"Nobody's perfect. At least I do imperfect perfectly, as we all do." Michael
Here is a purpose behind working on a better world.
1. Ignorant Recovering Doctors and Animal Feed Manufactures [AMFs].
I recently read about how our local, Maryland, chicken farmers were getting highly resistant bacteria from their chickens that had been fed antibiotics in their feed.
Doctors have not known better than to cooperate with their patients in creating more hostile bacterial by excessive use of antibiotics. AMFs have not know better than to cooperate with farmers to fatten up their cattle and poultry by the use of antibiotics in their feed.
There is a recent study that said: "The [London] Times says the lab's Dr. Henrik Wegener has determined that a common form of bacterium found in the intestine became resistant to vancomycin, a widely used antibiotic, when a similar drug was used in animal feed."
Bacteria mutate to stronger versions when they are in the presence of antibiotics in the long term. Unfortunately this process could have produced our "Killer Hamburgers". This process also produced bacteria that is harder and harder to treat. This process has made hospitals less safe places. Recently in Europe they banned antibiotics in the feed of chickens because killer bacteria had been created. Recently they found that they could reduce bacteria by feeding cattle hay, instead of grain, before they were sent to the slaughter house.
Since a hostile environment made our bacteria more hostile, is is possible to give our bacteria a kinder and gentler environment to make them kinder and gentler? What do you think? What do you feel a solution is? I wish for many others than the ones using the standard medical model to work on better ways.
I recently read about a company that got an award from the NIH alternative therapy office for combining growth factors with homeopathy to make a real difference in AIDS therapy. Who else will follow new ways to better health?
There was a column at http://www.dldewey.com/column.htm on the challenge we have with the unwise use of antibiotics by David Lawrence Dewey.
I believe that evolution & intelligent design are not mutually exclusive. In fact they can go together. Once upon a time, you could eat Beef Tartare and have a lower risk of being removed from the human gene pool. Beef Tartare's recipe is raw beef & raw egg. The higher risk today, comes from the intelligent evolution of the bacteria. How much intelligent design did animal food manufacturers and farmers do in adding antibiotics to their beef and chicken food for many years? Their intelligent design process of bacterial evolution has created stronger and stronger bacteria, by the survival of the fittest bacteria, that passed their genes on. Now, when you need some antibiotics to help recover from eating Beef Tartare, many antibiotics are less effective, from their overuse by Doctors & patients. Perhaps the evolutionary design process is more intelligent than its products, so far. So, it is OK to teach intelligent design & evolution together, they are relatives. Teaching intelligently about life, evolution, and intelligent design, will be the challenge.
2. The Bible says "be fruitful and multiply." It seems that mankind got that backwards. We have over multiplied, before we were over fruitful. It would be heaven on earth, when we get that in order. This planet could support many times our population, when we learn to assist our planet in being fruitful, first. We could plant the deserts, and have them bloom, instead of cutting down more than what we have. We will, when our collective wisdom reaches the level of understanding, to be fruitful first and then multiplying. When we are multiplying at a rational rate we will have reached a higher collective wisdom. Where can you be fruitful first and be part of the shift to our heaven on earth? Where can you help raise our collective wisdom?
3. We were going through a wonderful time politically under Clinton. We have the Democrats willing to look at how the Great Society put incentives in place that led to a less great society. We have the Republicans willing to look for more compassion as they look at what to cut back at the federal level and transfer to the local level. Both sides are getting along better and trying to find ways that work.
Now we are going through a very bad time politically under Bush. We have few democrats willing to find ways to help the republicans be rational and few republicans willing to find ways to help the democrats be rational. We need rational moderates in both parties to recover from our madness. Part of our country and its current leader has gone mad. He has started a policy of first strike warfare and he has destroyed most of the good will from most of our world. Our country and our leader are in need of healing. We are all in danger of heading down a similar path like Germany before the second world war.
Why not do the research first? Why not fly before buy? Why not find what has worked on a small scale, and then scale that up? Why not scale down things that are not working until they begin to work?
Simple questions. Send them to your recovering politicians to help them recover. Join with those that listen.
4. There is concern about "global warming". There is an emphasis on need for control of carbon dioxide emissions. We tend to have a control instead of a transformation mentality.
Why not consider incentivizing the planting of plants, to naturally balance the oxygen and carbon dioxide ratio. We would end up with a garden of eden, as a side effect, with more balanced weather. The Chinese reduced their desert dust storms by planting enough trees to serve as surface wind reducers. Perhaps windmills may have been smarter to produce electricity.
5. Criminal Justice System?
A TV news report said we have five times as many people in prison as Great Britton per unit population. Yet we still have higher crime statistics and do not feel any safer. I heard on TV this morning that we have one out of a hundred in prisons now. What would I do differently if these were my children? A lot. I saw a TV report on how we now use our prisons to try and take care of our mentally ill. Do you want to face all of these people that are made worse by our present system?
Another TV news report said there was a FBI report that a quarter are wrongfully there in the first place. The FBI report showed that where they had genetic DNA evidence in 8000 cases, 2000 times our justice system put the innocent person behind bars. That is a 25% error rate that needs to be corrected. A sample of 8000 is a large enough sample to determine what is happening in our justice system that is criminal.
