It is only about whose game it is and who is able to play it

The "other" major hobby I have indulged in, much of my life, is an Asperger's OCD search for a workable way for major access to space from the ground, and putting nearby space to good use in a suitably big way.

My struggles to design and build a bridge within a specific scenario back circa 1970, put my otherwise electronics focused attention toward the nature of materials and of the history of bridge building. That it succeeded in creating a 40 foot long bridge, with a 26 foot long center span 10 feet wide and easily capable of carrying the load of a car, was probably the needed turning point of my attention that got me to seeking a structural way to reach space, which seemed utterly impossible on the surface, considering the known construction limits of tall towers.

Multi-stage chemically fueled reaction engine powered rocket launch vehicle access to space had gotten enormous attention and by then had landed a few men on the Moon and brought them back to the ground; its potentials seemed refined by the best of minds and resources, and it still took enormous resources to put even a little payload into orbit.

The bridge studies and construction success became the idea of using the earth's rotation to swing around a tether, to provide the holding force for vehicles moving from the ground up into space; but then found the strength to density of materials just could not support its own weight of the tether, even without moving payload. A year later I had shifted attention to building a similar structure on the lunar surface through the balance point toward the earth, for efficient transfer of lunar materials for construction, and built of space rated fiberglass, and basic glass material was by then known to be abundant on the lunar surface. But the world was not interested; don't both them, they are doing something else.

The strength to density ratio seemingly insurmountable materials problem of an earth surface to orbit was way too hard a problem for materials researchers, and that seemed to put mankind back on the severe limitation of rocket based space access to space.

Reading of several people who were exploring a way to get around the limitation of an earth-swung tether for space structural access, I even urged the National Commission on Space to explore them in my testimony in 1985, but that was ignored in the commission's resultant report.

I sought why the structural access ideas Lofstrom, Hyde and Smith had put forth were being snubbed, and found the weaknesses of each of them, each severe enough to conceivable justify snubbing by the NCS. That report also had not mentioned my Lunar tether transportation system made of fiberglass, too.

So these things stewed in my mind until I got an insight that began to congeal it into what appeared a fully integrated technique with its enabled applications, and called it the "KESTS to GEO" concept.

("KESTS to GEO" is an acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit.")

This got snubbed by the space activist community too, despite their claim to have the purpose of establishing a spacefaring society. I did not realize this was most likely fueled by the vision of a relatively few elite individuals accessing space via rockets and those few then multiplying and populating the solar system and stars, leaving the rest of us behind.

The concept I had proposed had the potential to indeed enable every person on the planet to economically reach earth orbit (if for some reason they would want to do such a thing) along with means for building habitable facilities for living in high earth orbit. That was snubbed; it was not limiting the exclusive population rights to the few elitists, like limiting of space access by rocketry does.

So I was left to burble in my beer uncomprehendingly, rewriting my KESTS to GEO concept in many forms and presenting it in technical papers at space conferences, just not realizing what I was proposing would wipe out the dreams of those who were on the rocket road to space path.

They suddenly resurrected the earth-swung tether concept, claiming a proper strength-to-density tether material was available and all they had to do was get the money and it would be built; even though such a material was in actuality non-existent, the proclamation and followup space conferences devoted to that concept totally took interest away from the KESTS to GEO concept, which was still in the conceptual design stage. Clever ploy and it worked perfectly.

So let me point out what KEST to GEO was about.

The need I assumed was for structural access to space in a potentially large scale and low cost with very high energy efficiency. The earth-swung tether for climbing, now called the "Space Elevator" had extreme materials problems, but the basic concept would utilize centrifugal force to support the structure. The centrifugal force was supplied by the 24 hour rotational period of the planet. The concept was stuck with this rotational rate and the specific outward force that would provide as supplied by the counterweight being swung around by the planet. And that combined with the molecular bonds that provided the strength of materials of potential tether materials; the two no way were close to matching. And there were construction problems of the tether too, especially if it had to be tapered, that is, maximum girth at the balance point, GEO in the case of the earth access tether.

The KESTS to GEO insight was to provide the centrifugal force that supported the structure as part of the structural function itself, instead of depending on the centrifugal force from the earth's rotation.

This would take the form of an eccentric hoop, resembling the orbit transfer trajectory ellipse between ground and GEO around the Earth, attached to the ground at the equator, and looping around the planet to its highest altitude above the opposite side of the planet. It could go to low earth orbit, but payload would still need reaction engine propulsion added to stay up there in orbit, since the anchored earth stationary part of the hoop structure still would have the same angular velocity as the planet, the 24 hour period of rotation.

