Bee bar Bee Ranch (B-B)

COMMUNITY OR COMMUNISM

2012-01-02T08:38:00.001-07:00

Let me tell youa story.

Recently, mydaughter and her family moved into a new home. Her husband had knee surgery just prior to the move and they had notbeen able to unpack and settle in as they would have liked. My daughter is also an accomplished musicianand music teacher. Because of the moveshe had been unable to set up her studio.

The family wentout for the evening, and when they returned they found her studio not onlyunpacked, but the room repainted and beautifully decorated with curtains andartwork. You can see pictures of thefinished project on her blog at http://sunshine-sentiments.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to the Dec. 16, 2011 entry.

This project wasdone by her friends in the community.

The wordcommunity has been trivialized in recent years. There are no rules about such things, so it is perfectly alright thatthose who speak the English language change the meanings of words. But on the other hand, words are the way wethink, and when words are unclear, meaning is unclear.

At one time,commune meant to talk together with some intensity, perhaps implying someintimacy, and face to face. This, ofcourse, required a physical presence, or a community. But now we speak of communities as groupsthat share similar interests or connections, whether they are in physicalproximity or not. These connections maybe ephemeral such as the internet, or theoretical such as in the co-ownershipof goods.

However, it isdifficult for me to imagine my internet community redecorating my studio. They simply aren’t there to be of any realhelp at all. It may be even moredifficult to think of the city council, county commissioners, statelegislature, or federal government coming into my home and making it moreattractive and functional, right at the time I need it.

I think thisstory demonstrates the shallowness of technological community, and moreimportantly illustrates the difference between community and communism.

WHAT SHOULD I PRODUCE?

2011-11-24T15:36:00.001-07:00

After a lifetime of teaching biology, I am fixated on producing something real. I hope I have contributed something my student’s lives, but in the end it is never clear.

That is part of the reason I have gone into beekeeping. I build my own hives. I plan my own operations and business. I harvest my own honey and beeswax. I bottle it and sell it and give it as gifts. But the bees are resting now. We put them to bed a couple of weeks ago. We reduced the entrances, insulated the tops, provided extra pollen and some sugar to help them through the coldest months, and now we wait.

Music is a little like teaching. It is an ephemeral thing. Modern man is used to thinking of music as a CD, or a tape, or of an electronic object embedded in an i-pod. But music originally was something that was enjoyed for the moment and was then gone. Repeat performances were seldom the same. Transient musicians moved along. Old Bill pulled out the fiddle for the dance.

I have spent a lot of my life making music. I’ve played guitar, mandolin, banjo, and harmonica. I suppose I have contributed something to peoples’ lives with my music, but in the end it is never clear.

This winter I am going to make the things that make the music. I started with kits for building a cardboard dulcimer. I built several with my grand children. Then I built a wooden dulcimer modeled after the cardboard ones. It certainly isn’t a traditional dulcimer. And it is small to fit a child’s hands. But the volume and tone are impressive. I am currently building another similar to the one pictured, but with more of a triangular shape. Another Grand daughter and I have started on a wooden teardrop shaped dulcimer.

I am determined to be productive.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

2011-11-20T16:15:00.002-07:00

“Of this I am quite sure, if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.”
Winston Churchill

Whenever humans are confronted with misbehavior we try to redirect attention away from ourselves. W often blame someone, or something else. “So-and-so hit me first”, or, “The dog ate my homework.” If this does not work we direct attention to another time. “I have anger management problems because I was abused as a child.” “I was upset because the washing machine broke this morning.”

There is always a reason why something happens. It might even be a perfectly legitimate reason. However, it still never changes the fact that the event has happened, and it does not tell us what we are to do now.

There once was a man who needed a job. He finally obtained an interview for a job for which he was ideally qualified. On the way to the interview he was struck by a car and badly injured. He didn’t awaken from his coma for three days. Desperately he called the potential employer and explained why he had missed the interview. The man was sympathetic, but explained that when the applicant hadn’t shown up for the interview they had given the job to someone else. The man had a legitimate excuse for missing the interview, but he was still unemployed.

So how did it come to this? Financial collapse, riots, intrusive government, eroding freedoms, war, ecological catastrophes, threatened food supplies, incivility, unemployment, violence, fear, failing schools, and ignorance are enveloping the world. What is obvious is that the present is not what America has been. The predictable future, if present trends continue, is not one in which free men would wish to live. We can quarrel over when it began or who started it, but in so doing we will lose the future.

What is needed now, and for the future, is a plan for what we are going to do with the situation in which we find ourselves.

STRAIGHT TIME

2011-11-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the 1700’s, people began to conceive of time as linear. This is unlike earlier times when time was always considered circular. At other times, time has been perceived as random, or even irregular. Most of the time they say that time is uniform, but there are times when time seems faster or slower. The last time I wrote about time it was for New Years, 2011 when I wrote about biological time. But here it is, New Years for 2012 and time to write another column about time. I guess you could say it was about time.

Contrary to what many believe I am not old enough to recall ancient primitive conditions. Based on what little I have read about early human practices they must have often veiwed time as chaotic, events following events like a whirly-gig. The passage of time brought about unpredictable and dangerous changes, often resulting in dissolution and death. Elaborate rituals developed to appease the spirits in rocks, rivers, trees or animals.

