Miscellaneous Musings

The Callous Carbon Cycle

Some people still can not accept that use of fossil fuels contributes to global warming, or even that global warming is a reality.  They cite evidence of global climatic fluctuations caused by volcanic eruptions, changes in Earth's rotational axis, the timing and intensity of Sun flares and other effects through the eons of prehistory.

Climate scientists generally accept that all the above factors may occur but in addition to anthropogenic warming.. Climate is also influenced by natural cycles. One of these is the carbon cycle. Before the Carboniferous Period, (around 350 to 300 million years ago), the atmosphere held much more carbon dioxide (CO₂). It was warmer and wetter, with many rainstorms, conditions favoring plant growth. Plants need sunlight, CO₂ and moisture for successful photosynthesis. Over the Carboniferous Period trees and other plants grew and spread rapidly. When the trees died, many of their organic remains were  buried in dense layers that gradually became compressed and changed into fossil fuels.

Over the same 500 million years, CO₂ in the atmosphere declined as it was trapped in the dead plants. The oxygen in our atmosphere derives from photosynthesis. Mostly it comes from microscopic plants in the oceans, but it also comes from plants and forests on land. As CO₂  decreased the oxygen content increased and surface temperature declined. Early Carboniferous Period fossils are confined to small land animals and winged insects, but larger animal fossils occur near the end of the Period. (Marine life had existed for nearly three billion years already).

 Coal was the first major fossil fuel used, then oil then natural gas. We use them all without considering the carbon cycle. An old truism in science was that elements cannot be created or destroyed. That was minimally changed by Einstein and the nuclear age.. It does not impact the carbon cycle, so every time we use a fossil fuel, we should be aware that we are using some of the energy stored by plants in the Carboniferous Period, we release the CO₂ they trapped and the surface temperature rises; whether we like it or not, it is not a socialist plot.

Between a rock and…         

Politicians generally pass the laws their voters and backers want and rarely pass laws their voters and backers don't want. Sometimes an unpopular bill may slip through due to voter ignorance or apathy. Powerful corporations adversely affected by a proposed law generally mount a campaign by lobbyists and others to defeat it and jeopardize re-election of politicians who support it, so unpopular decisions are shelved.

Many scientists believe human activity is bringing Earth rapidly to a Global Warming tipping point. Beyond that date, our planet will not be able to reverse rising average temperatures. In a scorched Earth all biota, including humans, will die. While politicians and others say the tipping point is a long time ahead, more recent estimates make it less than 20 years away. Our puny nods to “Green activity” bear little relationship to really unpopular decisions needed by every country in the world in the near future to save humankind. Here is a list:

1. Encourage anything that reduces the total human population. Too many people is the underlying cause of all the other problems. Oppose all religious ideology against birth control; reward childless families; promote abortion and birth control and even euthanasia. The worst polluters are developed countries, so they are the ones in greatest need of population reduction.

2. Implement and strenuously police a system of fee and dividend, so less-polluting energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, wave can compete economically with more-polluting fossil fuels. Reward non-polluting energy initiatives.  

3. Reduce use of fossil fuels and other polluting fuels (e.g. wood burning) by taxation. Tax heavily pleasure or convenience travel by car, aircraft and cruise ships. Convert buses, trucks and trains to run on non-polluting fuels. Use more nuclear energy to power ships. 

4. Reduce electricity use and generation. Close the most polluting power stations. As the cost of electricity rises, encourage a less power-dependent economy. Encourage home-owners to install solar or wind generator systems to make their homes energy neutral or even to sell energy to the grid, as is done in Germany.  

5. Methane is a much more effective global warmer than carbon dioxide on a weight to weight basis. It is burped up in huge amounts by cattle. To reduce the methane people should eat less meat and dairy products.

These drastic changes require a worldwide move to a simpler agrarian economy, impossible with a multiplicity of democratically elected governments. With a threat to the survival of all humankind a world organization with totalitarian powers is needed. A pandemic that eliminated 50% or more of the world’s human population is arguably a gruesome but efficient way to save humanity from its rush toward destruction. Preferential thinning of richer countries would reduce the carbon footprint more than famine or ebola-like pandemics of the poor, as poor people usually live in minimally polluting countries. 

Speculations about basal layer stem cells. How they help

to keep the integument intact and help wound healing.

Introduction

Objects carrying similar electric charges repel each other and those carrying opposite charges attract each other. The human body is electrically charged. This actuates the touch screen of a smart phone or may cause a mild shock when you touch a metallic object on a dry day.

Every live cell has a transmembrane potential. Its outside has a net negative charge but its inside is even more negative. Potassium ions are concentrated inside the cell’s membrane and the extracellular fluid outside is richer in sodium ions. When the electric equilibrium of tissue cells is disturbed an ion current can be initiated.

The epidermis has a single thickness of basal layer cells that divide to produce new keratinocytes. It also has four other layers of varying thickness (five layers on the palms and soles). The outer layer consists of dead and keratinized cells. The inner or basal layer is attached to the basal lamina of the dermis.

The basal lamina has at least two layers, the lamina lucida and lamina densa. Membranes of basal cells are attached to the lamina lucida by hemidesmosomes and possibly other particles, but electro-repelled by the electronegative lamina densa.

Speculations about bioelectric influences on basal cells

1.   The lamina densa of the basal lamina is strongly electronegative, so it repels some of the motile electronegative molecules that normally reside on the basal membranes of basal cells to move from the basal area to the lateral area of basolateral membranes.

2.    This applies negative to negative repulsion against the transmembrane linkers (integrin and cadherin) and the basal edges of neighboring basal layer cells start to separate.

3.    The homeostatic response by basal cells to the loss of charged particles from their basal membranes is to replace them. To accomplish this the basal cells must be in the synthesis stage of their cell cycle.

4.    At equilibrium the basal membranes are repopulated with particles. The lateral membranes are overpopulated and neighboring basal cells are part separated. They are still joined at and below their tight junctions where the attracting forces of transmembrane linkers and gap junctions exceed the negative to negative repelling forces of encroaching particles.

5.    At equilibrium the basal cells are at G2 of the cell cycle. They are sensitive to electronic perturbation that separates adjacent cells farther apart and initiates mitosis.

 

 

Stimulus to maintain an intact skin surface

Living cells carry a net negative charge and at least some of this charge is likely to remain on dead and cornified keratinocytes. When they are lost from the cell surface, loss of this negative charge creates a tiny positive charge imbalance.

The charge imbalance creates a micro current. Over a period of hours or days the current adds to the negativity of the basolateral membrane of a nearby basal cell, forcing it to separate more from its neighbors and to enter mitosis.

The daughter cells of mitosis push into the next layer of the epidermis.

The push movement is transmitted through the epidermal layers until the lost cornified cells are replaced.

This terminates the micro current, the basal layer cell membranes return to equilibrium and basal layer cells cease mitosis.

Stimulus to wound healing

A wound causes a relatively huge positive charge at the wound site and sets up relatively huge wound currents and potential gradients.

The currents move anions radially and transversely from all round the wound and between epidermis cells toward the wound.

