Boomer News

Happy 16th Birthday Eric

Grandma & I are flying up to NH tomorrow to visit with your mom & dad, Chiara and you. We’ll be there on the 4th of July for your 16th birthday.

Last night I saw “Musical Minds” on PBS Nova and thought of you, since you are  the most accomplished musical grandchild in our family at this point in time. Neurologist Oliver Sacks has shown how music can treat some neurological disorders. He explores how the power of music  can make the brain come alive. Sacks is best known for his book and the movie “Awakenings.”

Since grandpa is into ways to change our unwanted “stubborn neurons”, it’s interesting how music can help people rewire their brain. You are fortunate to have a very keen healthy active brain. For you, music can be a pleasant refreshing escape  from the very busy life you are likely to have in the coming years.

A Thought for the Summer

School is out & grandpa is shutting down the Boomer News blog for the summer. Grandpa has kinda of run out of things to say about the “dreaded black hole”  and the “dreaded stubborn neurons” for now. ( I think I can hear your cheers and sighs of relief.)

See if you can come up with some interesting subjects for me to write about when we start the blog up again in September. Have a great summer kids!

Happy Birthday Luke

Age 11 is a wonderful age Luke. Especially since you have a great curiousity about nature. You spend a lot of time outdoors and the last time I talked to you … you were interested in all types of rocks.

Age 11 is an age when you still listen to you parents and ask them questions. Your brain is still a sponge, adding neurons, and gathering up information about your surroundings and storing them in your hippocampus.

At age 78 I just took a test that was organized by Gallup psychology scientists to determine my five top talents … strengths. The concept is that most people work on trying to fix their weaknesses, instead of finding their strengths and enhancing them.

There are 34 possible strengths  the test will evaluate based upon the approximately 170 questions you answer. Your answers to the questions will result in what the test says are your 5 best talents. Most people really do not know their best talents.

Mark Twain once decribed a man who died and met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. He knew St. Peter was very wise, so he asked a question that he wondered about all his life.

He said, “St. Peter, I have been interested in military history for years. Who was the greatest general of all time? St. Peter quickly responded, “Oh, that’s simple. It’s that man over there.”

“You must be mistaken,” responded the man, who was now perplexed. ” I knew that man on earth, and he was just a common laborer.”

“That’s right my friend” assured St Peter. ” He would have been the greatest general of all time, if he had realized his talents … and become a general.”

The theme  description of my top talents were:

• Futuristic
• Arranger
• Developer
• Connectedness
• Strategic

Luke, what’s in your hippocampus? Have a great day Luke!

Nested Universes [pg. 6 of 6]

Our universe, that eventually expands into a our parent universe, is more aesthetically pleasing than our universe expanding forever … don’t you agree? For the foreseeable future, we don’t have to ponder what is “outside”  our 3 universe concept connected by black hole [BH] conduits.  The  [BH] that our universe is in, initially sucks in material in the “eating phase” … A big bang occurs, our universe is born in the dormant phase … expands … stars burn out and we finally return to our parent universe as hot dust to form new stars.

Now to the nitty gritty part. How does our universe shoot out of the [BH] and into the parent universe?  There is a hint on how the cycle might work in the March 2007 Scientific American called “Black Hole Blow Back” by Tucker, Tananbaum, and Fabian.

“Jets blast through the galaxy … where their energy converts to heat. The heat greatly diminishes  the inward cooling flow, the super massive black hole chokes off it’s power supply of gas and gradually goes dormant. The jets fade away leaving the galaxy cluster without a heat source. Millions years later the hot gas in the central region of the cluster finally cools sufficiently to initiate a new season of growth for the galaxy and it’s super-massive black hole begins swallowing matter again … thus the cycle  continues”.

Their simulation shows that a [BH] can act as a giant motor. Gas falling toward the [BH] revs it up. Magnetic fields turn rotational motion into linear motion catapulting out jets of hot gas. The simulation suggests a rapidly spinning [BH] can shoot one unit of gas for every three it swallows.