However, for much of recorded history humans have measured time in cycles. As soon as natural cycles, such as diurnal rotation of our planet and lunar months, were recognized, time was measured and perceived as cyclical. Cyclical time allowed greater organization of society and control over the elements. Humans learned to perform certain deeds, such as planting or hunting, at the right times. Cyclical time also introduced a moral dimension. Things could be said to have been done at the wrong or right time. In addition, each generation could begin to compare its behavior to that of its ancestors.

The idea of time as a linear experience, with a distinct beginning leading on to a unique ending, is nearly universal in modern thought. Yet it has not always held strong infleunce on mankind. The concept was recognized by ancient Greeks who hoped that reason would improve mankind’s lot. The Romans had a concept of leading on to a glorious destiny. However, it was the rise of the great monotheistic religions that suggested that mankind might be about something more than fate.

For the common man linear time had little meaning for much of history. It was in the sixteenth century that the invention of science, combined with the Reformation, begin to spread through Europe, leading people to begin speculating about the origins, and the end, of the earth. Later, during the Enlightenment eighteenth century philosophers developed similar progressive ideas involving a secular ‘heavenly city on the hill”.

The idea of linear time assumes that mankind is on a trajectory of progress. Men disagree about when it began and how long it might take. The overall assumption, however, is that we are on a straight line of progress to better things. This thought so pervades modern America that it has shaped our entire culture.

Under cyclical time people valued patience, relatedness of parts, ritual, relationships, nature, and the healing power of time. Modern culture values haste, practicality, concentration, efficiency, analysis, power and control of nature.

If the future can be extrapolated as a straight line, then the past ceases to have relevance. If one does not see any possibility of deviation from the trajectory in the future, they will not consider any deviations in the past as significant. In fact, the past is assumed to have led to this moment when we are just lucky enough to be in existence and the exact apogee of human existence.

I am not sure if time is linear or not. But one thing does worry me. Straight lines do not necessarily lead upward. They can just as easily be downward slopping, something linear progressives often overlook. It ought to give pause that all measures of time that we use are based on repetitive measurements, whether that be the vibration of an atom, the rotation of the earth, the lunar cycles, or the seasons in a year. Maybe that should be enough to give us pause. It’s about time.

I CANNOT REMAIN SILENT ANY LONGER

2011-10-25T14:50:00.001-06:00

FIRST, you are not 99%. You are a small, pitiful group of a few thousand rude, obnoxious, loud, privileged spoiled brats who have no idea what suffering or want truly are, or what tyranny and cruelty actually look like.

The banks have never abused you and you have never known want. The very tents you sleep in are available because of your prosperity and the riches of this country. You women dress as you please and go where you would like, freedoms unavailable to most women of the world. You men condemn the manly and destroy civilization and safety that other men have sought so hard to build.

It is America’s wealth and freedoms that afford you the possibility to do what you are presently doing. None of you are at slightest risk of being gunned down by the forces of a mad dictator. Your relatives are not at risk, and you will not disappear. In most countries of the world you would not have been allowed to do what you are doing for even one night without terrible bloodshed and great risk.

The truth is you are not 99% no matter how many times you say it and how often the stupid media repeat it for sales. There are others who also know how to use the internet and social media sites and WE are truly legion. You should be afraid that you will accomplish what you hope, for then you will find out how few, how cowardly, how foolish, and how weak you truly are.

SECOND! Hatred of other men is wrong! It is evil! I do write this message because I hate those who disagree with me. I write this message because others, and those who I disagree with, must know that there is determined, courageous, and equally noisy opposition.

To condemn a human for being black is racist. To condemn one because of their culture is bigotry. To condemn the Jews is not only a form of both, but is the basis of nearly every evil action taken in western history. I am shocked, appalled, and furious at the language I have heard in recent days coming from loud ignorant protestors who are either dumb or evil.

To see a black women attack a group of people because they are Jews is almost unbelievable. To see political leaders and academics endorse the same accusations and hatred that has been heard time and again in history, and as recently as the last century, is simply unbelievable. But my eyes and ears cannot deceive me.

Perhaps worst of all is to listen carefully for the condemnation and courageous refutation from our countries leaders, public officials or even loan citizens and to find there is none. The few loan voices are timid or drowned out by the silence of acceptance from the masses. Well, listen closely. JEW HATERS ARE EVIL, IGNORANT BIGOTS!

THIRD! Taking money by force, even the force of government and giving it to someone else is theft. Theft is the epitome of GREED. Those who demand social justice are guilty of the crime of which they accuse others. Consider the complaints against the banks and society at large.

“I want what you have” is the cry of spoiled children. “You don’t deserve what you have” is playing God. You may not believe in God, but I do not believe human judgment is superior. (In fact your behavior proves my point.) “I deserve more than I have” is so arrogant as to be almost unbelievable. “It’s not fair” is what my children used to say.

Do you not understand that in nearly every other society in history, and even in present day, that people have NO chance to improve their lot in life? There is NO chance to change economic circumstances. Capitalism is the first and only system that makes it possible for common people to work and improve their lot in life. In fact, most of you protestors are able to protest because your parents improved their lot through capitalism.

There may be none greedier than the poor and the envious. Most of you in the streets do not know what poverty is, so I am left to assume you are simply greedy.

FOURTH AND LAST! The unions no longer represent oppressed workers. There was a time when people were often forced to work in inhuman and dangerous conditions. Pay was inadequate and workers were oppressed. That is obviously no longer true in America. American teachers are NOT oppressed. I know I am one as are others in my family. American union workers live well and have excellent working conditions.