The charge imbalance causes a micro current to flow. Over a period of hours or days the current adds to the negativity of the basolateral membrane of some nearby basal cells, forcing them to separate more from their neighbors and to enter mitosis.

The new cells formed by mitosis are swept toward the wound along the potential gradient.

As the new cells help to repair the wound, they gradually reduce the positive charge of the wound and the wound current. When the current ends, the membranes of basal cells return to equilibrium and they cease mitosis.

Review

Basal layer cells at equilibrium are at G2 in their cell cycles. The lateral area of their basolateral membranes has been invaded by motile membrane surface molecules from the basal area. Negative/negative repulsion of encroaching particles has applied a separating force on neighbor cells. The transmembrane linkers and gap junctions hold them together.

In integument maintenance and wound healing, a tiny current brought a negatively-charged environment to the outer surface of their basolateral membranes. This extra negative to negative force eventually caused a minute increase in the separation of neighboring cells and this stimulated mitosis. The action was self-limiting, the new daughter cells eventually stopped the electric current that was stimulating their synthesis.

The mother basal cell after mitosis reverted to interphase or the synthesis stage of its cycle. It eventually reached G2 equilibrium, but its lateral membrane was minutely less attached to neighbors so it was minutely easier to initiate mitosis the next time it was stimulated.

Extrapolate the image of one basal cell to a tissue with millions of basal cells, each with its complex internal and transmembrane electric sensitivities. We now add sensitivity to minute external electric currents acting on some cells to stimulate them to mitosis over and over, each stimulus taking a relatively long time period (hours to days) and each stimulus lowering the stimulation threshold for the next mitosis of that cell.

Carcinogenesis as Aberrant Epidermal Mitosis

Extending the speculations about epidermal mitosis.

What happens if a basal cell is exposed to a continuous tiny current for months or years?

The cell moves from G2 to mitosis each time another link to a neighboring cell is broken by the action of an external micro-current, but each loss of a linkage makes the cell more easily stimulated to mitosis by the micro-current.

It is speculated that this leads to progressive loosening of neighbor to neighbor lateral bonds between basal layer cells and is related via ease of mitosis to malignant transformation. This mechanism may explain a number of less understood cancers such as carcinomas from non-healing wounds or burns, from sites of many years of abrasion (horse collars) and many other long term physical insults. It may also explain the cancer from asbestos fibers, which carry a permanent surface charge or zeta potential¹.

Beech J.A. “Bioelectric potential gradients may initiate cell cycling, ELF and zeta potential gradients may

mimic this effect”. Bioelectromagnetics 18: 341-348, 1997. 

Hickery Dickery Dock

Some nursery rhymes were written as satires of historic events, though it is hard to separate later speculations about their origins from actual verifiable origins. One such rhyme is Hickery, Dickery Dock. Its earliest publication, in Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (1744), had the opening line ‘Hickere, Dickere Dock’.

Tourist Guides in Dublin and historians elsewhere associate the Irish-born playwright Oliver Goldsmith with this nursery rhyme, although he was only 15 years old in Ireland when Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book was published in London. In this essay these claims are examined.

Young Goldsmith was clever but he was a party animal. His father was an Anglican priest. He sent Oliver to Trinity College, Dublin at age 15 to study theology but two years later he was expelled for a prank. After readmission he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. After more high living and partying he studied medicine but did not graduate. He moved to London in 1756.

To support his gambling and dissolute lifestyle in London Goldsmith worked as a hack writer, producing a huge output of booklets, essays and pamphlets mostly published anonymously. He also made a small income by illegally practicing medicine. Goldsmith was notorious for his wild ways, vicious practical jokes and jealous nature. His first successful publication was “An inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe”, published in 1759. The attention Goldsmith received after its publication caused jealousy among other Grub Street hack writers and he was viciously attacked by an article in the Gentleman’s Review.

Goldsmith and friends met together regularly as a debating society. Samuel Johnson was invited as a guest speaker and soon after they became good friends. Johnson was at that time the undisputed leader of London’s literati, his most important work being the first Dictionary of the English Language. Johnson’s father owned a bookshop, so as a precocious child Samuel probably read many books. He attended Litchfield Grammar School and spent one year at Pembroke College, Oxford before his money ran out.

On a visit to Birmingham in 1733 Johnson met an older man, Henry Porter, who was impressed by the young man and invited him home, where he met Henry’s wife Elizabeth. The Porters had a large home and Johnson was invited to stay as a guest. Shortly after, Henry died and less than two years after they first met Johnson married Elizabeth Porter. The London rumor mill assumed that Johnson cuckolded Henry Porter and had married his widow for her money.

After a failed attempt to start a private school, Johnson moved to London in 1737 and never saw his wife again, though they remained corresponding friends. He wanted to make a living as an author, and like Goldsmith, he started out as a hack writer. Twenty years later, after the Dictionary and many other publications Johnson’s leadership as a writer was established.

Johnson stood out in a crowd. He was fat, with a loud voice, florid complexion and a facial tic suggestive of Tourette’s Syndrome. He enjoyed company and many of his statements were recorded by others. With his friend, Joshua Reynolds, he formed The Club, a group of nine authors and artists who met weekly to dine, drink and discuss local and world affairs.

Johnson invited Goldsmith to join The Club as a founding member. Soon after, Johnson praised Goldsmith’s writing skill, but several quotes by Boswell, Johnson’s biographer, show that he soon realized that Goldsmith had published a vicious slur about him¹. Personal slurs in penny pamphlets were common at that time. 

Johnson was the perfect butt for a jealous practical joke. He was the accepted literary leader and Goldsmith was called an ‘Inspired Idiot” by the politician Horace Walpole. This alone could have provoked Goldsmith. Also Johnson asked to be called Dr. Johnson though his doctorate was honorary, though Goldsmith, who studied and practiced medicine, could not use the title.

Johnson was fat and ugly, with a facial tic. London society spread the rumor that he was a cocksman who had seduced another man’s wife. London was growing rapidly in the 1750s and the new arrivals had brought an invasion of lice, almost every bed was lousy. “Sleep tight, sleep tight, Don’t let the bedbugs bite” originates from this time.

Based on this evidence, the modern version of the rhyme and the speculative rhyme that Goldsmith may have published are compared:

Hickery Dickery Dock

A mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one

The mouse ran down

Hickery Dickery Dock.

Hickory^A Tickery^B Doc^C

A louse^D ran up his cock^E

His cock did cum

The louse ran down

Hickory Tickery Doc^F.

A.     A hickory branch is straight and stiff, commonly used in walking sticks, it was a euphemism for an erect penis.

B.    Johnson had a Tourette-like facial tic.

C.    Johnson insisted on use of the honorary title of Dr.

D.    Lice were a common conversation topic.

E.     See A.

F.     Scurrilous verses were often published. Coarse language was also more acceptable.

Ref. 1 www.samueljohnson.com/goldsmith.html

Life and Scrabble

When I heard of Scrabble, the term hardscrabble came to mind and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Oklahoma sharecroppers in the Great Depression. I've grown to love the game if I win, but it's great depression time again when I lose. Was it Shakespeare who said "What's in a game?" Lots of emotion, that's what. I remember kids in a tantrum over going bankrupt in Monopoly. I used to play chess but wasn't much good. I stopped as I often lost and it depressed me. To win more I would've had to spend more time learning its strategy than I was willing to invest.

