Diatomic oxygen has a single bond and two unpaired, unshared electrons. It isn't obvious to me why this should be, the two unpaired, unshared electrons should "pair and share", but they don't. I am told this is confirmed via their spectra.
I this is true, then
1) does that mean the two unpaired, unshared electrons are locked into the same spin as each other.
2) does that mean the oxygen molecule is magnetic
3) does that mean that oxygen molecule can be oriented in a strong magnetic field so that it won't effuse through holes too small for them to go through sideways. Nitrogen molecules do not have this unpaired, unshared electron phenomenon, so they would not orient in a magnetic field and they would effuse through the hole too small for them to go through sideways, because some of the molecules would randomly be oriented to go through longways.
Indeed, I have read that oxygen IS paramagnetic. Maybe this would work.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Ideas: 1: The Idea Guy (created 12-7-09)
You know how there are stereotypic people in every organization. The whiny guy, the gossip guy, etc. An engineer (Bob Daus) I used to work with called me the Idea Guy. That's one of the biggest complements I've ever received. My brain is just wired that when I learn about something I ask 1) Why (does that happen), 2) How (does that happen) and 3) What if (we do ???). I have almost 40 years of ideas which I want to share. So this topic thread: "Ideas" will be devoted to presenting my new ideas and some of my old ideas.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Customer Service 2: Les Stumpf Ford Dealership, Appleton, WI (created 11-29-09)
I have had two, recent, personal experiences of excellent customer service at the Les Stumpf Ford Dealership in Appleton, Wisconsin.
I live about 25 miles north of Appleton. I only go to town once every week or two. I have a 1998 Windstar minivan with about 125,000 miles on it. I was driving in town when the breaks became very soft and squishy. And then smoke started to come out from under the car. I was only two blocks from the Stumpf Ford dealership so I pulled in, turned off the car and started looking under the hood. I was afraid of fire and I wanted to check it out as quickly as possible. A salesman came out to help me and when we were fairly certain the danger of fire was past he brought me to the service department. They immediately brought the car in on a rack and diagnosed the problem for me, a ruptured break line was squirting oil on the engine. I had commitments and errands to finish. They rented me a car (only about $30 for a day) and had the my car repaired that afternoon. I was happy and impressed.
About 3 months later I was heading toward Appleton to help my son move his girlfriend to a new apartment and noticed a burning smell. I stopped and checked everything and found the engine oil very low. I bought oil at a gas station and topped it off. I checked the oil filter and it was on tight so I started to worry that something was cracked to be loosing oil like that. I went straight to Les Stumpf Ford. Again, they immediately put it up on a rack and had a diagnosis for me in less than 10 minutes. The oil filter wasn't loose, but it did have a tiny hole in the bottom of it. They changed the oil and filter and had me on my way to meet my obligations in only 30 minutes and $18.95.
I can't say enough good things about them.
I live about 25 miles north of Appleton. I only go to town once every week or two. I have a 1998 Windstar minivan with about 125,000 miles on it. I was driving in town when the breaks became very soft and squishy. And then smoke started to come out from under the car. I was only two blocks from the Stumpf Ford dealership so I pulled in, turned off the car and started looking under the hood. I was afraid of fire and I wanted to check it out as quickly as possible. A salesman came out to help me and when we were fairly certain the danger of fire was past he brought me to the service department. They immediately brought the car in on a rack and diagnosed the problem for me, a ruptured break line was squirting oil on the engine. I had commitments and errands to finish. They rented me a car (only about $30 for a day) and had the my car repaired that afternoon. I was happy and impressed.
About 3 months later I was heading toward Appleton to help my son move his girlfriend to a new apartment and noticed a burning smell. I stopped and checked everything and found the engine oil very low. I bought oil at a gas station and topped it off. I checked the oil filter and it was on tight so I started to worry that something was cracked to be loosing oil like that. I went straight to Les Stumpf Ford. Again, they immediately put it up on a rack and had a diagnosis for me in less than 10 minutes. The oil filter wasn't loose, but it did have a tiny hole in the bottom of it. They changed the oil and filter and had me on my way to meet my obligations in only 30 minutes and $18.95.
I can't say enough good things about them.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Education 2: no limits to learning
"The more you understand, the more you can learn."
While I was recently a teacher, the mantra at the school was don't teach or test for facts, teach skills and understanding.
I'm not certain how to separate the two.
The summer of 1974, between high school and college, I was lucky enough to be tutored by a man on how to improve my study habits and techniques. It opened new worlds to me.
Lesson #1: The human mind thinks 10 times as fast as most people speak or most people read. (I suspect this is part of what allows trained individuals to speed read.)
Lesson #2: The 9/10th of the brain not involved in listening or reading doesn't like to sit quietly and wait for something interesting to come along. It entertains itself. This is called daydreaming.
Lesson #3: The 1/10th of the brain involved in listening or reading gets sidetracked by the daydream and leaves maybe 1/100th of the brain left to listen or read. That's too little for any learning to happen. This is how you can get to the end of a reading assignment and say to yourself, "I'm glad that's done. I wonder what I read."
Lesson #4: Involve the entire brain in the listening and reading. This is not done by shear force of will. Its done by moving past passive listening or passive reading and becoming an active listener or active reader. That means that you are doing much more than just listening. You are actively thinking about what is being said. You are thinking about how what you are learning fits with what you knew in the past. You are anticipating what might come next.
Specifically for science, you aren't just trying to memorize a science fact, (in magnets, opposites attract) you are filling it out by thinking about 1) how it happens 2) why it happens, 3) why it matters, and 4) examples.
A simple fact is like a bit of dandelion fluff, and is easily blown away in the wind. Each related thing you connect to it helps it become more substantial. When you can interconnect the filled out facts, you have built a substantial structure upon which you can build true understanding.
"The more you understand, the more you can learn."
While I was recently a teacher, the mantra at the school was don't teach or test for facts, teach skills and understanding.
I'm not certain how to separate the two.
The summer of 1974, between high school and college, I was lucky enough to be tutored by a man on how to improve my study habits and techniques. It opened new worlds to me.
Lesson #1: The human mind thinks 10 times as fast as most people speak or most people read. (I suspect this is part of what allows trained individuals to speed read.)
Lesson #2: The 9/10th of the brain not involved in listening or reading doesn't like to sit quietly and wait for something interesting to come along. It entertains itself. This is called daydreaming.
Lesson #3: The 1/10th of the brain involved in listening or reading gets sidetracked by the daydream and leaves maybe 1/100th of the brain left to listen or read. That's too little for any learning to happen. This is how you can get to the end of a reading assignment and say to yourself, "I'm glad that's done. I wonder what I read."
Lesson #4: Involve the entire brain in the listening and reading. This is not done by shear force of will. Its done by moving past passive listening or passive reading and becoming an active listener or active reader. That means that you are doing much more than just listening. You are actively thinking about what is being said. You are thinking about how what you are learning fits with what you knew in the past. You are anticipating what might come next.
Specifically for science, you aren't just trying to memorize a science fact, (in magnets, opposites attract) you are filling it out by thinking about 1) how it happens 2) why it happens, 3) why it matters, and 4) examples.
A simple fact is like a bit of dandelion fluff, and is easily blown away in the wind. Each related thing you connect to it helps it become more substantial. When you can interconnect the filled out facts, you have built a substantial structure upon which you can build true understanding.
"The more you understand, the more you can learn."
Thursday, November 12, 2009
technological equipment half-life 1: why it was too soon to attempt the international space station (created 11-12-09)
My house is 11 years old. We didn't cut corners when we built and choose quality appliances and materials. In the past year, both garbage disposals started leaking. The dishwasher discharge hose cracked and leaked. The copper plumbing is starting to spring leaks. The furnace needed a replacement combustion blower years ago.
I used to work for a major printing company. There was constant scheduled maintenance and repairs to the printing presses, and they still needed to be completely overhauled after 10 years.
One of my cars is 11 years old and the alternator died last weekend leaving us stranded on the side of the road 100 miles from home.
What does all this have to do with the International Space Station (ISS)? Plenty. The ISS is 10 years old and we haven't finished building it yet. Things like tubes and hoses and fans and pumps and many electronics have a half-life of 10 to 15 years. So the ISS is going to start needing major repairs and it isn't even completely built yet. Whoever was in charge should have insisted that the engineers come up with a plan that it could be built and doing whatever it is it is supposed to do in the first 2 years. And if the engineers didn't know how to do that, or the funding wasn't there to do it, then they should have waited.
Bye for now, Doug
I used to work for a major printing company. There was constant scheduled maintenance and repairs to the printing presses, and they still needed to be completely overhauled after 10 years.
One of my cars is 11 years old and the alternator died last weekend leaving us stranded on the side of the road 100 miles from home.
What does all this have to do with the International Space Station (ISS)? Plenty. The ISS is 10 years old and we haven't finished building it yet. Things like tubes and hoses and fans and pumps and many electronics have a half-life of 10 to 15 years. So the ISS is going to start needing major repairs and it isn't even completely built yet. Whoever was in charge should have insisted that the engineers come up with a plan that it could be built and doing whatever it is it is supposed to do in the first 2 years. And if the engineers didn't know how to do that, or the funding wasn't there to do it, then they should have waited.
Bye for now, Doug
Monday, November 9, 2009
Customer Service 1: Fleet Farm (created 11-09-09)
My water heater was leaking. I went to Fleet Farm and bought a new, 50 gallon Natual gas fueled water heater. I brought it home and installed it. When I went to hook up the gas line, my brother pointed out that I had bought a Natural gas fired heater. I live in the country and have LP.
Fleet Farm allowed me to return it and didn't even charge a restocking fee. I had managed to drain it and re-crate it and bring it back with no damage or signs of use. I was honest about how installed it was. And they didn't even make me feel dumb for my bonehead error. The LP unit they sold me was even a few bucks cheaper.
Now that is what I call great customer service.
Bye for now, Doug
Fleet Farm allowed me to return it and didn't even charge a restocking fee. I had managed to drain it and re-crate it and bring it back with no damage or signs of use. I was honest about how installed it was. And they didn't even make me feel dumb for my bonehead error. The LP unit they sold me was even a few bucks cheaper.
Now that is what I call great customer service.
Bye for now, Doug
Education 1: Can everybody learn everything (created 11-09-09)
The following view flies in the face of everything that the United States has been trying to do in education for the past 20 or so years.
Teachers in training and teachers in jobs are taught that every child can learn every subject and it is the kiss of death to buck that sentiment. School districts are held hostage to the aspiration that every child will test at least "proficient" in every subject or the school district will be denied state funding and will ultimately be taken over by state authorities.
So, as a teacher, do I believe that every student can be proficient in every subject.
No I do not.
I believe that every person can be successful in life. That for those who have immense difficulty learning to do math, that there will be other strengths which can be cultivated to help them be successful and be a self-sufficient adult. The same goes for every school subject.
I have a friend who was in special education in high school. He wasn't good at reading or writing or arithmetic. But he was good with engines and he is very successful working at the city garage repairing their trucks and busses and such.