When we have 1/4 of the wrong people there, adding their resentment of their injustice to an already angry mix, we have not designed a very wise system. The other 3/4 have already demonstrated their anger by their breaking society's laws.
It is time to do something better. It is time to do some research and development to find better ways for the justice system to work. We need to fly before we buy any improvements. We did not do the research in the past and are experiencing the consequences of our mistakes.
The first research we can do is to find where the research has already been done and has not been used. The next research we can do is complete the research that has been started but not completed. The last research we can do is to try new ideas.
An example is that in Great Britton they tried giving drug addicts their drugs from their health system doctors. They only required that the doctor ask what the addict was doing to get responsible work. Addict got off their drugs and the crime rate went down.
Perhaps we have paid too much attention to the crime news and our politicians using acting tough on crime and our media. We seem to have created more crime than the rest of the world. Perhaps it is time to pay attention to what is working in reducing crime.
I wrote to a group: "For example: I could retrain "criminals" to be socially acceptable loving and gentle people, if I ran the equivalent of Marine boot camp my ways and it lasted as long as it took with different incentives and processes."
A major incentive I would have would be a pardon for those that graduate from this justice system. This pardon would include the characteristics of the witness protection program. The graduated would have a real chance to start over as restored members of society. We all know the results of our current system where it is difficult to get a job on getting out of prison and where they are the first suspects for the police.
The major processes would be learning experiences to learn new ways of healthier thinking and learning how to earn a living.
Someone wrote back: "I am not sure where the belief that boot camp of any kind changes sociopaths comes from. There is little evidence that true sociopaths, those who have no empathy, have a need for control over others, take pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others etc get better due to any treatment."
I wrote: "First, the belief that boot camps can change people comes from those that have had that experience. It also comes from those that see the large changes in those they know that go through the process. It is easy to understand how someone who had not been there and done that and not had that done to them would not understand. Second, I would like you to notice I used the term "criminals" in quotes and not "true sociopaths". I would not choose to set them, or myself, up for failure. That is not to say I would not accept that challenge as a separate experiment. For example, I have been a friend to a street person that self described as possessed by demons and cursed and spat continuously. I just viewed him as needing a friend and in need of spiritual recovery. So I was just a friend with some skills of forgiveness and that person is recovering. Third, just sentencing "criminals" to the Marines as they are, would produce better results than the system we have. I do not suggest this in practice, since it would be cruel and unusual punishment and therefore against the US Constitution that I swore to uphold and defend as a Marine."
That last was a joke. It can not be cruel and unusual punishment since we let our young people join the Marines. It can not be cruel and unusual punishment in terms of the writers of the Constitution that knew real cruel and unusual punishment. It takes strong dedicated people to protect us.
They also wrote: "Having worked in a prison I can say that there were men there who were more a product of environment than a severe personality disorder. However, the idea of making any real inroads with someone with antisocial personality disorder via boot camp, spiritual guidance, education, therapy, or long term incarceration is just unfounded."
I wrote back: "We do have founded results from out current system. Our current system is not doing a good job of healing either part of personality disorder or environment or even genetics or family history. Of course we would not have any results from a forgiving system, because it has not been tried. However I refer you to the story of the ex con that was hired by a person in prison for a white collar oops. He went on to become the president of a company that had great success by hiring ex cons. It is in the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series, which I also commend to all. My guess is that we have enough data, we just have not looked in those directions yet."
They also wrote: "Our present penal system works to keep these folks away from the rest of society long enough to "age out." This means that they eventually run out the energy and fury it takes to commit the kind of crimes they are capable of as young people."
I wrote back: "I agree that aging and the maturity is something that helps. Unfortunately the vindictive part of our society has willed spiritual death to part of themselves by denying hope to part of us. The new programs, to report on the location of unforgiven people getting out of prisons, also deny hope. The prejudices of a record and loss of citizenship is a loss of hope.
If I was designing our system, it would have hope of a good life upon graduation. I would not touch the current system, because that would be the consequences of not cooperating with my new system and graduating.
They wrote: "Prithee go hence. Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits through the ashes of my chance." W. Shakespeare: Anthony & Cleopatra
I wrote: "Appropriate quote to demonstrate the loss of hope and soul killing in the system we use."
We sometimes have a different justice system for our children and our adults. We seem to somewhat recognize that children do not have as much control of what they do as adults do. We seem to recognize that we might be able to salvage our children but not our adults. We sometimes get frustrated and put our children into our adult system. We seem to recognize that some adults do not have control of themselves due to mental illness.
How can we really draw the line between children and adults? How can we really draw the line between mental illness and criminally insane? How can we really draw the line between the level of powerlessness? How can we really know who we can salvage and restore to citizenship?
Are we afraid to do real research? Are we afraid to find better ways? Are we not willing to give up our judgments? Remember that our judgments are coming upon us.
6. Circumcision and Pornography.
I recently read of a study that showed that men that were circumcised were more varied in their sexual interest than the uncircumcised. Does the God of the old testament want us to have more varied sexual interest now? Or does God want us to quit wounding our male children? I notice that we are getting around to trying to stop female circumcision. I am recommending asking Him. The answers I get is a preference for less wounding and that we are wounding ourselves by our own programming of ourselves and that we need to learn better.
