future is natural? As one goes through this process of considering what is natural, one gets closer to the idea that there are some things that go well beyond the natural. Is it fair to add all these new things that we discover in the future to our category of natural. I have my doubts.

My inclination is to reject this notion of natural and think of the world as being supernatural. The category of supernatural for me at least includes what is natural and then adds to it. I don't think all the past was natural. One has only to ask what came before the past and one has no answer. What existed before the big bang and why was there a big bang? Its not satisfactory to me to say that everything after the big bang was/is/will be natural. My view is that all this stuff we see around us includes the natural universe plus a very large supernatural universe. Its not that I have any proof, but I am not going to wait forever thinking that this is all there is, or ever was. That would seem to me to be rather silly.

The Crash Georges

My pet peeve is that two Heads of State named George crash landed their economies, when they could have landed them much more softly and the world would not have to change so much. George Bush crashed his America and George Brown his Britain.

A consequence of George Brown's failure to produce a soft landing will in my view at this moment in time (opinions change) be the loss of the UK Pound Sterling as an independent currency. As the pound weakens because the UK financial is inhibited from crisis creation a benign consequence could be for Britain to join the Euro system.

Had Britain been part of the Euro system, there might have been greater sensitivity to the forms of inflation that are socially divisive, namely the inflation of costs of operating and owning a family residence. As it now stands, George is unrepentant in his mistaken view that his lack of sufficient understanding of evolutionary economics was not the source of the crash landing of the British economy.

Is the G20 Challenge an impossibility? Not yet, but pretty close!

Later this week the G20 meets in London, England under extraordinary security. Heads of State will discuss options for our future based on their assessment of the processes of economics that generated the present difficulties.

On the top of the list must be the future role of the IMF, and one can be forgiven after what has happened whether the IMF has been neglecting its mandate, which is to ensure that the world economy grows and inflation is kept in check. The idea may have arisen in many minds as to whether it is a failing of the staff of the IMF or its political bosses. Its one thing for staff to comment on what countries should do, but quite another to buffet the pressures of governments pushing their own agenda a views of what makes good world order.

The IMF Slept While Housing Inflation Raged in the US and UK.

At fault is the price index used by the IMF to assess whether inflation exists. A new index needs to be worked out that assesses contributions of inflation in long term investment forces, such as housing, land rental, residence rental and property. This is a minimum and security of pensions and of pensioners is at stake.

The main economic idea to be supported is that inflation is socially divisive and has in the past contributed to the deterioration of the social fabric of the period immediately before the second great war.

The role of the IMF, its primary role, is to ensure that the world does not deteriorate into stagflation that brings about international conflict in trade and investment, especially if such deterioration and conflict can be avoided by good economic policy.

Stability in the Housing and Building Industry

Its very strange that Gordon Brown should be mouthing off about how upset he and the people around him are about how profligate the banks have been. Going back in time, one can see that the approach of allowing the big five in the UK to lend to the housing market resulted in an over investment in that market relative to what could be sustained. Its fairly easy to see that liberalization of the banking system in this one aspect was controversial from the start as it was based on the wrong assumption that banks in the UK could lend long and borrow long. That is not the case. Even building societies have problems borrowing long.

The competitive reaction analysis done by Knickerbocker in the 1960's, by Gary Hufbauer in the 1960's and by numerous economists like myself in the 1970's, was suggestive enough that American banks would bring with them a competitive reaction relationship from the US and the very financial technologies suitable for America but unsuitable for the UK. The US banking system is vastly different from that of the UK and the rules that US banks like to follow are competitive, dishonest and legalistic rather that cooperative and honest as in the UK. In essence, the British banks increased in number as Building Societies became banks. The ethics of British bank fell prey to the lack of ethics in American banking. The US disease has been seen around the world and suggests that we need to move to remove the sickness of doing what is legal and replace it with doing what is good for everyone.

At the very least, the OECD technology wing should study the competitive situation in banking systems of the members of the OECD and come up with proposals for reform.

Stability in World Banking and My Recommendations of Starting Steps to Achieve it

It is fair to say that people are holding too much debt. Much of existing debt needs to be written off, but it needs to be done within a cooperative frameworks rather than competitive frameworks. Under competition, banks will gobble each other up as they dishonestly portray their financial situations. Camouflage and obfuscation is the 'order of war' between banks. People will be thrown out of houses to make balance sheets look good!!

1. The OECD should study the technologies of the banking systems and make recommendations based on high technology considerations.

2. The OECD should also study the nature of banking sector risk and make recommendations regarding what forms of hedge funds would be permitted based on risks of the forms we have seen and based on simulations of potential industrial growth permutations.