I loved social Bridge, where the wine and social chit-chat were more important than the game. But my Bridge partner wasn't satisfied and she wanted to join a Bridge Club. I only went twice. The members were so intense and vicious it wasn't fun. After most hands had been played, they held a post-mortem and the one who under- or overbid, usually me, was castigated and made to feel like some slimy sort of low life.

Playing games alone is good training in accepting defeat; there's no one else to blame when you lose. I cut my teeth on different solitaire games. Computer games made playing alone much more complex, with virtual or real opponents who can be any place in the world. Computer games teach kids the skill of hitting fast moving targets on screens. When they are older they can use the same skill to pilot drones thousands of miles away in the sky and kill lots of unsuspecting people before going home for dinner.

Winning is good and losing is bad. We get similar emotions in games, competitions, sports, fights, battles and wars. We even confuse them; in Games at the Roman Coliseum, gladiators fought to the death. When FSU plays football in Tallahassee, thousands of waving "tomahawks" evoke a war-dance. When the combined armed forces of USA and others practice attacking targets with live bombs and shells and making general mayhem, it's okay because they're only playing war games.

If the only participants in wars were people who wanted to play or who had some vested interest in winning, life will be a lot simpler. Those of us who want to watch from the sidelines can do it while the politicians, religious fanatics and investment bankers battle it out for world supremacy.

Henry VIII, a Great Tudor King

The six marriages of Henry VIII give a distorted picture of his reign. In many ways he was a strong king who set the scene for the huge expansion of England’s power when his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, reigned. Henry was born in 1491, the 2nd son of Henry VII. His older brother died when Henry was 10. His father first asked Henry to marry his brother’s widow, pretty Catherine of Aragon then he changed his mind, though Henry was probably in love with her. When his father died in 1509 Henry became king and a few months later married Catherine.

Until the human ovum was isolated in the 19th century, most people thought the man's semen held the complete seed of a baby and women merely provided a "nest" in which the baby grew. Henry knew he could make boy babies because at least one of his mistresses, Bessie Blount, bore him one. Catherine had at least 3 sons that died in infancy. Only one daughter, Mary, survived. So after 18 years he must have reasoned that she could not provide a safe nest for his boy seeds.

Times were hard on the Church of Rome. In 1517 Martin Luther nailed “95 Theses Protesting the Sale of Indulgences” to Wittenberg cathedral door and then founded Protestantism. Henry was a religious scholar. In 1521 he wrote a letter to the pope opposing Luther. In return the pope gave him and all British royalty the title of Fidei Defensor or Defenders of the Faith. Fid Def or FD is still put on British coins.

When Catherine was getting old for childbearing Henry started to play the field. He loved the beautiful Boleyn sisters. Mary was his mistress but he really wanted Anne, who may have been a virgin. Initially, she refused him unless they were married.  He tried to get his marriage to Catherine annulled, but Cardinal Wolsey and the pope demurred. For seven years Henry pleaded with no success. In 1533, when Anne was pregnant, he persuaded parliament to pass a law to found the Anglican Church, with himself as its head. He then divorced Catherine, married Anne and sacked the wealth of the monasteries. The money was used to build up the British navy and support Henry's lavish lifestyle at court.

Henry stayed fond of Catherine until she died in 1536, but was disappointed when Anne had a girl, the future Queen Elizabeth I. Anne was accused, perhaps on a trumped up charge, of having a lover, a deed punishable by death. She was executed 3 years after they married. Conspiracy theorists have drawn parallels between Anne Boleyn and Princess Diana in the 20th century. In the 16th century kings had more power. Anne sought to be the center of attention in Henry’s court. She was described as wilful and shrewish. Diana’s popularity eclipsed that of Charles, the king designate. After Diana died, Charles married Camilla. Henry married Jane Seymour, who had a son, Edward, but died giving birth. Her son, James, died when he was 15 years old.

In 1540, three years after Jane died, Henry tried a political marriage to Anne of Cleves. Holbein had painted a flattering portrait of her and Henry was told she was “fair of face and sweet of breath”.  When she arrived, he found she was neither.  Henry could not consummate his marriage to the “Flanders Mare” and it was annulled a few months later by mutual consent.

Henry soon found a new bride, the young beautiful Catherine Howard. But he was old and fat. She preferred sex with young courtiers. She was caught in bed with one, tried, and also had her head chopped off. Henry loved her and was devastated that he couldn't stop her execution. He died in 1547, four years after marrying a rich widow, Catherine Parr.

Adam & Eve

Once upon a time six thousand years ago, when Adam and Eve were cavorting around in the Garden of Eden, naked as jaybirds, Eve grew tired and hungry. She wanted to bake an apple pie so bad. Johnny Appleseed sowed seeds all over, so there were lots of apple trees and someone had invented apple pies to compete with motherhood. George Washington did not like fruit trees. Few people know it, but he cut down an apple tree as well as a cherry tree. They remember the cherry tree because he threw a silver dollar across the Chesapeake River at the same time and he is the only politician to claim that he never told a lie.

So back to Adam and Eve. This big snake slithered up to naked Eve but she wasn't scared as it wasn't really a snake. It was the devil, who looks like an ugly little man with ears like Mr. Spock, wings like a bat and a long thin tail and he breathes fire and brimstone, which is a kind of sulfur my parents gave me on Friday nights, with treacle, to keep me regular. This is why people don't like snakes, although they don't like spiders too. There is even a phobia for spiders called arachnophobia.

The Devil disguised as a snake said to Eve, "If you pick just one apple, you won't have to run around stark naked anymore. There will be stores where you can buy elegant dresses by Versace and Chanel and other Paris designers. There will also be shoes in all colors of the rainbow to wear. You will look as pretty as Cinderella at the Ball or the Tooth Fairy. You won't get wings like the Tooth Fairy as the only others with wings are angels, who play harps or blow long trumpets when they're not spying on people and reporting their misdeeds back to God".

God has a huge ledger in which he writes details of all your sins and wickednesses - like Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Affairs Committee or J Edgar Hoover and the FBI used to do. Now the NSA does it, but more cleverly. Hooray for freedom! One of God's pet peeves now is of people running round stark naked, but that is Eve's fault because she ate that apple instead of baking a pie for Adam, who was an innocent bystander in this whole sordid business. Like all men, he would have been happy to cavort about naked with Eve for ever, as long as she stayed trim, beautiful and 18, as older girls are less fun and younger ones are jail bait.

Eve was the first Fem Libber. She tried to liberate women from housework and drudgery of baking pies by eating the apple. Costco sells apples, apple pies, cream puffs and other basic needs. So that's what I believe of Adam and Eve.

Fairy stories traditionally begin with "Once upon a time".

