Continuing engineering failure analysis of social systems re technology

(Continued from http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/10/failure-analysis-of-lack-of-acceptance.html )

So far, the failure analysis of the social systems needed to establish early space colonization for humanity, have brought up factors of lack of congressional funding; judging the originator's credentials instead of judging the concepts themselves; lack of peer-membership with the potential evaluators; interference with existing business investments and career planning; unfamiliar technology to the evaluators; and the business choices of going for easy profit instead of the vision of early space colonization.

The 1972 Lunar space elevator concept, called the Mooncable, brought up those factors, as mentioned in the referenced post which is part of this overall message.

The next concept utilized for this failure analysis of needed social systems, relates to the the "KESTS to GEO" concept. So the last part of the preceding post is repeated here, as it is part of the description of what was tried and how failure was the result.

The second example for this kind of overall system failure analysis, is my effort to gain interest in my concept for rapid expansion into high Earth orbit, initially with the purpose of building abundant Solar Power Satellites to provide plentiful clean energy to nations around the world. This concept would bypass the Space Elevator's severe limitations, yet be able to do the same efficient access to high earth orbit, probably even more capably too. It would use the outward force of internal centrifugal force to balance the weight of the structure in the planetary gravitational field, instead of utilizing strength of materials to do the job.

I created this "KESTS to GEO" concept - acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit" - to bypass the problem with the Earth Space Elevator concept, that of the lack of a material strong enough for its mass to support its own weight between GEO and the ground. I was keenly aware of this problem, having thought of the earth space elevator idea in 1969 - not the first person to do so, it turned out - then realized that the tensile strength to density ratio problem that really made a problem for the concept. (However, that effort later enabled my 1971-1972 creation of the Mooncable concept.) So I constantly sought other ways to have large scale access of earth orbital space.

The early 1980's concepts of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop rocket lift to the fringes of the atmosphere by a trapezoid shaped tethered out-flung loop of continuous material, and Rod Hyde's "StarBridge" vertical tower to the fringes of the atmosphere, supported by electrodynamic drag of high velocity paramagnetic beryllium disks flung upward inside the structure, excited my hopes for early large scale space colonization in my time; even Earl Smiths' "Texas and Universe Railroad" concept of an out-flung expandable iron belt from the earth surface to GEO, although had some major flaws in it including that it would not go to GEO if anchored in the high latitude of Texas, got me to do my first speech supporting those concepts, as well as my Mooncable space elevator concept, to the National Commission on Space in 1985. But to no avail, the Commission's report did not mention any of these things.

I mulled over the why-nots for a few years, discovering the major faults within each of those systems, and finally figured out how to combine all those concepts and add some new components, to make what appeared a workable large scale ground-to-GEO access space transportation structure of high efficiency, supported by the outward force of high velocity armatures circulating throughout the quasi-elliptical hoop around the Earth, connecting the equatorial surface to GEO. The materials and technology were well within the contemporary capability.

But the problem remained, of how I, as still an unknown in the field, could get this concept into the awareness of those who could take it to the next steps. About that time, I had gotten connected to the GEnie Spaceport Library, via my 300 baud modem connected to my long-obsolete Adam Coleco computer; as always, I lived on the edge of poverty, earning a living as an engineering technician in electronics; I worked for a small car alarm manufacturer at the time. Finally I could get the attention to my Mooncable concept and my new KESTS to GEO concept, I thought, through the GEnie network, connecting with other space enthusiasts involved with technology.

Even the GEnie Network was sponsored by General Electric, a large company who could possibly be able to build much of the KESTS to GEO system, I thought. I posted the initial insights there in 1988, and had largely fleshed it out in 1989, posting many files in the GEnie Spaceport Library.

But the reaction I got as a result was lots of angry replies, not involving technology, but bringing up other issues that readers would have to wade through before getting to the technical parts of the chat strings back then.

It took me a long time to realize that the KESTS to GEO concept would obsolete the ground rocket launch vehicle industry, on which these folks based their futures. No wonder the anger.

But clearly they were only interested in their personal fortunes, not the vision of large scale economical access and utilization of high earth orbit, and the large scale access of the Lunar environment and Mars' moons and asteroids, all now potentially in the near future, instead of something that would only have to withstand the test of real physical construction and usage generations later, as were the other forms of space colonization views as based on rocket systems alone.

A general pattern seems to be forming as I write here: the wideness of the vision of the evaluator, controls the trend of the resulting decision. If the evaluator was not fitting the concept into the wide vision of extending humanity into space colonies, then the criteria would be based on such things as the concept's potential effects on the evaluator's career, the corporate business potentials, the disruption to existing personal investments such as into petrochemical energy sources so as to gain personal wealth that way, effect on esteem from non-peer level concept offerings, and potential effects on international interactions. Thus what seems to be a failure of social systems, is simply reduced to success at supporting continuance of other considerations. Not looking to early space colonization, why disrupt existing plans for enabling that to happen.

In the KESTS to GEO enabled SPS case, done by the pointing out of the essential nature of large scale worldwide energy sources that are not primarily based on burning of petrochemicals in the air, simply stimulated efforts to create "green" energy sources and transportation systems, from existing technologies of wind, photovoltaics, wave energy, nuclear, and geothermal energy sources; maintaining the hydroelectric dams, and electric cars.

Such a diversity of energy sources is important for a resilient energy supply. Yet since these "green" energy sources are not producing more than a small fraction of the nation's energy needs; we have to burn coal aplenty to provide the vast majority of our daily energy usage.

The concept of building Solar Power Satellites in GEO, adequate to supply the vast majority of civilization's energy needs on into the future, enabled by building the KESTS to GEO transportation structure from ground up to GEO, is still being intensely avoided even now in 2011, some 22 years since the concept was fairly fleshed out in 1989, and long enough to have developed working structures built between equatorial ground and GEO by now, and a few prototype Solar Power Satellites of operational capacity already built and being used to supply all the energy the transportation structure system needs itself, as well as supplying gigawatts of energy to the power grid.

While the failure to implement this is a failure to be able to provide plentiful non-petrochemical energy for civilization along with large scale space colonization in GEO and on the Moon, it is not a social failure in the sense that it enable continuance of business-as-usual, in the comfort zone of those who make things happen. And, there are fewer big goofs made, when people stick to the familiar; never-mind the lack of preparation for the needs of the future of civilization. There is also the social quirk that people generate far more emotional energy when things fail as they do when things work fine; witness the major agony over the crash of the Challenger, yet no comparable rejoicing across the nation in the many successful flights that the Challenger Space Shuttle made before that. Goofs cost the doer far more than successes are rewarding to the doer, in other words. Risk not taken, means not risking condemnation due to failure.

But, this is analogous to when a man fails to approach a woman in hopes of courting her, for fear of rejection by her. No loving has a chance of happening. In this case, we not only have no chance of life preservation diversification via space colonies, but also we are stuck with our planetary oxygen being converted into unbreathable carbon dioxide, in order to have electrical energy lightening our homes, and our massive cars get pushed around in the commute each day.

So let's look in more detail as to how the KESTS to GEO concept was shot down, and why. Each factor can be a factor in extrapolating what will happen in subsequent efforts to revive the concept, as well as in new forms of space access and utilization concepts.

The initial efforts to gain awareness and interest in the KESTS to GEO concept are described above, utilizing the GEnie Information Network.

Other avenues were also explored, however. A visionary article on the concept was published in a non-technical magazine called "Meditation Magazine" in 1990. A talk was given to the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Society of System Scientists, on the subject of KESTS to GEO in 1994. A description was given as part of a RAND study seeking new space systems concepts. The early vision of KESTS to GEO envisioned its high energy efficiency, high capacity continuous operation between ground and GEO, to enable a couple of prototype space colonies in GEO, modeled after the Stanford Torus 10,000 person space settlement design of 1975, originally intended for construction in the distant future at L-5 built out of Lunar materials; but KESTS to GEO would enable them built in GEO without first creating a huge Lunar infrastructure. So it was also proposed to build a classical wheel-type space station in LEO, totally built teleoperated until assembled in LEO, before the first manned presence would be needed there; this concept was called "Centristation"and would be a 100-200-person R&D habitat to work out many of the interactions of a near-self-sustaining 1-g environment in actual space conditions. The wheel structure would first be built on the ground and debugged there as much as possible; each of the component modules would be designed and built for use as their own fuel tank during launch. Thus it was titled "Wet launch of Prefab habitat Modules" when I presented a peer-reviewed technical paper on the Centristation concept to the Space Studies Institute at Princeton, NJ, in 1995.

May I mention the factors that this was my first attendance to such a space conference and knew little about doing such a thing; I was still very nervous about public speaking, having only done the one testimony to the NCS in 1985 as mentioned before; and that in my impoverished state - employed as an electronics technician at a car alarm manufacturing company at the time - all I had was a 386SX computer running DOS at home so I had to format the document to SSI specs, using poster freeware to make the camera-ready copy of the paper. This paper got published by SSI/AIAA in 1995.

Such a wheel- space station in LEO was in line with Gerard O'Neil's wonderful vision for space colonization that was the lifeblood of the Space Studies Institute.

But the KESTS to GEO concept was not in line with that SSI vision; it would bypass the need for an initial Lunar infrastructure and colonies built at L-5 which would build the Solar Power Satellites; KESTS to GEO would build the SPS out of earth materials, economically brought up for construction in GEO by the electrically powered and supported transportation structure. In other words, I did not realize I was trying to propose something that would wipe out their grand vision's purpose for happening.

Thus it is no wonder I was ridiculed and booed out after I gave my technical paper to SSI on KESTS to GEO in 1997, naively thinking them to be focused on getting SPS built in GEO and space colonization to happen much quicker than their existing vision would. I thought they would welcome my vision with open arms; but in reality I was seen as a disruptor, and invader, something to be stamped out of existence.