If we are doing circumcision to support doctors and hospitals, I am wondering why doctors unconsciously want this effect. I know that a wound is a wound. I know that any surgery has risks and side effects. I know that we need to recover from our wounds that we create.
What if men's interest in pornography is incentivized by this wound's attempts to heal? What if our rape rates are incentivized by this wound's attempts to heal? What if our excessive violence is incentivized by this early wound?
I know that violence is violence. I know that violence creates more violence. What if our society is more violent because of our doctors' and parents' ignorance.
Would it not make more sense for our religious righteous to be attacking the real problem, our need to wound our men? All they are doing now in their ignorance is making pornography more desirable by their attacks. That which we suppress becomes over expressed. Again we have more of a control than a transformation mentality.
Would it not make more sense for both the religious righteous and the rest of us to spread more truth and information, so that less doctor and families are less ignorant of the facts? Would this not be steps towards a garden of Eden [which means pleasure]? After all, Heaven's Gate is Here and not in a Comet.
7. I saw FRONTLINE on PBS last night about the child care case in North Carolina where there was hysteria about allegeded child sexual abuse. Even more than they showed in their report, is on line at http://www.pbs.org at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/innocence/.
I wrote them a e-mail like this:
I appreciate your courage in showing an even handed show on the facts of the case, to the extent I could tell.
First, I must state that my belief is that everyone involved did the best they knew with what they knew, and did not know that they did not know. Many were ignorant, but that is just not knowing.
Second, I must state that I have a masters in applied psychology, but I do not now call myself a therapist because of the agendas of some therapist cause them to lead their witnesses, just like lawyers do. I do call myself a recovery coach or happiness coach or spiritual therapist, things like that.
It is totally unfair for the state to have "their" therapist leading impressionable witnesses for months. The defense in fairness should have "their" therapist with the same opportunity to make it fair. That includes the trial of Bob coming up.
It is totally unfair ignorance to have kept those people in jail for so long without a fair trial.
It was totally unfair for the state to ignorantly persecute, not prosecute, those people.
There is such a thing as a false memory syndrome. There was even an experiment that had women observed in a dentist office being given dental procedures with laughing gas. Although the observers saw nothing happen, many of the women said they were sexually abused. We have things in our unconscious that come out under certain circumstances that we can even believe, but they are just not reality. They are our reality when we add in our unconsciousness, but we are unconscious of that.
Perhaps someday we will move beyond witch hunts and Scopes trials. I live in that hope.
Of course it was fair from a spiritual perspective where the people that were unfairly persecuted had the same unfair persecution of others in their subconscious. But they did not know that was why they were persecuted. The first step is to fight for fairness on the surface so that the unconscious material can be healed by a perception of fairness.
The perception that came across in the FRONTLINE piece was that you can not get a fair trial when you are accused by children of sexual abuse. It appears like there is no chance of a really fair trial as long as we are so ignorant.
There have been cases of witnesses telling of satanic rituals that were demonstrated to not have happened physically. Perhaps there have been some that have been demonstrated to have happened. We can not tell the difference. There is a lot of material on line on the false memory syndrome. There are good books on the false memory syndrome. There have been cases of witnesses telling of killings and sexual abuse that were later found to be not reality. There have been cases that witnesses were accurate. We can not presently tell the difference. Even "lie detectors" are false positive and false negative a high percentage of the times. They can not tell the difference between false memories and more accurate memories.
The fact is that I can not tell the difference between a dream or other unconscious material when it comes up as I am coaching a player's recovery or my own. I can not tell any authorities what comes up, because I do not know what is true without some physical evidence. There are laws that try to force regulated therapist to reveal this previously unconscious material, as if it is reality. That is an ignorant law from ignorant law makers that are not awakened enough to be leaders yet.
A wiser focus would be on learning how to forgive and how to thereby transform any unconscious material so that we have less negative influences on our planet. A wiser focus would be on learning how to tell the difference between false memories and accurate memories. Accurate memories is almost an oxymoron.
Then I saw DATELINE on TV on the case in the northwest about a detective that took in two girls that either he told to tell about a child sex ring or they told him. In any case this was another witch hunt without physical evidence or even other witnesses.
Another case where the defense did not have the same intimate access to the witnesses. Another case where the accused were guilty till proved innocent.
This time only the poor and ignorant went to jail, although others were deeply wounded by paying for their lawyers.
Then I saw a story about how DNA was finding the innocence of almost half on death row in Indiana. One wonders how many more would have been proved innocent if there had been physical evidence or where the physical evidence was destroyed.
How long can we keep on executing people when it costs more in time and money and the "justice" system is so poor?
How long can we keep on electing more politicians that promise more death penalties instead of research on how to get better?
8. It is not surprising that a politician who had accused others as a part of acting like a politician would now be on the receiving end of accusations.
I found it interesting that in a news program they had a discussion of women about the Kathleen Willey sexual harassment case.
Several women felt that both our president and Ms. Willey could be telling the truth from their point of view.