We compare ourselves to other countries and conclude that our education system is failing and so we reinvent it every few years. Guess what. The European countries who are testing better than us for high school kids is in great part because in 8th grade they separate the kids with the aptitude and desire to go to college from the other kids. The other kids get training in a trade. The college bound kids go to high school as a group and do remarkably well on the tests. We compare all of our kids in high school to just Europes best and brightest. Our high schools for the most part do not teach skills which prepare a student to immediately get a job. Our high schools attempt to be college prep schools.
Not every one wants to go to college. Not every one should go to college. There are not enough college level jobs for every one to go to college and get an appropriate job. So why do we continue to make everyone go to a high school that for about 30% of the kids is not teaching them any of the things to help them be successful in life.
This is not the politically correct opinion. But it's my opinion and I'm free to have it.
Bye for now, Doug
Teachers in training and teachers in jobs are taught that every child can learn every subject and it is the kiss of death to buck that sentiment. School districts are held hostage to the aspiration that every child will test at least "proficient" in every subject or the school district will be denied state funding and will ultimately be taken over by state authorities.
So, as a teacher, do I believe that every student can be proficient in every subject.
No I do not.
I believe that every person can be successful in life. That for those who have immense difficulty learning to do math, that there will be other strengths which can be cultivated to help them be successful and be a self-sufficient adult. The same goes for every school subject.
I have a friend who was in special education in high school. He wasn't good at reading or writing or arithmetic. But he was good with engines and he is very successful working at the city garage repairing their trucks and busses and such.
We compare ourselves to other countries and conclude that our education system is failing and so we reinvent it every few years. Guess what. The European countries who are testing better than us for high school kids is in great part because in 8th grade they separate the kids with the aptitude and desire to go to college from the other kids. The other kids get training in a trade. The college bound kids go to high school as a group and do remarkably well on the tests. We compare all of our kids in high school to just Europes best and brightest. Our high schools for the most part do not teach skills which prepare a student to immediately get a job. Our high schools attempt to be college prep schools.
Not every one wants to go to college. Not every one should go to college. There are not enough college level jobs for every one to go to college and get an appropriate job. So why do we continue to make everyone go to a high school that for about 30% of the kids is not teaching them any of the things to help them be successful in life.
This is not the politically correct opinion. But it's my opinion and I'm free to have it.
Bye for now, Doug
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Healthcare 2: Follow the Money (created on 10-28-09)
In the advice of "deep-throat", when you want to find out what’s going on, "Follow the Money."
So why does healthcare cost so much. Why would a minor, 30 minutes in and out, hand surgery I recently had cost $1800. There wasn't much in the way of materials. They sterilized my hand, they put a sterile cloth over my arm, they gave me a few injections of lidocaine, and then the doctor, nurse and assistant spent about 15 minutes poking holes in the fibers built up by my Dupuytren's contracture. And simple band aid was all I needed and I was on my way home.
The process was a complete success. I am totally happy with the results. But why so much cost.
The company I learned most of what I know about successful business would have been able to give me an answer. They religiously tracked the cost of doing everything so that they didn't take on jobs which were no profit and strove to develop customers which were high profit. They tracked how much it cost to do internal operations. We were advised that because of the paperwork involved in filling out a purchase requisition, tracking the purchase requisition, tracking the invoice, and paying the invoice, that there was a hidden cost of $100 for every purchase order. So we should whenever possible, wait to order until we had several items to order from the supplier. And we shouldn't split orders between suppliers because one supplier was $10 cheaper on one item than the other supplier. Saving that $10 would cost $100.
So here is my suspicion, there is too much paperwork in healthcare. I suspect a big portion of the cost is filling out and handling all of the paperwork. Of course the insurance industry won't want to hear this. There entire existence is based on paperwork. I have heard estimates that 20% of our healthcare costs occur directly in the insurance companies. But it has to much more than this. The doctor and his staff have to spend a huge amount of time filling out paperwork for the insurance company and the government.
So the next time you go to an emergency room and get a $500 bill for the 10 minutes the doctor spent putting in a couple of stitches, the doctor didn't get paid that $500. I suspect that for the 10 minutes the doctor spent with you, a total of 1 to 2 hours of paperwork by a number of other people were involved.
If I were in charge, I would start "following the money" with a religious fervor.
So why does healthcare cost so much. Why would a minor, 30 minutes in and out, hand surgery I recently had cost $1800. There wasn't much in the way of materials. They sterilized my hand, they put a sterile cloth over my arm, they gave me a few injections of lidocaine, and then the doctor, nurse and assistant spent about 15 minutes poking holes in the fibers built up by my Dupuytren's contracture. And simple band aid was all I needed and I was on my way home.
The process was a complete success. I am totally happy with the results. But why so much cost.
The company I learned most of what I know about successful business would have been able to give me an answer. They religiously tracked the cost of doing everything so that they didn't take on jobs which were no profit and strove to develop customers which were high profit. They tracked how much it cost to do internal operations. We were advised that because of the paperwork involved in filling out a purchase requisition, tracking the purchase requisition, tracking the invoice, and paying the invoice, that there was a hidden cost of $100 for every purchase order. So we should whenever possible, wait to order until we had several items to order from the supplier. And we shouldn't split orders between suppliers because one supplier was $10 cheaper on one item than the other supplier. Saving that $10 would cost $100.
So here is my suspicion, there is too much paperwork in healthcare. I suspect a big portion of the cost is filling out and handling all of the paperwork. Of course the insurance industry won't want to hear this. There entire existence is based on paperwork. I have heard estimates that 20% of our healthcare costs occur directly in the insurance companies. But it has to much more than this. The doctor and his staff have to spend a huge amount of time filling out paperwork for the insurance company and the government.
So the next time you go to an emergency room and get a $500 bill for the 10 minutes the doctor spent putting in a couple of stitches, the doctor didn't get paid that $500. I suspect that for the 10 minutes the doctor spent with you, a total of 1 to 2 hours of paperwork by a number of other people were involved.
If I were in charge, I would start "following the money" with a religious fervor.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Genesis: A story I wrote in 1992
Genesis
12/13/1992
With slight updating on 1/17/2009
Doug Iverson
[This story is not meant to be taken seriously.
It is just a story.]
*************************************
Nothing.
There was nothing.
No life. No land. No water. No mass. No light. No energy. No matter. No space. No time.
There was nothing.
There was a purpose. There was a consciousness.
It couldn’t move because there was no space. It was both everywhere and no where at once. It was both infinitely large and infinitesimally small at once.
It couldn’t age because there was no time. It was both old and young, at once, forever.
It could think; therefore it was. It called itself Iam. Iam had a purpose.
Iam desired beauty; beauty in symmetry, arrangement and pattern.
With a flexing of its will, Iam created energy and matter. Iam also created time and space in which the energy and matter could exist. In a rapidly expanding bubble, time and space grew, drawing matter and energy with it.
The energy possessed many forms; kinetic, electromagnetic, nuclear and gravitational. The total of all energy was zero. The positive and negative energies were exactly equal. Nothing had been divided into two symmetrical halves and when put back together, it would still be nothing.
At first there was only energy. As more space was created, the energy cooled and matter condensed like dew during a cool night. The matter was pro-matter and anti-matter. The total of it was zero. Nothing had been divided into two symmetrical halves and when put back together, would still be nothing.
The matter had symmetry reflective of Iam. A symmetry of three coupled with two.
For every particle, there was an antiparticle. Of particles, there were two basic types, quarks and leptons. Of each basic type, there were six particles, six quarks and six leptons. Each quark and lepton was created in three different flavors.
The sphere of Nothing expanded in perfect symmetry and quantum mechanical pattern. Iam was happy. This was beauty. This was Good.
The quark and leptons began to aggregate. They formed arrangements. The nothingness formed protons and neutrons. These formed new arrangements of simple atoms and molecules. Hydrogen and helium filled the universal sphere of Nothing.
Iam enjoyed the arrangements. This was beauty. This was Good.
As the sphere of Nothing grew, the remnants of the quantum mechanical patterns present in the first few instants of time arranged the gasses of the expanding universe in long strings strung across the heavens. The strings pulled apart into short segments of galaxies. The galaxies swirled around themselves forming disks and arms and spirals. The gasses within the galaxies were pulled together into tight balls in which the matter began to convert into energy and into more complex patterns of matter. Heavier atoms were created within the suns and Light pervaded the universe.
Iam was happy. This was new symmetry. There were new arrangements and patterns. This was beauty. This was Good.
Some of the larger agglomerations consumed too much of their matter. They became unstable. They became explosive. In a tremendous burst of energy these suns supermovaed, spewing forth into the galactic gas clouds hew heavier elements suitable foe building planets. The gasses began to pull together again, this time drawing the solid dust particles with them. The aggregating mass began to pick up energy and revolve because of the Coriolis Effect from the spiraling galaxy it was part of. The rotating motion separated the gasses and particles based on density and molecular weight. Many of the systems became temporarily unstable because of the large masses of metals and other heavy elements and split into two gas galls; each circling the other and having orbs formed from the heavier elements circling each.
Iam was happy. These were new arrangements, new symmetries. This was beauty. This was Good.
Some of he orbs generated gasses, building an atmosphere. As the orbs radiated off heat to the vast nothingness, water vapor condensed into mighty clouds, raining for eons, and covering the planet surface with a mighty ocean. In the ocean, carbon based molecules began to form a dazzling array of organic molecules. Supplied with an abundant source of simple carbon molecules emanating from the center of the orb and warmed by the sun’s energy in the shallows, complex forms began to take shape: lipids and fatty acids and ring structures and chains.
Phosphorous was also used, as well as nitrogen and sulfur.
Some of the molecules formed lower energy, more stable arrangements which aggregated with each other. Fatty acids formed emulsion droplets with lipids in the center. New molecules formed in the specialized environment of the lipids/fatty acid droplets which would not have been stable in the general ocean environment. The more stable droplets drew on the abundance of molecules dissolved in the ocean. Growing until they reached an unstable size, they split into two halves, each of which continued to grow.
Iam was happy. There was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the planetary orbits, solar systems, galaxies and clusters of the large scale. There was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the atoms, protons, neutrons, leptons and quarks of the smallest scale. Now there was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the molecular arrangement made of these carbon clusters.
Iam called them the tender beauties.
Iam had not exerted his will since the original creation of space, time, matter and energy. The entire universe had unfolded without intervention. Now Iam reinserted himself into creation. These tender beauties were fragile. They occasionally made molecular mistakes while growing and copying themselves. These mistakes sometimes lead to a more stable, ever larger arrangement. Some of the droplets formed a molecule in their central regions that could directly capture the energy of the sun and store it as chemical energy for the use of the droplet. Some of these droplets formed protective sheaths around their perimeter. Some formed aggregates of sheathed droplets which took on larger patterns of symmetry. Iam began to control some of these “mistakes.” Iam controlled the formation of symmetry, pattern and beauty of the tender beauties. Iam directed the formation of millions of types of animals and plants which filled the oceans, covered the lands, and filled the skies.
Iam never interfered with the physical forces released at the creation of the cosmos. Sometimes these forces destroyed the tender beauties. An asteroid would strike a planet disrupting the delicate balance the tender beauties could exist in, or a sun would nova sterilizing the surface of the planet. Sometimes the animals advance to such a high degree of specialization that a minor environmental change caused their extinction. Whenever these setbacks happened, the evolutionary force to develop new levels of symmetry, new forms of patterns and increased beauty began again. Occasionally directed by Iam.