A Poet and His Son

Alan Alexander Milne was born in 1882 to a wealthy family. His father owned and ran a small private school in a west London suburb. He was educated at Westminster School and Cambridge University. He served for a while in the British army in World War I. After he was invalided out he wrote a diatribe against war.

AA Milne specialized in writing children's stories. Perhaps the ones best known are about Winnie the Pooh. He wrote them for his son, Christopher Robin. The little boy was a great joy to Alan. This comes through clearly in this poem that was also made into a song.

Vespers

Little boy kneels at the foot of his bed, 

Droops on his little hand, little gold head

Hush, hush! Whisper who dares, 

Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy, I know that’s right, 

Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight

The cold’s so cold and the hot’s so hot, 

Oh, God bless Daddy, I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more, 

I can see Nanny’s dressing gown on the door

It’s a beautiful blue but it hasn’t a hood, 

Oh, God bless Nanny and make her good.

Mine has a hood and I lie in bed 

And I pull that hood right over my head,

Then I shut my eyes and I curl up small, 

And nobody knows that I’m there at all.

Oh, thank you God for a lovely day 

And what was the other that I had to say

I said bless Nanny so what can it be, 

Now I remember, it’s God bless me.

Little boy kneels at the foot of his bed, 

Droops on his little hand, little gold head

Hush, hush! Whisper who dares, 

Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

His poems and stories made AA Milne and Christopher Robin famous. After he died, his widow sold the rights to the "Winnie the Pooh" story characters to Disney. But what about Christopher Robin?

Christopher Robin was educated at a very proper school in London, but he was so hounded and taunted by peers that he grew to hate Vespers and felt that his father’s poems and stories exploited his childhood. He learned to fight and defend himself but he was sickly. He volunteered for the army in World War II and was initially rejected for medical reasons, but his Dad pulled strings to get him into the Royal Engineers. After the war he and his wife ran a bookstore in Devon, where he died in 1998. 

Future Time Traveler

On New Years Day we begin the millennium year in commemoration of the start of the Great Calamity. I am Alan d’Hetre, the Mayor of Palmertown. I have the sad task of leading the service and giving the eulogy. Fortunately, there is good news to report; everyone in the exploration team we sent to South Africa survived the quarantine period when they returned, unlike men in the team we sent to Tierra del Fuego ten years ago. They also brought back most of the items on our shopping list and all them have been thoroughly fumigated.

There is still snow on the tops of some mountains on Palmerland Peninsula, but the lower areas near town are now pleasant outdoors in the summer and they support our community-organized agriculture. We can only grow crops during the six summer months, but we have lots of indoor industries that have been adapted to the six dark months.

We have come a long way since the first kibbutz was built on this unforgiving land near the South Pole almost a thousand years ago. We are blessed because our ancestors were powerful people who thought and planned ahead. The shiploads of foodstuffs, building materials, power-generating equipment, tool-making and survival supplies they brought here during the first year of the Nuclear War were the foundation on which we built. Most of the kibbutz and its protective minefield had been finished and our invited chosen citizens were on board the SS Phoenix by the time smaller nations retaliated with the Viral War. Heat from nuclear explosions had already accelerated global warming enough to break off both ice shelves of West Antarctica and it was widely known that sea levels would rise rapidly by up to fifty feet.

That first group needed all their smarts to survive, even with the huge mountain of supplies. They left us a pretty complete history of the nuclear war. They all agreed that it started after a US drone veered off course and killed the family of a top Pakistani general. He ordered nuclear warhead rockets launched against Tel Aviv and New Delhi, as the US was beyond range of their rockets. After Israel retaliated against nearby Moslem countries Russia came to their defense and China and the United States also launched many of their huge nuclear weapon stockpiles.

We only have sketchy records of the Viral War, from radio messages the SS Phoenix and earliest settlers intercepted. Several strains were apparently unleashed by countries without nuclear weapons. The worst were genetically engineered to be undetectable, incurable and lethal. By these standards even ebola and anthrax seem tame. The last radio transmission was recorded in 55AGC (After the Great Calamity). Apparently several other ships attempted to reach our kibbutz at that time but they were sunk by our perimeter defense system.   

Medieval Tyme Travyler

I William de Wendenal, do pen this document in th Yr of Our Lord 1193 Anno Domino. 20 yrs ago did good King Henry ll rais a grate tax levy in Nottingham ynd did build a grate big castl on th cliff over lookyng th town ynd River Trent. For 12 years he did honor us with visits ynd did bring hys barons, courtiers ynd thyr house holds. This did attract money-hungry merchants from London ynd our City of Nottingham did grow apace till it hath grown to be come a Borough. As th wealth of th merchants did grow they did de sire to take moneys to London but wer much afearèd of hyway men. Th Guild of Merchants did make me fyrst Sheriff of Nottingham ynd th South to police th high way so that honest peopl yr safe. My garryson of 200 men yr paid by taxès levied on th merchants of th Borough of Nottingham. 

Good King Henry died 4 yrs ago ynd Good King Richard 1 was crownèd. He did only come to Nottingham once. Our new king (Gd. rest hs soul) is a verry rum man. In stead of ruling our stout yeomen here in England he needs must take hys barons and thyr armies et cetera off to a God-Forsaken Land at th end of th Mediterranean Sea to fight Holy wars ynd chase young ladys only dressèd in faerie-lyke sylk trousers. Our goodly new castl was left to rot, so I did con-sider it my sacrèd duty to take it. My loyal men en sure that we lack no thing and get th best of every thing.

Th merchants did at fyrst refuse to pay th tax for my army when th king and hys court did not visit, so I did use a simpl wile to per suäde them. We did build a sheriff encamp ment in Sher Wood out of site of th road to London. Company B of my army, undr Capt. Robyn Hood, was clothèd in green gar ments. I singlèd out hys company as he is a jolly man wyth a love of musik {he em ploys Allin-a-Dale as hys harpyst} ynd hys men yr all good bows men. After they did hold up 2 merchant con voys and steal theyr moneys, th merchants did wish more to pay theyer taxes to my army to pro tect them.

We now work a pretty dans wyth Robyn's men who pre tend to fight my pro tectors. We do let most of th con voys through so to justify th tax, but we know th wealth ynd merchandys of each con voy so we know be fore hand whych ones to rob. Robyn is a rum chap. He did thynk up a scheme to gyv back 10 per cent of th moneys we steal to th poor peopl. They all love Robyn now ynd thye hav mor moneys to spend. Thye yr more yndustryus be cause thye yr happy so th merchants yr rich ynd my men ynd I yr even richer. Lyf is verry fyn. I just had 2 bolts of th faerie-like sylk stuff im portèd from Eastern Lands and made in to see throo baggie trousers fr all th young ladys in my harym.

{Trans latèd from th Middl English by Allin de Hêtre Esq in 1561 Anno Domino.} 

Offensive Sex Laws

There is strong evidence indicating that the human sub-species evolved from its nearest great ape relative five or more million years ago. An extensively studied human-like ancestor, called Ardi, is four million years old. Civilization, as we know it, began less than four thousand years ago. It follows that evolutionary adaptations to primeval life were ingrained a thousand times longer than adaptations to civilized life. As social anthropologist Desmond Morris puts it, “We still live in the bodies of uncivilized animals overlaid with a thin veneer of civilization”.