Here is our version: The accretion ring around the [BH] had moved away from the [BH] during the dormant phase. If we use the “Black Hole Blow Back  Cosmic Hydrologic Cycle …When the  gas sufficiently cools the accretion ring begins moving toward the [BH]. The accretion ring moves with a crushing force toward the “equator” of the event horizon sphere. The accretion ring cuts into the event horizon equator and squeezes the expanded universe into a pencil shape and shoots it out through the north and south poles of the [BH] sphere into the parent universe as extremely hot jets.

In a Feb. 2009 Scientific American article, the author shows two ways to crush a star by computer simulation. Method one results in a the typical circular point shaped singularity, the second results in a pencil shape …

We can speculate that our universe in a [BH] gets crushed into a pencil shape, and squirts out the north and south poles … before the accretion ring can force it’s way into the [BH] at the equator to fill the space left by the crushed  universe. This begins the very active phase when the parents stars get swallowed up … starting another continuous cycle in our three universe drama.

We may be “crack pots” kids … but, we’re having lots of fun.

Nested Universes [pg. 5 of 6]

Now let’s get into our universe within a black hole, [BH], concept. The very thin membrane that we have represented as the present time can be stretched, bent and warped. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity brought about the concept of a black hole [BH].  The collapse of an iron core star of about 5 stellar masses can collapse forever, which results in a dent in the thin balloon skin (space).  The super massive [BH]s is a million or more stellar masses and definitely cause a dent in our present time  membrane.

The iron core star collapses inward into it’s location in space and eventually into an infinitely small and extremely dense point called  a “singularity”. A black sphere, (not a hole) , surrounds the singuarity point. The sphere is black because the light entering the sphere cannot escape and is invisible. The light  is completely “blue shifted”  beyond our detection. We cannot see … or ever know what is beyond this invisible sphere, called an “event horizon”.

The origin of the big bang is not  understood. The big bang is another science “interface with the unknown”. What happened before the big bang is a problem for all cosmologist. Here’s how we handle it. We looked at Planck’s minimum distance, (1.00E-33cm), as a barrier to the collapsing star collapsing further.  All the material sucked in behind the collapsed star at Planck’s minimum area and volume piles up … but we had no mechanism on what might “ignite” the material to create a big bang.

Does the material reach Planck’s maximum temperature  of 1.00E+32 degrees Kelvin for 1.ooE-43 seconds to start a big bang? Then in the October 2008  Scientific American article by Martin Bojowald;

“As you pack energy into a volume of space, the wavelength of particles carrying the energy shrinks and eventually approaches … Planck’’s smallest units of distance” … (Where have we heard that before kids?) …  “Space literally runs out of room. If you try to pack in sill more energy, space will push it back out. It will appear that gravity generated by the region has turned an attractive force into a repulsive force”.

This supports our concept that the collapsed star never becomes a singularity. The energy that has”piled up” at the Planck minimum distance barrier will become the method to ignite a big bang in the [BH]. So what happens next? It is encouraging that articles keep popping up about a cyclic universe. The “Big Crunch” concept keeps coming alive every so often. A June 2007 NY Times article entitled; “New Theory … Universe Born in a Black Hole”. It’s nice that someone else is considering our concept. Except that wasn’t our concept. Lee Smolin had contemplated that a few years before we did in his 1997 book, “The Life of the Cosmos”. Kids, I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.

The Landry “Nested Universati Hypothesis”  (9-10-2008) idea is pretty much the same as our concept. His thinking was apparently  based upon his expertize with spatial relation geometry. Our universe in a [BH] idea started in the year 2000, and our Nested Universesconcept  in 2003.

” In Life of the Cosmos, Lee Smolin offers a new theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before. Smolin posits that a process of self -organization like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes”

No, this is not a paragraph we wrote comparing our Nested Universes with Smolin’s idea … the above paragraph is taken from Paul Steinhart and Neil Turok’s 2007 book called “Endless Universe, Beyond the Big bang” They posit two universes are connected at each end with “tubes” … (string membranes).