The unions no longer have any moral ground on which to represent anyone. They now fight for control and power for the union, not the worker.

DID YOU KNOW?

2011-10-08T22:20:00.002-06:00

Did you know that grazing wheat or alfalfa stubble with goats reduces wheat and alfalfa pests the following year? Who knew?

Did you know that grazing animals on certain forages can reduce the intestinal worm burdens sufficiently that medications may not be needed? Who knew?

Well, my Grandfather, for one.

Did you know that grazing animals on harvested fields can reduce fertilizer requirements the next year significantly? Who knew?

My other Grandfather . . . and just about every living person born prior to 1945.

I smile at some of the research being generated by S.A.R.E. (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education). Not because it is wrong, but because they are discovering what almost every person knew when most people lived on small farms.

When the federal government subsidized corporate farms following WWII they killed the small farmer. Then as the corporate farms plowed from fence row to fence row, dumped on petroleum based fertilizers, destroyed natural habitat for productivity, and in general turned food production into agricultural factories we are discovering that this doesn’t work.

Farming is basically a nurturing process. It works best when there is a love for the land, an understanding of the natural order, and the patience to live in that world. Unfortunately this nurturing process is often pitted against millions of dollars.

Growing animals that fertilize the crops that feed the animals (including humans) is as important as growing crops that feed the animals that fertilize the crops. Growing more than one crop, rotating them, and including animals in the products enhances the health of the land, the plants, the animals, and the humans.

I applaud S.A.R.E. for their efforts. However, the efforts are doomed until public policy ends subsidies for large farms and provides incentives for the small nurturing activities. These can only succeed if we decentralize food production and processing. The big money will see to it that that never happens.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

2011-09-21T14:00:00.002-06:00

People don’t want to own things. People want to do things.

The other day I overheard a conversation between students. One of them had a new cell phone. It suddenly struck me that the others weren’t interested in the phone, but in what it could DO.

Isn’t that why people buy boats, campers, hot tubs, swimming pools, fishing rods, duck blinds and whatever? People like to do things. They even often enjoy puttering around with cleaning the pool and maintaining the camper. After all, there is no farm to care for.

At first I thought about how people like movies, television, and entertainment. But then I realized that what those things do is make you believe you are doing something. The sounds, visuals, conflict, romance, and even news reports convince us for awhile that we are doing those very things. For a little while, we think we truly matter.

Of course, when the movie ends we discover that we haven’t done anything at all, we feel even more useless than before. That is the danger of modern entertainment.

There was always something to do on the farm. One could do something different every day of the week and still have things to do. But in the urban setting it is much harder to find things to do that are constructive and productive.

I am not sure how to use this insight productively. People need things to do. Do you have any ideas?

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP) AS DISEASE INDICATOR

2011-09-15T20:00:00.001-06:00

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross National Product will not be about production but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. What if you stop receiving unemployment benefits? Will the GNP go down because you have nothing to spend. Of course, these ideas are only true if the only measure of value is the economy.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be very worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

But they will be worth more, financially, to the economy, if they divorce. They will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and there will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community generally, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries?

Perhaps the GNP could be used as a measure of just how bad and inefficient our nation is: the higher the GNP the worse off we are in all the things that matter most. Is the GNP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? What happens to the GNP when people are paid to not work? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

AGRICULTURE POLICY

2011-09-01T11:04:00.002-06:00

In the last fifty years government policy has favored large agriculture which has displaced the population off of the farm and into cities. Now we find:
• the mega-farms in trouble,
• environmental contamination and degradation due to industrial farming practices,
• agricultural subsidies a huge drain on the government money (mostly to large corporate farms)
• increasing difficulty with food safety,
• and a huge regulatory industry on production and processing.

Of course, the displaced farmers all moved to the cities. They went to work in large industrial factories. The result has been:
• crowding in cities,
• expansion of suburbs onto farm land,
• increased demand for city services,
• increased taxes to pay for city services,
• increased land cost as land competed with housing,
• urban decline.
• And, as the economy falters, joblessness.

This change could, only come at the price of cheap energy. For under the US agricultural system for the last fifty or sixty years:
• food had to be produced in mass requiring greater energy and fertilizer,
• food had to be shipped long distances to processing plants,
• often food had to be shipped again for packaging,
• and then shipped again to the consumer
While this was going on:
• the factories required increased energy of operations,
• commuters required increased energy for traveling to work,
• and cities required cheap energy to meet the demands of growth.

Now one of the nation’s greatest concerns is joblessness, and it is the small businesses of the United States that are the greatest employers. Obviously government policy has promoted, even required, these changes, resulting in our present predicament. Yet these policies have destroyed one of the most successful small businesses available to men, the small farm. We now talk about farms and business as if they were separate things. A FARM IS A BUSINESS.

There is no question about whether we will run out of oil. The only debate is about when. If the earth is a hollow ball filled with oil we will run out in several hundred years. If that is not true it will be sooner. Either way, we will not see cheaper energy again. Can the present system, based on available and cheap energy, be maintained? Of course not!

So what kind of government policy could help us move into the future? While it will take many years and enlightened leadership to resist the existing establishment, policy that moved production, processing, packaging, and consumption back into local and regional centers would provide additional small businesses, employment, food, places to live, and use less energy. Present policy makes these changes impossible.