Iam was happy, but Iam was not complete.
Iam was alone.
Iam desired someone to share the universe with. Someone to enjoy the beauty in the symmetry; beauty in the patterns; beauty in the life of the tender beauties.
Iam flexed his creation will for the second time. Iam created two beings, so that neither would be lonely as Iam had been. Iam created them in his own image and likeness. They were timeless and dimensionless. They had Iam’s appreciation of beauty. Iam called them Adam and eve. Iam gave them the universe to enjoy.
Iam was happy.
“Who am I? Who are we?”
“You are Adam and Eve.”
“Who are you?”
“Suffice it to know that Iam. I am your creator and of everything you sense other than myself.”
“There’s so much. You made all of this?
“Yes. All of it and yourselves, my children.”
“We are different from the rest of creation. We seem more like you; almost exactly like you, only lesser somehow.”
“You are different from the rest of creation, my children. You are in my image and likeness. I induced all of this creation from nothing and back to nothing it will someday return. It is always aging and changing; until someday it will end. You, my children, are timeless, ageless, eternal.”
“Who created you?”
“No one created me. I have always been. This will be difficult for you to understand since even though you are eternal, you have never existed outside of time and you won’t until all of this creation ceases. At that absence of time, you will understand.”
“Why have you done all this?”
“I created time, space, energy and matter for the beauty contained in its symmetry and patterns. As you focus your attention on it from the smallest to the largest, you will find beauty.”
“And why did you create us?”
“It brings me even more pleasure to share all of this creation. All of creation is yours to behold and enjoy. Center yourselves wherever you desire. The universe is yours to watch and enjoy. But not to alter. Enough of this. Go; focus yourselves elsewhere or on each other. We will converse more later.”
Adam and Eve needed no further prompting. A nearby sun was supernovaing. They both focused themselves into it, experiencing the swirls, the power, the expansion and the beauty in the rapid change of atomic patterns.
Iam was happy, very happy.
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Adam’s and Eve’s concentration was on an island which moments before had teamed with a dazzling variety of tender beauties. They were all gone now. This planet had a high level of volcanism. The entire island had just been recoated with thirty feet of volcanic rock.
Eve called “Iam.”
“Yes my children.”
“Why did this happen?”
“It has to do with the planet’s highly elliptical orbit caused by the next planet out in this solar system. This induces tremendous gravitational tidal forces which keeps the interior molten and induces cracks and fissures in the crust.”
“We know and understand that. I’m asking, why did you let this happen? Why did you let all this life be destroyed?”
“Have you noticed that I never intervene with the physical forces of my creation?”
Adam replied “Yes, but we sense that you could. You have the power to do so. We don’t. Why did you let all this beauty be destroyed?”
“Center within the rock as it cools and crystallizes. Focus on the steam swirls rising where the hot rock meets the sea. There is still beauty here.”
“You know it’s not the same”
“You speak with such certainty my children. But you have focused on this planet for not even one complete orbit around its sun. Not long enough to notice the instability of the large polar ice caps on this world. When life first evolved here, those ice caps were twice as large and sea was much lower and yet there was no dry land for life to exist on. Only in the oceans was there life. This volcanism you view as so destructive created the first islands of dry land and that was the substrate of the life you miss so dearly even though it exists on hundreds of other islands on this same planet. But the ice caps have been melting, raising the ocean level. The islands have to keep rising to prevent of these dry land life forms from perishing in a flood of sea water. Luckily, the instabilities of this planet only raise and resurface a few islands at a time. They will be repopulated with life from the other islands before those other islands either flood or resurface. As you can now see, life has evolved very well here to deal with the local physical forces. It needs no interfering on my part.”
“Now focus elsewhere my children. Do not trouble yourselves with why and because. Just enjoy the beauty.”
They each thought to themselves as they shifted their concentration, “I could manage that planet better than Iam. If I had Iam’s power I could find a way to stabilize the ice caps or raise the islands without having to kill all the life.”
Iam’s thought followed them. “Enjoy the beauty my children. There is more beauty in the ceaseless change of creation than you could ever imagine on your own. Enjoy the beauty my children.”
Adam and Eve shifted their focus across the universe. They flitted through and past galaxies and clusters of galaxies. They experienced the cloud shapes, the disk shapes, the spiral shapes. Their focus shifted further and further waiting for some detail to catch their attention. They burst through suns, penetrated through the core of planets, enveloped entire galaxies.
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Eve spoke, “There. Adam, did you feel that?”
“No, what? I was busy trying to sense any free quarks in this sun.”
“Adam, unfocus yourself. Open yourself. It’s like when we communicate, but from a much greater distance. It’s a presence, a consciousness. Can’t you feel it?”
“Yes, now I can. It’s coming from the blue planet in this solar system. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
They both centered themselves on the planet; focused on the consciousness; perceived its emotions; felt its fear; converged closer and closer until they were both in a field, next to flocks of animals running from a fire which engulfed the savannah. The flames were only minutes away from the animals and stretched from horizon to horizon. Fed by dry winds, the flames shot hundreds of feet into the air. Fireballs of burning debris were lifted and then dropped starting new fires. Black smoke darkened the midday sky. The terrified animals ran in sheer panic. The old and the weak fell and lay until the flames swept over them and they transformed back into the elemental oxides from which they were formed.
“Adam, there’s so much destruction. There must be something we can do to save these tender beauties. And the thoughts we feel, they’re here, close by. But where and what are they from?”
“Eve, these bipedal animals running next to the river are what we sense. We’re able to sense their feelings. There’s so much fear it’s nearly overwhelming!”
“Adam, the flames are so hot and close. All of these animals are going to perish. They’ll all die, millions of different animals. We must save them. There is something special here.”
“Iam forbade us from interfering Eve. And it doesn’t matter, there’s no way to save them. We can sense them, the same as we sense the fire, the soil, the sky. But we can’t influence them. None of Iam’s creation can sense us.”
“I won’t accept that any longer Adam. If it’s impossible for anything to sense us and receive direction or motivation from us, then why did Iam so carefully forbid us to try?”
“Eve, forget it! I’m focusing elsewhere. I refuse to sense this much devastation.”
“Adam, stay and help me. The bipedal animals are those which we can sense the strongest. Perhaps they would be able to sense us. If we can get them to submerge themselves in the fiver, the flames would pass overheat and not kill them.”
“I’m focusing elsewhere eve. Come be with me again when you realize how futile this is.”
Adam was gone. Eve had never felt so alone before, so vulnerable, or so determined.
Many of the animals collapsed from exhaustion in their flight from the advancing wall of flaming chaos. It swept over the bodies, char sealing their skin and then exploding them as their interior fluids eruptively boiled. Of the animals which made it to the river, many drowned in panic in the water. Others swam to the other side, only to be greeted by more flames which had jumped the watery span and ignited an inferno on that side of the river also. Others ran along the edge of the river, in a futile hope of outdistancing the fire.
A band of bipedal animals was among the latter. Eve focused on the entire group. She tried to plant the thought in their brains of hiding in a calm part of the river at a depth where they could still stand on the bottom. She sensed their panic, but they couldn’t sense her. She tried focusing on smaller and smaller groups of the tribe. As her task seemed increasingly unobtainable, she became more resolute. But these creatures were emitting so much panic and fear it began to over whelm her.
Then Eve felt determination returned from one of the creatures. It was a mother, carrying an infant, clutched tightly to her chest. She was near the lead of the tribe, forcing herself to keep up her pace, controlling her breathing, ignoring the agony rising up in her leg and abdominal muscles. Forcing herself to keep panic subdued for the sake of her baby.
Eve focused herself entirely on this creature. She confined herself completely within the body of the female and tried to reinforce her self-control. It began to work. What panic did exist, subsided. Eve couldn’t control the bodily motions of the creature, but she could influence its emotions. Eve tried to convey the thought that the cool water could be a haven, the only source of refuge. The female slowed her run. Many of the other creatures ran past her, gasping to her not to stop. She walked slowing into the water. Eve helped her fight the fear of it. The female and never been more than knee deep in her life. She called to the slower ones who were now passing by. Most continued on, too physically spent and panicked to notice her. A few stopped and stood at the water’s edge with dazed eyes.
One of these wasn’t as tired as the rest. He was a large male, carrying two small children and helping a lame female to keep moving. Eve extended her focus to him and could feel him respond. He started to put aside his fear of the water and view it as a sanctuary from the heat and flames which were almost upon them. As he began to move his family out to the chest deep water where the first female stood calling, a few of the other creatures followed. The rest began running down the riverside again.
The male looked around and picked some large fleshy leaves from the foliage along the river’s edge. He covered his family and each of the others with a leaf and then began slowly dunking himself, his children and the leaf under water and then just an inch up. “Yes,” thought Eve, “keep the leaves wet so the fire can’t burn through to you.” Some of the others copied his example. The fire was almost overhead now and panic began to fill the creatures. Eve spread her focus over all who were in the water, calming them, keeping them under their wet leaves. And then the fire was past and the creatures were alive.
Eve, completely spent, lost her focus on everything and slowly dispersed and drifted away.
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“Eve, Adam, where are you?” Iam searched for his creations. “I know you’re focused here, but I can’t sense you in the normal way. Where are you?”
Adam was focused inside of and controlling a bipedal creature. He was just finishing the model for the new fertility temple to be built at the center of the city Adam had designed and caused the creatures to build over the last 100 years. Eve was focused inside a priestess. She was starting the rite of spring planting.
“Adam, Eve, where are you?”
Eve and Adam both heard the calling. Their attention wavered, wanting to stay hidden and yet also wanting to focus with Iam even though they feared Iam’s displeasure with the tampering they had done with his creation.
Adam switched focus first. When Eve felt his normal focus, she left the priestess also. Iam focused on them immediately. “Adam, Eve, where were you?”
Adam spoke. “We have been enjoying the beauty of shape, form and life cycle of the bipedal creatures on this planet.”
Iam replied, “I sense you have done more than just appreciate the beauty. There are advances in civilization, agriculture and architecture here which should not yet be.”
“It’s not my fault” Adam protested, “Eve did it first. When I saw what a beautiful thing it could be and that you did not come to punish her, I started doing it myself. If doing this bothers you so much, why did you wait so long to come back and tell us?”
Eve defended herself. “Don’t blame me. When I did it, it was just to be once, to save some of these creatures from death in fire. They Adam did it again and again. I saw he wasn’t punished, so I did it also.”
Iam stopped all the blame casting. “Enough, both of you. I am not interested in why you are doing it. It is enough that you are. And what you are doing with it is exactly as I know it would be. On any of the planets anywhere in the universe, you have never seen any of the creations involved in any action to praise or glorify me. None of them even know of my existence. They were only meant to be beautiful. Now you have these creatures honoring yourselves as gods, as if you were me. They view you as their creators, the bringers of Life and Death. Because you have disobeyed my law and directly interacted with physical creation, I banish you to be part of that creation. I banish you to become one with them. Their needs will be your needs. Their pains will be your pains. You will wear their bodies like clothing which cannot be removed.”
“But there are so many of them and only tow of us. If we are to be one with them and no longer able to control them, they might kill us for they are violent creatures and then we would cease to be.”