The ideal upper altitude was GEO, where the orbital angular velocity matches the planets angular velocity. There, payload would stay in orbit even without any intermediary rocket propulsion step.

The concept developed from there, into various configurations, the best was in the form of a synchronous electric motor infilling the perimeter of the eccentric hoop, with its internal armature mass stream being driven by mass drivers on the ground, to be in such a velocity that their above-orbital-velocity component outward restrained centrifugal force was picked to slightly exceed the inward force of gravity on the mass of the earth-stationary part of the hoop, along with the vehicle's live load it carried between ground and GEO.

And some of that internal hoop armature segment momentum could be electromagnetically coupled to lift the vehicles with their payload from ground to space, thus needing no energy source to be carried or beamed at them.

It looked like it could easily finally enable the economical construction of the Solar Power Satellites envisioned from the 1960's; and one of them thusly built in GEO could beam energy down to power the mass drivers on the ground terminal of the transportation hoop. Many applications would become feasible in GEO. It all fit together quite well, thus providing a path for the masses of humanity to head for space to live and work, and using existing materials and close-to-present electric motor technology.

Did this stimulate excitement and a lets go do it cheer? Nope. It got snubbed.

It did not provide the rocket access to space bottleneck that would enable a small elite to go out to populate space with their genes exclusively. A horde of humanity would have instead have the potential to populate space; thus, no benefit to the few anymore. So it was ignored, and the population assumes anything ignored by the "experts" is worthless.

And that is where it stands now. My Asperger's obsession to provide a way for near future mass access of nearby space by large quantities of people, solved the technical problem, but did not solve the people problem: they wanted to play their game, not mine.

And that was a pattern I discovered on the playground in kindergarden. It is only about whose game it is and who is able to play it. It is not about what different opportunities are enabled by the various kinds of possible games.

Explaining what the Clark-Zapper technology is

Since posting "A standby and be prepared medical system" http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/12/standby-and-be-prepared-for-worst.html I have realized that probably most people have no idea what a "Clark-Zapper" is or the technology involved. So this post is to attempt to explain it a bit. I have found a few instances where there appeared to be deliberate attempts to mislead people about this subject and associated equipment, so thus the need for this explanation.

First of all, it is an instrument that is integrated with a couple of other activities in a health protocol, such as identifying the sources of the particular typical toxin that is associated with any particular chronic health concerns a person has. Then this substance is avoided as much as possible. For example, for an increasing prostrate stress I endured many years ago, where I could not drive for over an hour without having to find a restroom, the book by H R Clark pointed out to avoid anything with the element nickle in it and also avoid all bubbly beverages. My source of nickle was primarily from stainless steel; my acidic system had long even dissolved the stainless steel backs off of wristwatches I wore. Stainless steel table utensils, particularly spoons, I could taste, and taste means some material is coming off the material. Worst, if a stainless steel spoon were used to beat mashed potatoes in a stainless steel bowl, eating those mashed potatoes with even those traces of stainless steel in them, would set off a prostate flare up. So, using high quality camping type eating utensils became part of my regimen, along with using the Clark-Zapper occasionally; the prostate problem has essentially faded away in the process.

So, the Clark-Zapper, or as is sometimes called, the Zapper, (even this term has huge other connotations these days, unrelated to the Clark-Zapper, if one does a search for the term) is a small battery powered instrument. Quality ones range in price from $10 to over $600. They are used to deliver a very small particular kind of electrical current in the body, nominally a series of on-and-off pulses of about nine volts peak amplitude, and they pulse on-and-off about 30,000 times a second. The usual way this signal is delivered to the experimenter or an animal, is by contact with soaking wet paper towels that cover two "handholds" made of copper pipe (copper tubing), each of which are 4 or 5 inches long and 3/4 inch diameter. Each of these sections of copper tubing connect by a separate wire over to the Zapper electronics, which usually is powered by a small nine Volt battery; the simple electronic circuit inside, typically using an integrated circuit called a "555" to "chop" the battery's nine volt output on and off about 30,000 times a second, otherwise called "30 KHz" and connect that small electrical signal to the two wires to the two handholds. (Note that "KHz" is pronounced "Kilo Hertz" and refers to something cycling a thousand times a second.)