It was easily seen that if enough orbiting satellites and space junk were put into the space between ground and GEO, that continuous structures like Space Elevators and KESTS to GEO Space Escalators increasingly become at risk for collision and thus destruction. Stall these transportation structures long enough, and they would not get built because of this, thus assuring that rocketry business would continue on abundantly, instead of becoming obsolete. And so they did that. And that is the situation now. We are stuck with rockets, the incredibly inefficient rocket launch vehicle access to earth orbit and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, there is still potential for building KESTS to GEO, if mankind chose to do so.

Anyway, after getting the boot from Princeton, I nursed my wounds but saw no flaw in my technical concept itself; so I submitted a technical paper to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) space conference in 1998. It got rejected. I rewrote it and it finally got accepted for presentation and publication in 2000, and thus became the first peer-reviewed formal technical paper hardcopy published on the KESTS to GEO concept. Two years later, I wrote a more complete paper on the subject and presented it to the ASCE 2002 space conference. But clearly there was some interference going on; NASA had sponsored someone to make a spectacular proposal saying that the Earth Space Elevator was ready to build, if money were available to do so. And thus no one was interested my concept when something else could be built right away, that would do a similar job. Of course, we now know that it was not ready to build at all; but the timing was just right to shoot down the budding KESTS to GEO concept. In 2004 a third technical paper on KESTS to GEO was presented my me, and the paper published, but clearly it was being ditched by the rocket launch business interests who freshly had been given contracts for the manned Mars project by NASA.

I began to realize that NASA itself was actively against KESTS to GEO. Impossible as that seemed to me to be; was not NASA devoted to advancing space utilization including space colonization?

But, rocketry systems were what NASA folks were experts in. Not some weird electric motor completely encircling the Earth; their academic and corporate expertise would largely be obsolete and they would have to go back to college, maybe to fail this time. Nope; keep business as usual.

And after all, NASA has the mandate to enable America to stay ahead of the Space Race, to protect America from possible lunar bases built on the Moon aimed at us, like Cuba back in the 1960's that was what NASA was created to do, and now it has the task of maintaining that technical expertise of manpower and manufacturing. The scientific folks can do relatively safer robotic missions to Mars and the other bodies hurtling around in our solar system, keeping their technical expertise up through that kind of exercise, and also happening to see what the potentials are out there. But space colonization is not in NASA's mandate. Solar Power Satellites are not in NASA's mandate. Congress sets NASA's purpose. NASA is just doing its job. And, the prospect of them having to build a KESTS to GEO most likely is scary to them; too different and too many goofs inevitable, like in early rocket development.

The KESTS to GEO concept would provide a means for electrically lifting goods and personnel from ground up into GEO and back, potentially very energy efficiently. The amount of energy added to each pound of mass lifted from the equator up into GEO is only 7,300 KWh, or 73 cents per pound, if at a energy cost of 10 cents per KWh. Lifting an average person up into GEO would therefore add the amount of energy to his mass, about the same as the cost of a trip from coast to coast by airplane. Building things in GEO could become very low cost and rapid instead of the incredible cost and effort of rocket launch to there, as is required now.

KESTS to GEO can take many forms. For example, KESTS could also be built for ground to LEO access, or even be used in circular form, linking pressure-supported towers located around the planet along the equator, for highly efficient intercontinental travel. But the most useful form would be from equatorial ground up into GEO, where something will stay put, with no intermediate use of a rocket propelled vehicle or other free-flying vehicle. Walk onto KEST on the ground, walk off into GEO.

The KESTS to GEO structure would not have its weight supported by the counterbalance of a weight swung around by the Earth's rotation, as would be done in the case of the anchored tether Space Elevator concept.

Instead, it would provide its own internal centrifugal force in the direction opposing Earth's gravitational field everywhere, but constrained high velocity armature segments endlessly circulating within the hollow hoop structure at velocities several times that of the orbital velocity along that path.

Thus the surplus outward centrifugal force supports the static weight of the earth-stationary part of the structure.

The whole transportation structure is essentially a synchronous electric motor. In its primary form, all the energy is input to it at the ground terminal, by electromagnetic accelerators synchronously re-accelerating each armature segment as it passes through the accelerator; the armature segment then coasts all around the planet within the hollow hoop, back again the the earth terminal accelerator where its energy losses along the way are replenished over and over again. Millions of such armature segments comprise the high velocity mass that provides the outward push against the hoop structure, supporting its weight and the weight of its live loads.

The armature segments' upward-bound mass stream are also configured, at least in part, for being electrodynamically braked against by coupling to captive spacecraft, thus lifting the spacecraft up between ground and GEO; thus the vehicles carry no energy source nor need any beamed to them by lasers.

The captive spacecraft carrying construction materials and personnel up from ground to GEO, would move continuously up one side and down the other side gently back to Earth. Counter-rotating mass streams within the hoop are needed for this, note, laterally coupled by the constraints on their inductive extreme high velocity maglev tracks. The continuous lift of materials up to GEO make rapid construction of large scale Solar Power Satellites possible.

It also make s possible the construction of spaceports in GEO, where rocket components would be electrically lifted efficiently up to GEO, where the reaction-engined spacecraft would head off to space, already 91% up out of the Earth's gravitational energy well. Returning to Earth is just as efficient, no re-entry energy to be dealt with.

This would enable a whole new paradigm about civilization's relationship with space at the vast resources there of room to grow, material to be found, energy from the sun 24/7, and opportunity to establish space colonies abundantly in high earth orbit as well as on the Moon, Phobos, Mars and asteroids, for starters.

But we chose not to do this. Business as usual is lots easier. We have kids to put through college, etc.

In 2005 I naively also tried presenting papers to Space Elevator conferences. It was as popular as a Ford salesman babbling away at a General Motors new car showroom. They published three of my KESTS to GEO related technical papers, but they somehow ungrouped the graphics so they are meaningless, useless for communicating the concepts.

I finally got the message. Corporate aerospace does not like KESTS to GEO.

A friend who understands the world more than I do, urged me to write science fiction about my concepts, instead of technical papers. I at first resented that, fearing people already call my concepts science fiction, not having been built yet. But, eventually I discovered that writing high tech science fiction about my concepts was cathartic, finally living out the building and usage of such transportation systems involving Centristation, the Space Elevator, KESTS to GEO and Circular KESTS. It got to be fun and interesting to do so, and was lots easier than traveling to space conferences and coping with public speaking tying to convince hostile people of the worth of my concepts. I had to learn how to format the sci fi novels so they could be printed as paperbacks, and made available for sale at Amazon, but nobody buys them, nobody knows they are there, and Amazon does not bring them up in title searches. I have also made most of the novels into eBook format too, via Smashwords.

What more can I do to help space colonization happen?

In evaluating this kind of effort for what caused the failure to get these concepts to be made physical, so that the larger goal of establishing living systems off-planet can be achieed, some factors need to be considered. There is a characteristic integration among the pieces of the concepts, different from team designs or design by committee; for example, although the Centristation in LEO project would be built using over 200 launches of a three-part reuseable teleoperated launch and docking system, using conventional chemical rockets, and its purpose is to get advance R&D done for the construction of 10,000-person Stanford-Torus type space colonies in GEO, that it still needs the KESTS to GEO already built to at least a small lifting capacity girth, or at least built to access LEO from the ground. This is because of the need to staff it with some 200 people, perhaps as many as a thousand people. It would take the transportation capacity of a KESTS to put that many people into orbit in a short time, and to get them back again in a hurry if need be. The orbit of the Centristation would be chosen to not intersect with the KESTS to GEO. The characteristic integration of such large scale projects is the result of both a predisposition by the individual, plus the very long term obsessive pursuit of a subject for achievement that is characteristic of someone with Asperger's Syndrome. In this case, consider that large scale earth to space transportation structures were sought and found as early as 1969; and some some 42 years of mulling over the basic transportation problem having been done even since then. It is the result of much of a lifetime obsession with the subject. Both conscious and subconscious mind ever at least partially looking for hints of pieces to the solution of the puzzle the Asperger person seeks to build.

Yet the naive Asperger person believes that humanity will accept him/her finally, when a successful concept design is produced. Like the fable of the rejected "different" Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at Christmas time, the goal is to come through to save the day. Such fantasies are rarely realized in the real world, however; the real world just usually dismisses the Asperger's great creation as somehow unworthy; or if not, the Asperger must have stolen it from someone of high academic or corporate stature. This is because of the non-Asperger's nature of ever striving to prove he/she is better than... somebody. The Asperger with the concept is considered a show-off, trying to be better-than you; therefore, must be put down, in order to restore everybody's status. Such petty processes are busy influencing what happens to the concept; and will normally result in either someone else stepping forward and declaring it is their idea, or someone else's idea, thus the concept originator is righteously put in his/her place; and the concept is now loose and available for all the regular folks to use without involving the originator anymore. (Unfortunately they usually do a poor job of utilizing it, settling for merely one implementation of it that makes them money.)

For some reason, the group psychology needed for some corporation to form a team to develop such a concept to bring it into reality, needs to thusly pry rights to the concept from the one who has spent much of a lifetime creating it, by trickery like that; it shows that they are smarter after all. The concept is thought to be completely the property of those who are in the team and the team's financiers; and indeed patents are not awarded to the originator of the concept that describes how to build something, it is awarded to whoever follows the instructions and thus puts it into practice before others do.

Yet the spread of new concepts need to be done. Like the story of Archimedes, having long struggled with the very complex problem of how to calculate the exact volume of a complex metal object volume so as to be able to correctly measure its density and therefore determine the type of metal of which it is made, having noticed in a bathtub how the water rises in exact displacement of his complex body's shape, he made the connection that the same thing could be applied to the complex shape of, say, a gold jewelry item; simply measure the height of the liquid it displaces, inside a constant cross sectional area container. The integrated volume is found as easy as that. And so this technique was eventually communicated widely, so that all people might utilize it. The concept becomes part of civilization's tools.

So, to seek engineering failure analysis of social systems, and find ways to resolve the problems, it is suggested that people seek more understanding, and make it available to others, I suppose, like in this writing.