Then I read an AP report on 19 Mar with the following:
"In another October 1991 interview, Clinton explained why he found both Hill and Thomas credible in their testimony.
"I believed them both a little bit," he said. "My feeling after listening to the whole thing was that the truth was something that will never come out, that in their own way they both felt they were telling the truth.""
This all reminded me of something I had written about before, the false memory syndrome. We can not remember clearly because of our unconscious stuff. We do not know that we have unconscious stuff because we are unconscious of that stuff. That unconscious stuff biases our memories since that unconscious stuff is making itself conscious where it can.
There was a research experiment in a dentist office. The researchers had a one way mirror to watch the patient and the dentist. The patient was given laughing gas. A normal dental procedure was observed by the researchers. Afterwards the researchers interviewed the female patients. The researchers were startled to hear that a large portion of the female patients remembered sexual intimacies with their dentist. Perhaps that is why I now find a reluctance of dentists to use laughing gas. Sexual harassment is now a serious matter. Those repressed memories that are released by the laughing gas are now dangerous. Perhaps those in the presence of our president had some of that laughing gas effect. Perhaps everyone is telling the truth as best they know it considering their unconsciousness.
September 1998
When we are not telling the truth we have learned as children that telling the truth brings punishment. We all lie some ways from time to time. I would be for everyone's upliftment when we all forgive ourselves for judging ourselves as liers. We would become stronger with less need to lie. We could clear some more of our fear of our parents by forgiving ourselves for judging ourselves as unfair or unwise or punishers. You put in what works for you. These work for me.
9. As I completed my income tax forms again this year, and all previous years and got my records together, I again wished for a much simpler and fairer system. The system we have takes too much work and still is not fair. I again read of some rich not paying anything and I know the drug dealers are not paying their fair share. Everyone would pay there share with a national sales tax that could include business transactions. The rate would be low when the tax is spread to those that do not pay their share now.
When we decide to shift to some form of national sales tax we will need to phase it in over 10 years. It would be too big a shift to so much a simpler system. There are so many that make their living off our frustration with the present system. There is the IRS, the tax lawyers, the computer programs and tax assistants and all those working tax strategies. We would need time for these people to shift to more worthwhile professions.
It is not that we do not have this in some forms now. We could be paying for our roads with income taxes. We could be paying more for airports, etc. with our income taxes.
We already are shifting to more reasonable user fees for those that use the government. We already have sales taxes for gasoline that pays for our roads. We already have airport taxes that pay for our airports. We have been paying a large profit to the Government to register our web site names.
I can hardly wait.
10. What would you like to improve?
Michael Foster MA
11. A VISION FOR THE HOLY LAND: I met a Christian Arab from Jerusalem that had been an American for over 30 years and he has a vision for a peaceful Holy Land. His vision is for the United Nations to guarantee peace for a new state called the Holy Land made up from Israel and Palestine. He sees the combined state becoming a world's holy land that could quickly be transformed into a new garden of Eden. I agree with this vision or anything better for the highest good of all concerned. Who else would be in unity about this vision?
12. I wrote about questioning the treatment of Mr. Stephen J. Hatfill that has not been treated as INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty. Someone that knows more than I do about how Fort Detrick works also wrote questioning the treatment of Mr. Hatfill. When you feel that you need to petition your government about this, I encourage you to do so. Just click on http://www.congress.org/ and e-mail or better for the highest good of all concerned.
We mess up in the short run and God cleans up in the long run. That is why letting go and letting God is about the long run and learning to relax and help clean up is about the long run.
It is beginning to look like God has even more to clean up for Mr. John Ashcroft. I am doing what I can to help.
Today, September 13, 2002, I heard on the radio that the FBI was searching Mr. Hatfill's home for the third time. I wonder how many times the FBI did that to Richard C. Jewell before discovering the error of their ways. Mr. Hatfill had the courage to speak out against his inappropriate treatment, by our current Attorney General, Mr. John Ashcroft. Mr. Hatfill may be paying the price of standing up to little Johnnie. In the past, Johnnie has been known to hold a grudge for a very long time. Look under "Judgeships" here for the rest of this:
How is Johnnie using his office to hound Mr. Hatfill being a loving, forgiving, rational, Christian? I love you Johnnie, but someone needs to tell you that you are bringing censure to your office, like you accused Clinton of bringing censure to his office and your witness is not as a loving Christian.
Johnnie spoke these words at Bob Jones University taken from ABC News at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/ashcroft_bjutranscript010112.html:
"There's a difference between a culture that has no king but Caesar, no standard but the civil authority, and a culture that has no king but Jesus, no standard but the eternal authority. When you have no king but Caesar, you release Barabas — criminality, destruction, thievery, the lowest and the least. When you have no king but Jesus, you release the eternal, you release the highest and the best.
It is not accidental that America has been the home of the brave and the land of the free, the place where mankind has has the greatest of all opportunities, to approach the potential that God has placed within us. It has been because we knew that we were endowed not by the king, but by the Creator, with certain inalienable rights. If America is to be great in the future, it will be if we understand that our source is not civic and temporal, but our source is godly and eternal. Endowed by the Creator with rights of life, liberty and the pursuit if happiness. I thank God for this institution and for you, who recognize and commit yourselves to the proposition that we were so created, and that to live with respect to the Creator promises us the greatest potential as a nation and as individuals. And for such we must reacquaint ourselves daily with His call upon our lives."
