Boomer News

America is Not Yet Lost

A little over a year ago, a Russian professor predicted that the disintegration of America would occur by 2010. The Russian National Security Agency, FAPSI, said it will begin with wealthier nations withholding funds from America.

Paul Krugman began his article “America is not lost yet” in the NY-Times by saying; “We’ve always known America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation will eventually end.”

My question to Paul is when? My grand-kids would like to know. Obviously the Russian’s have done some serious thinking on when America will disintegrate.

Not since the book “Limits of Growth” in 1970, and the follow up book in 2000, have I been able to find an agency in the United States that does unbiased long term projections on all America’s … and the world’s most important issues.

The politicians keep saying that we can’t pass all our problems on to our grandchildren, but Paul, where do go to get trustworthy long term projections on all the problems are grandchildren will be facing?

Maybe a company like Gallup, with it’s technical talent, could set up a long term forecasts department to do long trem projections open to the public. We are alredy getting tons of polls on this falls coming election … how about a poll on when America will disintegrate?

Back to the drawing board

After looking into the difficulties and and the huge effort to set up a dedicated Forecast Channel built around charts & graphs to get accurate data on the world and national mid to long term problems, I’ve concluded that it would be a very risky venture.

I was encouraged when Ross Perot started a website in 2008 called perotcharts that provided charts on looming budget crisis issues. Apparently the website is no longer active. The public response to his website was poor based upon websites that tracked Perot’s website performance. The NY-Times column called “By the Numbers” on statistics and charts caught my eye, but it appears the interest and the number of articles on statistics has fallen off.

The Era of Distrust  was even around in Mark Twain’s time. One of  his famous quotes was: “There are three kinds of lies … lies, lies, and damned lies … and statistics.” Sorry kids, it seems the really truthful forecast data and facts on long term issues will remain in the labs and computers with the people who compile the data … for now.

But if you are like your grandpa … you don’t give up trying. Even if someone is singing to you to; “Turn out the lights, the party is over”. Be persistent if you are purposefully driven to achieve a particular goal.

Maybe Perot charts can be rejuvenated as a web site if it looks at all crucial long term problems, that have the objective of Continuous Measurable Improvement to avoid disaster … it will need the blessing of the influential pundits.

Another area to look at is the polling companies. The public pays attention to their statistics and charts. Grandpa will check into how they are funded and what type of information they look for to go out to the electronic media and the printed media. Tune into future grandpa’s blogs kids … the party is not over …yet.

The Geezers’ Crusade

Before we push forward on our dedicated graphics TV channel, I will fill you in on the comments I made on a David Brooks NYTimes articles … The Geezers’ Crusade. Here it is:

“I hope old geezers like myself can make a difference. I’m 79 and I started a blog in 2006 to communicate with our grandchildren, our children and their spouses. (11 grandchildren and 11 adults.) My initial motivation was to see if I could interest a few kids in math & science careers, using the cosmos and human thought as the main subject categories. My last blog I posted was to encourage other old geezers grandfathers like myself to communicate with their grandchildren and immediate family.

When I started writing I felt that the majority of bloggers were more interested in talking  … than listening. And it looks like that is the way it has turned out … at least for my blog. (Which is OK by me, communicating with the kids being the objective). I’ve written 260 blogs with 220 comments from the kids, family and friends … and only one comment from a stranger on the Internet.

Trying to just communcate with the kids was more important than dealing with the Tower of Misinformation on the Internet.

My coming blogs to the grand-kids are on the merits of our dedicated TV channel concept. It will use Perot graphs and charts to address the major world & national issues. It will be like the weather channel … you pop in … get the information you need … and pop out. The difference will be that we will be tracking mid and long term problems on a daily basis. It won’t be boring. The information will be factual. Journalist with technical training will be comparing the latest problem of the day against the  historic data and the forecasts for that particular probelrm.

Thanks David Brooks for your thoughts about us old geezers. Hope is on it’s way. I predict (forecast), the young people who are the age of our grandchildren will someday be known as the enlightened Generation. Kids that are now 10 years old are exposed to all the good and bad to which adults are exposed. They will not be fooled …and they will act before a major crisis occurs.” 

It’s better to trust … than not trust

 What do you do kids when you feel you can’t trust your government and you can’t trust many of our influential business leaders? Where do we turn for truthful information? In a recent article by David Brooks called; “Politics in the age of Distrust” he  offers the Obama administration 4 bad options in going forward.