Jim Cline 20111028 Ephrata, WA, USA

Failure analysis of lack of acceptance of space access system concepts

In engineering doing development work, there sometimes is a need to debug something. The first step in debugging is to evaluate the data which discovered the failure to live up to expectations; this data and its failure analysis needs to be as thorough and accurate as possible, so as to be more likely to fix the problem in the subsequent effort.

The development of space colonization might benefit from a similar approach. Looking back at failures is no fun; but if we don't learn from our mistakes, it is wisely said we are doomed to repeat them.

I personally know of several such failures on the path to space colonization; so, despite my dislike of rehashing the unpleasant and often incomprehensible, subsequent events have provided me with significant understanding of what was going on in the bigger picture, that probably caused the failures to get those early starts in space colonization.

Sifting out what seems the most pertinent parts - the whole scenario and sequence of related events would take volumes to write - the following items are some of those failure analysis findings:

The first one has to do with the failure to build Space Elevator technology on the Moon, using the leftover Apollo Saturn 5 launch vehicles to emplace a seed elevator cable on the moon. This concept was informally gotten to NASA and in mid-1972 was given a rejection by the NASA Inventions & Contribution Board. This concept showed that an existing material, space-rated fiberglass, was capable of being used to build what is now called a Space Elevator, but I called it the Mooncable back then. A cable made of space rated fiberglass, built into a tapered constant-stress-cross-section shape, could be built linking the lunar surface with a somewhat lower gravitational energy level toward the Earth, going through the L-1 balance point, where the thickness was greatest. It took me months of hand calculations to prove that the material was up to the task; and my concept description described a way to utilize motor-generators traveling up and down the Mooncable, using conductive tracks on the structure to connect the earthward-downward electrodynamic braking energy over to lift another motor generator tractor up off the lunar surface toward L-1. The system thus provided a siphon-like effect, so my more extensive description was titled "The Mooncable: Gravitational-Electric Siphon in Space"This was a deeply integrated concept description, where it integrated the mooncable structural transportation mechanism with a major product so as to make it a profitable activity, supplying a useful material to the Earth. Foamed steel, a material only create-able in zero-g, would be made at a manufacturing plant located at L-1 balance point on the Mooncable, by using focused solar energy to melt nickle-iron brought up by motor-generator tractors from the Lunar surface. The metal would be filled with gas bubbles there in zero-g at L-1, while being input to a mold, which would shape the material into the form of a re-entry glider, for the trip from the earthward-end of the Mooncable to the Earth's surface. The cast gliders, with the durability of stainless steel yet the density of wood, would float in the ocean after landing, and be towed to land where it would be sawn up and used for construction material, such as for energy-absorbing crash barriers lining the middle of freeways; and building fireproof homes that were nearly impervious to weather effects. The Mooncable structure itself would be made of fiberglass, and glass is an abundant material on the surface of the Moon; so the only thing needing landing by Saturn-5 launch systems would be the original seed cable, plus a robotic operated glass materials plant. The timing was right; we were still landing astronauts on the Lunar surface, and this seemed an appropriate next step to build upon Apollo, and enabling economical establishment of a lunar manufacturing facility on the Moon, a first space colony. And the project could be started immediately, right then in 1972.

But it did not happen. What was the failure in the system? So here is an engineering failure analyst effort:

Looking back, there seems to be multiple points of failure, and each provides an example for preventing similar failures for present and future efforts striving for space colonization.

One factor was that it required Congress to vote to provide appropriations. And that congress was showing its meaningfulness by hacking off a percentage of the funds asked for Space Shuttle development, standard Congressional practice, to show they are doing their job. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle proposal did not provide extra fluff to play the game of having its funds chopped back some; thus solid rocket boosters had to be put into the design, and ultimately we lost a spacecraft because of that, the Challenger and her crew. So NASA was in deep struggle for money to get its job done; the Mooncable project would have required a significant amount of money to achieve even its first steps, despite use of the two Saturn 5 vehicles that were built but not going to be used.

Much of this was explained in the brief letter the NASA ICB chairman sent to me with the rejection of my informal proposal. This rejection had another major effect, in that when my wife read the rejection, saying no grant funds were forthcoming, she was quickly out of my life, very pragmatic lady she was, and I was no longer as good a money source as other men would be. The effect on me was that, being an Asperger, now without a pragmatic mate to take care of the social etc aspects of my life, in despair I threw away my promising career at JPL and basically just existed for the next half dozen years. Occasionally I would try to find someone interested in my Mooncable concept, but I had no connections. In the early-1980's I made another effort, by writing an article for the L-5 News, but it was rejected.

I think a significant part of the failure of the system for establishing Space Colonization that way in the mid-1970's was my lack of credentials: I was an unknown in the field. the concept was not allowed to speak for itself, in other words. This seems to me to be a significant failure mechanism in the overall system: not letting a concept speak for itself, but instead first looking at the originator's standing. It is analogous to people in the military look at the number of stripes on your shoulder, to decide whether or not to pay attention to you. The academic standing, the industrial position standing, is where the evaluators looked, and they found I was a nobody, had not even graduated from college, had even switched from a physics major to a psychology major for a semester before dropping out, clearly a loser. And possibly a related factor, how could PhD's in high positions, admit that someone who was a college dropout came up with a concept to get the job done, and the credentialed folks had not thought of it, what would people think about that; better just ignore the originator, and no one would pay attention to the concept. Later, the concept could be revived by accredited folks who could build careers on it. And that happened: Pearson wrote an excellent paper on such concepts four years later, in 1976; and even today there are businesses proposing building a Mooncable-like Space Elevator through L-1, so it was not a dysfunctional concept. It was a failure of the human aspects, not the technological aspects.

So the failure mode here is that of using the originator's credentials to speak for the capability of the concept, rather than let the concept speak for itself. Part of this may be the inability of the initial evaluators to evaluate the concept adequately, especially if it is a really different thing from their field of expertise; and they do not want to admit that.

The second example for this kind of overall system failure analysis, is my effort to gain interest in my concept for rapid expansion into high Earth orbit, initially with the purpose of building abundant Solar Power Satellites to provide plentiful clean energy to nations around the world. This concept would bypass the Space Elevator's severe limitations, yet be able to do the same efficient access to high earth orbit, probably even more capably too. It would use the outward force of internal centrifugal force to balance the weight of the structure in the planetary gravitational field, instead of utilizing strength of materials to do the job.

I created this "KESTS to GEO" concept - acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit" - to bypass the problem with the Earth Space Elevator concept, that of the lack of a material strong enough for its mass to support its own weight between GEO and the ground. I was keenly aware of this problem, having thought of the earth space elevator idea in 1969 - not the first person to do so, it turned out - then realized that the tensile strength to density ratio problem that really made a problem for the concept. (However, that effort later enabled my 1971-1972 creation of the Mooncable concept.) So I constantly sought other ways to have large scale access of earth orbital space.

The early 1980's concepts of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop rocket lift to the fringes of the atmosphere by a trapezoid shaped tethered out-flung loop of continuous material, and Rod Hyde's "StarBridge" vertical tower to the fringes of the atmosphere, supported by electrodynamic drag of high velocity paramagnetic beryllium disks flung upward inside the structure, excited my hopes for early large scale space colonization in my time; even Earl Smiths' "Texas and Universe Railroad" concept of an out-flung expandable iron belt from the earth surface to GEO, although had some major flaws in it including that it would not go to GEO if anchored in the high latitude of Texas, got me to do my first speech supporting those concepts, as well as my Mooncable space elevator concept, to the National Commission on Space in 1985. But to no avail, the Commission's report did not mention any of these things.

I mulled over the why-not for a few years, and finally figured out how to combine all those concepts and add some new components, to make what appeared a workable large scale ground-to-GEO access space transportation structure of high efficiency, supported by the outward force of high velocity armatures circulating throughout the quasi-elliptical hoop around the Earth, connecting the equatorial surface to GEO. The materials and technology were well within the contemporary capability.

But the problem remained, of how I, as still an unknown in the field, could get this concept into the awareness of those who could take it to the next steps. About that time, I had gotten connected to the GEnie Spaceport Library, via my 300 baud modem connected to my long-obsolete Adam Coleco computer; as always, I lived on the edge of poverty, earning a living as an engineering technician in electronics. Finally I could get the attention to my Mooncable concept and my new KESTS to GEO concept, I thought.

Even the GEnie Network was sponsored by General Electric, a large company who could possibly be able to build much of the KESTS to GEO system, I thought. I posted the initial insights there in 1988, and had largely fleshed it out in 1989, posting many files in the GEnie Spaceport Library.

But the reaction I got as a result was lots of angry replies, not involving technology, but bringing up other issues that readers would have to wade through before getting to the technical parts of the chat strings back then.

It took me a long time to realize that the KESTS to GEO concept would obsolete the ground rocket launch vehicle industry, on which these folks based their futures. No wonder the anger.

But clearly they were only interested in their personal fortunes, not the vision of large scale economical access and utilization of high earth orbit, and the large scale access of the Lunar environment and Mars' moons and asteroids, all now potentially in the near future, instead of something that would only have to withstand the test of real physical construction and usage generations later, as were the other forms of space colonization views as based on rocket systems alone.

This post is getting too long, so I will continue this in a subsequent post.

Is patent law doing what it was intended to do?

Patents were intended to protect the one who had struggled to create something new and achieved it, from the horde of copycats.

Copycats, from the bully sitting next to you as a schoolkid - who passed his tests by copying your answers, and you had better not try to hide your answers - could start from where the innovator left off, and without that life resource being used up in struggling to create the innovative thing in the first place, they could run with the idea and make their fortune with it, never compensating the actual originator who made it possible to exist.

It is an ancient problem. It was generally ignored; the upper crust tending to be formed of bullies who had no interest in supporting those who had been ripped off. So the innovators, who had found a way to make something new, would do their best to hide their secret means from the prying eyes of others; so as to protect their business making and selling their innovative thing. But when those innovators grew old and passed away, the special goodie that they had made and sold, vanished from the market and no one else knew how to make it anymore; and so everyone had to do without that special something from then on.

That was something that got the attention of the bullies who ran things, when they got deprived a bit, that way.