For example, a bill was proposed in the Colorado legislature in the spring of 2011 that would have allowed certain home businesses to sell food products under reduced regulations. These were low risk products such as honey, jellies, and fresh baked goods. The bill was defeated, presumably on public safety grounds. But the major opponents were supported by large agricultural producers, processors, packagers, and retailers.

Yet this bill would have been a step towards relieving financial suffering for many families, especially on the western slope, and would have been a step towards local production, consumption, energy savings and economic stimulus.

I do not wish to return to an earlier day. I would hope that changes in agricultural policy would create a more thriving economy, but one that was decentralized, regionalized, efficient, and economical. America does not need jobs. America needs work: meaningful, productive, satisfying, and rewarding work.

GREAT GRASS MAKES GREAT BEEF

2011-08-28T18:10:00.002-06:00

Does American business produce what Americans want, or does American business make Americans want what they produce?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not mad at capitalism. I participate myself in my own small way. The B-B Ranch sells honey, beeswax, bees, solitary bee nests and bee hives. But I also think that a lot of what business does is convince people that they want what they make, instead of making what people want.

I bought a shotgun at Wal-Mart a year or so ago. I couldn’t leave the store until the background check was completed. That turned out to be about three hours. I am now very familiar with the products available in Wal-Mart. I probably don’t need ninety percent of it, and that only on occasion.

Do people want campers, boats, sporting goods, ten pair of shoes, jewelry, musical instruments, new dishes, and on and on? Or do people want close families, good friends, peaceful lives, fulfilling goals, meaningful work, and freedom? How many ads on television make it appear that the way to have the latter is to own the former.

In fact, people seldom own things. Things own people. You may spend a weekend with your family on the boat. But you will spend many hours before and after the outing getting the boat ready, cleaning the boat up, paying for the boat, insuring the boat, buying the boat, repairing the boat, and talking about boats. Most of that won’t be done with your family, but will, instead take you away from your family. You probably could have spent more time with them on a hike, reading together, or playing a game.

If you own a boat don’t be mad at me. The same thing can be said of guitars and mandolins, my personal weaknesses. My point is that people sometimes don’t think very carefully about what they really want to produce. Successful marriages, independent children, strong communities, beautiful farms are all forms of production also.

However, it’s difficult to sell them. Now honey! That will bring you good health and delicious toast.

DIVIDED

2011-08-07T19:35:00.000-06:00

We are a divided people. We are no longer Americans. We are Black Americans, Spanish Americans, Italian Americans, and multicultural Americans. How is this different than a group of tribesmen?

But perhaps more importantly, we are divided from our purpose. This began when our living became separated from our work. I noticed this first when I visited rural Kentucky and went in search of a dulcimer. I had wanted to buy a dulcimer to learn to play and had planned an extended trip to shop for one. However, our trip was cut short and I found myself with just one afternoon in which to find a handmade dulcimer. My daughter and I went shopping.

We had the name of a man and an obscure rural address. After driving around for some time, even with a Google map, we had not found the home we were looking for. (Google is not really reliable once you leave paved roads.) There were a few homes along the road and we stopped at several, but no one seemed to know which house we were looking for.

There was an old, small house, back off of the road considerably, that we eventually approached. An elderly woman came out onto the small porch and we told her we were looking for a man who made dulcimers. She went out back and called her husband from a small shed. Mr. James Horn from Finchville, KY came out to visit with us. He eventually brought out some of his dulcimers to the front porch and played for us. His “pride and joy” wasn’t for sale, but I purchased a beautiful instrument from him. His business card said he was the maker of “Handcrafted Mountain Dulcimers”.

But what is important is how his home was set back off the road. I have noticed that in older rural areas, the homes are set back off the road. On modern hobby farms the homes are set close to the road. This, perhaps more than any other characteristic divides America, and it is clear now who is the minority.

You see, when the home is set close to the road it is easier to go to town, but it may take considerable effort to go to the barn or out to the field. But when the home is set back off the road it is easier to go to the barn and work the land. We are divided people.

TIME IS AN ARROW?

2011-07-17T15:38:00.002-06:00

Time is an arrow! Or is it? In America, for the last at least fifty years, and perhaps much more, productivity has been defined as larger, more and faster. Economics of scale have been the holy grail of all efforts, from the farm to the retail store. Sales of every quarter must exceed the previous quarter, or the CEO’s position is in danger.

This has been encouraged by government leaders who have believed that this was the way to wealth and power. Leaders who believe in this paradigm set policies that encourage “biggerring and fasterring”. We moved people off the land to live in bigger and bigger cities, so farms could get bigger and bigger. The people worked in factories of ever increasing size that were surrounded by the bigger cities.

In this scenario everything is a straight line to progress. In fact, many government leaders literally called themselves progressives and actively pursued these ideas.

There is nothing wrong with this theory of course, except that it doesn’t reflect the real physical world in which nothing is a straight line. The earth is round, the planets orbit in circular motion which gives rise to circular seasons. The day revolvers and morning differs from night. The heartbeat, probably the first sound a human hears, is marked by systole and diastole and the blood flows in repeating cycles. Youth is followed by four periods of time from birth to death and new generations arise periodically.

When man’s concepts of order are not in agreement with nature, it is always nature that wins. It may take a considerable amount of time, but straight lines never continue upward. Eventually the cycles will turn them down, so those progressive ideas will always eventually lead to decline.