Okay kids, we now have to figure out how to show how the material of our universe gets back into our parent universe .

And then there are [BH] that are a million or more stellarmasses and are cllaedsuper massive [BH]. They reside

Nested Universes [pg. 4 of 6]

New let us pause and talk about light. The radiation we see with our eyes is an extremly small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum continuum. The light wavelengths we can measure cover 22 orders of magnitude … from the shortest gamma rays  to the longest radio waves.

For now kids, grandpa is going to arbitrarily estimate  the size of the three nested universes. If we assume there is a smaller universe in the Milky Way black hole, [BH], and this smaller universe is now half the diameter of the Milky Way event horizon … we get  1.5E+7cm in diameter. Now our see-able universe is estimated to be  3.0E+24 cm diameter. The ratio of our universe to the smaller [BH] universe is about 2.0E+20cm. Multiply that ratio times our universe size … to get a parent universe that is 4.0E+40cm in diameter. (Very rough estimates & assumptions kids. But it demonstrates that each of the two other universes in our nested universes concept  are scaled beyond our ability to see or measure).

Each universe has it’s own energy sources, (stars), and electromagnetic spectrum scaled to the size of each universe. The electromagnetic spectrum travels at 186,270 miles per second in each universe scaled to the size of each universe. (Light travels at 286,270mile/sec …all the time … no matter what warp in time it may be in … and nothing travels faster). The speed of light is the same in all 3 universes. Light is proportional to the space and time in the 3 universes.

Man’s average life on earth is 2.21E+10 seconds. Man’s life on a Plank cubic cm would be 1.11E-52 seconds. So, you see kids … it’s all relative.

When the intensity of light is high, we see light as traveling in waves. When light is very dim we see light as individual packets of energy called photons. When used in cosmological equations, the photon is often considered to have no mass. Mass can be interchanged with energy. When sun light falls on a solar cell, 1.0 units of light results in about 10% increase in electricity from the cell. At any rate kids, photons are the life-giving force in all three universes.

Nested Universes [pg.3 of 6]

Dark matter has a different story to tell than dark energy. Physicists think that dark matter in our universe consists of an ocean of very small particles we cannot see that surround galaxies to prevent the galaxies from flying apart. Black holes provide a conduit … a hole between the nested universes … where particle “cross talk” can occur. How they might influence our universe is a puzzle to your grandpa. Maybe one of you kids have an idea.

What is going to happen kids if our universe expands forever? “As our universe expands there is more force pushing the galaxies outward faster and faster. As neighboring galaxies approach the speed of light, they simply vanish from view, as if falling into a black hole, their light shifted to infinitely long wavelengths and dimmed by their great speed. The distance galaxies disappear as the horizon slowly shrinks around us like a noose”

The above paragraph was taken from a Scientific American magazine and it is not a very aesthetically  pleasant outcome for our universe. The WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) data confirms the inflationary model of the universe. The NASA WMAP mission brought us a map of our universe collected  as it was about 380,000 years after the big bang. Everything after that, back to the big bang is opaque … invisible to us. New attempts to see further will be tried at different wavelenghts.

Let’s begin by visualizing  our universe as being laid out on the surface of a large balloon. Even if the balloon was as large as the Macy Day parade balloons, the earth would be too small to see. The Milky Way would probably be a very small dot. Lets assume the surface of the balloon is an imaginary thin membrane  that will represent the present time. We cannot look up and out from the surface … for that is the future. Looking out is the space-time into which our universe will eventually expand. When we look inward toward the center of the balloon we see the past. Let’s consider that the very center of the balloon is the point where the big bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago. Even with our most powerful microscopes and detectors, we can never see back to the big bang. Our balloon surface, (our universe), is expanding and beyond a certain point light cannot keep up with our observation point on Earth. The Hubble distance is a combination of the speed of light plus expansion. Beyond this distance which we can never see … or know. Hence the expression, “our seeable universe”.