So a compromise was set up, where the innovator would be granted a limited time to exclusively make and sell his/her innovation-based product, if they would disclose how to create the innovation. I think it was seventeen years, in which it belonged to the innovator; thereafter it was free for all to copy.

The rulers of the land thought they had wisely solved the problem, providing for everybody's needs by issuing patents. And, it all sounds reasonable: 17 years of protection for your idea, your answer on the school desk test; then it is given away for free. The copycats could still make their fortunes by making the innovator's thing, except they had to wait some years to do it. And the snoops did not need to spy to steal the innovator's ideas anymore; it was all there, disclosed in the patent.

But instead of peace and prosperity resulting, there were fights over who would get the patent. Innovations have to be built out of the things already available, and so the search for new ideas for innovations went on being done by multiple people, often times. The early days of electronics often involved many quite angry disputes over who came up with an idea first, for example.

And all our innovative ideas are built on a vast legacy given by others of the past. Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Newton, Einstein, Jobs, and millions of others, put much of their lives into making the bricks out of which we now build our innovations. They are gone now, and best we can do is give a blanket silent mental thanks to their lives and their gifts to us, with which we strive to build anew, much as they did in their time.

Yet without the promise of a patent protecting you, there was little use in doing the long involved work of finding a way to create a new and useful thing, since the copycats, who often were also tough bullies - or hired them - stalkers & assaulters, would just grab away any success one had.

Nowadays, The start of Apple Computer by a couple of guys in a home garage, could not create the personal computer line that many of us so cherish. There simply are too many folks incredibly skillfully snooping and able to invade one's workspace while you are gone shopping, to keep anything secret and documented long enough to get a patent to protect the innovative thing. Huge corporations with almost endless deep pockets can hire industrial spies, to make sure nothing happens to challenge the huge corporation's business technological base, their "intellectual territory." Protects their investors; what else do you want?

Another way the huge corporations protect their existing intellectual property technological base, is by making sure that no one comes up with something better. This is done by requiring workers in technological fields, to sign an "employment agreement" that not only keeps them from stealing the company's intellectual property - the "employment agreement's" apparent intent - but also steals any and all ideas about anything that the employee might suddenly think of on or off the job. Those hands-on workers are the ones most likely to come up with lateral field ideas for innovation, since they are fascinated by the potentials of innovation, and are ever matching up their background knowledge with whatever they encounter in life, on or off the job. And so they are the ones most likely to come up with the really innovative new approaches. To prevent them from leaving and starting their own company based on their own innovative idea, the "employment agreement" forbids them from doing that. Thus, the nation is deprived of countless advances that would have solved problems and made life more bountiful. But it protects the various big employer's profit bottom line. The employee, who most likely is living with little surplus income from the job, cannot get patent protection from his/her innovative idea, which has nothing to do with their job or what they have seen others do on the job there. The employer claims ownership of all such ideas for innovation, but has no interest whatsoever in developing or making the new thing available to customers; so the idea is just dead, right there.

So, is the patent system achieving what it was intended to do? Imperfectly, at best.

The gaining of patents has merely become a game tool among businesses, patents mere pawns in their monopoly business games.

Gone is its original intent, to protect the innovative folks from predators.

Yet for sure, some businesses will hire a bunch of engineers to strive to produce a management-defined specific innovative thing; and that specific innovative thing deserves a patent's protection in the classical sense.

Yet the original intent of the patent system, to prevent loss of innovative product knowledge, and eventually make it fully available to all, by granting the originator exclusive right to produce the products utilizing that innovation but for a specific limited time only, has resulted in not only the "patent agreement" technique for suppressing innovation, but also the widespread "industrial espionage" against the backyard home inventors, making sure nothing becomes patentable by them, and thus unable to get financing for making their new product; the innovation dies right there, and thus all the consumers lose what might have been, as a result.

America has come a long way since the U S Patent system was set up. Could there be a major revision devised, so as to both reward innovation, yet also make such innovation immediately available to all?

This is something worth thinking about.

Some things seem headed a bit in that direction already. Open-source software, for one. Creative Commons licensing, for another. Yet these do not reward the innovators; they merely are some means for enabling some innovations not to just die due to strangulation by the intellectual-property-territory tools of big business, who would simply have grabbed any loose ideas and patent them as if they had done the work - sometimes patenting just to prevent others from utilizing the ideas. Copycats have free use of the innovative ideas, but now they need to acknowledge their sources for the ideas their products are based upon. At least the originators get their name mentioned, even if no other reward. And, that often is enough thanks.

Yet, sometimes an innovative idea is taken and run with, by a talented person skilled in actualizing such innovations, and squeezing hordes of money out of it, by them knowing how to manipulate the system. That kind of skill and effort surely deserves reward for making new product available to the consumer. They sometimes become billionaires over such doings.

And I wonder, how fair is it that they are billionaires due to their excellent business skills having achieved; yet the original innovative concepts on which their fortunes were based, get only Creative Commons names mentioned, but those innovators may be living in poverty.

This does not lure people to do the work of coming up with innovative ideas for solving problems or enabling new opportunities in our lives.

Maybe the system needs some new inspection, and wisdom applied, to match the world as it is now.

Twinning a rich MCG with a poor MDG to infill the world

Am trying to convince myself that the MCGs have more chance of success than the goal of getting Jabba the Hutt to voluntarily morph into Robin Hood. Millennium Consumption Goals for the world's rich, to pair with Millennium Development Goals for the world's poor, could take the form of twinning: linking each specific 20% MCG in a rich country/community with a specific 80% MDG in a specific poor country/community, covering the whole world. Like the Sister Cities idea. Jabba, what say?

Most likely we Americans cannot get our collective hypnotized focus off of the "us vs them", "me vs you", "make them look bad so we will look good", "who is better than whom", kind of paradigm, to even consider this kind of thing. But, hey, writing it down is maybe a start.

I wonder, how did we get out of the feudalistic Dark Ages up into our industrialized enlightened civilization? Might be worth a think, as we apparently are headed toward a Feudalistic mode of the Aristocracy vs Serfs, divvying up of America; Owner-management vs Sheeple. A head start in placing seeds to get out of that trap, might make it easier. And take less time than from the Dark Ages.

And am a bit sad that the best that the 99% can do to get their potential productivity back online nicely, is to sit on the doorstep of the 1%. Are we really just Sheeple?

Sure, the owner-managers are the ones with the right-stuff to get productivity going; the workers are not generally built that way. But the owner-managers are apparently out to lunch. Or maybe out in their mega-yachts unaware of it all. Or maybe their college degrees did not teach them responsibility for the whole system that supports them and everybody else; instead got taught mere grab-root-growl competitiveness to "win," nevermind the whole system that provides us all existence?

What happened to the 200 KHz stereo system technology?

As I wait year after year for a particular new kind of product to come out, that it has not done so, gets more puzzling.

It has maybe been ten years ago that I read of a very interesting technology, that would enable low energy hi fi stereo for homes. Excellent bass yet without big woofers. Highly directional music, for stereo in different parts of the room. Ought to be low cost, too.

I got even more interested when seeing employment ads by a company in San Diego looking for engineers to help create these products.

Yet, I keep looking and reading, and even bought some systems that I supposed used that technology, but did not; were something else each time.

What I remember of the technology, it used ultrasonic signal generators, probably crystal resonators, small and low cost. Operated around 200 KHz acoustical mode. Worked by the interference pattern at the ears recreating the sound, in great stereo and also as a function of where you were located in the room, such as real variation at where an orchestra plays. System operated at low power.

I have wondered if the Bose receivers that came out about then, used that technology; since it advertised exceptional stereo music yet low power, but I could not afford the then $300 to buy one to find out.

Recalling the descriptions of that 200 KHz audio technical concept and findings, it was also useful for steering the interference patterns so as to have some things only perceivable by people at certain locations in a room. That could be useful, for, say, a movie director wanting to send instructions to specific actors on stage.

As time goes on and I continue to not find such type high fi stereo devices on the market, I wonder if somebody figured out a not-so-nice use for the technology, and bought the rights out. The ability to direct audio to people located at specific places in a big room, could be used for not-so-nice manipulation of people and events. Bullies would probably like such a tool to do their control issue thing, another trick to fiddle with other people's lives. That could explain why I cannot buy a nice low energy high quality stereo setup for my home, that uses such 200 KHz interference pattern music delivery technology.

If cell phone use does not cause tumors does that mean it is totally safe

For several years I have watched the research reports about dangers of cellular phone use. A repeated finding, such as the linked one here, is that cell phone use apparently does not cause cancer or tumors, per studies.

Somehow I get the feeling that people take this to mean it is safe to use cellular phones. As if something is found to not cause cancer, then that the something cannot harm in any other way.

Similarly I have noted that, as an amateur radio operator as a hobby, that obtaining a license involves rote learning that the only effects of radio waves is heating of tissues. This has to be "learned" to be able to pass the licensing testing.

The main career i ended up spending my life on, employed life that is, was hands-on electronics technician work of many kinds, often engineering related. Lots of years of experience intensely in electronics equipment surrounds.

And in recent couple of decades, a scientific hobby exploring potentials of electro-herbalism, such as the Clark-zapper type equipment, on myself.

There is a huge variety of types of signals that can be received by the human body, as well as by different parts of the body. I have seen far more effects on my body, than could be caused by mere "heating," by electrical signals.

And cell phones up close can deliver other energies besides RF from the antenna. For example, inductors can produce local energy of a different type too, alternating-magnetic field type, limited to very close range but the brain is close range to a cell phone.

And my 15 years of electro-herbalism experiments intensely suggests the frequency and form of small electrical energies into to the human body, can cause very specific effects, unrelated to "heating." The ones long researched by amateur scientists in the field, consistently find they can be very helpful to the body; and the frequencies, waveforms and energy levels have long been explored as to which ones are useful. Safety of these appears be quite high.

But the cellular phone does not emit such energy signals. And therefore is a potentially somewhat different field of study. The point here is that different forms of electromagnetism, as well as different frequencies, and physical body input area, do appear, I believe, to make a significant difference in effects.