Would Jesus or Caesar be hounding Mr. Hatfill?
Where are Mr. Hatfill's rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?
14. What about abortion? When you are not ready to think, you are not ready, yet. When you are not open minded enough, you may not be ready to find inner peace.
15. What is the problem with the "mad cow" disease?
Pride. The mad cow disease is where the brains of cows become spongy and stop functioning. The same happens to people that eat their meat.
They first noticed mad cows happening in England. They were too proud to stop eating beef. More people died and they found that they had been feeding cattle to cattle in their feed, to fatten them up for market.
The farmers were incentivized by greed. The animal feed manufactures were incentivized by greed. They were doing this same thing in the USA, until they found the problem. It is still going on by mistakes.according to the 60 Minutes show. You see, it was still legal to feed cattle to pigs and pigs to cattle. Of course, sooner or later the cattle will be eating cattle through the pigs that ate cattle. It is still legal to feed cattle blood to cattle. In england, they can only feed grasses to cattle. In England they do better tests for the disease.
France denied they had a problem like we are and it happened. Germany denied they had a problem like we are and it happened. Italy denied they had a problem like we are and it happened. Now Spain denied they had a problem like we are and it happened. Our old friend denial from pride.
We did not know better. When will we know better?
The disease is from a protein that is created by the mad cows. The name of the disease suggests the problem. The problem with feeding cattle to cattle is that they are designed to eat grass. When the spirit of the cattle sees that they are eating cattle, species madness happens. The madness disease spreads back to the species spirit that caused the problem.
The problem may get fixed rapidly in the USA, when enough people refuse to buy beef, until the system has taken at least the measures that England was forced to take. Those that refuse to buy beef that has not been tested need to tell the marketplace why. Or, the problem may get enough priority when we find that enough people have died with MS like symptoms.
16. First, I am an Independent. I believe we need a balance of power between the two major parties, to avoid the extremes, of both of them. We need moderates, mediators.
Now, War or Inspections?
This is now 26 Feb 2003. Since we are likely to pay Turkey, several billion dollars, to let our troops stage there, I would guess for that the odds of going to war, instead of inspections, would be very hight. Of course our present fearless leader can not see how well he is playing into the hands of Osama Bin Laden. I saw a cartoon, that shows some of Osama's wins from our fearless leader's decisions. Like splitting NATO, alienated France, Germany and much of our world, getting rid of the infidel Sadam, bringing new recruits to Osama's religious war, and losing focus on Osama. Osama must think that God is with his cause, from what Bush is delivering to him.
Most of us know that our fearless leader Bush, did not do much of what he said in the campaign.
What did he actually do, except lower taxes, thereby lowering our confidence in paying off our national debt?
Where are the Republicans that used to stand for fiscal responsibility and the rule of law to protect our liberties?
Did He not say it was wrong to be nation building?
What about the Afghan nation?
What about his plans for Iraq?
Did He not say we should be a humble nation?
So why is He leading us to be a bully nation?
Did He not say we should have an exit strategy, before getting into war?
So why do we have His war on terrorism, that never ends, and where He is becoming the terrorist?
Did He not say we should listen, to other nations?
Why is He isolated us from the wisdom of patience, in other nations?
Would He be so impatient, if his mother and father were not the targets of a car bomb from Sadam, in the past in Kuwait?
We had the same mass destruction threats from Russia for over 40 years and yet we had leaders with the patience to help them come to their senses.
We even had Nixon to do away with our germ and chemical warfare programs.
I will bet that we have some empty shells for that warfare that we lost when we destroyed our stocks.
We could not find them, unless of course we had inspectors crawling all over us.
This is now 11 March 2003, and our country is letting contracts to fix up Iraq after the war. That certainly states the intentions of the current administration.
How many other broken promises do you remember?
17. Energy Independence.
I am giving one answer here. It is not the only answer. But, when there is one reasonable answer, to begin to solve our challenge, then there is a place to start.
There are answers out there, that are being pushed with our scarce dollar resources, that do not make any practical sense now. They may not make practical sense for a long time.
The problem is, that the time for breakthroughs, and low yield alternatives, is already gone.
We have to go with what works now, so that we will have energy to work on, the low yield and high risk things later. Much later if we delay. They have to be put on the far back burner.
We have to have enough courage to compare all high risk alternatives, with the low risk alternatives.
For instance, we can now grow peanuts underground, along with soybeans above ground, and both of them fix nitrogen ,so that we do not need to waste natural gas for fertilizer. Growing oil helps reduce the CO2 problem.
We can press the oil from both in the fields, and run diesel tractors on the oil, and run trucks on the oil to deliver the excess. We can feed animals with the residu and use their waste for methane and fertilizer.
We have to be courageous enough to compare the energy and food produced per acre with any alternatives. At this stage we must have the most energy produced per resource used.