Our prehistoric ancestors, like virile humans today, probably spent a lot of their spare time directly or indirectly thinking about or practicing sex. Among men, they would have concentrated on courting or coupling with the most physically attractive women. Among women, men as lovers may have been important, but their strength, as potential providers and warriors would also have been important. Men would show off their muscles, agility and physical endowments in courting, like great apes do. Women are most fertile at age sixteen so it is reasonable to suggest that exhibitionism to teenage women was part of the courtship ritual of primeval man.

Fast forward to today. All virile men fantasize about sex. If they are not gay the fantasy objects are usually young beautiful women. Erotic images are available on the Internet by a few clicks of a mouse and they sell magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. Courtship between men and women usually includes exhibitionism in varying degrees, Stupid and unlucky men who use exhibitionism in a crude attempt to court a woman under age 18 and get caught can be charged as sexual predators.

A drunk who exhibits his erect penis at a giggling sixteen year-old girl can be labeled as a sexual predator. For such a minimal offence he should and usually does get a much lighter sentence than serious sex offenders who rape or bugger children. It is after serving their sentences that the law becomes unfair. Both men may be bound by the same strict rules. They must report regularly to a law officer and are restricted from living in areas near schools and children for the rest of their lives. In Miami until recently, one of the few places they could live was a vile, unsanitary area under a local causeway.

Remember that primeval man is just below the surface. But for a few alcoholic drinks and will power, millions of men might also become minimal sexual predators. These harsh post-punishment restrictions should be re-examined and made more humane.  

A Devil’s Advocate

The revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power also catalyzed waves of Cubans to migrate to the United States. Most of them settled in Miami, the nearest big city to Cuba. They changed it from a tinselly tourist town in 1957 to the slick commercial city it is today. Yet almost to a man, Cubans in Miami excoriate Fidel whenever they can. I contend the City and Miami-Dade County leaders should recognize his contribution to the growth of Miami by erecting a statue honoring him.

Many of the early families fleeing Cuba for Miami included leaders of Batista's government and economy, who had the most to lose under Castro. They brought capital and business acumen. They formed new corporations or rebuilt old ones. By 1979 Hispanics outnumbered Anglos on Miami's Chamber of Commerce and there was a shortage of Spanish-speaking workers.

Once again Fidel Castro came to the rescue. In the Mariel boat-lift of April to October 1980, 125,000 people left Cuba and over half of them settled in Miami or its surrounding county. Many found immediate work, the percentage of unemployed rose from 5 to 7, only a little more than the normal low-tourism seasonal increase.

Since then, word of Miami as a Hispanic foothold and destination for shoppers has spread rapidly through Central and South American countries. Wealthy people come to Miami for luxury goods and take their kids to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. The combination of a Spanish-speaking community and American materialism induces many visitors to stay, especially if their governments are overthrown. Ex-dictators and politicians from Caribbean, Central and South American countries are almost as common in Miami as czarist generals and Russian nobles were in Paris after the 1917 revolution.

As the Hispanic community of Miami-Dade has grown it  has diversified. One suburb is mainly Nicaraguan, another mainly Venezuelan and so on. New Miamians have created strong business ties with their home countries, so Miami is now a center for trade with Central and South America. Export and import companies occupy the most pages for any heading in Miami's Yellow Pages.

Miami is also a great place to enjoy ethnic dining. Whatever your taste, there is a good restaurant that serves it. Miami’s nightlife has been glamorized on the TV show, Miami Vice and others. Coconut Grove used to be the strutting ground of the rich and famous but it was eclipsed by South Beach and even more recently by the Design District and Brickell. Famous movie stars, fashion models and other well-known beauties make people watching a great local and inexpensive pleasure.

Without Fidel, none of this would have happened, so how about that statue?

 To all gun-toting Cuban-Americans who read this - "Just kidding, honest"!

Feedback from Heaven (A Fantasy)

The pain doesn’t feel as sharp as the morphine kicks in and I drift away from my bed and family members around me. My essence is being sucked into a thin transparent tube. As I move along it, I look out on still pictures of recent hours then days of my life with no pain. I move slowly back through time except when I decide to leave my tube. I can leave it whenever I want but it is cold and uncomfortable outside. When I pop out, time moves forward and I can watch things I did and said then, but I can’t influence what I see.

I pop out of my tube to watch last year’s New Year’s Eve party at the retirement home. There aren’t many at it, as most residents spent the holiday with relatives. Audrey and I had a family party the day after Christmas. At the New Year’s Eve party we had fun with other residents. After the meal we watch a skit by the staff and join a sing-along. As I grow accustomed to watching without eyes, I realize that Lucy Smith, who passed on in January, before me, is also watching the party. At the moment we greet each other, our essences combine. When we pop back in the tube, it is wider and there are twice as many scenes and people we recognize as we move back in time. We look at Miami Lakes and Manhattan and her children and my children who are now our children. I know as much about her family as she does, and she knows as much about mine as I do.

Further along, Arthur Rodham a friend of Lucy’s, joins us. I remember that Lucy was in mourning before she died. We are happy to merge with Arthur. We share his memories, like when he was a doughboy in Germany after World War II. We leave the tube to enjoy being voyeurs on Arthur’s tumultuous love affair with Lucy from Lucy and Arthur’s views of it.

We share each others thoughts as if they come from separate people but we cannot disagree, because we are one. We move continuously back in time in our comfortable tube but can change how fast we back up by mutual thought control. It is fun to mess with time. We slow days down so they last a week or more as long as we are in our tube. When we take an outing as observers, time goes forward at its usual pace but when we return to our comfortable tube we are back where we were before the outing.

Friends who passed before us continually join our tube. With each addition the tube grows wider and the number of scenes to watch increases. It is like multiple slides projected on screens showing the many places we were and things we were doing at that moment. As our combined essence and the tube holding it grows bigger, we develop ways to stay amused. We write poems about how it feels to be independent but also part of something. Albert Young, an English teacher who recently joined us, reminds us of a poem John Donne wrote around the time Shakespeare wrote his final great tragedies:

No man is an island entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were,

As well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were;

Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Donne’s poem pretty well describes the inverse of our journey back through time and how we are accumulating essence from friends and relations who passed on before us, together with their friends and relations. Within a few years, most of the people in the world who died before me will have joined us in our tube. How rapidly we grow.

Helmut Gort, who taught mathematics at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin until he had a heart attack, has a wonderful selection of stories. One is about an ancient king who was so delighted with the game of chess that he rewarded it’s inventor with any request he found reasonable. The inventor asked for one grain of rice for the first square of the chess board, double that number for the second square and double the number again for the third square and so on for the 64 squares of the board.

The king granted this apparently trifling request. He set mathematicians to calculate it. It was 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128 the first row, then 256+512+1024+2048+4096+8192+16,384+32,768 for the second. They calculated that the total was more than all the rice in the world. In a similar way, our tube is now wider than the Mississippi at New Orleans, yet I enjoy each of the millions of scenes passing before me as I have the eye essence of the multitude who are part of me and their brain essence to interpret them.