Some cell phones, held against the side of my head while making a call or receiving one, can sometimes give me a peculiar headache that takes a long time to go away, for one thing. Caused by mere heating? I wonder. Mere warming up part of my brain cells seems unlikely to do much different that normal heating by sunshine or hot shower, which do not cause such localized peculiar headaches. But delivery of resonant energy to small areas, could possibly cause some disruption, I think. Could be killing off some brain cells each time used; but we have trillions of them, therefore so what? How would one measure the killing off of a fraction of one's brain cells be detected and proven, I also wonder, considering that millions are "normally" lost all the time.

I often see girls and young women going around with a cell phone to their head, as they go down the street. If it is burning out bunches of their brain cells, how good a mother will they be able to be, to their children. Or employees somewhere. Or wife to a husband. How can such accumulating dysfunction be separated by normal human variability, I wonder.

And maybe no one cares. Especially the makers and sellers of the products; no disruption in sales appreciated by them.

Hundreds of millions of the cell phones are in use around the world; look how many popped up taking movies of the recent brutal killing of Gaddahfi, for example; they had to be already in their pockets beforehand. All those hundreds of millions of people are carrying out reality testing of possible harmful tests of cell phone use. They are not dropping dead on the spot. That indicates some level of safety: that they are not dropping dead on the spot, is the specific data measured. And the gadgets clearly are really liked by all those folks, around the world. I have one in my pocket too, though it is usually turned off. In my youth, the comic strip character Dick Tracy wore such a device on his wrist all the time, a videophone to talk to other people; it is a device long envisioned.

And yet, I occasionally feel some odd subtle energy striking me, that appears to be some radiated energy from elsewhere. For example, one of my kitchen windows cannot be walked past without getting a fairly noticeable headache on the side of my head facing the window; keeping the metal venetian blinds mostly closed, helps, but it takes a metal shield beyond them to better block whatever it is. And papering the inside of my front wood door with aluminum foil, works well to block the oddity of a different kind of pin-point spark-like "energy" sometimes hitting me through the closed wood door when certain vehicles rumble past when aligned with my door. Am probably more sensitive to this kind of thing, due to my background.

I think that there is a lot yet to be learned on these subjects. Unfortunately the main people with such money for research are only wanting new weaponry and surveillance technologies. Hopefully some research will be also done by unbiased benign folks, and the findings made available to everybody.

As with everything, such knowledge and technologies can be used to help or to harm, depending on the nature and intent of the user.

Yet, some things can be designed to be mostly useful for helpful things.

And inadvertent characteristics of things needs to be explored too; which are too often ignored in the cheap-as-possible rush to market. Exploring lateral possibilities is often not even considered in development work, especially in science and engineering. Even more so when the research path is strictly limited by upper business management toward getting maximum bang for the buck.

Did Gadahffi have long term lead poisoning?

A blog is a place where one can spout off about things that do not directly concern him or herself.

So, in that opportunity here, after more reading online about Muamar Gadaffi's recent past and even more recent demise accounts, in looking at his photos, I wonder, he looks like he has major lead poisoning, probably for a long time. An old bullet never removed, from original fighting?

Accounts of his last months as leader, reminds me of the erratic decisions and brutal orders of the Roman Empire rulers before its fall. Their case, lead poisoning by the lead water pipes and drinking utensils.

So I would suggest via this post, that no doubt will not get heard let alone headed, I would suggest that a bit of hair and some drawn blood from the corpse, for analysis of heavy metals poisoning, and possible other factors, be gotten. Some for contemporary technology formal chemical analysis; and other samples saved for the far more sophisticated analysis techniques being developed.

The effect I got from the Bad Karma of unnecessary killing of an animal

A friend has suggested I write a post here which is part of what i wrote her in response to her feedback re my post re the tigers etc, and asking about my former marriage, long ago. She has suggested labeling it "The effect I got, from the Bad Karma of unnecessary killing of an animal......" So, here it is:

"... Re the unfortunate rattlesnake, that happened - about 1968 - in Old Topanga Canyon, our home for 6 years until she decided it was time to ditch me, and my life was ruined for years after that, in my own self pity and despair. I threw away a potential career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for starters. However, I slowly have learned how to function as a lone Aspy over the decades since then, living without a "normal" woman to deal with the intracies of social world existence.

http://www.escalatorhi.com/PhotoStories/905otcr.html

http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-hope-they-save-those-rare-zoo-bengal_20.html

Recalling that incident of the tragic rattlesnake's killing, I now have also recalled another item that seems related: the snake symbolizes one's R-Complex (short and polite for the "Reptilian-Complex" part of our brains), the part that deals with the physical world; the next rainy season, in the very place where I killed the snake, in the middle of the stormy night, the side of the mountain in back of the house collapsed and smashed in the house, mashing in the 20 foot long wall, and we had to abandon the home in the dark and raging pouring storm, phone, electricity, water all already torn out, across the then-footbridge to escape, only to find the road had been washed out in front of us and a huge tree had fallen behind us, so we could not leave.

So be careful, do not offend your R-Complex."

There has got to be the responsibility for the big picture

The defeat in Congress of the plan to up the taxes of the super-wealthy, to pay for creation of some jobs that the super-wealthy did not create from their vast surpluses, is the result of some reality-testing now done. Attempting to comprehend what is going on, my first thought is that President Obama is, and has been, responding to the situations as he finds them in his job, that he expects law makers to be as rational as judges, and that is his skill, to plead his client's case. In this case, his client is the people of the United States.

An insight I had - urging this post be written - is that his rational lawyer mind is not having to deal with the fairly rational field of lawyers and judges, but instead with the ruffians who originally create the situations that then require court scenes to sort of fix. He is thinking he is dealing with rational lawyers but really is dealing with gangsters instead, and he does not seem to realize it.

He does get the part about the game of rival political parties, the part where it is important to each side that they "win." Nevermind what the other effects will be, which in normal sports is just who has the ball, who gets the trophy, who gets the hoorahs. It is a mindset. It is not completely appropriate to the governing of a nation, where the fate of hundreds of millions of people are at stake.

The GOP uses its banner that says that all jobs must be created by private business, period. They apparently are blind to the fact that private business has had the opportunity to do that all along, still has the opportunity right now, and yet has not done so, is not doing so. Those are the reality test's results. How cannot they see the fallacy in their claim? Most likely they don't care, they just want back in the driver's seat, a power-craving phenomenon.

Perhaps they are suggesting that private industry moguls are just sitting on the needed jobs, held hostage but will open them up if the GOP wins. Or maybe expect the desperate voters will hope so, and put them back in the office, so they can do the 2000-2008 thing again. (Are we ready for spectacular excuses to go to big war again?)

And, the scenario is that where private business controls things, there is a kind of class system going on, the owners and managers, vs the working class.

I was a member of that working class for the almost 45 years of my employment working for a huge number of companies. I have seen the patterns. I see little reason they have or will change soon. So I have basis for what I babble about here, as if someone else will hear.

Most of that work was done for private business, although some of the early years, nine of them, were for the federal civil service. So I have seen lots of variety. Even the civil service provided variety for me: I trod the deserts helping survey land and objects on that land; I worked as a museum technician, helping prepare displays; I operated missile testing equipment; I maintained complex electronic equipment. Private industry employment only provided electronics high-tech work for me, measuring, testing, building, debugging, making things work; yet in a wide variety too.

Owners and managers got in their positions generally because they had the urge to control other people, and had talent and opportunity to do so. The others, the working-class like myself, were willing to let others do the planning and provide pay for doing whatever their boss told them to do, then the worker could go home and live their own life until going back to work the next day. It was a system that worked, although rarely led to the full potential of people be applied to the full needs of the nation. It all was sort of happenstance, whatever goods and services that some owners thought up that would make them some money. Not fill the needs of the nation in a larger world; had no interest nor attention in doing that. Not their responsibility. It was the government that had the responsibility for the bigger picture, and strove to fill in the cracks in what was needed to enable the nation to work as a whole.

In the GOP plan, it appears that they assume that this would all would magically change, that business people would somehow start automatically filling in all the cracks in operating a nation, even though they have never voluntarily done so in the past.

Maybe the GOP has some secret formula to resolve all this, kept in hiding. (Maybe it is that they themselves plan to rule over all, forcing everybody in the nation to beg them as individuals to do favors and work for pay, so they can survive. Bullies have those instincts to force those situations, and it works well for them.)

There is one kind of scenario where this scenario seems to work, in some circumstances. We currently have several large "religious" groups who tend to have the larger picture of enabling their males to breed faster than other group's males, and the thusly growing larger voting population gets them into office eventually. These "religious" organizations have the intent and expertise for helping their members prosper, that the organization itself prospers as a result, and reproduces faster. What if the whole nation were to be declared all members of one of these "religious fundamentalist" groups? Would they then apply those impressive chains of assists to get all the people in the nation to usefully work, considering the whole nation as the system needing assistance in prospering? At present, such organizations depend on prospering by taking from the larger non-member group in which they exist, the nation. If they were in control of the whole nation, they would possibly then see the whole world as the larger group from which to extract goodies - and of course extra women so that the in-group of the "religion" can reproduce faster - the root motive for it all, most likely, when all the fluff and layers are peeled off. To solve a problem accurately, one needs to first define it accurately. Or one can merely look at a little piece of the problem and seem to solve it, job done.

But in the upcoming situation, it looks to me like the problem needs more clearly defining, or it will just get messier as a result of efforts to fix things. And, that can provide lots of continual conflict that provides the drama that people seem to crave.

Do I want it to get more drama, messier? There is a balance between colorful interesting events ongoing in my life, vs the neat and predictable gray-suited stiff walking lock-step mode of life.

The kind of drama I would like is that of scientific discovery and comprehension, responsible care of our planet's ecosystem that gave us life, and reaching out to the lifeless vast areas of space to which we can bring life, and get living room and resources aplenty in return.