3. The IMF should reexamine the role of the SDR as a commercial medium of exchange and store of value. The US dollar as a stable unit of account is exaggerated. The Chinese, Brazilians and Russians are quite right in asking for a basket of currencies, and in my view it should be the SDR.

3. Oil and energy taken from the ground (gas, petrol, wood, and other contaminate) should be priced in SDRs. The IMF should regulate these pricess to ensure the environment targets, what ever they may be, are met. A proportion of the revenues should go to the IMF to help finance solar energy and clean energy production in small economies. Energy from the sun should be priced in the currencies of countries of source.

4. A better approach for housing finance is that certain debts be forgiven over the long period on a sliding basis. What should happen, in my humble view is that all housing debt after 2004 be locked in at fixed rate of two percent and the 60 year maturity assigned. Each year thereafter the maturity of the loan should be adjusted forward by one year. After fifteen years these loans should be reviewed and differentiated between manageable and unmanageable accounts. Those that cannot afford their properties should sell them and move to other locations.

5. All new loans for housing should have a fixed interest rate of greater than 2 percent. All borrowers should be allowed a single multiple of 3.5 times current annual income, and married couples 5 times joint incomes. Capacity to repay should be the basic rule.

Wuh Lax Rules

1. Don't smoke... ever!
2. Drink only in moderation, and keep as wheat free as possible, for health and nourishment.
3. Be as honest as you can be in all things.
4. Treat others as you would treat yourself.
5. Exercise as often as you can.
6. Eat only when hungry and eat for health and nourishment.
7. Talk when spoken to. but talk in moderation and listen attentively to others.
8. Remember that people are varied and enjoy them as you would good books.
9. Rest often and be tranquil frequently.
10. Avoid profanity.
11. Cultivate friends assiduously.
12. Try working with those who oppose you as your preferred option.
13. Find out new things by figuring out the universe.
14. Create novelty and be inventive in your attitudes and attempts to master new skills.
15. Do voluntarily give up.

The Real Losses During the Present Financial Crisis

Strange isn't it that when everyone is looking at stopping the bonuses at AIG as a moral issue, the people at AIG and administering the rescue package see it as a competitive issue. We have to pay out the bonuses in order not to lose the brains behind financial market turmoil. These precioiusly smart individuals have to be kept within the fold of American industry. This sounds a bit like the retention in the United States of German military and bomb scientists after the war. We can't let destructive genius escape into the void. What the administrators of the rescue packages appear actually to be saying is that the destructive scientists will or could come back and beat us at our own destructive games! The real loss to America is, however, that the destructive games will not be stopped because the country worships them. They represent its new and resident gods, the 'now' gods of financial warfare.

America - You can't handle the ........ competition

The present financial difficulties of America and Great Britain are far more serious than most can imagine. I use the verb 'can' purposefully. Our difficulty is that we have now got used to the conventional explanations for the weaknesses of these economies. The usual story is that the housing markets got over blown and because it was insured by AIG this meant that AIG was vulnerable when the home loans started to go sour with a slow down in the growth of home loans, house purchases, construction of new homes and what fills homes.

Money was poured into AIG and the businesses that were insured by AIG. Those financing the stock market, however, realize that the 'real' problems go much deeper. There are many many people who know, not just suspect, that getting the financing right for home loans does not solve the extraordinarily deep problems that America and Britain face. President Obama last night on the Jay Leno show intimated that the collapse of AIG would bring down the financial markets and that this would lead to a main street collapse, as well. Few doubt that he was wrong, but many know that the solutions presently in place are definitely not getting to the heart of the problem especially if what we are seeing is inherently structural in nature and not tactical.

My thinking goes to the heart of the problem which is that the strategic games being played by banks changed fundamentally during the 2006-2008 period into one of 'anti-competition' and defensive realignment. At some point during the recent period, some banks assessed that it was in their interest to create a bit of creative destruction by innovating in the 'scale of operation' game, the Walmart game, but within the financial sector.

This new development, which has been brewing for decades took a very serious leap forward when the deposits needed to play the game gave it an ominous character. Defending 'your' bank against acquisition by another required raising the stakes and borrowing more into riskier and riskier ventures of acquisition. Inherent in this game was cheating and lying, falsifying a bank's true worth, hiding operations from competitors view, creating deliberate confusion and confuscation in order to survive as an independent entity.

An explanation for banks being unwilling to lend to each other could be that they do not trust the credit worthiness of other banks. My view is that the problem may be far deeper in that banks do not want to lose in the restructuring of the banking system, its consolidation into fewer and fewer banks.