This was the form of Zapper as originally described by its inventor, Hulda R. Clark, PhD, and described in her 1995 book "The Cure for All Diseases" which despite its inflammatory title, is still a classic in the field, fifteen years later. I bought one of the very first commercially available Zappers for $200 back then, since even though I had the skills to build one from the instructions in that book, I could not get myself to really think such a thing could possibly help my well-being, and anyway I was reasonably healthy; but I was able to buy one and use it for safety-testing instead. That is how I got around the "mental block" regarding the Clark-Zapper usage, that my engineering-mentality initially had about the subject. Since then I have built several of similar design but of different construction over the years, as I was able to build better constructed ones than that first one I bought. But they all worked equally well, and have provided me with experimental results that prompted me to write this post as well as the referenced prior post; and have written of it off and on over the many years of the experiment.

This particular circuit still is the basis for several commercial Clark-Zappers, as well as a very basic Zapper that sells for $10 on the internet and is built to mil-spec standards out of tiny surface-mount components, making the electronics part of the device about the size of one section of one's fingers; the connecting wires to the battery and to the handholds are the larger part of this instrument; this is a very convenient form for inclusion in first aid kits. And if such a device were included in every front line soldier's equipment, available for rapid use when receiving dirty wounds on the battlefield, no doubt much pain and suffering could be avoided, and even sometimes lives saved. This I discovered when in dire circumstances I received a large dirty wound from a jagged rotted piece of wood popping out of the former stable's ground, and medical help was not available in the circumstances; and flushing out the wound with tap water, using the Zapper, and taping the flesh back together with masking tape, the wound healed up rapidly with no swelling, redness or pain, nor the dozen stitches that would have been needed conventionally. So out on the battlefield, this could be indeed a welcome self-administered healing technique when pinned down under fire, as well as also by medics.

The Clark-Zapper technology has undergone much advancement in the past 15 years, however, primarily in Europe, since the Clark-Zapper is still useable only for one's own research as applied to oneself here in America, by the authorities (why they do that dis-service to Americans, I don't know; clearly they either have never actually tested the device to see if it works or not, or some more ugly reason) yet some very useful expanded features have been developed and made available to experimenters around the world. These typically utilize the bio-resonant frequencies of pathogens, as also described in Clark's aforementioned TCFAD book; these frequencies range typically in the 300 KHz to 600 KHz range. These deliver direct disruptive energy to specific pathogens, while doing so to other pathogens at a much lesser intensity. This provides a more concentrated targeted signal series, and commercial ones that have been found and evaluated for efficacy, typically have sixteen or fewer specific frequencies they deliver to the handholds, lasting about an hour. I have found that the signal series that was made for "headaches" to have the side effect of significantly restoring my ability to remember things; the effect fades off, so needs to be repeated for an hour about every couple of weeks, to maintain my normal memory level, now at age 75.

The primary usage for myself of such signal series, has been to deal with pathogens gotten from mowing the dog-and-cat pooped lawn, breathing in the stuff while mowing, and the eggs of various parasites like Ascaris and Toxoplasma then taking root in my body, and if not Zapped will slowly start bringing back a plethora of problems, particularly regarding mental functioning. One would need to read up on it, such as in the Clark TCFAD book, to comprehend the complexities of these parasite invasions and their effects, as it is quite involved and too much to include here. Suffice it to say that I feel much better if I zap for the pet parasites after mowing the lawn. Also some sources such as fresh veggies from grocery store, and Shigella from some cheeses, sometimes import eggs of various parasites etc into oneself, setting off a battle between them and one's immune system, with some of the critters managing to get to hideout places such as in the brain. Targeting them one by one, while they are still circulating in the blood is quite effective in helping my immune system dispose of these invaders, some of which most likely were involved in my sufferings that eventually led to my dropping out of college long ago, after entering college with a brilliant future ahead as a physicist and in general sciences. (That was complicated also by an unknown wheat gluten sensitivity and trying to live on white bread at times due to low finances in college.) My career and life opportunities would have been far better, if I had known about these things back then. Yet the knowledge and Zapper is now able to help restore a significant part of my functionality, although cannot bring back the half century to live again, of course. And similarly, other people might well be missing out even now.

There are even more potential areas for improving health based on the Clark Zapper technology, which I have been exploring, including designing a special instrument that combines the broad field of electro-herbalism. Building and testing these devices to see what - if anything - they do with the many kids of signals that can be delivered to myself via the handholds, is providing some entertainment to me in my retirement. As well as helping educate me in ways to maintain my own health - and incidentally saving the government many thousands of dollars in Medicare costs.