But the current drama is of the type of "who does what to whom." Much too much so. It appears that is because that is all they know how to do. The responsibility for the people and the world is mostly missing in it all. The responsibility seems to be of my family prospering at the expense of your family fading away as a result, the "who does what to whom" kind of thing.

We don't have to do that. We have a choice in the kind of drama we experience. A small part of that is in the political process, who we vote for to put into office. We can hope that those voted for have better capability and knowledge and good-will to do the job better than we ourselves could do. This can get to become a sport game playing activity, much as is tying our country's progress up in knots lately.

Could we somehow start looking at the big picture of America - and America in the larger world at times - and see all the needs needing filled, and arrange private business to get all the pieces, every one, done? Congress paid NASA to pay prime contractors and sub-contractors to build and operate the Moon landings. Private industry generally would not have done that, no big profit from selling a few moon rocks acquired as a result; no reason to go to the Moon, nevermind the Soviets' doings. But private industry did get the pieces done, big and small; yet were paid by the federal government from taxes the people of the nation paid to have it all get done, no missing pieces.

There has got to be the responsibility for the big picture.

I hope they save those rare zoo Bengal tiger's DNA and others' too

The news says that fifty rare animals were gunned down in the past 24 hours, including eighteen rare endangered Bengal tigers. Here in the United States of America; not in some far away jungle warfare nation.

The sub-stories of the event appear to be very complex and surely tell a lot about human psychology. A huge amount can be deduced from reading the various news stories about it. I resist pointing out some obvious ones, about the assumptions made and declared truth and justification for the shooting frenzy.

A lot that many would probably not want to be exposed.

It seems to me that it would be valuable to document as much of that as possible, in unbiased unemotional terms, merely tell it like it was. If the data could be obtained, that is; most involved would be defending their actions; and probably in afterthought, defending their actions to their own selves.

(I live with a similar memory, of killing a large rattlesnake merely because it might have become a danger to others. I told my wife about seeing it, she said kill it. Is that justification? I did not think I could capture it for sure, for transporting to the wilderness. The critter was not being threatening, and was just moving along in plain sight even though it could have withdrawn to safety; it did not fear me nor was going to harm me. But I took a shovel and killed it, and it began to look alarmed by my lack of friendliness just before I struck. It haunts me still. Its presence coming from under our canyon house explained the cessation of rodent sounds in the area above the room, rodents that could have munched through wiring and caused great damage; the rattlesnake had done us a favor and was headed home. It was one of those "might have become a danger to someone" justification things.)

Such a massive event probably will never happen again; and thus could be valuable learning lessons about human behavior. Some of those lessons I suspect we don't want to know. Yet without the knowledge, how can we learn to not repeat them, when the chips are down in some other kind of unexpected spectacular event? And those will surely happen, as they have throughout history. If they had been documented and analyzed and taught from the previous episodes, perhaps those zoo-fed and raised non-hunting rare animals would still be alive today. Maybe even their owner too, although I can see why the law enforcement would have considered him a potential loose cannon, and have put the screws to him till he broke. Did the news folks notice that the zoo owner did not take his gun and wipe out a bunch of semi-random people, like seems common in the news these days, like in Seal Beach a couple of weeks ago or in Tucson? Give the guy some credit. Considering the scenario of place, he even seemed to be offering his remains to feed his cherished lions and tigers even though he no longer had money to feed them anymore, apparently, freshly out of prison. And freshly out from being caged behind prison bars for a year, what did he see the kind of life of his cherished exotic animal collection, there behind bars, unable to run free and experience life, just as he had no longer been free to fly airplanes, race boats, ride motorcycles?

And those freed lions and tigers, did they give any officer or bystander even a tiny scratch of injury? Did any of the dozens of them that were being gunned down, put up resistance? I doubt it; they were used to people bringing them food and admiring them, and now were probably quite puzzled as to what was going on.

And yet, such large feline predators loose in the night growing hungry and unpredictably baffled about what was going on and what to do about it, would have been a heavy responsibility to those supposedly protecting life and property. And although they did not have the knowledge - nor equipment, most likely - for how to safely capture such critters even in the daylight; but they did have the knowledge of how to use high powered guns to easily kill without risk to themselves.

What was Right and what was Wrong, is something I cannot judge from here. Most likely it was all just interplay of forces and situations. And surely we could learn from those forces and situations, and decisions and actions that happened for real. If all were documented without bias nor as part of "justice" preparations.

Could that be done? I doubt it, considering the probable professional psychology of those involved. So humanity is doomed to repeat lessons not learned. This time, humanity seems to have "won" but in the bigger picture, maybe not so certain.

At the very least, I hope that those animals will all quickly have tissue samples saved in 95% Ethanol and some curated by nitrogen freezing, so that given future technological advances, their DNA could maybe some day be restored to the dwindling pool of DNA of their kind. Especially of the Bengal tigers; those gunned down represent over 1% of the present entire world population of them.

Part of why this is "pushing my buttons" is because of my volunteering in natural history museum settings. Such as in a marine biodiversity processing center for a couple of years, curating specimens in ethanol. Yet also when one historical society discovered I was a volunteer both with them and at the major natural history museum of the area, I was given copies of old news articles, and was asked to see if I could get a grizzly's skin back to those who claimed it. Totally out of my arena of volunteer work, but I did learn what I could about it.

An old newspaper photo showed a lean & mean looking mustached man holding a rifle, next to a dead grizzly bear. He had killed it after he had set a bear trap chained to a heavy log, which had caught the bear and thus could not go anywhere nor attack anyone. It was titled the last grizzly bear was now killed ... nevermind that the grizzly bear is the animal on the state flag. Big hero and celebration feeding all the neighborhood bear meat barbeque in the town park. (A park I was quite familiar with, many decades later, near my apartment.) The grizzly bear's head and skin were given to the natural history museum. The museum then sent the bear's skull to experts at Berkley, who advised that it was not a species of grizzly that had ever lived anywhere in that part of the state; it had come from far north. It was quietly decided that the bear had escaped from the Los Angeles Zoo, and was wandering around foraging on the landscape, lacking a zookeeper to feed it recently, a few tens of miles from where it was caught and killed; the zoo was reported to have not fully solved the problem of containing all its charges at the time.

How similar the psychology and events. But the older story had gotten covered up a lot. And clearly the gun toters in the current news article had not learned the lesson; most likely never heard about it. "When will we ever learn?" Maybe when we get lots stronger and even far more wiser than strong.

Tar sands, pipelines, and big-picture decisions

The Sierra Club is having a campaign to stop the oil pipeline from Canada down to refineries here in the US; the complaint is partly about the environmentally-damaging source from tar sands, too. (Or would we like fracking contamination of our drinking water?)

Normally I would stand with environmental protection concerns. But after much thought about the bigger picture, on this one I abstain from the vote of participation. It is the bigger picture that must be consulted.

The reasoning is as follows:

We Americans have built our lifestyles around cars and trucks. This consumes an incredible amount of oil for the energy to propel these vehicles, that we send huge amounts of money overseas to get more oil, tens of billions per year.

Much of my life I too consumed gasoline in my cars as if it were in endless supply and of our own produce. But nowadays, people know better, and have the choice to moderate their petrochemical fuel consumption.

But they generally choose not to. Instead of buying their teenagers bicycles to use to go to school, the soccer moms fire up the family SUV to take them to school and bring them back in style. To go get a couple items to finish off dinner prep, again fire up the SUV or other gas hog vehicle to make the trip there and back, the foreign-bought fuel pushing the multi-thousand-pound vehicle to grocery and back, with the half pound of grocery food treasure. The local Walmart has a huge supply of bicycles for sale, along with basic supplies like helmets. But when I put on my backpack and bicycle to Walmart to get groceries and supplies, mine is usually the only bicycle parked on the parking rack there at the store.

Point is, we Americans could be doing lots more to reduce our oil consumption, yet we are not doing that. We still live it up, burn the gas, to heck with the nation and world problem it makes.

Thus we need more and more oil to feed this problem. There are security problems about the supply from overseas, as was so well experienced in the gas lines during the gs shortages of the early 1970's. Could happen again, even lots worse.

We have a better chance of protecting a pipeline from Canada to refineries in Texas, than to guarantee endless oil from overseas.

We have not been able to wean ourselves from excessive use of oil for energy, despite being aware of the problem for decades. Sure, it is hard to change ones ways, even a little bit. But life is ever changing; we constantly adapt. But to the energy problem, we just have not adapted.

Even lots of politicians say there really is no oil supply problem, no CO2 building up in the atmosphere due to our industrial civilization, altering the basic energy balance from the Sun. It wasn't taught them in school; therefore it does not exist. It is all a plot by the politicians on the other side of the ball court.

America must have a continuous supply of energy, and lots of it. We are making some success such as some solar panels up and a few wind turbines up, but we are stuck on the notion that it has to be cheaper to get energy from wind and solar, before we will abandon coal and oil as our primary source of energy. Energy to run our factories and light our homes and swirl our washing machines. The idea of building wind power infrastructure when it is in competition with other energy sources, is ridiculous to those who do not comprehend that even some energy from local sources is better than none, when things have gone sour.

Can we continue to guarantee that things do not go sour on us re invasion by another country, simply by reminding them that we have enough nukes to destroy all life on earth including them? Well, we cringe that North Korea or Iran may make a nuke or two, that we don't control. Hardly enough to destroy the world like we can do, but enough to make a terrible mess of a big city or two, or vaporize one of our great aircraft carriers at a strategic moment. Yet perhaps the bigger risk is that we will be conquered by starving us of critical supplies, and energy is the most obvious one. All energy self-sufficiency we can arrange as fast as possible, is a better protection than waving our world-destroying pile of nukes, to guarantee we get enough energy to power our lives.

It is abundantly proven that we cannot curb our demand for petrochemical energy sources, in great quantity. It is a choice thing, as pointed out. Therefore we need to do second-best, and that appears to involve more secure and diverse petrochemical sources, such as the Canadian tar sands pipeline.