Here is what I wrote to "Fast Company" magazine online in reference to an article on GE management:
"Name: Robert M. Foster
Email: FastCompanyemail
Posted: Wed Jul 27 2005 13:37 EST
Location:
Occupation: Life Coach
What is GE going to do, besides windmills and nuclear plants, as we come up to peak oil?
We need to be moving now, while we have enough fuel to move to a more sustainable paradigm. Jet engines could run on mixtures high in peanut and soybean oils, when they are designed that way. Starting with soybean and peanut oils would help maintain our soils with their nitrogen fixing. And our diesel transportation fleets can run on the same mixtures, as well as diesel machines on our farms. There will be a need for efficiency in separation of the oil, and transformation of the residue into food and products. More of this needs to be done on our farms, to run the farm themselves, and feed the farm animals."
One pushed answer, is to use hydrogen, that our current leader, included in his state of our union speech.
My first career was as an general engineer, that was mostly in charge of planning and executing programs, as a team leader. As an engineer, I know that producing hydrogen is expensive, at least so far. When hydrogen is produced from electricity, you need very cost effective electricity. That means going to a high percentage of atomic power and coal fired plants. You lose a lot of efficiency unless you produce the hydrogen, at the electric plant. When you get more cost effective power, other users, like aluminum producers, want to use that power. And windmills, are not yet more cost effective. And even when windmills could produce more cost effective power at night, the other users, would switch to night use too.
There is a local firm that is saying that they can produce more cost effective hydrogen, from natural gas. Unfortunately, peak natural gas may come before peak oil. If they have success, then our alternative of using natural gas directly in vehicles and homes, for the long term, is in jeopardy. And of course, handling hydrogen is more difficult, than handling natural gas. It would make more sense to just use the natural gas directly as LNG. LNG = Liquid Natural Gas.
We already have hybrid engines, that use gas and batteries efficiently. My proposal is to use organic oils, instead of gas, as the gas part of the hybrid engines. The oil can be used directly in small diesel engines or small turbine engines. Organic oil is now being used in diesels, but it not quite cost effective yet. Organic oil production is almost cost effective now and would become cost effective with large scale production. My proposal is to use farming of soybeans and other oil producing plants like peanuts that both fix nitrogen in the soil. That would expand our farming industry and provide cost effective animal feed, food products and new stocks for producing plastics. That would take away our dependence on foreign oil over time, and provide for the world's needs for oil over the long haul.
Peanut oil was the fuel used on the first diesel engine. George W. Carver even made plastic from peanut oil. Soybean oil was used by Ford in their Model A car for making plastic and I had Model A cars over 30 years later with that plastic still there. Mr. Ford wore suits made from soybean oil, back when chemical engineering was in its infancy. Almost half of the oil we use, is for industrial production.
Our challenge is to shift over to farm produced organic fuels, and industrial stocks, while we have the petroleum to do so. It will be less painful now. Our window of opportunity is closing, and our current Nero is fiddling with hydrogen, while we are burning up our opportunity to convert to farming our oil. [rev070504]
See: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html and http://www.biodieselnow.com/ added 30 July 04
What about using BioDiesel Hybrids?
Not only are they more efficient, but part of their energy could come from our electrical power grid at night to charge up their batteries.
[Added 2Mar2003]
How might we facilitate our transition, to using farm produced oils? One way would be to ramp up federal taxes on imported oil and use the funds to fund a direct subsidy on farm produced oil as a matter of national defense until we become energy independent. Then the taxes and subsidies can be ramped down as long as we remain capable of competing to produce our energy.
[Published 27 April 2004]
We can also start small, and then transform big. We could start with our lawn mowers. One way would be for a company like Black & Decker to upgrade their battery powered lawnmower. One way I would do that is:
Cut the battery size about in half.
Add a very small biodiesel motor to run an alternator to provide power and charge the battery.
Add a small alternator
Add small drive motors to the wheels. [It already was too heavy to push easily]
The motor should run on peanut oil or equivalent. That will endear it to the people supporting their renewable world. [Added 8May2003]
[Added 28 July 04]
One solution:
What about the really important issue, of energy? Unfortunately it looks like Bush and Cheney are too tied to the oil companies. We have "Peak Oil" coming that your and my grandchildren will face before they get too old. See the current National Geographic on "The Last of the Cheap Oil" ,with a good summary of our challenge. The success of our grandchildren, depends on what we do now!
Hydrogen cars are a joke to an engineer to me that remembers some of my chemistry and physics and thermodynamics. Bush's proposal is either ignorant or low ethics and the same applies to the car companies and oil companies involved. Hydrogen is worst choice we could make, even though it is a religion with some environmentalist. I have a start at the details at http://RecoveryByDiscovery.com/hydrogen.htm. Biodiesel is the most sensible alternative I have found so far, especially since it is easier to phase in from existing trucking, coal conversion, and much lower CO2 biodiesel comes from farming.
P. S. Here is the last letter I wrote to the News-Post on use of Hydrogen:
"Publication: News-Post; Date:2005 Apr 24; Section:Editorial & Opinion; Page Number: A-1
Solving energy challenges
ROBERT M. FOSTER
It may be too late for science teacher Joel Weiss (Pesky prefixes make a difference, April 20) to influence the voting parents of his students, but it is imperative that his students learn enough physics and chemistry and thermodynamics to solve their future energy challenges.