That this problem exists in both the United States and Great Britain cannot be escaped. It obviously exists across the world financial sectors. By putting more liquidity into the system, the authorities may be accelerating and enhancing the odds for those most active in this destructive game. My dears, the money that is going into the banking rescue is not for the rescue at all, but for the freeforall of debt creation as banks gobble each other up.

The Insanity of Borrowing Short and Lending Long

I was going to entitle this blog "Take Banks Out of Home Loans." My logic is that if we don't remove banks from the housing markets around the world, we will descend into another sick period of international violence. There is no logic that tells me as an economist for over forty years that the banks can finance home loans.

Banks really can't, and its obvious that the liberalization of financial markets in such a way that banks participate in lending for housing predisposes them to excessive over investment.

End the competition between banks in that sector and one ends the economic insanity of land price inflation that destabilizes democracy. We know the experience of Germany with its inflation in the 1920's, where it led and the insane demands in Germany for living room. We can see how lending for homes and bank financed 'illegal' settlements in Israel destabilizes the balance between communities their. Which banmk is going to take the greaterst risk? Who is financing conflict between communities for land and homes? There are countless experiences of stock and house price inflation linked to competition of bank lending for home loans.

History will repeat itself in many communities and the world community unless we take competitive banks out of the business of borrowing short and lending long.

In USA and UK very few banks finance for the long term. They may lend to consumers but they ask for, no they demand, a variable rate and revision of terms and conditions whenever they see their margins falling. It is insane to expect banks to borrow short and lend long. They just don't do that.

Our big problem is that Governments often make it too easy for banks to get into problems of cash flow. Governments don't allow banks to fail because banks are into the long term loans where they have no right to be. If governments allow banks into long term lending and variable rate financing they contribute to the subsequent squeeze of banks against the non-banking sectors after periods of excessive borrowing by buyers competing on terms of loans that they have agreed with banks.

The banks that take the greatest risk beat out those that are careful lenders. Prudence in lending is thrown away in attempts by competitive banks to stay alive. Banks will borrow to buy other banks and those that take the greatest risk contribute to the highest extremes of asset price inflation. As short term businesses, banks cash flow issues arise first. They then pass their problems onto the real economy main street. In fact, they can create many of the problems of low investment in the real economy main street by increasing the uncertainty of investment in the main street.

Liberalization of banking systems around the world has increased uncertainty and produced the basis of inflation of land values, real estate, and stock market excesses. People have bought more than their incomes can support over the long term. Everyone engages in the activity of borrowing short for long term assets. Insanity. It is insanity!!!!!!!!!!!

The Breaking of Boundaries

Throughout history, there are individuals that break boundaries. Such individuals are most often capable of perceiving the nature of a boundary, just as clearly as most people can perceive the presence of a wall that represents a barrier.

Occasionally, people perceive the limits of a current ethos of thought and its progression over time. Such people may be able to alter the ethos in such a way as to change the progression of history for better or worse. At the heart of ethos changing are words and actions by individuals. Their words and actions are interventions to correct the direction of progression of human affairs. Although very abstract, the interventions and the perception of hidden boundaries in the historical dynamic become realities with enormous consequences.

Why individuals should be able to perceive boundaries is interesting, but why they should also be able to perceive ways to alter these boundaries permanently is much more interesting.

Occasionally, the boundaries broken by individuals are unique to the characteristics of the individual as if given an opportunity that has consequences beyond anything imaginable. Some people change the course of history, occasionally without realizing what they are doing, but some times well aware of the impact of their actions.

What results from boundary breaking are events, many events, that run counter to what would have been. Historically, there is an enormous disjoint between the beneficiaries of significantly wonderful and well perceived boundary breaking interventions, and the awareness by people that an intervention has even taken place. Thus, on the one hand there is the myth that individuals do not matter, and this idea runs counter to the notion that individuals do indeed matter. In any event, there is always within the human experience those that attempt to minimize the consequences of those that perceive boundaries and how to alter them for the benefit of others. Such interventions are perceived as moving arrangements between individuals in ways that are intolerable.

The historian, novelist, news writer, lawyer, columnist attempts to redress the imbalance between the consequence of individual action and lack of recognition in the many arenas of human fact sharing. In an important sense a missing recognition of the king pins of benign change are a loss of value in valuation and a breaking of the contract. Without recognition of these contributions, there is a cyclical process in human affairs that allows bad things to continuously repeat.

On the Nature and Significance of the Christian Experience

At the heart of the religion that is available as Christianity are two very important components. The first is historical and the second is mystical. Ignore either of these components of Christianity and one might as well ignore the nature and significance of Christianity. Christ and the cross are both symbolic and historical.