• The Heedless and Arrogant Approach.
• Weak and Feckless Approach.
• The Dangerous and Demagogic Approach.
• The Incoherent and Internecine Approach.

(yes, I had to check the meaning on a couple of words too kids)

We have a fifth approach:

• Establish a place where the most trusted data on the TV and the Internet can be found.

The next series of blogs will explain our concept of a TV channel dedicated to accurate information.

Do older Boomers still read the newspapers?

I’m one generation older than the oldest Baby Boomer.  Do you older Boomers still like reading the daily newspaper over coffee in the morning and relax on Sunday with all the information in the thick Sunday paper? The “Tablet” is the latest electronic digital device designed to put an end to the newspaper business.

I’ve been advocating a dedicated TV channel to put words to the graphics that track the worlds most serious problems on a daily basis for 35 years now. That concept has not caught hold yet. Poor Ross Perot tried to get interest in the use of graphs in the 1992 election campaign and again in the 2008 campaign when he initiated www.perotcharts.com web site. Apparently he gave up … the web site doesn’t seem to be active any more.

I know people use the Internet for all the financial data, graphs & charts … but the older generation will still want the full page printed sheet the newspapers provide. The concept of putting words to graphics can be done at a local, state, national and global levels in the newspapers.

Journalist & politicians are for the most part verbal people. Graphs are foreign to them … “graphs are for people who are into math and science.” Journalist have learned photo journalism … putting words to pictures.  They don’t seem to appreciate the power graphics have to convey the present status and future projected status of all the important  issues of the day. A graph can be worth a thousand words. Graphs can help reduce “The Too Much Information Problem”

Hillary Clinton made fun of Ross Perot’s charts in the 2008 campaign. Duh! Charts on the debt have been crying out for action for decades and yet the politicians have not had the fortitude to address the problem. With the Internet, the American public now have access to the information that shows how soon the crisis is going to hit us. The Massachusetts election shows how the American public is awakening to the unsustainable curves the graphs are showing. The politicians & TV news media are feeling the heat of the public anger … and party affiliation has nothing to do with with the overall frustration in our governments ineptitude with problems they have avoided for years.

We need a dedicated TV channel that profides projections on every important issue, in the same style as the weather channel. The same graphs and statistics can be printed in the newspapers to breath new life into newspaper business.

Boomer News to Grandpa Boomers

I’m not from the Boomer Generation. So why did I call my blog the Boomer News? Because in 1941, when I was in the 5th grade in grammar school, I wrote a hand written newspaper for the 5th graders that I called the Boomer News. I don’t recall what made me come up with that name. The oldest of you real boomers are now about 64 years old. Many of you are grandparents. This blog is to you boomer grandpas.

My blog is written to my our eleven grandchildren who are between 3 and 18 years old. I’ve been writing this blog for three and half years and hope to keep writing to them until the youngest is at least in the 5th grade. I don’t expect any of the grandkids to tune into the blog until age 10. I’m not writing a blog to make money … it is just my way to have one-on-one communication with my grandchildren … from a distance.

My guess is that my readership is about 30 people, which is composed of the kids parents, family, relatives, friends, and the kids. My most recent blogs have been to the parents, friends and to the oldest grandchildren. If any of you real grandpa boomers wish to communicate with your grandkids in a similar one-on-one fashion, check out my blog at web site “Boomers.Alltop.com” (4th blog down on the left . Last blog; “In all Things … be Moderate”)

My experience is that 10 year olds are curious, imaginative and still listen to their parents and grandparents.

In All Things … Be Moderate

That is something I heard as a child that has stuck with me. From my engineering experience kids, you get to realize for every decision you make … there is a trade off.  Look for the downside to every action you make … there will be one … just keep the downside as small as possible.

When it comes to your health and welfare being moderate in all things is a good axiom to go by.

In politics, your grandpa is noted for being a middle-of-the road guy. A moderate. Like a guy that is standing in the middle of a see-saw shifting his weight left or right to maintain a balance between extreme factions.

Back in the late 80s I became very disenchanted with our two political parties. They were becoming more and more polarized and beholding more & more to special interests. I felt the country needed a third party. I voted for Ross Perot along with about 18.9% of the American public. But   the search for moderate candidates has grown tougher ever since.

(This is for our 18 year old grandchild and all the parents). Yesterday was a historic day in Massachusetts when a Republican beat a Democrat for a very important seat in the Senate. My guess is that moderate independents made the difference.