This is why a people who loose site of agriculture and the natural cycles of nature, and who begin to put their time and energy into the straight line progression of industry will always reap what they sow. The lineup will become the line down. Those countries that do not grow their own food, will eventually loose site of the wisdom of nature.

This is not some weird concept of nature worship, it is physics. Chemical reactions never proceed in only one direction. They are reversible under proper conditions, or they trigger yet further chemical reactions which changes the circumstances of the first reaction. The environment selects the plant and animal that survives, but the surviving plant and animals change the environment. Physical laws proceed in one direction only so long as the initial state is maintained. Once the physical world has changed to a new physical state, the laws of physics will change directions.

The problem with modern concepts of business, management, and government is that those teaching and executing the policies have lost sight of the fact that life and the world are cycles, requiring periods of rest between periods of growth and different behaviors during different seasons, all in preparation for the next cycle. If we wish to live at peace and with some kind of understanding, we must accept the concept of death. We must embrace the winters as much as the summers. We must alter our behaviors according to the cycles of our world, the times of our lives, and the periods of the universe.

UNITED

2011-07-09T18:41:00.000-06:00

Bees produce. On the average a hive of honey bees can produce sixty pounds of surplus honey a year. But there are numerous kinds of bees, and while they all produce the same things, they don’t all produce the same amount.

All bees produce more bees, and provide pollen and nectar for their offspring. But only honey bees produce pollen and honey beyond the immediate needs of their offspring, because only the honey bee colony lives from year to year. Honey bees must put up stores for the winter. If the stores are inadequate, the colony dies.

Stay with me here. This is about more than bees.

A single bee, like most native bees, lays an egg and provides it with sufficient stores to survive the winter. After provisioning somewhere between ten and thirty eggs, which takes around six weeks, the adult dies and leaves the offspring to their own fate.

A single honey bee lives only about six weeks as well. But it spends its days serving the needs of the hive in various ways and provisioning the hive so that some descendents of the hive can survive the winter. At the peak of summer a beehive may contain 150,000 bees. Even over the winter, the colony will usually contain several thousand bees.

OK, so now we get to the point.

If a solitary bee can only provide for maybe thirty bees, how can a collection of bees in a hive produce and provide for several thousand bees?

They are UNITED! Each bee is programmed to do what it is supposed to do at each time in his or her life. But they all treat the hive as if it were there sole reason for existence, which, in fact, it is. A honeybee without a hive dies. But working together towards the same ends enhances survival of each bee as well as the whole.

An individual person can only accomplish so much. By working together we can produce more. The difference is that humans are not programmed to do only certain tasks. Humans can choose. This makes unity far more rare and difficult to achieve. However, those who accomplish and produce the most find ways of convincing others to unite with them in common, mutually-supportive goals and activities.

In most cases in history, and still in the world today, unity of a country has been achieved by force or accident. But one country has united by voluntary consent of the people. These people embraced a set of common constraints, responsibilities, and commitments called a constitution. They did so for the purpose of uniting because they were convinced that unity would better preserve the peace, protect the citizen, foster economic opportunity and allow individual self-determination.

Each individual gets to choose how carefully he or she adheres to the commitments and responsibilities of the constitution, but we are the first people in history to attempt to live like the bees, united in purpose and support for the good of all.

Bees do not reinterpret their purpose with each generation. They do not renegotiate their responsibilities or opportunities from season to season. It is the stable unity that has allowed them to flourish for thousands of years.

Mankind is not pre-programmed to a life like the bees. But we are programmed to live in groups. The lone survivor is a fascinating subject, but in reality a myth. Humans accomplish more when they are united and cooperative in social groups. The successful business man is able to encourage others in common goals and activities.

The value of the US Constitution is in its planned method of uniting the group for safety, efficiency, and economic benefit while protecting the individual to choose their own goals. It will only be advantageous to the country as a whole when it is treated with respect and as a rigid, only pragmatically flexible, foundation for the good of all mankind.

THE SECRET OF PRODUCTION

2011-06-19T14:17:00.002-06:00

Seemingly complicated things aren’t usually very complicated. After all, an entire sky scraper is made of the same short list of materials used over and over again in different ways. In fact the entire universe appears to be made from just a little over 100 elements. Shakespeare only involves twenty six letters of the English alphabet. The information on the computer used to write this blog is done with just two characters: 0 and 1, on and off, however you describe it.

The secret seems to be in how these simple things are connected together in different ways. Knowing how to assemble the elements into a sky scraper is crucial or it will fall down. The variation of 100 chemical elements is phenomenon and accounts for all of the physical world and its manifestations. My words do not seem to be as well connected as William Shakespeare’s. Still, they have some meaning to them, even if not entirely clear.

So it isn’t the elements of production that make a product. It is how they are connected. This seems to be true at many more levels than objects, elements, or language. It is the strength of the connection, the number of connections, and even the types of connectors that makes a new product.

There are some connectors that are stronger than others. For example, a weld is probably stronger than bubble gum for holding things together. A staple is superior to a folded edge on two pieces of paper. The type of connection doesn’t always make the difference. Two staples are only slightly better than one because the paper will tear with the same stress. However, two welds may be better than one if the surfaces to be held together are large. And while a weld can’t be any stronger than a weld, more than one weld does add strength.