When you know enough physics, chemistry and thermodynamics, you know that using compressed hydrogen as a fuel would only make our total energy costs go up, and our energy efficiencies go down, even if they solve the high car production cost issues.
For some people, belief in using hydrogen is just like belief in a cult that requires belief in things that they have no real knowledge about. Some of these hydrogen cultist only look at the clean exhaust pipe of the car and forget the very dirty emissions and inefficiencies of the many processes to get that car and compressed hydrogen ready to use.
Continuing down this path could lead to selling even more of our land and companies to foreign investors to afford our energy addiction. It would be far better to learn how to more efficiently grow and produce our own biodiesel in time to avoid our pending third world status.
Hydrogen is really good at leaking, even into the surface of metals to make them brittle.
Hydrogen may be the most common element, but it is one of the most expensive fuels to supply in compressed tanks and will only get more expensive as its sources get more expensive. Bad news for those that expect compressed hydrogen to get cheaper.
One would have to be very ignorant to take natural gas and use energy to extract hydrogen that has less energy and takes more energy to compress and contain. An intelligent person would just use the natural gas.
One would have to be very ignorant to take expensive solar energy to produce and compress hydrogen that would have far less energy left and be especially expensive. Why would one use wind energy, when there is not going to be enough wind energy to meet our current needs?
It takes a lot of energy to compress and contain hydrogen enough to get any reasonable range. Better to compress natural gas. At least we could make natural gas from sewage as natural gas becomes scarce and sewage become plentiful.
Using batteries in a hydrogen hybrid would only add weight and reduce range. A bio-diesel hybrid would just make more sense."
Energy is related to our balance of trade debt along with our national debt, and our Social Security debts in government bonds, that will come due for our baby boomers, when our grandchildren will not be able to pay the piper. These debts were made by our politicians from both parties. A miracle happened when a democratic president actually went for balanced budgets at the costs of losing seats in Congress, and that led to actually paying some of our debts off, and some of our people paying some off their debts. That left the miracle of the democratic party waking up enough, to believe in a balanced budget and actually proposing elimination long term capital gains taxes.
The miracle was temporarily pushed aside, by our republican Congress losing its fiscal discipline by greatly increasing our debts under our republican president, most especially with a war of choice, that will likely come in at 500 billion dollars total costs, and tax cuts in the trillions. This will lead to strategic costs in more than money that will come due with no mercy. The president's proposal for individual Social Security accounts, will only make the posibility of paying off the Social Security government bond debts even more risky. That is simply because that will take away from the funds needed to pay off those government bonds. I do not know if he is proposing this from just ignorance or low ethics. See: http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,663998,00.html. Conservatives may have got the idea from Chile, where it did not work out so well in the long run. And Chile did not have the borrowing curse as much as USA.
There is one solution, but it would take another miracle for us to actually do it. That solution would be to invest in black gold, oil, by banking as much oil in our strategic reserves as we can. Using government bonds that we can not redeem after peak oil, is not a real alternative. Google "peak oil" to learn more about our challenge. We need to get back to redeeming those bonds now and buying oil for our strategic reserves now, while we have a chance. Later, when these debts must be paid off, peak oil and world demand will push the price of that oil through the roof. That will pay for our baby boomers that will not have to work until they are dead. This could buy more time, by using our filled up strategic reserve, to shift to producing renewable biodiesel, to replace the oil that is depleating. Then, we could sell our biodiesel to the world. Pray for this miracle, because because the odds are too high now with big oil in charge of big government.
I am interested in ideas that could help reduce how much fuel we use for our autos. Check out my ideas for energy page.
18. Government Reduction:
Re: Your editorial on "Let market forces work in government", http://www. newspost.com/sections/display.htm?StoryID=27619, about George W's initiative to cut our government workers in half and contract out the other half of the work. This is unlikely to be done uniformly, so some parts of government would be cut far more than half.
I was a government engineer and project team leader for almost 40 years. I know about almost every form of contracting and contracting out. I have seen it done well and done not well and done in between. Project managers need the freedom to decide whether contracting out, or contracting within the government, makes the most sense, for each project task. Also, each project management team must not contract out their brains, or they will just become the tools of the contractors, as some are.
I have seen most grand concepts that came along, fall apart in the details. The devil was in the details. My concern about George's initiative is, that this initiative is not likely to work out either, in the details. Contracting out work to private contractors takes knowledgeable government employees left. It takes a long painful time to do it, because the pile of rules and laws written by lawyers in Congress and in the agencies. No sane person would do contracting the government way, in their private life or business. I would not be crazy enough to start any company, to work for our government, because working for government contracts is too difficult. Part of the expense of government contracts is their difficult requirements.
If George RIF's the lower half or more, of our government workers in most parts of our government, that would leave mainly those ready to retire or close to it, because the Reduction In Force rules, make it that way. Then, those left, will also be gone too, in a relatively short time. That may be George's game plan, or George may not have though it through.
Would it not make more sense, to just not replace half of those that retire? Would it not just make more sense, to start over with contracting law and methods, to make it easier for our project managers to decide to contract out work? Would it not make more sense to make procedures easier for government workers to move around our government, when there are large changes going on? Would it not make more sense ...