It opened my eyes that a third party might end up being just as bad as the two we have. We don’t need a 3rd party we need more independent voters  …who are not beholding to giant special interests groups …  to get the GOP & DEMs to do the will of the people.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Kids, in our last blog we pointed out to you the amazing  achievements of a small culture. The value of education, covering many centuries, has lead to these achievements by the Jewish people. These achievements have been available and made possible for all cultures, since we all came from the very  first two Homo sapiens to have children. 

It’s not to late for all cultures to put education and critical thinking as the highest priorities in the 21st century. All the educational resources are right there on the Internet.

Is it possible that all wars will be eliminated in the 21st century? Not likely. In the movie Avatar,* after we humans have depleted the Earth, humans move to the habitable moon Pandora in the year 2154, and then become engage in more fighting . As we get into  the 21st century, fighting is still about the haves and have-nots and economics … but with a more more obvious theological influence. Belief against belief … culture against culture.

The United Sates has been the melting pot experiment for over 250 years where people from all the world’s cultures live. Each immigrant has had to under go huge belief changes to become Americans. On the whole the experiment has worked. In America your achievements are more important than your origins. But, the United States, as the world’s super power, policemen and ultimate “have” nation, we are still hated.

But kids, I’m optimistic about the planet’s future. Grandpa has dubbed all the children of the world now under 20 years old as the “Enlightened Generation”.

Now fast forward to the year 2154 we find a columnist writing an article about our planet’s slowly being restored to it’s environmentally balanced health and beauty, he entitles the article, “Maybe we all can just get along!”

*(Kids I haven’t see Avatar  yet. Hopefully I haven’t made some erroneous comments about the movie.)

Is the World list of Cultures Complete?

So, here we are in the 21st century with no new cultures left to be discovered. It’s estimated there are 1,500 cultures in the world. Just what is a culture Kids? A simple definition  would be: “a particular society that came from a particular place”. Since we have not been able to discover any new groups of people on earth that have not already been discovered … we have to work with the cultures that now exist.

One would assume that each culture would be defined by it’s different behaviors and beliefs. In this century, where world cooperation will be needed to head off the consequences of the unsustainable issues, how will we get all the different behaviors and beliefs to work together? How do we get rid of the angst  & anger between cultures?

Is there any culture that stands out above the rest? I just started to think about this blog subject several days ago, when David Brooks  of the NY Times in Tel Aviv news pops up with a column about a culture that sets benchmarks for all the rest of us to achieve. Jews make up 0.2 % of world population; Yet 54% are world chess champs, 27% noble physics laureates & 31% medicine laureates. In the US 21% Ivy league student bodies, 26% Kennedy Center honors, 37%  Academy Award directors, 38% of leading philanthrolists, 51% of the Pulitzer Prize winners.

This is going to take more than one blog kids, so give some thought to how one small culture could have accomplished so many achievements that is not in proportion to their size. Grandpa’s initial thought is that since the genesis of the written word, they have been continually living through hard times and being forced to assimilate into other cultures. All these challenges stimulate the creative juices that require education as the fuel.    

 So here we are. So where do we go from here? Next blog.

Do we need a journalist?

What are we going to call our imaginary TV station dedicated to following the status of our nations most important issues and the world’s  most important issues? The station, to be effective, has to attract an effective segment of the general TV watching audience.  Will the raw science data do that? No. Will a scientist be able to do that? Probably not. (Not too many Carl Sagan’s available).

We need a journalist who is part scientist, part reporter, part columnist, and most important … part story teller. This TV station is taking raw science data, (Things that are prove-able) and making projections/predictions into the future. (which one might say is … being a prophet … which is in the realm of the mythical). Lots of good story lines for a journalist.

Our best example for our TV station, (that has a shorter time scale), is the tracking of a hurricane that pops off the coast of Africa as a suspicious low pressure area until it finally hits the US mainland. The hurricane graphics attract more and more viewers as the hurricane gets closer & closer to the mainland. In our case, we need to attract people to the impending crisis or catastrophy, early in the game, while time still allows for corrections to be made. The 21st century is loaded with unsustainable growth problems that have curves, that need to be bent.

Do any of you kids, who might be thinking about journalism or science, find this interesting?

Do Journalist still avoid graphs?

Journalist are verbal people … which makes sense. Verbal people write books and stories in print that are interesting, enjoyable, and educational. With the advent of the camera and TV,  journalist  had to combine their prose with pictures. But a graph is not a photo, and journalist seem to  be uncomfortable trying to be descriptive about graphs that require some understanding of the raw data that  generated the graph.