“Your deaths will not be the end of you. You will be different than all the other creatures of the universe and you will be the only creatures of both physical and spiritual substance. All of your physical children will also be made of the spirit also.”
“I will change the mitochondria in Eve’s womanly body so that it is much more efficient than the other bipedal creatures’ at releasing energy to do work. All of your children will have that change also, for their lives will be filled with work and toil to survive in this world you have chosen. You and your children and your children’s children will spread like a flood across this planet and once you have filled and mastered this planet, you will spread to the billions of other planets that exist in the universe. For I still want the same thing for you now which I have always wanted. Enjoy the beauty, the symmetry, the arrangement and the patterns which fill all of creation. But now I give you permission to create and augment beauty after your own desires.”
With that, Iam focused elsewhere.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth but they were without form and void. Light shone forth and a solid firmament formed in the midst of water. God let the earth bring forth life in the form of vegetation and all creatures. God created man in his own image and likeness and gave man all love creation. God gave man the command to not act as God. Man disobeyed. God banish man from their special place in creation and clothed them in the skins of animals to live out their days until their redemption at the end of time.
12/13/1992
With slight updating on 1/17/2009
Doug Iverson
[This story is not meant to be taken seriously.
It is just a story.]
*************************************
Nothing.
There was nothing.
No life. No land. No water. No mass. No light. No energy. No matter. No space. No time.
There was nothing.
There was a purpose. There was a consciousness.
It couldn’t move because there was no space. It was both everywhere and no where at once. It was both infinitely large and infinitesimally small at once.
It couldn’t age because there was no time. It was both old and young, at once, forever.
It could think; therefore it was. It called itself Iam. Iam had a purpose.
Iam desired beauty; beauty in symmetry, arrangement and pattern.
With a flexing of its will, Iam created energy and matter. Iam also created time and space in which the energy and matter could exist. In a rapidly expanding bubble, time and space grew, drawing matter and energy with it.
The energy possessed many forms; kinetic, electromagnetic, nuclear and gravitational. The total of all energy was zero. The positive and negative energies were exactly equal. Nothing had been divided into two symmetrical halves and when put back together, it would still be nothing.
At first there was only energy. As more space was created, the energy cooled and matter condensed like dew during a cool night. The matter was pro-matter and anti-matter. The total of it was zero. Nothing had been divided into two symmetrical halves and when put back together, would still be nothing.
The matter had symmetry reflective of Iam. A symmetry of three coupled with two.
For every particle, there was an antiparticle. Of particles, there were two basic types, quarks and leptons. Of each basic type, there were six particles, six quarks and six leptons. Each quark and lepton was created in three different flavors.
The sphere of Nothing expanded in perfect symmetry and quantum mechanical pattern. Iam was happy. This was beauty. This was Good.
The quark and leptons began to aggregate. They formed arrangements. The nothingness formed protons and neutrons. These formed new arrangements of simple atoms and molecules. Hydrogen and helium filled the universal sphere of Nothing.
Iam enjoyed the arrangements. This was beauty. This was Good.
As the sphere of Nothing grew, the remnants of the quantum mechanical patterns present in the first few instants of time arranged the gasses of the expanding universe in long strings strung across the heavens. The strings pulled apart into short segments of galaxies. The galaxies swirled around themselves forming disks and arms and spirals. The gasses within the galaxies were pulled together into tight balls in which the matter began to convert into energy and into more complex patterns of matter. Heavier atoms were created within the suns and Light pervaded the universe.
Iam was happy. This was new symmetry. There were new arrangements and patterns. This was beauty. This was Good.
Some of the larger agglomerations consumed too much of their matter. They became unstable. They became explosive. In a tremendous burst of energy these suns supermovaed, spewing forth into the galactic gas clouds hew heavier elements suitable foe building planets. The gasses began to pull together again, this time drawing the solid dust particles with them. The aggregating mass began to pick up energy and revolve because of the Coriolis Effect from the spiraling galaxy it was part of. The rotating motion separated the gasses and particles based on density and molecular weight. Many of the systems became temporarily unstable because of the large masses of metals and other heavy elements and split into two gas galls; each circling the other and having orbs formed from the heavier elements circling each.
Iam was happy. These were new arrangements, new symmetries. This was beauty. This was Good.
Some of he orbs generated gasses, building an atmosphere. As the orbs radiated off heat to the vast nothingness, water vapor condensed into mighty clouds, raining for eons, and covering the planet surface with a mighty ocean. In the ocean, carbon based molecules began to form a dazzling array of organic molecules. Supplied with an abundant source of simple carbon molecules emanating from the center of the orb and warmed by the sun’s energy in the shallows, complex forms began to take shape: lipids and fatty acids and ring structures and chains.
Phosphorous was also used, as well as nitrogen and sulfur.
Some of the molecules formed lower energy, more stable arrangements which aggregated with each other. Fatty acids formed emulsion droplets with lipids in the center. New molecules formed in the specialized environment of the lipids/fatty acid droplets which would not have been stable in the general ocean environment. The more stable droplets drew on the abundance of molecules dissolved in the ocean. Growing until they reached an unstable size, they split into two halves, each of which continued to grow.
Iam was happy. There was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the planetary orbits, solar systems, galaxies and clusters of the large scale. There was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the atoms, protons, neutrons, leptons and quarks of the smallest scale. Now there was symmetry, pattern and beauty in the molecular arrangement made of these carbon clusters.
Iam called them the tender beauties.
Iam had not exerted his will since the original creation of space, time, matter and energy. The entire universe had unfolded without intervention. Now Iam reinserted himself into creation. These tender beauties were fragile. They occasionally made molecular mistakes while growing and copying themselves. These mistakes sometimes lead to a more stable, ever larger arrangement. Some of the droplets formed a molecule in their central regions that could directly capture the energy of the sun and store it as chemical energy for the use of the droplet. Some of these droplets formed protective sheaths around their perimeter. Some formed aggregates of sheathed droplets which took on larger patterns of symmetry. Iam began to control some of these “mistakes.” Iam controlled the formation of symmetry, pattern and beauty of the tender beauties. Iam directed the formation of millions of types of animals and plants which filled the oceans, covered the lands, and filled the skies.
Iam never interfered with the physical forces released at the creation of the cosmos. Sometimes these forces destroyed the tender beauties. An asteroid would strike a planet disrupting the delicate balance the tender beauties could exist in, or a sun would nova sterilizing the surface of the planet. Sometimes the animals advance to such a high degree of specialization that a minor environmental change caused their extinction. Whenever these setbacks happened, the evolutionary force to develop new levels of symmetry, new forms of patterns and increased beauty began again. Occasionally directed by Iam.
Iam was happy, but Iam was not complete.
Iam was alone.
Iam desired someone to share the universe with. Someone to enjoy the beauty in the symmetry; beauty in the patterns; beauty in the life of the tender beauties.
Iam flexed his creation will for the second time. Iam created two beings, so that neither would be lonely as Iam had been. Iam created them in his own image and likeness. They were timeless and dimensionless. They had Iam’s appreciation of beauty. Iam called them Adam and eve. Iam gave them the universe to enjoy.
Iam was happy.
“Who am I? Who are we?”
“You are Adam and Eve.”
“Who are you?”
“Suffice it to know that Iam. I am your creator and of everything you sense other than myself.”
“There’s so much. You made all of this?
“Yes. All of it and yourselves, my children.”
“We are different from the rest of creation. We seem more like you; almost exactly like you, only lesser somehow.”
“You are different from the rest of creation, my children. You are in my image and likeness. I induced all of this creation from nothing and back to nothing it will someday return. It is always aging and changing; until someday it will end. You, my children, are timeless, ageless, eternal.”
“Who created you?”
“No one created me. I have always been. This will be difficult for you to understand since even though you are eternal, you have never existed outside of time and you won’t until all of this creation ceases. At that absence of time, you will understand.”
“Why have you done all this?”
“I created time, space, energy and matter for the beauty contained in its symmetry and patterns. As you focus your attention on it from the smallest to the largest, you will find beauty.”
“And why did you create us?”
“It brings me even more pleasure to share all of this creation. All of creation is yours to behold and enjoy. Center yourselves wherever you desire. The universe is yours to watch and enjoy. But not to alter. Enough of this. Go; focus yourselves elsewhere or on each other. We will converse more later.”
Adam and Eve needed no further prompting. A nearby sun was supernovaing. They both focused themselves into it, experiencing the swirls, the power, the expansion and the beauty in the rapid change of atomic patterns.
Iam was happy, very happy.
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Adam’s and Eve’s concentration was on an island which moments before had teamed with a dazzling variety of tender beauties. They were all gone now. This planet had a high level of volcanism. The entire island had just been recoated with thirty feet of volcanic rock.
Eve called “Iam.”
“Yes my children.”
“Why did this happen?”
“It has to do with the planet’s highly elliptical orbit caused by the next planet out in this solar system. This induces tremendous gravitational tidal forces which keeps the interior molten and induces cracks and fissures in the crust.”
“We know and understand that. I’m asking, why did you let this happen? Why did you let all this life be destroyed?”
“Have you noticed that I never intervene with the physical forces of my creation?”
Adam replied “Yes, but we sense that you could. You have the power to do so. We don’t. Why did you let all this beauty be destroyed?”
“Center within the rock as it cools and crystallizes. Focus on the steam swirls rising where the hot rock meets the sea. There is still beauty here.”
“You know it’s not the same”
“You speak with such certainty my children. But you have focused on this planet for not even one complete orbit around its sun. Not long enough to notice the instability of the large polar ice caps on this world. When life first evolved here, those ice caps were twice as large and sea was much lower and yet there was no dry land for life to exist on. Only in the oceans was there life. This volcanism you view as so destructive created the first islands of dry land and that was the substrate of the life you miss so dearly even though it exists on hundreds of other islands on this same planet. But the ice caps have been melting, raising the ocean level. The islands have to keep rising to prevent of these dry land life forms from perishing in a flood of sea water. Luckily, the instabilities of this planet only raise and resurface a few islands at a time. They will be repopulated with life from the other islands before those other islands either flood or resurface. As you can now see, life has evolved very well here to deal with the local physical forces. It needs no interfering on my part.”
“Now focus elsewhere my children. Do not trouble yourselves with why and because. Just enjoy the beauty.”
They each thought to themselves as they shifted their concentration, “I could manage that planet better than Iam. If I had Iam’s power I could find a way to stabilize the ice caps or raise the islands without having to kill all the life.”
Iam’s thought followed them. “Enjoy the beauty my children. There is more beauty in the ceaseless change of creation than you could ever imagine on your own. Enjoy the beauty my children.”
Adam and Eve shifted their focus across the universe. They flitted through and past galaxies and clusters of galaxies. They experienced the cloud shapes, the disk shapes, the spiral shapes. Their focus shifted further and further waiting for some detail to catch their attention. They burst through suns, penetrated through the core of planets, enveloped entire galaxies.
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Eve spoke, “There. Adam, did you feel that?”
“No, what? I was busy trying to sense any free quarks in this sun.”
“Adam, unfocus yourself. Open yourself. It’s like when we communicate, but from a much greater distance. It’s a presence, a consciousness. Can’t you feel it?”