19. Diet
When I was a kid, I'm now in my 60's, and I read on the Crisco labels, that it was hydrogenated oil, I though that it was a bad idea then.
Now, when I have thought about it more, it may be a worse idea. When they check for cancer causing foods, and feed the stuff to rats, they did not consider that rats have relatively short lives in the first place. It may take a long time, for hydrogenated oil to cause cancer. Now, we know that excessive fat causes more cancer. Now, with hydrogenated oil, in so many food products and restaurant foods, that may be why our whole population, is becoming fatter. This may be one of the factors in increasing cancer rates, that they can not explain.
The reasons food manufacturers use hydrogenated oil, in the first place, is to have a longer shelf life and to stiffen up some products, like peanut butter. Hydrogenated oil will not naturally break down for a long time on the shelf. What if it does not break down in you body? What if your body will not process this strange food?
I am a native Californian. We had Indians that we called Coastal Mound Indians. A very high percentage of these Indians were fat and had diseases like diabetes. One scientist had a bright idea to feed some their native diets. He knew what to feed them, because these Indians left mounds of their food waste on the coast. After a while when they were back on the diet that their genetics was used to, their fat and diseases went away.
20. Gambling.
I read the following question:
"The bigger question is, does it really benefit the state. Yes, money would be added to the state budget, but how much will be the increase in expenses if people need additional state assistance because of their personal losses."
We recently had slots at horse racing in our governor election issues. The no's won over the governor's support of the yes's in the legislative house. But, that was not based on facts. In the states that had slots like West Virginia, they had a net positive. And, they attracted users from Maryland to contribute to them, but that did not cost them. No one looked if it was a net positive, if both states had slots. These things are settled these days on more emotions than facts.
Keeping out gambling works, like prohibition did not work. When moral issues are suppressed, they are expressed in support for criminals, or states, that allow gambling, or now the Internet. This is what is happening in illegal drugs. Suppression is leading to more war on our planet and the enriching of some states and criminals.
The truth is that which works. Suppression has not worked and will not work, it has created even worse problems. Financial negative incentives like taxation at least slows down the process and benefits society.
One reason that suppression does not work is that people do not have to face their addiction directly. A suppressed addiction only shows up in different areas. Ultimately you have to get through your addictions, you can not get over your addictions or around your addictions.
21. AIDS
Our president's recently stated goal of spending 15 billion dollars, that we do not have, in Africa on AIDS.
The road to hell can be paved, with the best of intentions and politics.
Using the current drug cocktail can prolong life and increase the quality of life for the recipient, but:
22. Illegal Drugs.
What are the differences between legal and illegal drugs?
Why could doctors not dispense both kinds of drugs?
23. Hormone Replacement Therapy
Drug Manufacturers, created unnatural estrogen from pregnant horse piss. They did not want to sell natural estrogen, since there was a lot less profit. Unfortunately, the side effects are now becoming known. There is an unconscious association, between piss and anger. Cancer, Heart Diseases, Alzheimer's, and who knows what else, are some of the side effects. The lawyers will have a field day, if they can find any smoking guns. There is a large reward possible, for whistle blowers.
The larger tragedy, is that hot flashes, are just extra energy to be integrated, for the next life stage. They are meant to be gone through, with acceptance and joy. For those that get through, the natural way, a better life follows. There is a book called "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" that tells of the natural process
24. BioTech Crops.
BioTech Crops could be a boon or a boom for peoplekind. Right now, pollen from biotech crops is spreading world wide. Some of them may or may not make detergent in your tomatoes and corn. What needs to happen is more controlled test and evaluation before we go into production. You know, fly before you buy. And, with plants, pollen goes on the wind world wide, and we do not know what species are enough alike to produce new plants. We do not know if we will like or curse these new plants and those that started these world wide experiments without enough care for all of us.
Our Department of Agriculture is beginning to start regulations, but they may be too late, and too restricted by the current administration's bowing to business people. Time to write our elected and paid officials how much they flew these crops before they bought them and how carefully they tested them. Remember the DOD motto to "Fly before Buy"?
25. What about homosexual marriage for open minded Christians? When you are not open minded, you are not ready, yet. When you are not open minded enough, you may not be ready to find inner peace.
The issue of political cartoons is not really about positive or negative views. It is about the lack of truth and facts. When clowns and commedians tell us the truth, we laugh, and the truth sets us free. When they use lies, we know and grown, when we are awake enough or know enough. Politicians tell lies, to make us angry, to bind us to them and their false beliefs. When politicians tell lies, we should laugh at them more, to set ourselves free. When political cartoons started, they were used to expose the lies of the politicians. Now, some clever operators use their cartoons to lie to us, to make us angry, to bind us to their beliefs, not to the facts or truth. Newspapers should pick better. Their criteria should be truth and facts, and funny when it is really true. I would like to be more impressed in the future, like I am with some of your editorials. And how about adding the ability to comment on the cartoons so those that are interested can give you all some feedback on what we think the truth is. It is up to us to give you valid sources.
Very Respectfully,
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