Kids, our goal is to have a TV station that is dedicated to presenting charts and graphs of the most accurate, concise  raw data available on the status of the world’s most important issues.  This requires that the scientific method be used by the people who acquire the raw data and that the journalist, with the aid of a scientist, believe in the accuracy of the information they are presenting to the public on TV.

Kids, do you know what the “hockey stick controversy” is all about? How about you journalist out there? The global warming dispute started over the reconstructed estimates of the Northern temperature changes from the year 1000 to the year 2000. The curve looks flat from 1000 to the year 1900 … followed by a sharp increase. A PhD named Jerry Mahlman named it the “hockey stick curve” because it reminded him of the shape of a hockey stick. The dispute arises over the accuracy of the raw data.

Global warming information presents the journalist with the very interesting assignment to initially explain to the public just how complex the science of climate change is … and that many, many factors are involved in presenting an accurate picture of where science is, in obtaining an honest picture of their present projections.

Will anyone actually watch this TV station? I know I would, rather than hear and see the pundits of the far right and far left, who command a disproportionate amount of time on TV … or the “out-of-context snip-its” of the network journalists. And then AP news stories that get used over and over again  by other news outlets … that add to “The Too Much Information Problem.”

In my opinion, there would be no trouble filling up the time with interesting important accurate information. What do you kids think?

The Too Much Information Problem

Okay kids lets move onto one of our other blog subjects of interest. It is estimated that 1,000,000 books are written every year. And wouldn’t you agree that it’s next to impossible to review even the most miniscule part of the any of the scientific disciplines from the 100,000,000 scientific articles generated per year? And it’s probably not possibly to calculate how much new information is put on the Internet in a year. There is a lot of important information beamed out to the general public that can’t surface because of all the chit-chat that is flooding the airwaves  … and print material.

I’ve been pushing for a TV channel dedicated to presenting the news of the most critical national & world longer term problems that need the attention of our leaders and the general public. It’s been an objective of mine for 35 years and kids, it’s obvious I haven’t had any success with the objective. Maybe one of you eleven grandchildren has an interest in journalism and can help me out.

Well, I checked over the 250 plus blogs we have written over the past 3 plus years and I was surprised we have written over 10 blogs on the  need  to present the most significant  national & world measurable  issues to the public on a continuous basis to achieve continuous measurable improvement … using graphs and charts.

On the next blog we will update “Why do journalist & politicians avoid graphs?” blog that is in our August 2009 archive.

As you Grandchildren Thinketh …

Each of  you grandchildren,  are literally what you think … your character being the complete sum of all your thoughts. Grandpa is not saying anything new. There was a man 2,500 years ago who is known for his thoughts … about thinking. His name was Socrates. Other people over the centuries, who had the advantage of becoming literate, … recognized that we are the masters of who we are and who we can become.

Kids, if our subconscious mind were able to say to our conscious mind;

“Your thoughts are being recorded for future use and will become a permanent part of your memory … (i.e. your personality)”

Wouldn’t you tend to be a little more critical about what information you put into your brain? How can you tell if what you read or hear is actually true? The good news,  is that today, many people in the world are literate, and have the opportunity to become a critical thinker like Socrates … or some one like James Allen who wrote a very short book you can read called; “As a Man Thinketh” … in his heart, so is he. Written in 1903. 

The bad news today is that there is so much information available that is misinformation. It’s good to see colleges and universities offering “Critical Thinking” courses.  Today, the wars between opposing cultures is not about fighting on a battle field for land, but about winning the minds over to one cultures way of thinking, over the other cultures way of thinking.

Grandpa can’t emphasize enough how important it is for all of you children to be critical thinkers in what is your century … the 21st century.

Competitive Plasticity

Well kids, we left off the last blog asking how we could replace  erroneous thoughts or beliefs with more factual information. (critical thinking). It’s not easy. The neurons that make up the erroneous thought or belief covers an area on the “brain map.” They do not want to give up that space without a fight. Those neurons are very competitive. However, these  stubborn neurons have plasticity and can be rewired with new thoughts.

Here is what a neurologist in the book “The Brain That Changes Itself” says;

“When we learn a bad habit, it takes over a brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for good habits. That is why unlearning is so often a lot harder than learning, and why childhood education is so important – it’s best to get it right early, before the bad habit gets an advantage.”