On the historical side, Christ represents an intervention into history of a force that the universe has never before experienced. The intervention is nevertheless very small relative to its impact within the universe.

At the most, it physically represents a life cycle of a human being that creates a cross roads in human affairs. At the least, it conceptually represents a mystery intervention, a thought by an individual human being or a group of human beings that has the power to transform human society and through human thought the universe.

What Christ did was create meaning, and so much meaning that the course of history was changed. He may have only pulled together the ideas of others or expressed the ideas of others, but in terms of what he did, his actions were a spectacular intervention in human affairs by a single individual which would have consequences well beyond that of the individual. In this sense Christ is at the crossroads of human history and represents a significant departure from human business as usual.

Whether one believes that Christ's life, death and resurrection were real or imaginary does not matter except to ones participation in the processes of the intervention. One can choose to opt out or opt in. Christ demands that one opt in showing clearly the rewards of participation. Nevertheless, the process of participating in the consequences of Christian intervention are very abstract and personal.

The personalization of Christ within the hearts and minds of people who know of his intervention whether divine or not, is very real and allows for the interaction of human beings with abstractions that don't really exist in terms of human expectations of what physical life and death are all about. Christ has sent a message that rings true through the ages and it is the communication of this abstract idea about love and self sacrifice that sets an eternal standard for human conduct and experience.

Christian communications now pervade on different levels of society and a vastly different scales, but the challenge is always to recognize that a single human being at a point in history intervened in a significant way.

The relationship that one assumes regarding this fact defines whether or not any individual will maintain a contract with an abstraction, a fact of intervention in human affairs.

In either event of maintaining a personal contract or not, the effect of Christ's intervention is perpetual, irrefutable, and highly effective. At the heart of the Christian message is the notion of self sacrifice in order that love might prevail throughout the many arenas of the universe. One's notion of what that love is may vary over time or between individuals, but the idea of self sacrifice is inherently irreversible.

How should one view coincidence?

What is coincidence? Is it something important or an annoyance about something we don't quite understand but which will be explained later on? Is coincidence a result of our engineered world, the world that man has created and can see or measure, or is there something that goes much deeper?

Some authors claim that coincidence is normal and that our world is somehow small or getting smaller, that we should be able to see coincidence a not much more than an engineering phenomenon resulting from purely physical laws. The problem with this logic is that it begs a question as well as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

One of the great steps humans have made is to understand the nature of such phenomenon as electricity, radio and microwaves. We now have a strong body of science that shows how things work at the minutest level. Along with this growth of knowledge and technology, there is growing scepticism about unseen forces. We only have to look around us to see that humans engineer unseen forces all the time, that man has become master of a world of unseen capabilities allowing computation and control. What we cannot see, many will not believe. What their parents did not see, they can't either.

Along with realism and inherited habits is a flood of scepticism. We have not got to the point where the human mind seeks to know for the sake of knowing. We think and say that we have an inclination to understand a greater reality, but in everyday reality our scientists confine themselves to small enclaves of scepticism within which all is comfortable and tidy, even when our reality tells us that nothing is comfortable for long, nor neat and tidy for long. This blinkering of our willingness to be out of the box confines most human minds to the box.

It is normally too much effort or costs to much in one's career to try, even try, to think out of the box. It is easier to be told what to think, not have to think. We want to believe a reality in which we are with the majority. Most people, for example, cannot believe in a reality that has not be condoned by their parents. They say for example that smoking is good because Dad or Mom smoked therefore it will do me no harm. By not thinking out of the logic boxes of their parents, people lose their longevity. They die sooner than they should. They give up sooner than they should and they are less than they can be! I am reminded how hard it was to get people over forty to use microcomputers in the 1980's.

I am not saying that people should not try to see behind coincidences. I am say that the observation of inexplicable coincidences should not be reduced to mathematics. Coincidences are not mathematics they are physical events that happen for very real reasons. They point us in the direction of forces we don't believe in or which we would never have conceived.

In the practical world all this about coincidence has relevance when we cope with coincidences that are the result of strong physical forces. Think how hard it was to get economists to use non-linear modelling techniques even though the world is almost totally non-linear. Think how hard it is for ordinary people to see the work of inflation and understand its implications.

Our reality is that we see coincidences, but fail to understand them as the work of cooperative or competitive underlying forces. We see people dying from the effects of smoking cigars, but don't connect this with people dying from the smoking of cigarettes or pipe smoking. Because not so many people die from cigars relative to cigarettes, the deaths from cigars may be enormously underestimated. The reality is different and the coincidence of a relationship is of a stronger association than our minds lead us to believe.