Cosmologist rely heavily on their illustrators to pictorially describe the events we cannot see or photograph. Scientific Americam illustrators do a great job. Grandpa hopes  to acquire a digital camcorder after we fine tune this Nested Universes adventure of ours … do some illustrations and charts and make a video.

Nested Universes [pg. 2 of 6]

What are some of the implications of our universe being in a black hole [BH] ? It implies that our [BH] resides within a “parent universe”. We’ll assume our parent universe is just like our universe. It also implies that there is a universe, like ours,  inside the super massive [BH] that is in the center of every galaxy.  If this is indeed true, we could learn a lot about our universe by observing black holes very carefully.

So this kids, is our “Nested Universes Concept”. And what are the mathematical or experimental findings that will be the “show stoppers” to end our little adventure into the cosmos? Well have to wait and see.

In the meantime, if our universe does reside in a [BH], does this in anyway impact the dark energy cosmologist are now searching? It is this dark energy problem that makes are little project so interesting. If our universe is in a [BH], that means we are in the “gravitational hands” of our parent universe.

The gravitational pull of the [BH] is sinusoidal. It goes from maximum pull (at the maximum spin rate at the active eating stage ) to the minimum pull (lowest spin rate at the dormant stage). At the minimum pull the accretion ring has moved away from the [BH]. At maximum pull  the accretion is being sucked into the [BH].

When the accretion ring is moving away from the [BH] the expansion rate of the universe in the black hole increases due to a net decrease  in gravitational pull of the [BH].

This maybe the dark energy our universe is experiencing. In Brian Greene’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos”, he discusses Newton’s 320 year old water bucket experiment. Greene writes; “Not very exciting you say. But this experiment ranks among the most important steps toward grasping the structure of the universe.”

The [BH], where we are suggesting that we live,  is rotating at a tremendous speed, but we do not sense the velocity. We must be in a goldilocks time  period of constant [BH] velocity since we do not sense any velocity change. The concave-shaped water in Newton’s bucket experiment suggests an external influence on our universe. Does this add more credence to our universe being in a [BH] … or does grandpa completely misunderstand the experiment?

Okay kids , let’s move on to page 3

Nested Universes Intro. [pg. 1 of 6]

Nested Russian Dolls are a good example. We suggest that our universe is within a black hole [BH]. Our [BH]  resides within our parent universe.  We are the parent universe to many smaller universes that are located within the black holes in our universe.

The big bang ended the active phase of our [BH]. Our [BH] is now in the dormant phase. Our little blue planet has a 3rd generation sun and is in the habitable zone of our Milky Way galaxy. Our planet is in the habitable zone of our solar system. Our universe is now in the “Goldilocks” habitable zone in the BH dormant phase . We are at about half way point of the expansion of our universe since the big bang  occurred. 

 The first stars that formed after our universe’s  big bang occurred were huge … death came to these stars relatively quickly and the first black holes were formed. The huge accretion ring that formed around the black holes became the first galaxies. Our sun is a 3rd generation star following the 2nd & 1st generation stars after the big bang. 3rd generation stars have the heavier elements and the chemistry to support life.

To simplify the concept of our universe in a [BH] we are assuming that our parent universe and the [BH] that are in our universe we have selected to observe  … all have the same habitable zone conditions as we do.

There are many huge obstacles to this concept. To name a few;

• We must show the a [BH] singularity will become a big bang.
• Our universe inhabitants will not sense the rapid rotation of the BH.
• That our universe in the [BH] is following all the accepted models of of universe by today’s cosmologist.
• However, our universe will not expand for ever …  the contents of our universe will flow back into the  parent universe.
• We will need to explain how our universe is cycled back into our parent universe.
• We will need to try to explain the forces that cause the cause this flow of energy and material between the three nested universes.

Back to our Nested Universes concept

The reason this blog was started kids, was to try to stir up your curiosity and imagination about math and science. It’s time to go back to our Nested Universes concept which dates back in our archives to October 2007.

Grandpa needs to do a little more research on whether there are similar nested universes hypothesis out there. In general we have found that unsupported concepts like ours are not welcomed in legitimate physics forums. We understand that we  fall into the “crack pot” category.