That is why a very bad habit, like addiction, is very hard to get rid of and  requires some real pain and a sense of survival to quit. So kids, if you ever felt the notion to smoke cigarettes … think again … critically!

Thoughts & Quotes about Critical Thinking

Kids, grandpa calls the beginning of the 16th century the beginning of science.That is when Nickalaus Copermicus wrote that the earth circled the sun … rather than the other way around. At that time, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey said; “Be very, very careful what you put in your head, because you will never get rid of it.” (1471-1530). It took a long time for people to get it out of their head that the world wasn’t flat or that the Sun wasn’t circling the Earth.

Kids, it is difficult to think critically about a topic that you no very little about. A critical thinker is skeptical of simple or singular explanations, is mindful of the frequent mistakes people make with their information, actively looks for bias in others, and searches for faulty assumptions.

Grandpa and you kids … are subject to being wrong. Believe it. Assume it. Critical thinkers are humble about their own knowledge. Critical thinkers realize they do not know all the answers. Their information might be incomplete …  & as hard as they try … might still be biased in some way.

The first part of Critical Thinking is to expose and unlearn erroneous beliefs you have acquired. “The Illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” __Alvin Toffler. “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18″__ Albert Einstein.

The beliefs which are formed  in our subconscious mind are our best choices of information available at the time. However, such choices aren’t always the best to carry throughout life. In fact, some aren’t very good at all. “The most useful learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue” ___Antisthenes

“Because beliefs hold court in the subconscious, it’s very difficult to change them consciously. Does this mean that you can’t change existing beliefs? Not at all. Our mental system is dynamic and is actually willing to acquire newer, better beliefs, providing there is clearly an advantage  to the subconscious mind. A belief that makes the subconscious feel better” ___Jeff Sauber. Kids, It will take another blog to tell you how neuroscientist explain how that might be done.

Happy New Year grandchildren !

The Brain as a Hologram

Kids, the brain is as complex and complicated as the universe. The brain has as many neurons as there are stars in the universe and just as many unanswered questions. Karl Pilbram came up with idea of the brain as a hologram when the optical laser came on the scene in the 60s and optical holograms became possible. He figured that the hologram might be a way to explain the brain’s magnificant ability to process 400 billion bits of information when in the waking state … simultaneously.

The hologram brain theory maintains that the brain is continuosly engaged in coorelation processes. The hologram provides  an obvious computational advantage for the brain storing sensory information in the spectral domain. Pribram used the action of the inverse Fourier transform as a way to re-experience to some degree a previous perception. This is what constitute memory.

Bear with me kids, I’m trying to learn about this, and at the same time, trying to interest you in this quest to uncover mother nature’s secrets about the brain. Some of grandpa’s  information has the potential of being erroneous. This is very complicated stuff. Hopefully you older children who will be entering college and will take calculus and help grandpa out.

Holography makes an interference pattern from an image … and the whole image is in every pixel in the interference pattern. You can see how Pribram jumped on the concept that “the whole  is in every part” as a way for the brain to be able to access what is in memory so quickly, while  monitoring and controlling all the bodies function continuously and simultaneously. You can see how this concept of the whole in every part could place the scientific “provable”, right at the interface where the “unprovable” begins.

The brain, the subconscious & conscious mind are in the world of the small and quantum mechanics. I suspect that some of the brain’s activity are beyond our ability to measure. I’ve always wondered if the synapse “firing” was generating light. Light that forms an interference pattern that someone like Daniel Tammet can see … and covert into a number in order  to do his amazing calculations in his head. Recent experiments demonstrate that blue light can activate neuron cells. This might be additional evidence that the concept of the brain functioning as a hologram has merit.

The “Other-Than-Conscious Mind”

The Other-than-conscious mind is also called the subconscious mind, or the unconscious mind … or the non-conscious mind. It’s an area of science still searching for a better word to describe the “other-than-conscious mind”. For the sake of brevity kids, we will call the other-than-conscious mind the “OTC mind” until we can come up with a new and better description of a subject as mysterious and interesting as the cosmos.

Our conscious mind and our OTC mind work as a team. I’m convinced there is some interesting communications going on between the two. When I refer to just the “mind” I will be referring to the conscious mind & OTC mind in combination. All our conscious thoughts and self talk is stored along with our OTC mind the memories in our brain’s hippo campus. Our mind and our brain are two different inseparable things. The brain is an organ … material thing, that our mind needs to function. The memories created by the mind are who we are.