“Yes, now I can. It’s coming from the blue planet in this solar system. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
They both centered themselves on the planet; focused on the consciousness; perceived its emotions; felt its fear; converged closer and closer until they were both in a field, next to flocks of animals running from a fire which engulfed the savannah. The flames were only minutes away from the animals and stretched from horizon to horizon. Fed by dry winds, the flames shot hundreds of feet into the air. Fireballs of burning debris were lifted and then dropped starting new fires. Black smoke darkened the midday sky. The terrified animals ran in sheer panic. The old and the weak fell and lay until the flames swept over them and they transformed back into the elemental oxides from which they were formed.
“Adam, there’s so much destruction. There must be something we can do to save these tender beauties. And the thoughts we feel, they’re here, close by. But where and what are they from?”
“Eve, these bipedal animals running next to the river are what we sense. We’re able to sense their feelings. There’s so much fear it’s nearly overwhelming!”
“Adam, the flames are so hot and close. All of these animals are going to perish. They’ll all die, millions of different animals. We must save them. There is something special here.”
“Iam forbade us from interfering Eve. And it doesn’t matter, there’s no way to save them. We can sense them, the same as we sense the fire, the soil, the sky. But we can’t influence them. None of Iam’s creation can sense us.”
“I won’t accept that any longer Adam. If it’s impossible for anything to sense us and receive direction or motivation from us, then why did Iam so carefully forbid us to try?”
“Eve, forget it! I’m focusing elsewhere. I refuse to sense this much devastation.”
“Adam, stay and help me. The bipedal animals are those which we can sense the strongest. Perhaps they would be able to sense us. If we can get them to submerge themselves in the fiver, the flames would pass overheat and not kill them.”
“I’m focusing elsewhere eve. Come be with me again when you realize how futile this is.”
Adam was gone. Eve had never felt so alone before, so vulnerable, or so determined.
Many of the animals collapsed from exhaustion in their flight from the advancing wall of flaming chaos. It swept over the bodies, char sealing their skin and then exploding them as their interior fluids eruptively boiled. Of the animals which made it to the river, many drowned in panic in the water. Others swam to the other side, only to be greeted by more flames which had jumped the watery span and ignited an inferno on that side of the river also. Others ran along the edge of the river, in a futile hope of outdistancing the fire.
A band of bipedal animals was among the latter. Eve focused on the entire group. She tried to plant the thought in their brains of hiding in a calm part of the river at a depth where they could still stand on the bottom. She sensed their panic, but they couldn’t sense her. She tried focusing on smaller and smaller groups of the tribe. As her task seemed increasingly unobtainable, she became more resolute. But these creatures were emitting so much panic and fear it began to over whelm her.
Then Eve felt determination returned from one of the creatures. It was a mother, carrying an infant, clutched tightly to her chest. She was near the lead of the tribe, forcing herself to keep up her pace, controlling her breathing, ignoring the agony rising up in her leg and abdominal muscles. Forcing herself to keep panic subdued for the sake of her baby.
Eve focused herself entirely on this creature. She confined herself completely within the body of the female and tried to reinforce her self-control. It began to work. What panic did exist, subsided. Eve couldn’t control the bodily motions of the creature, but she could influence its emotions. Eve tried to convey the thought that the cool water could be a haven, the only source of refuge. The female slowed her run. Many of the other creatures ran past her, gasping to her not to stop. She walked slowing into the water. Eve helped her fight the fear of it. The female and never been more than knee deep in her life. She called to the slower ones who were now passing by. Most continued on, too physically spent and panicked to notice her. A few stopped and stood at the water’s edge with dazed eyes.
One of these wasn’t as tired as the rest. He was a large male, carrying two small children and helping a lame female to keep moving. Eve extended her focus to him and could feel him respond. He started to put aside his fear of the water and view it as a sanctuary from the heat and flames which were almost upon them. As he began to move his family out to the chest deep water where the first female stood calling, a few of the other creatures followed. The rest began running down the riverside again.
The male looked around and picked some large fleshy leaves from the foliage along the river’s edge. He covered his family and each of the others with a leaf and then began slowly dunking himself, his children and the leaf under water and then just an inch up. “Yes,” thought Eve, “keep the leaves wet so the fire can’t burn through to you.” Some of the others copied his example. The fire was almost overhead now and panic began to fill the creatures. Eve spread her focus over all who were in the water, calming them, keeping them under their wet leaves. And then the fire was past and the creatures were alive.
Eve, completely spent, lost her focus on everything and slowly dispersed and drifted away.
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“Eve, Adam, where are you?” Iam searched for his creations. “I know you’re focused here, but I can’t sense you in the normal way. Where are you?”
Adam was focused inside of and controlling a bipedal creature. He was just finishing the model for the new fertility temple to be built at the center of the city Adam had designed and caused the creatures to build over the last 100 years. Eve was focused inside a priestess. She was starting the rite of spring planting.
“Adam, Eve, where are you?”
Eve and Adam both heard the calling. Their attention wavered, wanting to stay hidden and yet also wanting to focus with Iam even though they feared Iam’s displeasure with the tampering they had done with his creation.
Adam switched focus first. When Eve felt his normal focus, she left the priestess also. Iam focused on them immediately. “Adam, Eve, where were you?”
Adam spoke. “We have been enjoying the beauty of shape, form and life cycle of the bipedal creatures on this planet.”
Iam replied, “I sense you have done more than just appreciate the beauty. There are advances in civilization, agriculture and architecture here which should not yet be.”
“It’s not my fault” Adam protested, “Eve did it first. When I saw what a beautiful thing it could be and that you did not come to punish her, I started doing it myself. If doing this bothers you so much, why did you wait so long to come back and tell us?”
Eve defended herself. “Don’t blame me. When I did it, it was just to be once, to save some of these creatures from death in fire. They Adam did it again and again. I saw he wasn’t punished, so I did it also.”
Iam stopped all the blame casting. “Enough, both of you. I am not interested in why you are doing it. It is enough that you are. And what you are doing with it is exactly as I know it would be. On any of the planets anywhere in the universe, you have never seen any of the creations involved in any action to praise or glorify me. None of them even know of my existence. They were only meant to be beautiful. Now you have these creatures honoring yourselves as gods, as if you were me. They view you as their creators, the bringers of Life and Death. Because you have disobeyed my law and directly interacted with physical creation, I banish you to be part of that creation. I banish you to become one with them. Their needs will be your needs. Their pains will be your pains. You will wear their bodies like clothing which cannot be removed.”
“But there are so many of them and only tow of us. If we are to be one with them and no longer able to control them, they might kill us for they are violent creatures and then we would cease to be.”
“Your deaths will not be the end of you. You will be different than all the other creatures of the universe and you will be the only creatures of both physical and spiritual substance. All of your physical children will also be made of the spirit also.”
“I will change the mitochondria in Eve’s womanly body so that it is much more efficient than the other bipedal creatures’ at releasing energy to do work. All of your children will have that change also, for their lives will be filled with work and toil to survive in this world you have chosen. You and your children and your children’s children will spread like a flood across this planet and once you have filled and mastered this planet, you will spread to the billions of other planets that exist in the universe. For I still want the same thing for you now which I have always wanted. Enjoy the beauty, the symmetry, the arrangement and the patterns which fill all of creation. But now I give you permission to create and augment beauty after your own desires.”
With that, Iam focused elsewhere.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth but they were without form and void. Light shone forth and a solid firmament formed in the midst of water. God let the earth bring forth life in the form of vegetation and all creatures. God created man in his own image and likeness and gave man all love creation. God gave man the command to not act as God. Man disobeyed. God banish man from their special place in creation and clothed them in the skins of animals to live out their days until their redemption at the end of time.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Healthcare 1: (created 9-18-09)
As someone who is probably going to be without health insurance soon, I have an idea to share. A family plan for me right now costs about $20,000/year. That's more than my wife and I make.
First, for people who can't afford health insurance, make the doctors and hospitals accept the same reimbursement as they would get from Medicare. Medicare wouldn't pay them, I would, but I don't like paying about twice as much as an uninsured person as Medicare pays and about 30% more than an insurance company pays.
Second, if I can't afford to pay it all right away, the government gives me a low interest loan to pay the bill and I pay the government back over time.
This wouldn't cost or make the taxpayer anything. The interest charged should just be enough to cover the administration costs of overseeing the loan. The government wouldn't really be providing insurance to compete with private insurance companies.
It would provide me some piece of mind. I used to have a great job with good pay. My wife and I raised our kids, helped put them through college and paid off our debts. Now I find myself unemployed because of the economy and when the COBRA runs out, uninsured also. I don't want a free ride, but I don't want one serious accident or illness to make me loose my home or force me into bankruptcy. My above proposal would give me the protection and need and not cost the government anything.
Bye for now. Doug
First, for people who can't afford health insurance, make the doctors and hospitals accept the same reimbursement as they would get from Medicare. Medicare wouldn't pay them, I would, but I don't like paying about twice as much as an uninsured person as Medicare pays and about 30% more than an insurance company pays.
Second, if I can't afford to pay it all right away, the government gives me a low interest loan to pay the bill and I pay the government back over time.
This wouldn't cost or make the taxpayer anything. The interest charged should just be enough to cover the administration costs of overseeing the loan. The government wouldn't really be providing insurance to compete with private insurance companies.
It would provide me some piece of mind. I used to have a great job with good pay. My wife and I raised our kids, helped put them through college and paid off our debts. Now I find myself unemployed because of the economy and when the COBRA runs out, uninsured also. I don't want a free ride, but I don't want one serious accident or illness to make me loose my home or force me into bankruptcy. My above proposal would give me the protection and need and not cost the government anything.
Bye for now. Doug
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
BioChar 7: Sustainable Land Development International (created 9-1-09)
Terry Mock submitted a comment to the BioChar 6 post. I thought it was so informative that I am posting it as a individual blog. I don't think everyone reads comments.
Terry, thank you for your comment. It is encouraging that this is being accomplished. And thank you for the links. I am already checking them out. More to learn. More to dream. Doug Iverson
From Terry,
Sustainable Land Development Goes Carbon-NegativeSLDT Magazine - August, 2009http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sldt/0809/#/18 Located in the headwaters of the Port Orford Community Stewardship Area in Southern Oregon, Ocean Mountain Ranch (OMR) overlooks the newly-designated Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve and the largest remaining old growth forest on the southern coast in Humbug Mountain State Park. OMR is planned to be developed pursuant to a forest stewardship management plan which has been approved by the Oregon Department of Forestry and Northwest Certified Forestry under the high standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). OMR is also serving as a pilot program and is expected to achieve carbon negative status through the utilization of low impact development practices, energy efficient buildings, renewable/clean energy systems, distributed waste management systems, biochar production, and other practices.
The land development industry is uniquely positioned to utilize best management practices to take advantage of emerging ancient and new biochar technologies to help address a multitude of pressing environmental, social and economic concerns by balancing the needs of people, planet and profit – for today and future generations. Sustainable Land Development International - www.SLDI.org
August 29, 2009 7:58 AM
Terry, thank you for your comment. It is encouraging that this is being accomplished. And thank you for the links. I am already checking them out. More to learn. More to dream. Doug Iverson
From Terry,
Sustainable Land Development Goes Carbon-NegativeSLDT Magazine - August, 2009http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sldt/0809/#/18 Located in the headwaters of the Port Orford Community Stewardship Area in Southern Oregon, Ocean Mountain Ranch (OMR) overlooks the newly-designated Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve and the largest remaining old growth forest on the southern coast in Humbug Mountain State Park. OMR is planned to be developed pursuant to a forest stewardship management plan which has been approved by the Oregon Department of Forestry and Northwest Certified Forestry under the high standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). OMR is also serving as a pilot program and is expected to achieve carbon negative status through the utilization of low impact development practices, energy efficient buildings, renewable/clean energy systems, distributed waste management systems, biochar production, and other practices.