And I also wonder, why are not all Americans having such health advantages. Well, I explored that part in the referenced post; optimum economical preventive health measures would include this Zapper-based technology, along with the usual veggies and going to the gym. This post is to hopefully better explain what the referenced "Clark-Zapper" technology is.

A standby and be prepared for the worst medical system

Another thorny problem nowadays is how to balance the needs of several important sectors of life in America. Fortunately it is not up to me to decide this, but in theory I can ponder about it in my blog here.

This one would seek to balance the needs of the American public for good health at low cost, with the needs of the established medical systems for steady income, and with the need of the nation as a whole to have a healthy economy, all at the same time.

Now, I have the advantage of knowing from amply-proven personally experienced data, that there is a technology that provides low cost good health long-term, and does not involve the conventional health system at all. This technology is so inexpensive that it would not drag the American economy down at all, if adopted fully in the country.

The problem is that America is struggling to have enough internal business to keep the economy healthy. Two factors, that of offshore suppliers providing for much of the goods and services previously fulfilled through employment of Americans; and the other being the apparent hoarding of vast fortunes and not letting it be exercised in the American economy, thus also strangling the economy. Neither of these factors are involved in my current suggestion here; besides, they are too big for anyone to deal with. Agricultural exports are helpful, yet do not begin to balance payments internationally; selling war machinery is the other export, but unfortunately war machinery is rarely something that can be used constructively so in the big picture is just wasteful effort. This leaves what exchange is going on internally in America, to keep its economy going well. And a major internal business exchange is that ongoing in the health system.

What happens if the technology were fully adopted, which would probably drop the income of the conventional health care system to about 30% of present level and in a few years dropping to maybe 10% of the 2011 income level?

How to keep the conventional medical system up and running so it can deal with the health issues that it can do best, such as repairing injuries in accidents and assaults, when they are needed?

And the other part of this question is how to deal with this even further loss of internal money exchange?

Now, looking at the big picture, it does not seem wise to be sick simply to keep the economy thriving. There ought to be a better way to do it. Yet right now, that seems to be what is happening, on a huge scale and even weighing down the nation's government, per the news re "healthcare."

Governmental subsidies are the traditional way to deal with such things. The oil companies are given huge subsidies even nowadays when raking in huge profits; so why couldn't the health care system receive huge subsidies at a similar level, paid out of taxes?

This healthcare subsidy could be used for keeping doctors, medical facilities, and pharmaceutical manufacturers supplied with money, while being prepared for emergencies. Emergencies like ... a huge natural disaster causing lots of injuries; new diseases sprouting up and spreading all over; local sectarian militia violence injuries; and bio-terrorism mischief.

Such a "standby, and be prepared for the worst" medical system could also have much of its daily activity be involved in doing research, while the facilities are also able to be quickly shifted over for meeting the emergencies.

So, this seems to be a way to deal with the business system problem involved in a technology that would greatly reduce the need for the services of the conventional health care system in routine activity as now practiced.

Anyone reading my blog for long would by now realize that the "technology" that is being contemplated going mainstream in a huge way, to greatly improve the average person's health, reduce sick time off work, and greatly reduce the cost of staying healthy, is that of the highly suppressed knowledge field going by names such as electro-medicine or electro-herbalism, particularly involving the basic Clark-Zapper and Rife handheld device expanded technologies. A field I stumbled into fifteen years ago, highly skeptical but exploring its safety aspects, only to find it is not only safe, but in many ways brings very good health maintenance at very low cost, all self administered.

Part of the usage of such a health technology is for each individual to finally accept self-responsibility for one's own good health. How to get that accepted is another question, not explored here right now.

But the otherwise-unexplainable cessation of my need to have the same colds and flu and whatever that is periodically knocking lots of people out of work for a day or two now and then, particularly in wintertime, simply by occasionally using the Clark-Zapper for a few minutes for no reason at all other than it being like the electronic version of "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Concurrent learning about nutritional requirements along with toxin avoidance as identified by the initial signs of need for better health (like avoidance of traces of the metal nickle, along with avoidance of bubbly beverages of all types, to help deal with potential prostate problems) would be needed, probably accomplished by online training for adults in the present time, and including it in the school curricula in the future.