Holding things together to make connections can be difficult. In many cases it simply can’t be done with just two hands. That is when we enlist tables, vices and tools to help us temporally. Often the best help is another pair of hands. Hands have a way of holding things together that seems more organic than natural than tool benches. Even when one could get by, two extra hands often seem to be the best way to produce more.

So many people who are producers find that what they really must achieve is the cooperation of many more hands. This is a little in the face of the myth of the independent, strong American. We’ll do it all on our own, and we’ll do it our way. The only problem with that is that it isn’t probably possible and probably never was true. I am pretty sure of this, now, after a long lifetime of being somewhat of a loner. People who produce create communities.

These may be families, clubs, or business organizations. But humanity has not developed from loners surviving, but from banding together in communities with all the frustrations that entails. If the world were to fall apart tomorrow, families would not survive because they are “self-sufficient”. The families and people who would survive are those who have connections and value to other people. Those who have skills, friendships, and products to share will survive. Those who are trusted, needed, and generous will thrive.

WHAT DO WE NEED?

2011-06-07T10:12:00.002-06:00

I hear a lot of talk about jobs. Everyone says the country needs more jobs. Yet I know many, many people with jobs who are not very happy. I suppose they are happier than if they could not pay their bills, but perhaps the problem is that they have too many bills to pay. I don’t know.

It just seems to me that historically jobs have not been society’s problem. Everyone had more than enough work to do taking care of their own work. Don’t misunderstand. I know that for much of history things were very hard for the common man. But usually poverty stemmed NOT from not having enough work to do. Historically poverty has usually stemmed from the fact that individual toil benefitted others than oneself: often royalty or government, but occasionally thieves and armies.

Today we need jobs because men have been removed from their work. Laying concrete all day pays a wage, but it is not very personally satisfying. Waiting on customers all day is less strenuous, but nearly drives people crazy. There seems to be more to life than a job and salary. Or at least many people think so.

There has also been a tremendous interest develop in entrepreneurship. I wonder why that is. It looks to me like owning one’s own business is a lot more risk and hard work than a job. Yet many want to own what they do. They even seem to work harder at their own enterprise than they do their jobs.

There is a common psychological list of people’s needs. It varies from time to time and from psychologist to psychologist. But generally it looks something like air, water, food, shelter (including clothes and housing), and energy for warmth and cooking. I find it interesting that psychologists never list work as essential to man’s well being. Yet humans are seldom idle. They may socialize and spend time in various forms of meditation. But they often spend their time beautifying, improving, and building. Art, music, poetry, tools, and better equipment seems to have occupied much of mankind’s time.

Maybe people need fewer bills and more demands. Maybe people would rather work for their own risks and rewards. Maybe people don’t need jobs, but businesses. Maybe we don’t need to create jobs, but farms and small factories. Maybe people need to work. Maybe people need to work for themselves as much as they need to work. Maybe it isn’t jobs we need at all.

WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT, CITIES OR LAND?

2011-05-14T21:07:00.003-06:00

(Oh, this is the same post as it was last week. But no one seemed to care much about the flooding of Louisiana. I wondered if they would be more interested in the concept of whether cities or food are more important? Or maybe they think that cities are more important than land. Do people think the world advances because of brilliant individuals, or by the caring labor of thousands, if not millions, of minds? Are any of these things related?)

They made the decision today to release water upstream from New Orleans. I understand the thinking behind that difficult decision. They had to weigh the needs of a few thousand people against the needs of many thousands more. I don’t know what is right.

But I do know the decision is very much a modern decision, and may prove short-sighted. They have basically decided that a city is more important than a farm. When inflation increases the price of food and there is no food to buy, the decision may look less compassionate.

One of the reasons this decision was made is that in the past sixty years we have moved people off the land in massive droves, and into the cities. So now very few people live on the land and many live in the city. Compassion would lead one to spare the city. But the people were moved off the land, supposedly in the name of efficiency. Large corporate farms being considered more efficient than the family farm.

But it is a false efficiency. No one ever has time to do sloppy work, and the modern corporate farm is sloppy farming. Eventually the exhausted soils, the erosion, the mono-cropping, the failure of pollinators, the energy expenses of plowing and shipping will overwhelm the system and it will collapse. When bad work is done the future will pay the price, and it will be very expensive in suffering.

As I look at cities with high buildings, slums, industrial blight, sameness and masses of people, I sense the loneliness and the lack of dignity. Each individual vies to be considered an individual, to be noticed. We glorify the individual in the celebrity culture. If one fails at gaining individual attention they fade into the anonymity of the city and abandons personal responsibility.

The real genius in the world is not individual genius. It is in the minds and hands of 10,000 individuals going about their business sharing ideas, helping one another and collectively finding what works in society. The genius of human culture is long, deep and slow. Sloppy work looks efficient. The city is always in a hurry.

MAKING, DISTRIBUTING, CONSUMING

2011-04-18T12:03:00.000-06:00

Most economists talk about production and consumption. In between the two, the produce must be delivered to the consumer, and that portion of the economy has exploded in the last fifty years. This has been driven by two changes in the economic world.

First, industrialization increased efficiency of production. But this required centralized production into specific local areas, often far from the consumer. Whether this consists of an expensive factory, or huge corporate farm, production became more and more centralized.