Associations are coincidences that we observe most of the time. Factorial or canonical, geometric, indirect, and non-linear associations we don't observe and they don't appear as coincidences. Such associations can be deadly yet we ignore them because our minds do not see the coincidence.

The coincidences that we can see provide us with opportunities to understand associations between things or realities and non-things or non-realities, such as abstractions. For example, God is an abstraction to most people. What we associate with God reveals many things about how we approach our realities. If there exists a force that is an abstraction, we may or may not be aware of it because we do not understand the coincidences that this force produces. Thinkers such as Arthur Koestler and Rupert Sheldrake are controversial to those that think of the universe as being very tidily physical and a result of natural engineering.

Associations that include messy associations such as hidden unknown forces do not conform to existing physics and prevalent ways of thinking in institutions earning their bread and butter from salaries of patrons convinced that physical truths are the end of the story.

Although mathematics is used to dismiss coincidences, often the mathematics is flawed and about as good as the mathematics of hedge funds, and you know what happened there. Mathematical statistics itself has multiple schools. The improbable does occasionally happen and when it does it changes everything. Yes, California will get its massive earthquakes and Florida its great floods even though you or I may not ever live to see either.

What is meant to be may very well be!

When I say that strange things can happen to me, I mean very strange. One as myself thinks of these strange things in terms of mathematical statistical probabilities. Then there are those events that blow statistics out of the water because they should not happen yet do happen.

For example, I gave my cousin John my telephone number in Florida. He misdials the number with one digit a 5 instead of a 3. He asks for me, and the person at the other end, a complete stranger in a state where I rarely travel tells him that he knows me. My cousin remarks that this is a strange coincidence, and that he is hot on the trail to locating me. However, this coincidence does not really help him because the person he is talking to does not know my telephone number nor how to reach me. He just knows that I exist from a relative of people who are staying with him and that they have spoken to him about me. End of story, or perhaps you would think. My cousin has to give up because there is no way to reach me. I have changed telephone numbers and no one knows the new number.

Meanwhile, I thinking that I must get into contact with my cousin do not know his number either, but he is staying with friends who send an email to me. I do not receive the email until Saturday, a few days later because I have not had a telephone number nor internet access. When I finally get a phone number and email address I open up my email to find that my cousin is looking for me urgently. I phone the number in the email and get in touch with thy cousin, John. I give him my new address and tell him to come stay a while. You would think the story would end here, but it doesn't.

On arrival, at my new address, my cousin, John tells me that he tried getting me, and that he had somehow misdialed my telephone number and had spoken with someone who knew me. This is very strange because the people he spoke with who knew me are from England and the only reason my cousin spoke with them was because he misdialed my temporary number by one digit.

All the above, I have verified. Its coincidence enough that I should be in Florida from Canada at the same time as people I know are in Florida from England, but that my cousin, who knew me, and was on a short visit from Michigan should talk to complete strangers who knew me. Well that is a second coincidence. It is strange that these people should actually have talked about me to their friends, the people they are staying with in Florida. It is a third coincidence that he should misdial bby accident and get a working numbner at all. He could have dialed the number correctly and just given up. It is a fourth coincidence that the number he should misdial would be one digit different from the number that I gave him by email more than a week earlier. It is a fifth coincidence that the numbers in Florida should be so close and the locations where I am visiting and my English friends are visiting should be so close.

I never spoke to my English friends that I was staying in Florida temporarily and they did not book a vacation to see me. That I am sure. However, by a sixth coincidence they had a meal with cousins of mine from Sidmouth in England about one hundred miles away from these friends and one of the friends is a niece of my cousin, Dorothy. Dorothy sent me an email guessing that the place where we were vacationing in Florida was the same as her niece aand husband had chosen to vaction at the same time as me. When I looked at the email from Dorothy this morning I noted that the Florida telephone number Jenny had given her was one digit different, but this not after I had phone Jenny's number in Florida.

That is the final coincidence because I had little intention of phoning that number thinking that Dorothy's email message was a very long shot and that in any event these people would have returned to Engl;and already.

Something this morning got me to read my emails, call Jenny's number in Florida. I had no idea that it was her friends that my cousin John had spoken with. Jenny was surprised to hear from me but less surprised than John to hear I had someone in Florida who knew me. She immediately told me of John's call to her firneds.

So the circle was completely until I checked for the coincidence of the telephone numbers and tied the whole thing together.

I have now to cope with the strangeness of these events and try to interpret some meaning if any. As you know, I do not think that things happen coincidentally, but that there are unseen reasons, unseen physics behind everything. Nothing is by chance. What we don't know is the extent to which events happen because of serious forces that are hidden from view until revealed by our meager logics.