This way, the potential productivity of America could be significantly increased through better wellness for all, including far less trips to the doctor and of going around feeling miserable. Better functioning employees can help a business thrive better. Per the above, I have also shown how the conventional health care system could be subsidized so as to be prepared to deal with emergencies of any scale, while also keeping partially occupied by doing R&D.

I think that the above fairly concisely explores an American problem that can't normally be socially-acceptably touched, and proposes a solution to it along with a solution to the problem that that creates. It looks like it would all work. If only people were interested in constructive cooperation, instead of exciting strife. Once again, it seems to bottom-line come to the lack of balanced usage of both left and right brained cognitive practices. (And, well, the social problems of bullies being so powerful controlling people-stuff, of course - but that is a different subject.)

Exploring a 1984-like scenario

A blog post I have long thought of how to word, still seems too complex for me. The whole thing seems nutty to me; why waste people's lives and effort. But, the news is full of goofy things people do instead of being a helpful influence to civilization. So here is an effort at it anyway.

What if somehow it gets proven that various security and law enforcement activities have been tricked into doing some of the dirty work instigated by some special interest group; does the special interest group then have to pay for all the time, salaries, resources used by those law enforcement agencies personnel?

Recalling the old adage that the average person breaks some law an average of three times a day, it ought to be quite easy to nail most anybody, given enough snooping and maybe some falsifying of evidence, and doing misinterpretations about the investigated persons.

While it seems highly unlikely that such a thing ever can get sufficiently proven, since the law enforcement folks themselves will not want to admit to doing such things lest they be thought as not doing their proper jobs, this still seems a worthy question. And maybe way down the line, someone will act to fix the problem.

As a hypothetical example, lets say that Chaos Corporation (am apparently thinking back to "Get Smart" TV show days for names) thinks it needs to defend its business territory from new innovators who might think of a new product that would obsolete the product of Chaos Corporation; and now someone, who is not directly legally controllable by Chaos Corporation, has thought up an idea for a product that would - unintentionally - obsolete Chaos Corporation's bread-and-butter product. Or another example, someone happens to walk in and witness a major deliberate wrongdoing participation by someone else who is part of Chaos Corporation; and now Chaos Corporation needs to discredit the witness lest he ever happens to disclose the odd bit of information he accidentally acquired by walking in at the wrong time and seeing something odd going on. Whatever the reason, the need is to ruin a target person who is perceived as being able to upset some plan of Chaos Corporation.

So Chaos Corporation embarks on a quiet character assassination program to monsterize their target person. And to Chaos Corporation, the target person is a villain, since he is a perceived threat to Chaos Corporation's thriving. And, it all must be done in a way so that it cannot later be traced to Chaos Corporation's doings. So getting the rumor mill to churning away about nasties that the target person is suspected of doing, they pick the things that really push peoples buttons, as well as being very hard to disprove. For right-wing-extremists, he is gossiped to be a left winger. To left-wing-extremists, he is rumored to be a right-winger. To husbands uncertain about their wives, the target is rumored to be a wife-stealer. To moms he is rumored to be a child abuser. To dateable women, he is rumored to be a dangerous person who uses a knife to harm women.

While this is all rumor-churning in the minds of potential onlookers, have a tipster say the target person is growing marijuana in his room, so the drug enforcers bash the target person's door down while he is away at work, and finding no marijuana - just houseplants - they leave silently, leaving the broken-into room unprotected for pilfering by the public. The target person is unwelcome there so has to move; his next rented room has small holes driled into ceiling for an investigator to peer in at the target to see what evil he is up to, but the noise the attic crawler is making is obvious so the target person covers up the drilled ceiling holes, so the owner then posts an eviction notice on his door. The next rented apartment soon is found broken into, but the manager of the building is honest and tells the target that the police and plainclothesmen were investigating a report of the target person harboring a Mexican woman wanted for questioning. From then on, any "plainclothesman" going into the target person's apartment while he is away at work, is assumed by the neighbors and manager, to be going in there to look for drugs or whatever, and to not get involved. But in reality the intruders are just expertly sifting through the target person's files, removing all records of his correspondence with people about the target's innovative technical concepts for new products, as well as grabbing all the new ideas the target person is exploring, so the "investigators" can sell them on the side to aspiring businesses. The target victim cannot make friends with neighbors, as they all are thinking he is a bad person and do not want to get accused of being an accomplice to the "evil person" wrongdoings being investigated by so many people. And through it all, law enforcement begins to believe that "where there is smoke there is fire" and investigative reports pile up, and the bigger the pile, the more likely it is that it must be true. So the effort is to imply great reward to any who would get some mud to stick on the target person; the reward might even be to put a huge amount of money behind some particular political candidate for high office, once the mud looks like it is on the target person.