The land development industry is uniquely positioned to utilize best management practices to take advantage of emerging ancient and new biochar technologies to help address a multitude of pressing environmental, social and economic concerns by balancing the needs of people, planet and profit – for today and future generations. Sustainable Land Development International - www.SLDI.org
August 29, 2009 7:58 AM
Friday, August 28, 2009
BioChar 6: Paul Livingstone of R&D Magazine (created 8-28-09, typos fixed 8-29-09)
Earlier today, Paul Livingstone, editor of the R&D magazine, posted an interesting blog pointing out similarities between the government involvement in pushing ethanol and the soon to come government involvement in carbon sequestration. He pointed out some of the flaws of the ethanol movement, ("competition with food crops, low energy per square acre for corn-based production") and suggested that the flaw of carbon sequestration is "there is no direct economic impact of storing carbon (it won’t actually produce anything useful, unless we find a way to use porous rock filled with CO2)". Paul's entire blog can be viewed at http://www.rdmag.com/Community/Blogs/RDBlog/Carbon-sequestration--the-ethanol-of-the-next-decade-/
I posted the following as a comment to his blog.
Actually we have a use for something even better than porous rocks filled with CO2, it's called biochar. And it's a natural or man-made product. In the spring when farmers burn off the dead grass in the road side ditches, the black residue is not ash. Ash is grey. The black residue is biochar, charcoal made from biological material.
On the great plains of North America, the natural grass wildfires left this biochar and it accumulated over thousands of years, helping to create some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. If not pyrolyzed, the grass litter is acted on by microbes and nearly 100% of the carbon is returned to the atmosphere in 5 years. If pyrolyzed during the grass fire, about 25% of the carbon removed from the atmosphere during the photosynthesis remains as biochar.
Biochar is chemically stable in the soil for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. It has been effectively returned to the lithosphere.
This natural process can be part of modern agriculture. Agricultural waste can be pyrolyzed producing biochar. The biochar when mixed with compost and added to forest or farmland dramatically increases the fertility the soils. The biochar acts as reservoir for both water and fertilizer. The soil tolerates droughts better and less fertilizer needs to be added which means less fertilizer leaches past the root zone to contaminate ground water.
The process of pyrolyzation is exothermic. This released heat can be used for heating and perhaps for the generation of electricity.So agriculture can be done in a carbon-negative fashion. This isn’t just carbon-neutral, but actually carbon-negative. More carbon is stored as charcoal in the soil than was released to grow the food. This can create a new product for farmers to sell, the biochar. It might allow farmers to generate and sell clean electricity.
On August 9 – 12, 2009, in Boulder, CO, there was the first North American Biochar Conference. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, spoke at it. He summed up the potential of biochar nicely. It can provide a new source of income for rural areas. It can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It can help ecologically dispose of our agricultural waste. It can make help rebuild the topsoil of our farmlands. And it can remove carbon which is already in the atmosphere (carbon-negative), not just remove carbon we are currently putting into the atmosphere (carbon-neutral).
Perhaps the recent trends in climate are not human caused global warming. Perhaps it is all normal changes we just aren’t clever enough to predict. Maybe the expansion of the great deserts and the melting of the ice caps are all natural. After all, we still don’t have consensus on what caused the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were clever enough to find economical ways to control climate (even if it was a natural cycle) and we could prevent the wars and epidemics and extinctions that come with climate change (human or naturally caused).
We are that clever, and it is in the production of biochar. But the success of biochar depends on research and also on the energy bill that congress will pass this year. Congress controls too much money to be able to do the research needed in the timeframe needed without their help. Instead of another government dole out, this can be a win/win/win situation. And we need all the help we can get to help Congress pass a bill which allows this to happen. Perhaps you can help. For more information, I recommend starting at http://www.biochar-international.org/. Let me know if I can be of any other help to you.Posted by: Doug at 8/28/2009 11:25 PM
I posted the following as a comment to his blog.
Actually we have a use for something even better than porous rocks filled with CO2, it's called biochar. And it's a natural or man-made product. In the spring when farmers burn off the dead grass in the road side ditches, the black residue is not ash. Ash is grey. The black residue is biochar, charcoal made from biological material.
On the great plains of North America, the natural grass wildfires left this biochar and it accumulated over thousands of years, helping to create some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. If not pyrolyzed, the grass litter is acted on by microbes and nearly 100% of the carbon is returned to the atmosphere in 5 years. If pyrolyzed during the grass fire, about 25% of the carbon removed from the atmosphere during the photosynthesis remains as biochar.
Biochar is chemically stable in the soil for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. It has been effectively returned to the lithosphere.
This natural process can be part of modern agriculture. Agricultural waste can be pyrolyzed producing biochar. The biochar when mixed with compost and added to forest or farmland dramatically increases the fertility the soils. The biochar acts as reservoir for both water and fertilizer. The soil tolerates droughts better and less fertilizer needs to be added which means less fertilizer leaches past the root zone to contaminate ground water.
The process of pyrolyzation is exothermic. This released heat can be used for heating and perhaps for the generation of electricity.So agriculture can be done in a carbon-negative fashion. This isn’t just carbon-neutral, but actually carbon-negative. More carbon is stored as charcoal in the soil than was released to grow the food. This can create a new product for farmers to sell, the biochar. It might allow farmers to generate and sell clean electricity.
On August 9 – 12, 2009, in Boulder, CO, there was the first North American Biochar Conference. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, spoke at it. He summed up the potential of biochar nicely. It can provide a new source of income for rural areas. It can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It can help ecologically dispose of our agricultural waste. It can make help rebuild the topsoil of our farmlands. And it can remove carbon which is already in the atmosphere (carbon-negative), not just remove carbon we are currently putting into the atmosphere (carbon-neutral).
Perhaps the recent trends in climate are not human caused global warming. Perhaps it is all normal changes we just aren’t clever enough to predict. Maybe the expansion of the great deserts and the melting of the ice caps are all natural. After all, we still don’t have consensus on what caused the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were clever enough to find economical ways to control climate (even if it was a natural cycle) and we could prevent the wars and epidemics and extinctions that come with climate change (human or naturally caused).
We are that clever, and it is in the production of biochar. But the success of biochar depends on research and also on the energy bill that congress will pass this year. Congress controls too much money to be able to do the research needed in the timeframe needed without their help. Instead of another government dole out, this can be a win/win/win situation. And we need all the help we can get to help Congress pass a bill which allows this to happen. Perhaps you can help. For more information, I recommend starting at http://www.biochar-international.org/. Let me know if I can be of any other help to you.Posted by: Doug at 8/28/2009 11:25 PM
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Biochar 5: David Yarrow: LIFE (Created 8-20-09)
On 8-11-09, at the North American Biochar Conference, I had the pleasure of hearing David Yarrow speak. At the end of his presentation, he received the loudest, longest applause of the entire conference. A link to David's blog is right here.
http://www.relocalize.net/blog/david_yarrow
His speech is reproduced here to the best of my abilities.
David Yarrow LIFE
North American Biochar conference 2009
8-11-09 2:00 pm
Show me the market: Nutrient-Dense, Carbon-Negative Food.
"My name is David Yarrow. I'm from the northeast and I've been teaching people about
biochar for two and a half years.
I felt someone made a mistake when they asked me to be on this panel because I've never been in business. I'm a healer. But I can certainly talk about high quality food for people so they can deal with their physiological crisis.
I think this is a way we can accomplish this and I'm worried that we aren't thinking largely enough about what it is we are dealing with. So I'm going to try and spin our microscope around and look thru the other end a little bit.
We have to start thinking much more about the whole context we are working in. The first thing I would like to tell you is you're probably not going to make much money selling biochar to farmers. They simply can't afford it or to put up a lot of money. I work mostly with small farmers and they would much rather learn to make their own rather than to buy it from somebody. That's the reality of their economics. Their economics says that they grow food and cash crops. They buy the seed because they know they have a market. And they grow food to feed consumers.
So if you want farmers to do something, give them a market.
So a market that we can offer them is the opportunity to sell Carbon-Negative Food. When I talk in the northeast about this people get very excited that they could go to the store and buy food that helps reverse global warming and address climate change. So this is a strategy we can put on the ground to create an identity in the marketplace for food grown with biochar. We get to attract consumers in this direction.
It's probably not going to work too well because most people aren't going to feel this is very attractive. It's not sexy enough.
But because of what biochar does in soils we have a little nicer opportunity to attract and develop consumer loyalty.
Charcoal soaks up nutrients in the soil and holds them and makes them available to the plants. So when you create that condition in your soil you create plants which are fully enriched with nutrition and you can begin to market nutrient dense food grown in that soil.
This is something which is already underway. It started about 25 years ago in Australia and New Zealand.
In February a hundred farmers showed up in Barry, MA and sat thru a three day training with Dr. Martin Anderson and he showed them how to begin to change their production systems to be able to produce commercially and market nutrient-dense food products. Food which has a guaranteed higher analysis than what the USDA started publishing when they first started publishing the nutrient content of our food.
We couldn't do that in the Eighties when we started the organic food system. We specifically restricted growers from making any nutritional claims for their products because we couldn't reliably produce that kind of food. We couldn't realiably get it to market. We couldn't verify. We couldn't authenticate.
But we can do all that now. And it's already happening.
One hundred farmers sat thru three days of training and at the end of it I wondered what they thought of this because I supported 100% what Martin Anderson was teaching. And they all stood up and gave him a very, very long standing ovation. They were very enthusiastic. I said to myself, "If there are a hundred farmers in New England who are pump up to go out and make this happen on their farms then the next revolution has begun. "
We are going to put a new standard of quality on the market and it’s probably going to take us two years. We already have lots of growers lining up because they want to do this. They believe in this.
Biochar is the key ingredient in making happen what they are trying to do.
But they can't buy it and what's the purpose in telling them about something they can't get their hands on. So the people in this room have a responsibility, I think, to work with this new movement and to help them understand how biochar is the key to what they are trying to achieve and to assist them to make it work in the marketplace.
It's hard work. We did this with organics in the eighties. I personally am not looking forward to doing it again. We have to create standards. We have to create trademarks. We have to create production processes which meet those standards. We have to create a system which provides the nuts and bolts and legal licensing and so on has to make this happen.
When I go around and do my talk about biochar and climate change at the end I ask people, "If we put a food product on the market which is carbon-negative and nutrient-dense do you think people will buy it?" The answer is very positive. And that's without much advertising or promotion.
The other part I want to talk about is to back up a little bit and look at the context I was just discussing. In New England we have a tradition called the town meeting. We have a social concern about how we go about doing things in our communities. And I saw this in the organic movement. We had small farms from New England which were sitting there representing social consciousness among the big farms from other parts of the country which were concerned about business and money.