Actually it is "third best" in my opinion. We could have already solved this energy problem, if we had taken on the task of building the Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit project, well outlined back in 1989, plenty of time to have developed it and have it operational used to lift construction materials to be building abundant Solar Power Satellites beaming totally clean electrical energy to America, in quantities enough to start shutting down coal fired power plants by now. (Sure, call me a crank, a loner, lots of bad names, reaffirming the rightness of business as usual. I just mention it here, as it rightfully belongs in the energy picture. Period.) And sure, wind turbines ans solar panels on the ground, are pitifully weak compared to the enormous energy demands of the industrialized world. This KESTS to GEO transportation system and the SPS energy sources could have well solved the problem, but it was not in the hands of the wealthy and powerful energy producers, so it was suppressed and had no chance to be done by now. And sure, they will eventually take the project over as if totally their own, when petrochemical sources peter out. Is lots easier to do that control game. But lots of suffering for humanity has to happen first, in the profit-controlled scenario.

Anyway my tirade about "KESTS to GEO" over, back to the current apparent scenario. We need petrochemical energy for our cars and trucks. They do not go very well without gas in them. Compromises need to be made. We chose not to go the KESTS to GEO solar satellite power route. We have done foot-dragging re the wind turbine and solar panel route for even a significant share of the energy needs. We are stuck with petrochemicals as our energy primary source, for a long time.

A pipeline from Canada's tar sands to our Texas refineries, seems a more secure supply route for a significant supply of our petrochemicals to move our cars around back and forth to our jobs and back home.

Beside the offshore oil sources, particularly in the middle-eastern areas, we are dependent on lots of oil pumped from ocean oil rig sites. In a big conflict, do you realize what happens if the other nation(s) use subs to chop those oil lines up from the ocean bottom, with no chance to shut their blowout protection system? The environmental disaster would be incredible, but right now since we are talking about fuel for our cars nevermind the environmental consequences, think of all that oil not getting to our refineries so that soccer-mom can drive little Suzie to school in the huge SUV?

Part of long term survival involves shifting from hand-to-mouth little-picture attention, to wider view big-picture attention in which our many little pictures all are all laced together.

America needs to have her greatness not so much on her ability to march off to war to save the world, but to save the world in other ways. Like, adequate clean energy to power our lives. Or if we continue to be unwilling to be part of the solution, at least not be so much a part of the problem.

The definition of forgiveness is giving up your just right to revenge

"The definition of forgiveness is giving up your just right to revenge."

Is the endless activity of tit for tat stoppable without this precept?

Yet I wonder, can a bully ever by retrained to serve as a useful member of civilization, without experiencing the pain he/she gives others. To discover that to bully means getting bullied right back, instantly. And therefore maybe figuring out that bullying is not the best mode of relating.

It may be too much to ask of bullies, to teach them to identify with others that can be hurt, and feel their pain as if his/her own, to see what it is like. (Hopefully to not sadistically want more of it, however, as some psychotic phenomenon.)

The taking of revenge seems to be instinctive effort to let the wanabe bullies be aware of the painful mess he/she can do, so as hopefully to later choose a more happy wholesome outcome for all concerned.

Yet clearly in practice, as in Israel-Palestine and Ireland-North-Ireland, the tit-for-tat just goes on and on. You hit me I hit you back. And then the other says and does the same thing back. Back and forth, on and on. Is the lesson being learned, to not hit "me"? Apparently not.

(I resist repeating here, the ancient mammalian archetype of the two stags, battling each other with their horns to the death, that only one of them will have the two does to breed; instead of each having one doe to breed, as 50-50 implies.)

The technique of applying "the definition of forgiveness is giving up your just right to revenge" has been brought and shown to be effective several times in the progress of civilization. It can work.

Yet it is also demonstrable that a bully will use you as a doormat on and on without end, unless something stops him/her from doing it. Forgiveness, turning the other cheek, does not always get the bully to lay off.

But it does keep oneself from adding to the wrongs being done, the bad karma being made. So this forgiveness may not be part of the solution; but it is preventing oneself from becoming part of the problem.

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However, there is more. What appears to be a new tool for ending this endless Hatfield-McCoy phenomenon that people sometimes choose to play, appeared quietly about a dozen years ago and has been getting the field testing done ever since. Although its intent is not to relieve the impasse of feuds, it may incidentally be able to resolve the problem.

It goes by the simple name of "Emotional Freedom Technique," abbreviated "EFT." It is a technique for giving a person emotional freedom so as to clear trauma's energy patterns from the person.

The scientific principles by which it works have yet to be acknowledged; but that it works and works very well, has been proven tens of thousands of times in field testing; oneself can test it by following a simple procedure. The problem is, that it's theory of operation involves an ancient understanding of the human being, that is not yet acknowledged by today's cadaver-measured medical system's understanding of the human being. It requires a plain let's see if it works attitude, to discover its truth for oneself. Generally it involves calling up a trauma in memory and holding it there while tapping a few times on a few points on the face and upper body, such as the inner eyebrow point, the outer edge of the eye socket, under the eye, between the nose and upper lip, between the lower lip and chin, on the hollows below center of the collar bone, a few inches under the left arm's location, the top of the head and the edge of the hand. Then notice the intensity of the trauma's distressing energy; it normally has reduced way down, perhaps no longer can be found at all in the memory of the event. Simple to do, yet profound in what it does.

As for EFT's potential involvement in resolving tit-for-tat messing around, it can be pointed out that the result of doing EFT on oneself or on others, is that the event's memory remains quite clear, but the trauma's disruptive energy is so thoroughly gone that it often is not even remembered as ever existing. There is no vision nor energy for driving oneself to take revenge. Other far more effective paths for solutions can then be sought and found. The Hatfield-McCoy tit-for-tat knee-jerk game is seen for what it is; and much more pleasant options are far more interesting than making more mess.

The Emotional Freedom Technique uses the hypothesis that people have several specific internal energy flow systems, and those systems get disrupted by trauma that locks in those disruptions, to forever after disrupt the person. Bullies use the technique of beating up on someone once, to form a trauma imprint that the injured person must thereafter obey the bully, fantasizing the traumatic disruption pattern would be repeated physically if ever not obeying the bully. The EFT protocol involves calling up the trauma in memory and holding it in one's attention, while tapping a few times on each of the end-points of those energy flows, thus balancing one's energy flows; and the trauma pattern's disruption is then gone. It does not matter if one agrees to the energy-flow hypothesis; the EFT protocol just works, regardless of the belief system.

Now, those who use bully techniques in today's world are not just the ones using bombs and guns, or being dictatorial tyrants in the Middle-Eastern countries, or religious sect obedient fanatics. There is a hierarchy of bullying, and sometimes can be reflected in parts of the corporate or political org chart. Thus to let EFT erase all that buildup of trauma enforcing chain of obedience, is probably not appreciated by the powers-that-be, since it might undercut all their years of clever abusive fighting to get to the top. Thus EFT gets suppressed from general awareness; and all then continues to work as before, business as usual, top dogs stay on top.

Nonetheless, EFT remains a potential game-changer, in the phenomenon of the otherwise probably endless tit-for-tat revenge game that we as humans have the instinctive option to play. We have another option besides that of saying "the buck stops here" in the game of tit-for-tat abuse, by applying "the definition of forgiveness is giving up your just right to revenge." We now also can use EFT's protocol to neutralize the energy that compels us to seek revengeful activity, or even to continue to monsterize the ones making the most recent tit-for-tat move. We can see the world clearly, at long last, for what it is. And make our decisions from that wonderous place. We can choose to no longer be part of the problem, and to instead be part of a real solution, since we are no longer dancing endlessly to the tune of the trauma.

And then perhaps becoming a humanity, more worthy of the name.

It is an entertaining hobby instead of a business territory challenge

The purpose of building these instruments and doing the experiments as an amateur scientist, sometimes needs clarifying. First, it needs to be said that it is not to challenge the authority of standard health practice business territory, nor to challenge health regulatory agency territory. Its purpose is to entertain the amateur scientist, the hobby arena researcher; much as amateur astronomers peer through their telescopes at the sky sometimes, to see what they find and to practice their ability to do reality testing for themselves, using their own equipment.

Some people like to go hunting, for their entertainment; and sometimes bring back some food for the table, another benefit besides amusing themselves. Some people like to go out in the football field and bash into each other, mock squabbling over the location of the football, and they get benefits of exercise and social interaction, as well as showing off in front of the girls who are looking for mates; thus also additional benefit to the players besides the basic entertainment value of doing the sport. And similarly, some people like to explore the huge arena of nature both inside and outside, including experimenting in what might be called electro-herbalism or electro-wellness, as I sometimes do to amuse myself; and yet, sometimes it also, like the hunter that bags food for dinner as an added benefit, I often find my wellness is improved by my entertaining hobby.

For example, I was up in wee hours this morning using my new experimental APZ zapper, since I was continuing to worsen from the surprising respiratory distress that was caused yesterday by sanding some very weathered old wood and applying an unfamiliar sealer to it, in the garage. The 2 AM start of the frontal-headache phenomenon, as well as much of the lung congestion, has abated as of getting up this morning, but there is still fluid flowing up from the lungs now, some tightness of breathing but part of it seems to be long term dusty struggle in this house. I had done two of the standard 30 KHz 7 minute long zaps via wet paper towel covered copper tube handholds, and also used my pre-recorded audio-frequency control tracks when the APZ was in the audio-frequency-controlled mode, using "sinusitis_frontalis" and "asthma" signal sets for a few minutes. Anyway, call it placebo or whatever, it appears to be helping adequately - or maybe it just went away by itself, who knows; yet, whatever, it is a most welcome result. Both living room air cleaners have failed recently - and both failed while I was off shopping at Walmart - so there is the chronic nighttime "dust' problem maybe figuring into it too. The computer room and bedroom still have working air cleaners, however.

I was reading an article yesterday saying that a formal scientific test of the medical drugs given to PTSD veterans was found to be no better than placebos given the test subjects. That also goes along with an article I had read maybe a year ago, that the majority of "standard medical practice" has never been subjected to formal double-blind scientific testing. Yet it is still utilized, since that is what they were trained to do and are required to do in their profession. For example, doctors have long given antibiotic shots and pills to patients who clearly only have a virus infection, the doctor knowing the antibiotic is not effective re the virus, but also knowing the patient expects the antibiotic and it will provide a placebo effect that clearly helps the patient get well faster.