Today I realized another exciting thing; my tube didn’t start with me. Each person who dies feels as if his or her essence is starting a new tube, but part of my essence went into the tubes of all my friends and relations who did or will pass away after me. I can’t see them, but it is comforting to know that they can see me. I think of people I’ve left behind, my wife and our children and many others. It is good to know that part of my essence will be with them as we all travel the path from the world without end, back through history toward the big bang and the beginning of time.

Playing With Chemicals

If kids were only allowed to play video games under adult supervision or after they pass an exam in video game theory, video games would be much less popular. We did a similar thing to toy chemistry sets and now we complain about a shortage of American chemists. My Dad bought me a chemistry set when I was 10. It had recipes for fireworks, stink-bombs and other goodies. I started to learn chemistry by playing with chemicals and soon I wanted to learn more about it.

Most toy stores don't carry chemistry sets now. There are a few suppliers on the Internet. The sets are expensive and the ingredients fairly innocuous, but they all warn that the chemicals are not to be used without adult supervision. A few years ago, the chemical stockroom of our community college (not accessible to students) was purged of every potential chemical hazard. Alkali metals, phosphorus, mercury, asbestos and many commonplace chemicals were taken out at great expense by a company that destroys toxic and dangerous substances.

We are overprotective of young people, too ready to sue and too scared of being sued. This is a deadly combination for bright kids who want to do chemistry experiments at home. It also affects our interactions with doctors and many others. In high school in England during WW II I could buy sulfur and niter from a local pharmacy. It made a super flash bomb when mixed with home made magnesium filings. I used one of Dad’s metal files on an unburned piece of a German incendiary bomb, a war junk trophy I traded for at school. When I demonstrated the mixture in the boy’s lavatories before school it made a huge flash, but the smoke (MgO) it also made was so dense I was sent to the Headmaster.

It wasn’t my first run in at school over chemistry. Calcium carbide generates acetylene (ethyne) gas when mixed with water. It was once used in acetylene lanterns and I found some in an old bicycle shop. Our desks at school had inkwells and we used the ink to write. When a lump of calcium carbide was dropped in an inkwell, it made smoke rings of ethyne gas that exploded from a single spark, but the teacher came in unexpectedly.

My first commercial discoveries were that bleaching powder changed a green half penny George V stamp to blue, and that farthings rubbed with mercury became ‘silver’. These items and my fireworks were in hot demand at school. I spent most of the income from the sales and my pocket money on chemicals and apparatus for my laboratory.

The science teacher encouraged my home lab and gave me a few samples of hard to get chemicals. Though the Headmaster chastised me severely for doing naughty stuff, when I graduated he sent a glowing reference for me in advance of a job interview at a chemical manufacturer. That set me on my life’s course.

Suicide on the Side

Almost every day another part of my body rebels with an ache or pain, usually when I move. My doc says I’m decomposing inside too. While I still have my wits, I need a fast, painless way to exit if I lose my faculties or am in intractable pain with no end in sight. The favored method the Nazis used was a capsule of cyanide. But it is hard to get now. It was taken out of the Chemistry Department stockroom along with all the other chemicals deemed a bit dangerous. Even empty gelatin capsules are hard to get. As a pharmacology professor I once had lots of them.

I favor suicide by drugs as a way to die. It’s like a cesarean section at the other end of life; you choose when to do it. I trained as a pharmacologist, a medicinal drug and poisons expert, but learned nothing about assisted suicide. Stories in magazines suggest that the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and others were from barbiturates. The most favored one was secobarbital, as it is fast-acting. Its victims went from sleep to death. At one time I owned a bottle of 500, but Margaret, my lady friend, threatened suicide, so I flushed them down the toilet. They are seldom used now and almost impossible to obtain.

There are lots of nasty poisons around, but few that are quick and painless. The man suspected of the anthrax murders committed suicide by a huge overdose of Tylenol. Many plant extracts are toxic. Extracts still used include strychnine, atropine, digitalis, menthol, eucalyptus, camphor and quinine. Plants manufacture these bad tasting or smelling compounds to keep harmful insects or animals away. Some insects evolved to use the poison themselves. The monarch butterfly seeks out milkweed plants for its eggs. Its caterpillars are immune to milkweed toxin but are themselves toxic to birds. Somehow the message gets around and even young birds refrain from eating Monarch caterpillars - though ducks, toads and possibly geckos seem to still enjoy them.

Traumatic death can be quick and certain, though it leaves more mess and stigma. I was impressed by a staged suicide in a recent movie I saw. The actress, an old woman, shot herself in the head while lying in bed, holding a pillow over her face and pointing the gun through the pillow. This setup confined most of the blood, brain and bone splinters between two pillows!

I mourn the passing of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a well-meaning man who helped those in extremis and constant pain to exit the world gracefully. He was attacked by groups who wanted to impose their religious ethical standards on him and on the people whose needs he served. We don't hesitate to shoot a horse in intractable pain from a broken leg as a humane act, or to put an old and sick family pet to sleep, but we refuse the same service to suffering fellow humans.

Note added 2015: Some US states have passed euthanasia laws, subject to restrictions. 

Drugs and Side Effects

In a primitive part of Nigeria, Efik tribesmen had a peculiar way of deciding between guilt and innocence of serious crimes or witchcraft. The accused person was asked to swallow a mush of ground “ordeal” or Calabar beans. Guilty people died a horrible death but innocent people vomited it up and suffered no ill effects. As long as everyone believed the beans knew who was guilty, they worked. Unfortunately, innocent people stressed by the trial also died, so the practice was stopped.

The main alkaloid drug in Calabar beans is physostigmine. Guilty people who believed in the power of the beans were stressed out, their stomachs secreted acid that dissolved physostigmine in the meal and they received a lethal dose. On the other hand, innocent people who believed in the beans knew there was no danger, so were not stressed and did not secrete hydrochloric acid. Instead, they threw it up and suffered no effects. Physostigmine is still used to treat glaucoma, myasthenia gravis and poisoning by belladonna or curare (Amazonian Indian arrowhead poison). A related drug was reported to be a nerve gas used in the Iraq war.

When a patient believes in a drug it can sometimes enhance the efficacy of its response; this is the well-known placebo effect, but there's a lot we don't know about even the most common drugs. For example, we know the side effects of most common drugs taken two at a time and can predict the effects of some combinations of three drugs, but there is hardly any information on the short or long term side effects of four or more drugs taken together on a regular basis. This is called polypharmacy, and it is a common cause of hospitalization, especially in elderly patients. When patients have diseased organs, it adds other unknown factors to the polypharmacy mix.

Mathematically, we are shaped like ring donuts. The foods and drugs we swallow are dissolved and digested as they pass through our gastrointestinal (GI) tract and they cross the wall of the small intestine to enter the body proper. What’s left is eliminated, like passing through the hole in a ring donut. The digested food and drugs that cross the intestinal wall land in the portal circulation and go directly to the liver. One of the functions of the liver is as a guardian. It removes poisons from the blood and digested food and makes sure that circulating blood has the right stuff in it.