Most of our nested universe concept falls beyond science’s ability to prove. The most interesting part of our concept is the possibility that our “parent” universe could be the source  our universe’s dark energy. Indirectly we can observe this by measuring the sinusoidal gravitational pull of a black hole during the active and dormant phases of a black hole. This assumes that our universe is in a black hole as Lee Smolin first suggested.

Blogs need to be kept as short as possible, so we will break up the concept into five blogs.

Our Stubborn Neurons

Well kids, in grandpa’s humble opinion, one of the most important advances in the next few decades will be for the human race to understand the amount of control our stubborn neurons have over us, and then learn how to rewire them.

In a recent blog called the “Little Ice Age and Stubborn Neurons” I tried to demonstrate how stubborn neurons made the Vikings ignore the Inuit Indian’s superior spear to get food, because they thought of the Indians as inferior, and how the French would not eat potatoes even though their above ground crops had failed and they went hungry.

Stubborn neurons are beliefs, habits, and addictions we can’t seem to control. Neuroscience told us over 100 years ago that once we reached adulthood are personalities were fixed. Our brains were no longer pliable. We accepted that “people don’t change, only time goes by” information for 100 years. Now we know that even old codgers like grandpa can rewire their brains.

Kids, can you think of someone who has an extreme belief in something that shuts out any reasonable debate? My hope is that all this latest interest in “Change your brain, change your life” will help us in the coming decades.

Think of those stubborn neurons as having control over an area of your brain being feed by one of the hundreds of chemicals in your brain. Then try to  to change that chemical with a new approach … another chemical.

Not easy … but now we know it’s doable and worth the effort.

What are the Limits of Growth?

Okay kids, help your grandpa out. Is there such a thing as “unsustainable growth”? Our planet is a spaceship … it has a fixed amount of each element. To be economically and financially healthy however, our country needs to have growth … every year.

In a 1972 book called “The Limits of Growth” they did projections on many natural resources that had unsustainable growth and the issues that affected them. Basically no one in positions of leadership paid any attention to the book. The book was updated in 2000. Their 1972 projections were quite accurate and the unsustainable growth of natural resources had gotten worse.

Since the early 70’s your grandpa has wanted to find away to have all the unsustainable growth problems plotted and published on a continuous basis available to the public. We know that a good percentage of the general public pays attention to hurricane projections from way out in the Atlantic until it hits the main land.

If we had an “unsustainable growth channel” … like the “weather channel” to continuously make and adjust the growth curves we could stay ahead of a crisis before it occurred. You say long term projections would be too dull to have on a daily basis? How about opening it up to traders to bet on the direction of the projected curves?

An article in the June 2009 Scientific American says the U.S. domestic sources of Phosphorous  could run out in a few decades. Our modern agriculture requires Phosphorous. This is a looming crisis that is news to me. How about you?

Well kids do you think  there is a limit to growth here on our little blue planet … ? and do we have the means and ability to evert, or reduce a crisis before it occurs?

“Physics of the Impossible”

Kids, the title of this blog is the title of a  book I picked up at the book store by Michio Kaku. You have probably seen him on the Science Channel. He reviews 15 subjects now considered to be impossible to solve. The two key subjects in our blog are reviewed in his book. Our two key subjects are  our concept of a multi verse called “Nested Universes” (His Cpt.13 “Parallel Universes”), and our thoughts on the conscious & non-conscious mind(s) and human  thought. (His Cpt. 5 “Telepathy”).

He breaks the “impossibilities” into 3 categories: Class I “Not possible today … but do not violate the known laws of Physics: Class II “They sit at the very edge of our understanding …” and class III “They violate the know laws of Physics” I agree with the chapters he has placed in each classification he categorized … but so far we have found more information and progress on our see-able universe than on the human mind and thought.

We will use his book to dissect our concept of nested universes. Our universe in a black hole, where  the black hole singularity & the big bang are the same thing , where the source of dark energy is caused by the influence of our parent universe, and where our universe will eventually expand into our “parent universe” in a continuing recycling system.