What happens is New England always looks at how this is going to impact our way of life in our communities. And we need to look at how this technology develops communities instead of destroying communities as has been going on for far too long. We begin to implement these technologies in ways that support communities not only in America, but all over the world.
Because what we are dealing with here are the two most fundamental things that every community needs; food and energy. And if we deliver these things in ways that make sense, from their local resources, then that community has the food, the energy and the money to build an economy that works.
So we can not only repair the atmosphere, we can also begin to repair our economic systems, community by community, around the world; if we do this right.
So this is the other end of the telescope, to look at the total context of what happens when we bring this process into a social context. And how to organize as human beings and how we can use this as a way to regenerate our social structures, our economic structures, our financial structures and we can make economies that serve communities.
I call this LIFE: Locally Integrated Food and Energy. It's an idea I've been carrying for about 25 years because I became concerned how to use food policy as a way to drive agriculture and create a sustainable regional food system because I saw the climate curve 35 years ago and I thought "How are we going to feed ourselves?"
I think we need to go forward with this business development. It's really critical. What we need to have happen is to incubate businesses and develop this industry.
But we also need to recognize the social impact of what we are doing and to go about this in ways which make sense. For example, in the Northeast, we are not interested in industrial sized power plants and communities are already organizing to fight them off. The government of course is taking sides with the large scale developers.
What people want is farm scaled equipment, which can be used on our farms on our scale of operations. Mobile power plants which can be taken to the field site. We also want cook stoves which we can use in our houses and wood stoves that will heat our houses and also produce biochar.
One thing that we are very concerned about is how we are going to grow food in our northeast winters when we can't predict the weather and climate and we get extremes. So we want to be able to grow food under cover and this is a very good way to heat that structure and produce a key ingredient for our soil while we are growing food inside of it. Those are the things that make sense to us.
We would rather see a million stoves being cranked out of a factory to go in houses and produce jobs in our communities than to see a megawatt reactor down the road ripping up our forests. These are the kinds of concerns that become part of this community supportive approach to help us implement this technology.
I'll close by mentioning that the shirt I am wearing was given to me by the man who drove me to the airport to fly here. He is from India. I would like us all to remember that what we are doing here is not only going to impact our own society but can lead the way for the world.
Thank you. "
http://www.relocalize.net/blog/david_yarrow
His speech is reproduced here to the best of my abilities.
David Yarrow LIFE
North American Biochar conference 2009
8-11-09 2:00 pm
Show me the market: Nutrient-Dense, Carbon-Negative Food.
"My name is David Yarrow. I'm from the northeast and I've been teaching people about
biochar for two and a half years.
I felt someone made a mistake when they asked me to be on this panel because I've never been in business. I'm a healer. But I can certainly talk about high quality food for people so they can deal with their physiological crisis.
I think this is a way we can accomplish this and I'm worried that we aren't thinking largely enough about what it is we are dealing with. So I'm going to try and spin our microscope around and look thru the other end a little bit.
We have to start thinking much more about the whole context we are working in. The first thing I would like to tell you is you're probably not going to make much money selling biochar to farmers. They simply can't afford it or to put up a lot of money. I work mostly with small farmers and they would much rather learn to make their own rather than to buy it from somebody. That's the reality of their economics. Their economics says that they grow food and cash crops. They buy the seed because they know they have a market. And they grow food to feed consumers.
So if you want farmers to do something, give them a market.
So a market that we can offer them is the opportunity to sell Carbon-Negative Food. When I talk in the northeast about this people get very excited that they could go to the store and buy food that helps reverse global warming and address climate change. So this is a strategy we can put on the ground to create an identity in the marketplace for food grown with biochar. We get to attract consumers in this direction.
It's probably not going to work too well because most people aren't going to feel this is very attractive. It's not sexy enough.
But because of what biochar does in soils we have a little nicer opportunity to attract and develop consumer loyalty.
Charcoal soaks up nutrients in the soil and holds them and makes them available to the plants. So when you create that condition in your soil you create plants which are fully enriched with nutrition and you can begin to market nutrient dense food grown in that soil.
This is something which is already underway. It started about 25 years ago in Australia and New Zealand.
In February a hundred farmers showed up in Barry, MA and sat thru a three day training with Dr. Martin Anderson and he showed them how to begin to change their production systems to be able to produce commercially and market nutrient-dense food products. Food which has a guaranteed higher analysis than what the USDA started publishing when they first started publishing the nutrient content of our food.
We couldn't do that in the Eighties when we started the organic food system. We specifically restricted growers from making any nutritional claims for their products because we couldn't reliably produce that kind of food. We couldn't realiably get it to market. We couldn't verify. We couldn't authenticate.
But we can do all that now. And it's already happening.
One hundred farmers sat thru three days of training and at the end of it I wondered what they thought of this because I supported 100% what Martin Anderson was teaching. And they all stood up and gave him a very, very long standing ovation. They were very enthusiastic. I said to myself, "If there are a hundred farmers in New England who are pump up to go out and make this happen on their farms then the next revolution has begun. "
We are going to put a new standard of quality on the market and it’s probably going to take us two years. We already have lots of growers lining up because they want to do this. They believe in this.
Biochar is the key ingredient in making happen what they are trying to do.
But they can't buy it and what's the purpose in telling them about something they can't get their hands on. So the people in this room have a responsibility, I think, to work with this new movement and to help them understand how biochar is the key to what they are trying to achieve and to assist them to make it work in the marketplace.
It's hard work. We did this with organics in the eighties. I personally am not looking forward to doing it again. We have to create standards. We have to create trademarks. We have to create production processes which meet those standards. We have to create a system which provides the nuts and bolts and legal licensing and so on has to make this happen.
When I go around and do my talk about biochar and climate change at the end I ask people, "If we put a food product on the market which is carbon-negative and nutrient-dense do you think people will buy it?" The answer is very positive. And that's without much advertising or promotion.
The other part I want to talk about is to back up a little bit and look at the context I was just discussing. In New England we have a tradition called the town meeting. We have a social concern about how we go about doing things in our communities. And I saw this in the organic movement. We had small farms from New England which were sitting there representing social consciousness among the big farms from other parts of the country which were concerned about business and money.
What happens is New England always looks at how this is going to impact our way of life in our communities. And we need to look at how this technology develops communities instead of destroying communities as has been going on for far too long. We begin to implement these technologies in ways that support communities not only in America, but all over the world.
Because what we are dealing with here are the two most fundamental things that every community needs; food and energy. And if we deliver these things in ways that make sense, from their local resources, then that community has the food, the energy and the money to build an economy that works.
So we can not only repair the atmosphere, we can also begin to repair our economic systems, community by community, around the world; if we do this right.
So this is the other end of the telescope, to look at the total context of what happens when we bring this process into a social context. And how to organize as human beings and how we can use this as a way to regenerate our social structures, our economic structures, our financial structures and we can make economies that serve communities.
I call this LIFE: Locally Integrated Food and Energy. It's an idea I've been carrying for about 25 years because I became concerned how to use food policy as a way to drive agriculture and create a sustainable regional food system because I saw the climate curve 35 years ago and I thought "How are we going to feed ourselves?"
I think we need to go forward with this business development. It's really critical. What we need to have happen is to incubate businesses and develop this industry.
But we also need to recognize the social impact of what we are doing and to go about this in ways which make sense. For example, in the Northeast, we are not interested in industrial sized power plants and communities are already organizing to fight them off. The government of course is taking sides with the large scale developers.
What people want is farm scaled equipment, which can be used on our farms on our scale of operations. Mobile power plants which can be taken to the field site. We also want cook stoves which we can use in our houses and wood stoves that will heat our houses and also produce biochar.
One thing that we are very concerned about is how we are going to grow food in our northeast winters when we can't predict the weather and climate and we get extremes. So we want to be able to grow food under cover and this is a very good way to heat that structure and produce a key ingredient for our soil while we are growing food inside of it. Those are the things that make sense to us.
We would rather see a million stoves being cranked out of a factory to go in houses and produce jobs in our communities than to see a megawatt reactor down the road ripping up our forests. These are the kinds of concerns that become part of this community supportive approach to help us implement this technology.
I'll close by mentioning that the shirt I am wearing was given to me by the man who drove me to the airport to fly here. He is from India. I would like us all to remember that what we are doing here is not only going to impact our own society but can lead the way for the world.
Thank you. "
Hypography Science Forum
Mr. Erich Knight sent me a link to the Hypography science forum and the discussion concerning biochar and terra preta. I have not followed and read everything the links connect, but it looks like a good thing to share.
I did not know about this hypography forum, Thank you for sharing Erich,
http://hypography.com/forums/terra-preta/3451-terra-preta-parent-thread-started-all-14.html
Bye for now, Doug
I did not know about this hypography forum, Thank you for sharing Erich,
http://hypography.com/forums/terra-preta/3451-terra-preta-parent-thread-started-all-14.html
Bye for now, Doug
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
BioChar 4: The USA Secretary of Agriculture (created 8-11-09)
Yesterday, at the North American Biochar Conference - 2009, the Secretary of the USDA spoke with us for an hour. I had no intention of devoting a blog to what he had to say, but it was too good not to pass on.
Whether you voted for President Obama or not, (I did not), you should admit that he is doing things in a different way. When he was still President-Elect Obama, he asked Tom Vilsack to be his Secretary of Agriculture. He told Mr. Vilsack, that if he accepted, that he had two main expectations.
The two main expectations were that the Department of Agriculture would be engaged in 1) leading the country off of fossil fuels and in 2) creating a more vibrant rural economy.
Secretary Vilsack summed up the driving force behind those two instructions in four imperatives which President Obama has recognized.
1) There is significant risk in not taking action in stopping global warming. It will create more violent weather and will affect agriculture and animal health and human health.
2) Leading the way is important to our national security. The world expects the USA to lead and when we don't, we further loose credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.
3) The USA needs better energy security. We need alternative ways to produce everything.
4) The USA needs a stronger rural economy so it is viable for families to move back to rural areas.
Mr. Vilsack spoke about how the administration is now recognizing biochar production coupled with energy production as one of the ways to meet all four of these imperatives. Biochar production removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeps it out of the atmosphere much longer then growing biomass does. There is a real opportunity for the USA to research and figure out the details of making different types of biochar to match the needs of local soils around the globe. There is a significant amount of electricity and space heating which can be done with the heat released while making biochar. The potential size of the new rural markets for making biochar/energy is estimated at between 5 and 20 billion dollars per year.
Mr. Vilsack answered questions for about 30 minutes. This author was very impressed with the answers. In response to one question about the budget set for the forest service, Mr. Vilsack outlined the 4 goals he has set for the USDA to use in creating its 2011 budget. All funded activities in the USDA in 2011 will have to address at least one of those four goals. The goals are:
1) Wealth creation opportunities for rural economies.
2) Support the forest service.
3) Global security and expansion of trade
4) Ensuring all children has safe, nutritious balanced meals.
That is the type of goal setting and holding people accountable for their activities and spending that I am used to in a successful private business. I was glad to see it being enacted in a governmental bureaucracy. I wish Mr. Vilsack all the success in the world.