But produce must be delivered to the consumer. So following industrialization the means of delivery and distribution needed to be expanded. This began with railroads and expanded to automobiles and airplanes. Overnight shipping companies and delivery services expanded. But all of this required cheap fuel so that the cost of delivery was reasonable enough to keep the price down.

So the cost of delivery is due to the cost of fuel. The question is, if the cost of delivery (fuel) goes up; will the cost of goods become too expensive for the centralized manufacturing model to work? And if the centralized manufacturing model fails, what will take its place?

It seems to me that there are only really two solutions. Either the cost of fuel must decline, or manufacturing needs to be decentralized so goods are closer to the consumer. Either of these solutions can be fostered by technological changes, but the technology developed will look very different.

A great deal of energy is being spent on the fuel question. Oil has driven the cheap distribution paradigm, and so much attention is paid to finding oil, obtaining oil, extending oil and replacing oil. However, the amount of oil available is finite, even though we don’t agree on how much is there. We will eventually run out of it. Biofuels, in the quantity needed to run the present system, is thermodynamically impossible. Efficient use of present fuels may be increased, but that also has a probably finite set point. The development of hydrogen as a fuel would seem to be a valuable development, but is some time away, if possible at all.

The other solution is to decentralize production. Some would say that this can’t be done. But it has been done before. In fact, throughout of most of human history, production and consumption have been local. Using modern technology which has reduced the amount of labor necessary to run factories and automated much production, could a post-industrial system develop in which factories were small and decentralized, manufacturing close to the consumer to minimize shipping.

Perhaps where there used to be family farms, there could instead be family factories. These could produce goods for, at most, regional consumption. The attention of most technology researchers is directed at continuing the present system and working on extending cheap fuels. Should someone be looking at miniaturizing manufacturing and minimizing distribution costs? If you know of people who are doing this let me know.

HUMAN NATURE

2011-03-31T07:27:00.002-06:00

Humans are all confused about human nature. On the one hand we understand that in some ways we are like animals and have similar needs for food, shelter, and reproduction. But then we want to claim that we are not like animals because we are “civilized”. But the concept of being civilized means that we aren’t like animals at all and therefore have very different needs and expectations.

This leads us to do all sorts of crazy things and adopt some very conflicting attitudes. For example, as civilized animals we need food to survive, but routinely do things that endanger our food supply in the name of ease, efficiency, or profit. We grow more food than we need to make money which cannot be eaten. We create shelters, not just for our lives, but for our separate work, play, recreation and storage of things. Animals would mostly be appalled. And then we have turned reproduction into entertainment, and made it a matter of civilized correctness that everyone must get to participate regardless of fitness or wasted effort between identical genders. And lastly, as civilized animals we think that we should live infinitely, even in a finite world, and that people should not necessarily be held accountable for their actions. The animal world is singularly unforgiving.

Human success as an animal relies, not on strength, speed, tooth or claw. Instead it lies in intelligence, family groups and culture. Yet we are busy destroying the family group and our brains in our excesses.

You may wonder what this has to do with making America productive. But before anyone can produce anything, they have to decide what it is they should produce. And their concepts of why they are alive, what is their purpose in being alive and what they hope to accomplish will dictate to a great extent what they choose to produce. If we do not think clearly about the issue of human nature, we will not think clearly about what we produce.

The point is many people do not think clearly about who they are or why they exist. When that happens they may willingly embark on production activities that make no sense or that may actually hurt them in the process. Are you an animal? Or are you something different, something special, whether we call that civilized or divine (“a little lower than the angels”)? That will make huge difference about what you choose to produce.

MAKING DO

2011-03-17T17:44:00.002-06:00

Is the human race is running out of water? Is the human race making too much carbon dioxide? Is the human race running out of energy? Is the human race is running out of air?

Nonsense! There is the same amount of water that there has always been. It may well be in different places. It may contain new materials that didn’t use to be there. But we haven’t “run out” of any water. Similarly, we don’t have too much carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon in the world hasn’t increased. It has obviously changed forms and moved from place to place, but the amount is the same.

Yes, it matters how we use language. For example, running out of water is a condition that sounds like it requires using less water. In fact, what it requires is to find new ways of cleaning up what we have, recycling, and distributing it more evenly. We may not be able to take cheap water out of ground water anymore, but the same amount is somewhere. It will just take some effort to get it.

Why are the only suggestions about greenhouse gasses about limiting their production? Carbon dioxide is naturally produced and has always been. What normally happens is that the carbon dioxide is recycled into living plants. So why doesn’t anyone suggest promoting plant production instead? Kind of makes me wonder.

We are not out of energy. We are running out of cheap stored energy known as petroleum. But the amount of energy available is more or less stable and comes from the sun. That doesn’t even mean that solar energy is the only energy available. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe and when it burns it forms water vapor. Hmmm. Aren’t we running out of water?

Will life be more complicated in the future? Yea, probably. And maybe more expensive. But should we make more laws, or make better questions. Should we make more regulations or more solutions? I know what I’m going to make!

A POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

2011-02-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

With the advent of the industrial revolution a pattern of production was established that was successful under the circumstances of that time. I wonder if it is still valid.

For the last 100 or so years we have extracted raw products, shipped them long distances to a centralized place where the raw product was formed into a manufactured product. Then the manufactured goods were reshipped back out to many different destinations for sale. The shipping of raw products in bulk was efficient enough to make the advantages of centralized manufacturing profitable.