And then we will continue working on our concept that human thought transmits radiation at wavelengths beyond our universe’s measurable electromagnetic continuum … rendering our ability to actually read another persons thoughts precisely as being class III… impossible.

Happy Birthday Jody

I send birthday greetings on this blog to all our 11 grandchildren and on special occasions to our 5 children and their spouses. This is a special birthday Jody. Mom and I wish you a very happy birthday. We wish you health and happiness. You’ll notice that people always put health first.  Not surprising. First, we do wish that good health be with you always Jody, because we know that you are such an upbeat purposeful daughter that you will always look at the positive side of life and make your own happiness from within. Your husband is a great guy and you have two children that I am sure make you happy and proud. Love. mom & dad.

The Mind within a Mind [con't.]

Trying to understand the workings of the mind and human thought is tougher than trying to understand the cosmos. With our great detectors & telescopes, we can pretty much cover the entire electromagnetic spectrum to “see” almost back to the big bang. We can see that we have reached the interface with the unreachable. We can see that we can’t see beyond the see-able universe nor can we see inside a black hole.

The secrets of the conscious and non conscious mind seem to be beyond our microscopes and detectors. We cannot tell if we have reached the interface with the unreachable. The extremely small world of quantum mechanics seems to be beyond detection. We do want to understand the workings of the conscious and non conscious minds … but on the other hand kids, it would be better if we could not actually read the thoughts of human beings. Let’s hope human thought is an “event horizon” beyond which we cannot detect signals.

Meanwhile we will conceptually try to see how the non conscious mind communicates with the conscious mind … and visa versa. We will follow the work of the neuroscientist at the University of Lubeck Germany  as they investigate the local activity in the neocortex which spreads sequentially to the hippocampus.

Our way out thinking is that the neuron/synapse firing generates light that is at wavelengths in the extreme quantum mechanics region, which are unreachable.

The Little Ice Age & Stubborn Neurons

There are lots of history lessons in the History Channel’s Little Ice Age documentary kids. The Little Ice Age occurred between 1300 & 1850, and made life very hard indeed in northern Europe. A 4 degree drop in temperature caused havoc on the population during that period.

Important lessons of history usually remain within the acedemic community history buffs and the public  doesn’t generally pay attention to these history lessons. Grandpa is only going to point out to you kids how stubborn neurons hurt the Vikings, The French, and the people accused of being witches.

When the climate changed it destroyed the green fields of Greenland, and the crops and live stock failed.  The Viking’s stubborn neurons  would not let them accept the better designed spears of the Inuit Indians to get food from the icy waters. (The Viking’s considered the Inuit’s inferior). The Viking’s starved and had to leave Greenland.

Europe’s above the ground crops failed and starvation occurred. The Germans brought the below ground potato into Europe which survived the climate and provided nourishment. However, The French stubborn neurons did not want to eat the below ground potato … and they starved. Probably leading to the revolt & the French revolution.

During the darkest days of The Little Ice Age, the populations were so weak from malnutrition that the Plague spread easily through Europe killing one third the population. The Church was not able to provide any spiritual hope, so the church’s stubborn neurons blamed the horror on witches … who were killed.

Kids … as we move toward another of nature’s changes, (assisted by us), the general population needs to be aware that our stubborn neurons, (habits), with knowledge … can be modified …but it will require world leaders and the media to rewire their brains and lead the way … and the general public will follow.

Loyality … Global or country?

David Brooks has a thought provoking article in NY Times 4/30/09. We face a series of transnational threats. How much control should we give to global institutions and how much to individual countries?

Our first Look back from the moon at Earth  … with no borders … made many humans realize that we were entering a period  where  many transnational crisis, like the environment, will call for global cooperation. Where borders,  nationalism, and isolation  are less important.  

Money flows rapidly around the world with little regard for borders. A bank meltdown will not stay isolated … which we have just witnessed. Brooks questions the merits of global institutions versus strong decentralized  national institutions and communities of nation-states.