Bye for now, Doug
Whether you voted for President Obama or not, (I did not), you should admit that he is doing things in a different way. When he was still President-Elect Obama, he asked Tom Vilsack to be his Secretary of Agriculture. He told Mr. Vilsack, that if he accepted, that he had two main expectations.
The two main expectations were that the Department of Agriculture would be engaged in 1) leading the country off of fossil fuels and in 2) creating a more vibrant rural economy.
Secretary Vilsack summed up the driving force behind those two instructions in four imperatives which President Obama has recognized.
1) There is significant risk in not taking action in stopping global warming. It will create more violent weather and will affect agriculture and animal health and human health.
2) Leading the way is important to our national security. The world expects the USA to lead and when we don't, we further loose credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.
3) The USA needs better energy security. We need alternative ways to produce everything.
4) The USA needs a stronger rural economy so it is viable for families to move back to rural areas.
Mr. Vilsack spoke about how the administration is now recognizing biochar production coupled with energy production as one of the ways to meet all four of these imperatives. Biochar production removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeps it out of the atmosphere much longer then growing biomass does. There is a real opportunity for the USA to research and figure out the details of making different types of biochar to match the needs of local soils around the globe. There is a significant amount of electricity and space heating which can be done with the heat released while making biochar. The potential size of the new rural markets for making biochar/energy is estimated at between 5 and 20 billion dollars per year.
Mr. Vilsack answered questions for about 30 minutes. This author was very impressed with the answers. In response to one question about the budget set for the forest service, Mr. Vilsack outlined the 4 goals he has set for the USDA to use in creating its 2011 budget. All funded activities in the USDA in 2011 will have to address at least one of those four goals. The goals are:
1) Wealth creation opportunities for rural economies.
2) Support the forest service.
3) Global security and expansion of trade
4) Ensuring all children has safe, nutritious balanced meals.
That is the type of goal setting and holding people accountable for their activities and spending that I am used to in a successful private business. I was glad to see it being enacted in a governmental bureaucracy. I wish Mr. Vilsack all the success in the world.
Bye for now, Doug
Sunday, August 9, 2009
BioChar 3: (created 8-9-09)
Today is Sunday and the first day of the North American Biochar Conference-2009. It's appropriate that a group of people all hoping to save the planet would start work on a Sunday.
Today we toured the production facilities of Biochar Engineering in Golden, Colorado and they demonstrated the making of biochar from woodchips. They are a startup company and their first system ships tomorrow. It is capable of turning 1000 lbs. of wood chips into 200 lbs. of biochar every hour.
I met people from all over the world. There is Mike from southern California. He was a dry dairy farmer and got out of farming because he couldn't stomach the practices the farmers have to do to make a living; specifically, the over application of dairy farm manure to farm fields. He has been trying to make a biochar system to turn dairy manure into biochar which wouldn't have the over application problem.
J. Steven B. works for a company looking for the biomass problem of sugar cane production. Before sugar cane is harvested, the top 1/3 of the plant is cut off and left on the ground. It is mostly leaves with little sugar. The rest of the plant is harvested and brought to the processing facility to extract the sugar. The third of the plant left on the ground is just open burned on the ground to ash. And there are growing air quality concerns with this practice. The rest of the plant is processed by squeezing out the sugar containing liquid. The left over dried stalk material is called bagasse and there is a lot of it. They can burn it for the heat to run the sugar cane mill. Some companies are using it to make disposable food storage boxes, to replace Styrofoam boxes restaurants put your leftovers in. Steven is checking out if biochar would be a good product to make from the bagasse.
There was a demonstration of TLUD stoves. TLUD is Top Lit UpDraft stoves. These are simple devices being promoted for the third world to create a relatively clean burn of scraps of organic matter to both release heat for cooking and to create biochar which either be sold as charcoal, or worked into their garden soil. They are also being targeted in this country for campstoves.
Most of today was spent giving us time to learn a little about each other. Every conference I've ever been to before we were giving about 30 minutes. Today, we had 8 hours. It was excellent. I'm excited for more.
Bye for now, Doug
Today we toured the production facilities of Biochar Engineering in Golden, Colorado and they demonstrated the making of biochar from woodchips. They are a startup company and their first system ships tomorrow. It is capable of turning 1000 lbs. of wood chips into 200 lbs. of biochar every hour.
I met people from all over the world. There is Mike from southern California. He was a dry dairy farmer and got out of farming because he couldn't stomach the practices the farmers have to do to make a living; specifically, the over application of dairy farm manure to farm fields. He has been trying to make a biochar system to turn dairy manure into biochar which wouldn't have the over application problem.
J. Steven B. works for a company looking for the biomass problem of sugar cane production. Before sugar cane is harvested, the top 1/3 of the plant is cut off and left on the ground. It is mostly leaves with little sugar. The rest of the plant is harvested and brought to the processing facility to extract the sugar. The third of the plant left on the ground is just open burned on the ground to ash. And there are growing air quality concerns with this practice. The rest of the plant is processed by squeezing out the sugar containing liquid. The left over dried stalk material is called bagasse and there is a lot of it. They can burn it for the heat to run the sugar cane mill. Some companies are using it to make disposable food storage boxes, to replace Styrofoam boxes restaurants put your leftovers in. Steven is checking out if biochar would be a good product to make from the bagasse.
There was a demonstration of TLUD stoves. TLUD is Top Lit UpDraft stoves. These are simple devices being promoted for the third world to create a relatively clean burn of scraps of organic matter to both release heat for cooking and to create biochar which either be sold as charcoal, or worked into their garden soil. They are also being targeted in this country for campstoves.
Most of today was spent giving us time to learn a little about each other. Every conference I've ever been to before we were giving about 30 minutes. Today, we had 8 hours. It was excellent. I'm excited for more.
Bye for now, Doug
Saturday, August 8, 2009
BioChar 2: What is my interest in biochar?(created 8-8-09)
So what is my interest in biochar? After a 25 year career as a scientist, chemist, engineer, and the “make it so" guy in industry, I spent the last two years teaching physics and physical science in a rural Wisconsin high school. The last topic we covered in the physical science class this past year was "the carbon cycle" and what the ramifications of our use of fossil fuels might be. I didn't insist on the kids accepting the current theory and fears of global warming. Most of them already knew enough to question how accurate the predictions are of global warming caused by human activity. With the drastic climate changes during the past 10,000 year not being explained by current climate change models, it is difficult to take the predictions seriously.
The side effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which I stressed cannot be ignored is ocean acidification. The kids learned that there are two large scale methods of moving carbon to long term storage in the lithosphere; 1) the aging of rocks (silicates react with atmospheric carbon dioxide creating bicarbonates and carbonates and silicon dioxide (sand). (Look for a future blog where I wonder why this isn't done on purpose in power plants to remove the carbon dioxide from the exhaust gasses.) The carbonates wash down the water sheds to the oceans. And 2) carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans forming more bicarbonates and carbonates and living creatures use these ions to build shells and tests. These shells and tests eventually settle to the ocean floor, creating limestone rock. As the ocean becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for the creatures to turn the carbonates into shells and tests. This is bad news. Make the world warmer, and weather patterns change, some species don't adapt and die, more wars occur as populations shift. Kill the oceans and everything dies.
My challenge to them was to figure out how to prevent ocean acidification. We explored growing biomass and making compost and biofuels. None of these activities reduced the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide for a long period of time. The one activity they found which moves carbon dioxide back to the lithosphere for an extended period of time is making biochar. And it has the advantages that the biochar makes our farmland, gardens and forests more productive and energy is released during the production of biochar which can be used to make electricity or biofuels.
I got so excited about this that I have spent my summer learning how to make biochar from my dried grass clippings and hay and am attending the North American Biochar Conference - 2009 in Boulder, CO.
I will post my notes about the biochar conference here on my blog. The conference runs from 8-9-09 thru 8-12-09.
Bye for now, Doug
The side effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which I stressed cannot be ignored is ocean acidification. The kids learned that there are two large scale methods of moving carbon to long term storage in the lithosphere; 1) the aging of rocks (silicates react with atmospheric carbon dioxide creating bicarbonates and carbonates and silicon dioxide (sand). (Look for a future blog where I wonder why this isn't done on purpose in power plants to remove the carbon dioxide from the exhaust gasses.) The carbonates wash down the water sheds to the oceans. And 2) carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans forming more bicarbonates and carbonates and living creatures use these ions to build shells and tests. These shells and tests eventually settle to the ocean floor, creating limestone rock. As the ocean becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for the creatures to turn the carbonates into shells and tests. This is bad news. Make the world warmer, and weather patterns change, some species don't adapt and die, more wars occur as populations shift. Kill the oceans and everything dies.
My challenge to them was to figure out how to prevent ocean acidification. We explored growing biomass and making compost and biofuels. None of these activities reduced the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide for a long period of time. The one activity they found which moves carbon dioxide back to the lithosphere for an extended period of time is making biochar. And it has the advantages that the biochar makes our farmland, gardens and forests more productive and energy is released during the production of biochar which can be used to make electricity or biofuels.
I got so excited about this that I have spent my summer learning how to make biochar from my dried grass clippings and hay and am attending the North American Biochar Conference - 2009 in Boulder, CO.
I will post my notes about the biochar conference here on my blog. The conference runs from 8-9-09 thru 8-12-09.
Bye for now, Doug
Friday, August 7, 2009
BioChar 1 (created 8-7-09)
We've all seen biochar but probably didn't have any idea that it has the potential to save the world. Have you ever made toast that went to far. The black stuff is biochar. Go too far when toasting a marshmallow over a campfire, the black stuff is biochar. In the spring, some country people burn off the dead grass in the road side ditch. The black stuff left is biochar. Before the European Americans settled the Great Plains and tilled it into farmland, there were natural, periodic grass fires which swept across the land. It left behind a thin layer of black biochar. This biochar built up over thousands of years is why the Great Plains were so incredibly fertile and the early farmers reported top soil "six feet deep."
Biochar is a form of activated carbon, similar to the universal antidote used by doctors. Biochar acts like a molecular sponge. It absorbs molecules which are in excess around them and then releases those molecules when they are no longer in excess. So when biochar is incorporated into the soil, it absorbs water when it rains and hold onto it until a dry spell and then releases the water for the plants roots. Biochar absorbs nutrients when in excess, as when a farmer or yard owner applies fertilizer, and releases it as the plant roots need it. Biochar protects the ground water from many forms of pollution.
Biochar won't protect the soil and groundwater from everything. It is not a panacea. In a future blog, I will expose some of the horribly silly things people are talking about doing with biochar.
Bye for now, Doug
Biochar is a form of activated carbon, similar to the universal antidote used by doctors. Biochar acts like a molecular sponge. It absorbs molecules which are in excess around them and then releases those molecules when they are no longer in excess. So when biochar is incorporated into the soil, it absorbs water when it rains and hold onto it until a dry spell and then releases the water for the plants roots. Biochar absorbs nutrients when in excess, as when a farmer or yard owner applies fertilizer, and releases it as the plant roots need it. Biochar protects the ground water from many forms of pollution.
Biochar won't protect the soil and groundwater from everything. It is not a panacea. In a future blog, I will expose some of the horribly silly things people are talking about doing with biochar.
Bye for now, Doug
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
My first blog
My better, smarter half has been after me to set up a blog. Here it is, my very first one. Many more to follow.
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