Some laxatives and antacids are among the few drugs that are not designed to enter the circulatory system, though their breakdown products may do so. The laxatives may increase the amount of water retained in the intestines or irritate them so they move their contents along faster. Some antacids neutralize hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach. All other drugs given by mouth are designed to try to get past the liver, which treats them like poisons. Many are partly broken down by the first pass. Some, like insulin, are completely destroyed in the intestines or liver so are only effective when given by injection.

When a drug leaves the liver in blood, it enters the general circulation and goes to most organs and tissues of the body. Some people think drugs go to a particular site, like a medicine to treat toenail fungus only goes to your toenails. Unfortunately that is not true. If a drug changes the activity of a tissue or organ in a good way we call it a therapeutic effect. If it makes a change in a bad way we call it a side effect.

Making New Drugs

Designing a new pharmaceutical medicine (drug) is often a crap shoot. Drug companies would have you believe that break-through discoveries in medical research lead to new drugs. Most of the drugs any given company sells come from three sources; 1, re-labeling existing drugs; 2, making a chemical with a slightly different formula from an existing drug or by 3, following a lucky lead; called serendipity in the drug industry.

Some of our most powerful drugs are extracted from plants that have been used in medicines since ancient times. Morphine and codeine come from opium poppies, belladonna from deadly nightshade, digitalis from foxglove leaves and quinine from the bark of cinchona trees. Other plant extracts are also used in modern medicine.

A “me too” mentality pervades the drug industry. Big companies like to have one or more drugs in their "stable" to cover all the common treatable diseases. When someone in Company A decides they need a drug to treat a particular disease, the simplest way is to make a licensing agreement with Company B that holds the patent rights to a drug with a good record against the disease. Company A then markets the same drug with a different brand name, shape and color.

The “me-too” principle also works with drug chemists. By studying the structure of a successful patented drug they can sometimes make a new drug with a slightly different structure, enough to break the patent but with a similar activity.  Thousands of “me-too” drugs are marketed, and many are interchangeable. A tiny therapeutic advantage can be worth millions of dollars in sales.

Major breakthroughs of drugs and medicines, almost without exception, are due to serendipity. One day, a scientist working on the floor above Alexander Fleming, studying the rare mold penicillium notatum, had his window open. Fleming also had his window open and a spore from upstairs fell on bacteria he was studying. Fleming saw something killing germs on his plates. By following up this observation, he identified the mold and penicillin, the first of many antibiotics.

A French anesthesiologist tried to reduce the dose of anesthetic needed by surgery patients by pre-treating them with known antihistamines. When he tried chlorpromazine his patients were less worried about their upcoming surgery. After more studies the drug was marketed as Thorazine, the first tranquilizer. It revolutionized the treatment of depression and mental disease for which surgical lobotomies and electroshocks were formerly used.

Scientists at Pfizer spent years testing a new drug for high blood pressure with limited success, so they withdrew it from test marketing. When they tried to get the test samples back, many participating physicians didn’t return them. They'd discovered its side effect of producing an erection. So the breakthrough drug, Viagra, and a new disability, erectile dysfunction, were born.

Feminine Liberation (Fem Lib)

During the Civil War, cities in northeast United States offered women well paid factory jobs. Many women moved from the West to fill them and a shortage of women developed there. Ones who stayed were given special treatment. In 1869, Wyoming granted women the vote. Utah, Colorado and Washington also enfranchised women before 1900. The vote failed in other states due to the liquor lobby. The suffragettes favored prohibition of liquor so they opposed them.

Women also did vital factory work in World War I and the 19th amendment was passed by a grateful nation in 1920, giving all women the vote. After that, politicians paid more attention to the demands of women. In the 1930's depression, women were often the family wage earners. They received less pay than men for similar work, so were fired last. World War II ended the depression, and again women did men's jobs. After WWII, they lost ground in some industries but gains became permanent in others. Women executives began to infiltrate boardrooms.

Two major changes accelerated fem lib in the 1960s. One was FDA approval of the pill as an oral contraceptive for women. It was an instant success and some forty years later, the ‘morning after’ pill became available. The other change involved the media. Radio, television and movies gave women new visibility. Videotapes made pornographic movies big business and puritanical sex values loosened. Playboy and its imitators helped this trend. The trend increased with DVDs and the Internet, that allowed those with a computer and internet to watch all kinds of explicit sex at any time. In recent years the ten most visited internet sites peddle pornography. 

Beware what you wish for, as you may get it. Pregnancy is now preventable, so a big constraint to promiscuous sex has been removed. Some young women now seek their sex partners as aggressively as men. Perversely men turn down sexual advances by women, an almost unheard of behavior in former times. Some people refrain from multiple sex partners only from fear of socially transmitted diseases. Love, ethics and loyalty may keep couples together, but men don't need to marry for sex, they can get plenty while they are single.

More women than men now get degrees in the United States. Women must decide between having a family or a profession, often leading to stress, divorce and single parent families. In 2011 the census office reported for the first time that there were more single households than married ones in USA. An unintended result is a sharp fall in birthrates in developed countries. 

In developed countries, unless governments offer incentives to breed, the populations will fall. As other nations become dominant they will suffer a similar drop in birthrate. So the human population may slowly decline. But scientists predict that the future won't support many people anyway, so these predicted changes may move the world’s demographics in the right direction.

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap

Species evolve in nature by natural selection. In the long run, those best fitted to their environment survive, but nature can be helped. Artificial selection accelerates changes. It is used extensively to breed plants and animals with special traits, like cows with a higher milk yield, higher yielding grains and different breeds of dogs. The breeder selects parents with the desired qualities to breed.

The first African slaves came to Virginia in 1619 and soon after, artificial selection began. For field work, the quality most valued in a slave was strength, so big and strong young men were chosen as studs. They were expensive chattel, so, like prize bulls they were rented as breeder bucks for wenches. As slavery increased, light-skinned good-looking slaves also fetched high auction prices and were used as house servants and entertainers. Owners encouraged their sons and overseers to breed with slaves. The resulting children were sold at auction in their teens.

Breeder farms were popular in the last 50 years of slavery. In these, many females were kept and bred regularly with one or two strong males. Many strong Afro-Americans are descendants of slaves artificially selected for strength, and this trait now selects them as top athletes in boxing, football, basketball and other athletics.

For the nearly 2000 years since Jews were dispersed from Israel, they have been tiny ethnic minorities in many countries. Like other minorities they have been the victims of persecution by majorities because they were different. In pogroms, strength was of no value against vastly superior numbers of people with superior weapons. Survival was dependent on cleverness or cunning, ability to plan ahead or to integrate into an important position among the majority. Over nearly 100 generations of discrimination this has led to inadvertent artificial selection for those traits in their descendants. A disproportionately large number of Jews occupy professional, business, academic, and political roles, where many years of hard work, study or planning and business acumen is required for success.