Corporate and government people  who are connected internationally have allegiances that are global. How do they handle being patriotic … just to the United States?

When it comes to loyalties, I’m concerned about the United States and how the middle and lower income people feel about military action outside our borders that calls for them to be patriotic. Patriotism was not a problem in WWII & Korea when the call to fight was shared evenly by the entire citizenship. In Vietnam the call to fight was not shared evenly. The volunteer army solved that disparity … to some extent. However, if the call to fight in Iraq  was asked of the entire citizenry evenly … would there have been a more serious debate about the war in Iraq?

I don’t have the answers. Maybe it will take a catastrophic environment event to get the answers.

Make products vs. Shuffling Papers?

Obama commenting on the American automobile industry at a recent town hall meeting in effect said, “It’s better to make products than shuffle papers like we have been doing”. (The last time I heard someone say that was back in the mid 1980’s by your grandpa in an office memo.)

In the late 1970’s a magazine article exclaimed “We are number one at almost everything manufactured in the world … from kitchen appliances to automobiles” Oh wow, I thought, that is the the kiss of death! Doesn’t the media know that’s all over now! High tech products are our future manufacturing niche in the new economy, along with the service industry.

Kids, when I was working I had a habit of writing office memos that were in effect, generic editorials on the our industry … which was high tech … and industry in general. (And please kids, don’t do what your grandpa did if you wish to keep your job).

The very high tech instrument I worked on, was our manufacturing hope to dominate, but our product was peaking in the mid 1980s and it was pretty obvious that other high tech countries were going to take  over and drive us out of this market.

This prompted me to write the following; “The craftsmen, the hardware, people , the makers of durable goods, will become a vanishing breed as the service industry takes the place of making products”.

“Job opportunities will rapidly narrow down to working for the Pentagon or McDonalds. Our biggest exports will be our movies, our pop songs, and Mickey Mouse.”

“We are good at marketing  in America …but I believe the “craftman” in this country are suggesting to our “gamesman” friends, (who are now in control), that they should be careful that there is still a product left in the box to sell, or to service.”

Happy Birthday Mary! Age 2

You won’t remember this Birthday but your parents will. Last year we celebrated “Personality Day” on your first birthday. Grandpa asked your parents to list six adjectives that best described your personality on your first birthday. I am now asking them not to look at last year’s list, but to make a new list of six adjectives to describe your personality on your 2nd birthday.

Mary, it is said, that your personality will be almost fully developed by age five … and you won’t remember how your personality was formed. It seems as though we have almost no influence over how our personality is formed. You were born with beautiful red hair and a pretty face. People couldn’t help but smile at you when you were a tiny baby. Now at age 2, you smile so easily and readily. Is this the result of everyone smiling at  you when were a tiny baby? The happy atmosphere your parents provide you, however, maybe the big factor in making you smile so readily.

Hopefully your mom and dad will celebrate “Personality Day” again next year by writing down six adjectives that describe your personality on your 3rd birthday … and then they will put your  personality information away until your 10th birthday.  I think you will find it interesting  to see how much your personality has changed … or not.

Back to Free Will & Human Agency

The puzzle the conscious and non conscious minds, and of human thought, brings in the puzzle of free will. The following is a comment submitted by Jim Nester which I find is the best interpretation I have received so far:

“First, I see no way to separate a discussion of free will from concurrent discusssions of self, (i.e., ego), conciousness, and perhaps soul. These terms are so intertwined that to doubt the existence of one is to doubt them all.”

“For example, can we have free will without conciouness thought; can there be conscious thought without a unique self, etc. Although numerous recent studies of brain function can cast doubt on the existence of self, consiousness, and free will, civilization would cease to exist without them”.

“If we cannot be held personally accountable for our actions, the concept of morality and law become meaningless, and civilization dissolves. ”

“By the way … free will seems closely linked to the BIG questions that have troubled philosophers forever. Who am I?, Where did I come from?, Why am I here?, Where am I going? Note that all of these BIG questions assume the existence of an I” .