The mystery we are now investigating is; “What is the OTC mind?* To understand the difference between the conscious mind and the OTC mind, let’s examine the conscious mind first. The conscious part of the mind processes things in linear fashion. All other things, other than what the conscious mind is focusing on, become distractions and are not acted upon. The conscious mind has the ability to think chronologically and consider both the past and the present. The conscious mind  has self awareness and abstract thinking capibilities. 

The OTC mind doesn’t appear to be self aware or have abstract thoughts, but it deals with everything the conscious mind doesn’t. The OTC mind monitors all the physical signals to the brain continuously and simultaneously. One of the hallmarks of the OTC mind it’s ability to react spontaneously. You might say at the speed of light. In the next blog, grandpa will get into conjecture like we did with our Nested Universes concept. We will make conjectures about the brain and the mind … that I believe are unproven. Next blog we’ll examine the brain as a hologram.

*A lot of the material comes from an article by Jeff Sauber on the Internet

What’s it all About Chpt. 9

Well kids, I’m not going to continue the experiment of analizing my beliefs using just my memories to see if I can detect erroneous beliefs. I am getting too heavily into religious beliefs. My mother equated God with nature. Nature is God’s creation. We are part of nature and God is within us. That’s a hand-me down belief that has made sense to me. As far as I can see kids, The communion with the natural world is not in conflict with any religion.

One of my erroneous beliefs, is that I feel most people think the same way I do. Wrong!  Thinking that most people think the way I do got me in hot water during my career several times. The truth is that that my favorite subjects, the cosmos and human thought, (and trying to figure what it is all about), are not subjects that are at the top of the list of  busy people … which is understandable.

The whole purpose of the experiment was to see if you kids wanted to test yourself to see if you have some beliefs that might be less believeable and  plausable than you thought.

In the next blog we will get back to science and we will continue with our investigation of human thought. We will see what we can learn about our very sophisticated subconscious mind.

What’s it all About? Chpt 8

Since 1500 until the present time the speed of new technologies being by introduced by science has been mind boggling. The way humans think and their beliefs has not advanced quick enough to react and adjust to what humans are now doing to mother Earth.

Nature is continuously changing and continuously trying to achieve a balance in all things. Good things happen when mother nature is able to keep things near equilibrium. Bad things happen when mother nature needs to make a drastic correction to restore balance. Humans have not learned to be balanced in all things. Unsustainable growth is a huge elephant in the house that humans live in … yet they can’t seem to see the elephant. 

Science has progressed in so many fields so that now they are at the interface between what is possible to know and what isn’t possible to know. A good example Kids; Cosmology has reached the very interface of a black hole. The black hole’s event horizon is an invisible sphere beyond which we cannot investigate because we cannot see what is inside. This is literally being at the interface of what is possible to know and what is not possible to know.

The universe and the human mind with it’s conscious thought are the two most complex systems that that we have to understand. In recent years we have learned a lot about our universe … but not as much about human behavior. Neuroscientist are beginning to make progress. Will they be able to teach humans how to expose their own erroneous beliefs? Like your grandpa is trying to do with this experiment?

What’s it all About? Chpt. 7

As we move away from a period of enlightenment and Christ’s birthday 2000 years ago, we move into a period that began about 400 AD to about the 1,300 century where there was in pause in the written word. It was like when the first flaked stone was fashioned by Homo erectus … and then a million years went by with no improvement. It was like the Western part of the world stopped thinking. There seemed to be something missing. There was faith … but no enlightenment.

Faith and enlightenment are the ingredients that we need to keep moving forward in our attempt to find out what it is all about. Hope, love and knowledge are the intangibles in life that help us carry on.

It’s my opinion kids, the beginning of science happened when Nickolaus Copernicus wrote  his theory of the Heliocentric Universe and put the sun at the center instead of the Earth. The use of mathematics to explain our physical surroundings is only 500 years old. It was the beginning of our ability to uncover mother nature’s secrets.

The things we now know as fact are the result of using the scientific method. Ideally all of mother nature’s Earthly secrets are proveable. Science, however should not go beyond the physical world … things that science cannot prove, belong to the spiritual world.

How humans perceive the spiritual world is unique and important to each and every human. Because we come into the world alone, we live alone within our thoughts, and we leave the world alone … there seems to be a need for spiritual contact within our mind that another human cannot fully fill.

Kids, we are now getting into the core of grandpa’s beliefs in this experiment. We will continue to investigate further in Chaper 8 of the What’s it all About blogs series.