Modern day Israel is home to many Jews with these skills and it is surrounded by enemy states whose residents outnumber it. This is parallel to the Judaic history outlined above, so the parallel response that Israel should adopt is to infiltrate agents into the neighboring governments to such an extent that they (and Israel) becomes indispensable to them, the way they have integrated into governing bodies in the United States and elsewhere.

Scientific Genesis

Our Solar system began about 4.6 bya (billion years ago, where a billion is a thousand million). The most accepted theory of its origin is that our hot gaseous spinning Sun came close to another small star and our solar system was pulled out of them as a dust cloud by their mutual gravitation. There is strong evidence from the Hubble telescope that stars form when atomic dust particles in outer space are attracted to each other by gravity and form a denser cloud. As the atomic cloud attracts more dust it grows denser, spins faster and gets hotter. When it is hot and dense enough for nuclear reactions to occur between atoms in the cloud, it emits energy and becomes a star like our Sun.

One theory is that as Earth gradually cooled it out-gassed an atmosphere of water as steam with carbon dioxide and some methane and ammonia. Violent thunderstorms occurred frequently and lightning caused these chemicals to react together, perhaps in shallow pools. As the steam condensed and seas formed, organic compounds dissolved in the water. Some of these compounds reacted together to become more complex, until chemicals formed that could react with other chemicals to form new chemicals like themselves, like DNA does but less complicated. These self-copying molecules were the first ‘live’ things.

Over millions of years, many families of self-copying molecules probably flourished and later became extinct. Fossils from ancient sea-beds suggest that self-copying molecules formed inside fat bubbles as protective coats and the first primitive cell membranes were born 3.8 bya. Self-copying compounds were better adapted to survive a hostile environment inside a membrane than were the uncoated compounds.

A big advance occurred when two or more self-copying molecules that helped each other shared the same fat bubble and self-copied together. One that converted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into carbon compounds and excreted oxygen was so helpful it was adopted by many cells around 3.4 bya. and it probably evolved to the chloroplasts in all plant leaves today. They are responsible for the oxygen that is now a vital part of our atmosphere.

Another great advance occurred when two or more whole cells joined together as a single organism. The oldest multi-cell fossils found in beds of ancient seas are from about 2 bya. Over the next 1.5 billion years the families of these simple multi-celled organisms evolved into complex marine plants and animals. They moved from sea to land much later. The earliest land plant fossils known are from 450 million years ago (mya) and animal fossils only 380 mya. Populations of multi-celled organisms formed, flourished, died or slowly evolved to their present-day form.

All organisms produce too many offspring, including humans. Without help, weak and unlucky ones die. Many mass-extinctions of species have occurred, some caused by climate change. The last major one occurred 65 mya, when a huge meteor landed in the Caribbean Sea near the Yucatan Peninsula. It helped to end the reign of dinosaurs. When they died, tiny mammals were able to proliferate. Eventually the mammal class became dominant animals. The human line of mammals separated from great apes about 5 mya.

Evolution and Darwin

Teachers use the analogy of a tree growing from a tiny seed to help explain evolution, though recent "trees of life" based on DNA and other evidence show a much more complex tree. A self-replicating molecule in primordial seas over three billion years ago represents the earliest form of a ‘living’ thing and the seed from which all life sprouted. In the tree analogy, species alive at any time are represented by the tip top point of each twig on each branch at that time. For example, the tips of twigs representing human ancestors and ape ancestors, diverged from a common twig (a common ancestor) five million years ago, and ever after that they have followed separate paths. This grossly oversimplifies evolution but it is a good teaching tool.

Darwin coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" to explain that all plants and animals produce more offspring than can survive and that they compete for the limited resources available. It explains why we are not up to our ears in oysters although a single female can release over a quarter of a million eggs at a time. Most of the eggs are eaten by predators soon after birth. Over production of any species upsets the balance of nature. Humans and domesticated animals are the only species shielded from culling by survival of the fittest. Intelligent people everywhere realize the runaway projections of human population growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. We cause most of the world's environmental problems. If we don't slash our rate of breeding by birth control and education, we are setting ourselves up for major future catastrophes.

When Charles Darwin expounded the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century, it was opposed by the Catholic and Protestant Churches. When word of the theory spread, other established religions also opposed it.  Religions attempt to explain how living things, especially humans, first arrived on Earth. Although their explanations differ, they all invoke supernatural reasons that cannot be defended by rigorous scientific methods. In contrast, the principles of evolution have been verified experimentally many times. It has not only survived, but the original theory has been strengthened and greatly expanded. The whole science of biology now rests on the framework of the theory of evolution.

The relationship of different species to each other used to be based on comparisons of their anatomy and physiology. That changed when DNA molecules were sequenced. By comparing their DNA, scientists re-classified the families of many plants and animals. The principles of the theory of evolution are now applied to many fields. Businesses evolve and thrive or die in patterns like species. Even ideas, called memes, thrive or die in a 'survival of the fittest' manner. In a twist on the initial opposition by religions, principles of the theory of evolution are now used to explain the rise and fall of religious factions in society.

Civilization

The Humanian model proposes that before humans evolved from other primates, their backbones were gradually changing in ways that favored walking on two legs, which uses less energy than walking on four. This allowed them to leave the forests to explore. Upright walking hominids evolved over a million years and many human-like species probably formed, spread and died off. Survival was favored by finger and hand dexterity and by having an opposing thumb to hold things. Fossils show a gradual increase in skull size and (by inference) of brains. These changes all improved the efficiency of hominids to gather fruit, plants and insects and use sticks and stones as hunting weapons.

Roaming hunter gatherers spread from East Central Africa to many parts of the world. Neanderthals were an early genus, reaching Europe about 600,000 years ago. Their descendents may have interbred with the later dominant genus homo, that arrived about 200,000 years ago and evolved into modern man, homo sapiens, about 50,000 years ago.

Somewhere along the way our ancestors learned to use fire for warmth and to keep predators away. The earliest hominids used stones and their descendents learned to shape stones. They used the sharp edges for cutting and to tip spears and arrows. Gradually, spoken languages developed and tribes changed from nomadic hunter gatherers and became more sedentary. Like other major changes, this took many thousands of years. Among theories that have been offered about early agricultural settlements is that they were accelerated by a climate change that occurred after the last ice age about 13,000 years ago. The earliest agriculture probably involved growing wild plants and trees and removing unwanted ones. There is some evidence of town building about 12,000 years ago. Recorded history begins 6,000 years ago, after written language was invented.

The first known civilization was in Mesopotamia, which runs from the east coast of the Mediterranean via the Basins of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to where they join and empty into the Persian Gulf. It includes Iraq, Syria, northwest Iran and small countries like Israel. Two other ancient centers of culture were the Nile Basin in Egypt and the Indus Valley, which includes modern Pakistan and parts of nearby India and Afghanistan.

The Greek and Roman civilizations came later, both of these nations built empires of subject states by warfare. Aggressive empire building was popular for two thousand years. Most European nations did it, especially Great Britain, so did many great generals from Genghis Khan to Napoleon. Modern empires rely more on economic subjugation. Subject states are “free” to govern themselves, but can only remain solvent or empowered if they obey the political wishes of the power that subsidizes them.