Placebo effect has its limits, however. As a wise man said a couple millennia ago, "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his height?" His point is well made, that placebo effect or declaration works only so far. There are "real" effects of some things.

Yet in the broader sense, whatever works in the desired way, is useful. Whether placebo or non-placebo effect, does not matter much. Getting the job done, does matter. And so far, my new type zapper - the APZ - seems to be useful to me.

And finding out those effects, entertains me. It is not just my parakeets who need entertaining, to improve the quality of their life; but also myself.

And like amateur astronomy, there is a lot to the subject matter that needs to be learned, and equipment made or purchased, to carry out the discovery of what works, what is real for the amateur scientist at the time. Can the rings of Saturn really be seen, using one's telescope, on a given night looking in a very specific direction in the sky? Similarly, the discovery of "what works" and "what experiment does what, if anything" in oneself by use of the APZ type zapper, involves learning lots about physiology and awareness as well as instrumentation.

I am also dimly aware that most people have no idea what "electro-wellness" could mean. The severe electrical shock therapy that is used on some deranged mental patients? Frankensteinian hookup to lightening bolts to revive life? Sticking one's fingers into the wall power sockets? All sorts of goofy things. To tell people that it is delivering tiny electrical currents to one's body through handholds, the signals from about nine volts peak in the form of pulsed on-and-off waveforms at specific frequencies, to explore by reality-testing for potential wellness benefits to oneself, as an amateur scientist, too often just gets a glassy-eyed reaction; like, maybe, they are still thinking of high voltage severe shock therapy for the deranged.

For some people, like myself, it is lots more entertaining to explore this, than it is to go hunt game in the wilderness; although I like to go hiking in the wilderness. And, just as the hunter who bags a rabbit or a buck in the self-entertaining sport of hunting also sometimes benefits his dinner table fare, is not challenging the commercial feedlot businesses nor grocery store chain business territories; so also are the findings of the useful protocols of my use of the Audio Programmed Zapper are not for the purpose of challenging the business territories of the standard medical business system.

(Eventually however, who knows, my anecdotal findings might ultimately help lead to some business finding some circumstance where it is more profitable to utilize similar equipment and protocols, than to follow its previous business path - and the regulatory agencies similarly agree to benefit for American economical well-being. Might be; who knows?)

Apparently that needs to be said.

Medicare, the Hulda Clark type zapper, and the American economy

I occasionally experience some ill-concealed hostility from otherwise intelligent people, about my interest in "alternative" health protocols, and that I have had lots of success with them.

Why would I bother with such things, since I have medicare to cover conventional medical costs, now being officially retired?

While I have great respect for the business-as-usual medical system, I also have lived through experiences that encourage some significant skepticism in its infallibility.

Starting when I was a toddler: several times I almost died from asthma. I remember it well, the experience of there being nothing in all life except to push a little space in my lungs, then drag a tiny bit of air in there, then with great effort push it out to make a little space, then drag a little air into that lung space, over and over again. Occupying all of my awareness, attention, and effort, on and on.

Meanwhile the doctors were saying that asthma was all in the head, a psychological problem, not doctor's problem. And offered no help. My mother had asthma too. My dad struggled then, as later in much of his working life, to help us.

I now find it hard to believe that a toddler, child, youth could experience asthma as a psychological, not medical, problem, per official authoritative doctor proclamation. But that is what the business-as-usual medical system declared back then, in the 1940's, proclaimed about my intermittent struggles with the gasping thing that demanded I stop and do nothing but deal with the gasping for air, whenever it struck.

Lots of people were dying of asthma, year after year. The business-as-usual medical system finally pulled its arrogant nose down out of the air and found that adrenaline shots would provide relief of a severe asthma attack. My dad got used to giving us shots, when the asthma got too bad, which seems to me happened a couple times a month, back them. It was wonderful, to be able to breathe easily again. For awhile.

The asthma seemed somewhat related to allergies, as well as to having done vigorous exercise in the presence of certain airborne substances. The connection with wet moldy hay in season, along with bermuda grass molds, was apparent. It was not for years that it was discovered that the kapok being used in place of cotton during WWII years for stuffing in mattresses and pillows, could cause severe asthma; simply encasing the mattresses and pillows in plastic well sealed, brought relief for breathing at night, once that was discovered. I don't know who had discovered that, was it some independent observant experimenter, or the business-as-usual medical system. Very welcome, whatever.

Asthma had been found to be place-dependent to some extent. So my father set his career course to find jobs in places that my mother and I might be free of asthma. This involved lots of motels to live in, as we tested out place after place; when the kapok thing was announced, each motel room's mattress and pillows got sealed by my mother, and that indeed helped a lot.

Then business-as-usual medicine discovered epinephrine, and sold it for use in a squeeze nebulizer from which I inhaled, when asthma was grabbing me as a youth. Worked wonders for me, but could only be used a couple times a day at most. That kept me going through high school years. I think present-day puff inhalers do the same thing, but easier.

Fortunately I no longer struggle with asthma. But I do remember the various attitudes of the business-as-usual medical systems along the way; and it suggests that things are no different nowadays.

I am thankful for those medical advances that made my life continuance possible, in critical years of my youth. And for medical advances since then. Great stuff.

But I also remember that the business-as-usual medical system made a long series of declarations about reality that proved wrong later. Fortunately they were able to change their stance, although it might have been just due to making more money that way, along with fewer dead patients.

I also remember in the early 1950's, when it was found that my parents and I carried the amoebic dysentery, symptom-free, acquired during the months we lived in Mexico City, while dad worked to help eradicate the foot-and-mouth disease problem in Mexico that was headed north to America. The business-as-usual medical system declared they knew all health things, and gave each of us enough arsenic to kill us four times over, except in somewhat smaller doses stretched over two weeks, to kill the amoebas in our intestines but not quite kill us too.

Now we know that arsenic is a carcinogen, as well as a deadly poison. Giving it to somebody as a medicine is unthinkable now. But the arrogant we-know-all medical experts in the early 1950's considered arsenic the good thing to give people. And to their credit, it worked - nevermind the side effects later.

Kind of like way back when they gave people with syphilis mercury to cure it. Really, they did. Biologically-bound mercury. A banned substance now.

In fact, the thimerosal biologically-bound mercury was abundantly used in my youth, swabbed all over my skin whenever I got scrapes or cuts. Great OTC disinfectant, merthiolate. Was used in vaccines too, to keep the stuff from decomposing in storage.

Always, it was the all-knowing business-as-usual medical system's protocols.

So do I think that magically today's business-as-usual medical system knows all the answers, or would use answers that made them less money?

I have some skepticism about it.

The toddler gasping within an inch of his life, many times, while the arrogant doctors declaring that "it was all in the head," remembers. Too well. Almost dying, over and over again as a toddler and young child, makes an impression.

So in the early 1990's, as I was employed by a company who refused to provide health insurance, I began to look into herbal remedies. Homeopathic remedies too, a bit, although they were almost too mysterious and magical, yet with my strong engineering career experience record, the thing that counted was what actually worked. Start with theoretical educated best guesses, then get hands-on and figure out what made it actually work. I was especially competent at that.

Staying healthy became part of the same mindset. And without health insurance and with low pay - yet also very appreciated pay for a man well past the usual age for that employment - being of an ever curious nature, explored vitamins, herbs, and alternative health things, when I could sort of afford them.

The search was for what actually worked, for me. And it got interesting too, at times.

I have written in this blog before, about how I stumbled into Hulda Clark, PhD's, "zapper" device information, and got my very skeptical self to give it a long term safety test on myself. With no conscious thought that it could improve my health - I was already in fairly good heath as it was, I thought. And the many subsequent years and experiences that gradually got my skeptical scientific-engineering mind to grudgingly decide the zapper thing not only worked as declared by its inventor, Clark, but did it easily.

Now, at times when I mention the effectiveness of Clark's zapper technology to people who ought to be concerned with good health, particularly in emergency situations, I get the "uh-huh you crazy nut" response. I ponder the psychological state of mind that would produce that kind of response, and come up with some messy muck. But then I recall the skepticism I had for the zapper and related protocols, myself, 15 years ago. And what many opportunistic personal experiences that it took to convince me. Those folks have had none of that reality testing.

And sometimes their careers depend on the zapper not working: what if people in general could easily and cheaply take care of much of their own health at home, not needing the huge medical business-as-usual system to live healthily? Would be scary. I have been through several RIF's, layoffs, including when a whole field of people got laid off simultaneously by many companies. Tough times for those employees. One such experience was what got me into that electronics tech job at low pay with no health insurance, for example, in the mid-1980's.

But I keep reading about the huge medical costs here in America, ruining the economy. Political giving the boot to Medicare and Social Security.

I think there are people with heavy control issues involved in all that. But this blog post is not about that kind of thing.

Point maybe is that my findings over the past 15 years, anecdotal as they would be considered, were facts, reality test results, and very consistent. If placebo, they are very good placebos, very reliable as to effectiveness. Dare I compare to equivalent medical protocols in those instances? No. Am not quite that naive about the powers-that-be.

But it suggests that if people were given even the basic Clark-designed zapper for use at their homes, and gotten to use it correctly, the medical expenses of this nation would drop enormously. And the amount of sick leave taken would drop a lot, thus helping employers. Eventually Medicare would have little to cover thus of little expense to the country, and thus of no political contention anymore.

I won't bother trying to name the many expletives I would get applied to me by suggesting such a thing.

The one difference between that mindset, and mine back fifteen years ago starting to do a safety test of the zapper on myself, was that I was willing to see what actually happened, and was unbiased as to results that might be found. And strived to do the experiments accurately per Clark's writings about the new technology. That were even so surprising to the inventor, Hulda Clark, PhD.

But reality-testing is about more than just economical good health for America. It also is about the reactions to such a post as this one.