Now such an effort is not likely to fail, due to the sheer volume of effort that has maligned the target person. And all the target person's innovative ideas have been stolen, so he has no way of getting paid for his creative technological achievements, so he lives close to poverty and his options in life are very few, not even able to get a girlfriend - a girlfriend might become a witness later who would refute much of the plethora of false accusations against the target victim, so it is quite a game to block any desirable women from discovering the target man, thus preventing that possible witness as well as making the target man live in even more misery of matelessness.

This post is about what does Chaos Corporation have to pay as penalty, if somehow this all gets exposed. What would be the appropriate fine imposed, for each document stolen from the target person, for each break-in of his residences, how much fine for each false accusation that gets apartment managers to let people into the target person's rented room or apartment, how much fine for each school bus driver who angrily watches the reported child abuser under investigation, how much fine for each husband who has done something to keep the target person from stealing the wife, how much fine for causing each mom who grabs their children glaring accusingly at the supposed child molester, how much fine for getting store security operations to stalk and record and pester the target person while he shops for food and other things in stores. And how much fine for the real wrongdoings salted into situations, mischief done specifically in a way that it points at the target person as the wrongdoer? How much fine to pay for sparking a juicy gossip item about the target person? And how much fine for every repeated utterance of that gossip item as it spreads throughout the neighborhood, the community, getting just about everybody who is in the gossip or security loop to assume the target person is evil and the observer could be a hero by catching the target person doing something wrong - it is not of interest that he is not doing anything wrong, that is no fun to watch. The target person suspects that he is getting paranoid, all this impossible weird stuff that sometimes cannot be fully ignored; Chaos Corporation would suddenly win the game if the target person gets pronounced paranoid, too. But more and more people come to believe that the target person is evil, thus to not become friends with him or else risk being assumed to be an accomplice. So how much fine would need to be levied for each of these instances of character assassination events?

Probably the bigger question is, would Chaos Corporation even worry about having to ever pay for such an accumulated collection of fines, even if it were all traced back to the source; a paltry sum compared to the wealth and power of Chaos Corporation; it has achieved its aim even then, since there remains no way for the target person to get his innovative concepts into practice that might rival the products of Chaos Corporation, and his word is discredited, so he could not be a credible witness about the evil done by Chaos Corporation. Besides, people with bully urges enjoy the sport of it all, stalking and harassing a person, without ever risking retribution; great sport for the bully mentality, as well as limits the girl's options for mates to not include the target person, thus has to marry one of the bullies instead.

Re-reading the above, I wonder if it ought instead be just made into one of my fiction novels. But the whole thing is so ugly that it would better be just flushed down the toilet like where such things are supposed to go. But how to do that in the real world, seems impossible. Bullies bully; theirs is the huge people-game world, too.

And what a waste of mankind's constructive potential - but I have said that in a lot of blog posts about "what people do do."

Strong willed person

It is said that some people are "strong willed."

Wondering about myself, I seem to have both a "will" and a "won't."

This morning before my daily cup of coffee, I seem to be more "strong won't-ed" than "strong willed."

A welcome feeling when one's ideas are proclaimed viable by others

It provides a welcome feeling when one's ideas are proclaimed viable by others, even though they do not thank you and may well have independently thought of it too. It shows that one's innovative concepts are viable. Has happened many times for me; and here is another one.

The article http://www.gizmag.com/shrilk-bioinspired-material/20858/ titled "Cheap, biodegradable, biocompatible "Shrilk" is a potential plastic replacement" where they tell of using the material from exoskeletons of insects to make plastic-like materials, such as one that is as tough as aluminum alloy but is only half the weight.

My high-tech sci fi novel titled "Building Up" that I wrote in 2006, five years ago, described building items including spacesuits out of cockroach exoskeleton material. See the last two paragraphs in Chapter 11, (P. 96 in the paperback) and much of Chapter 16 "Cockroach Spacesuits" (such as on p. 124 of the paperback.) http://www.kestsgeo.com/2sciencefiction/buildingup.html

Such happenings seem to validate one's existence. If only to oneself. Before the early e-book publishers started demanding that one charge for one's e-books, thousands of copies of "Building Up" were downloaded, so the hundreds of innovative technical ideas in that book have been circulating for a long time, hopefully seeding even more innovations by others in the future.