Reshipping was less efficient because of the many destinations involved, and because there was additional weight for packaging, record keeping for multiple items, and sales expenses. But while energy was cheap the system worked.

But what happens when shipping is no longer inexpensive? Shipping raw product to central locations, only to be manufactured, repackaged and reshipped may not be the most cost efficient way to do business because of the transportation costs.

Is there another way? What if manufacturing were decentralized and greater care was taken in shipping the raw product? What if careful efficient routes were developed for raw products that would drop off product as it was transported for regional distribution? This would reduce the amount of product in volume and weight as deliveries were made, and thereby reduce the expense of shipping raw product overall.

Then, what if, instead of having huge central-manufacturing plants, numerous mini-plants were built across the country in various regions. Then only the finished product needed in the region would need to be manufactured, and shipping finished product could be restricted to local regions. This would greatly reduce shipping costs for finished products.

While this may seem to have little to do with bees and agriculture, I think it does. You see, that is the model of our capitalistic country for the first hundred and fifty years of its existence. Small farms created the products that served a region. The raw products were sent too many small manufacturing enterprises that served a region, sometimes single families. Shipping of product on all ends of production, manufacturing, and consumption was kept to a minimum. That worked because transportation costs were expensive and inefficient. Without petroleum power, electricity, refrigeration and highways, shipping was just inefficient.

I believe that the industrial revolution was possible because of inexpensive energy. In the future, perhaps near future, the price of transportation is going to increase substantially due to increases in the cost of energy. Petroleum may yet last for many years. Sources such as coal, natural gas, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar and others will certainly be developed. However, the tremendous capital expenses required for these sources of energy is going to make the cost of transpiration continue to increase.

If the industrial paradigm is based upon inexpensive transportation, and if transportation continues to increase in cost, then the only alternative would seem to be a new industrial revolution structured in a far more decentralized manner. Perhaps the family farm will become economically feasible again, along with family manufacturing plants scattered across the nation. The computer is a general purpose machine, so perhaps it could lead us to regional general purpose manufacturing facilities.

WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE?

2011-02-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

Let’s begin with vandalism. If one person, or a group, wrecks a private home it is a crime. However, if one person, or a group, destroys a community it is often called progress. There is much oil shale in my part of the world. Many people think we can make it into oil and thereby save our way of life. Of course, the industry needed to make it into oil would destroy the present way of life for all who live here. But I suppose it will happen eventually, just as it has in West Virginia, Kentucky, and other places, because there is so much money to be made.

If I build a home with a wife and children, and put us up in a little house with a garden out back, it is not considered a very big accomplishment by the world. Everyone does that. But if I build a large plant that employees many people to extract oil from shale, and which destroys the way of life that the family enjoyed, it is considered a great accomplishment indeed.

It’s always interesting to me that so often people who want to change things, are seldom the people affected by the changes. The men who own the oil shale plant won’t live there. The politician who passes laws governing land seldom lives on the land that he passes the laws about.

It was decided years ago that the efficient way to get things done was to make the same thing, in the same way, at the same time, in the same place. It was called the industrial revolution. It has a made a lot of money. But making money isn’t making something. It is making an idea. We don’t have words to differentiate between making objects that exist in the real world, and making mental or abstract things.

Making war is not making at all. Making laws are not things but ideas. Making love at least has the potential to make life. Making music is a physical sound wave. Making noise is more about making, than making trouble.

What about making people? It’s a long process that requires more than making the body. It requires making a brain, a mind, a spirit, a person. So look how we do it. Every must learn the same things (standards), in the same way (school), at the same time (math at 10:00 AM), and in the same place. We even have to learn the things we learn within the same time frame. It is not the same thing to learn chemistry as it is to learn chemistry in sixteen weeks. But that is what the government routinely requires. It’s the industrial way.

Okay. So what should we make? What do you think you should make?

WHO MAKES THINGS

2011-01-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

Who makes things?

A person makes something, and thereby produces.

The individual may act alone, or as part of a group of people with a common product, but after everything else is said, it is a single person who produces.

Ask anyone what they do and they will tell you their title. But ask them what they make, or produce, and you will get a very confusing answer. Often they won’t know.

They may know what their organization makes, but they themselves may not think of what they do as making anything.

Besides not recognizing the fact that we don’t make anything but only remake raw products, we also do not think of most of our jobs as making anything.

What if each of us begins to ask ourselves, even if our bosses won’t, “What do I make?” Can we answer that question? If not, we are not producing.

How do you make something?

Ask any artisan how to make something and they will be glad to tell you. They are proud of their skill.

If you ask them how to acquire the skill they will tell you to make something using that skill. Duh!

Make something. Work at it every day. At the same time. All day if you can. Work at it for 20 minutes if not. Just show up and make something.

Sounds way too easy, huh?

So once you know what you make, could you make sure that you make it at least once every day.

Why we like to believe that producing is hard?

Is producing hard? Sure. Is it simple? Yes!

We like to think that raising production is difficult so that we have a reason to not produce. It also gives us a reason to feel good about what we do get done.

We like to think that what we do is hard and hard things have value. But the more we convince ourselves that it is hard the more we may dread doing it. We don’t like to do hard things.

If producing takes sweat, time, concentration, effort, or patience we have a lot of reasons to not do it. It isn’t easy. Easy is the opposite of hard.

But it is simple. Once you know what you produce and how to do it, it just means “do it”. Every day. All day. As much as you can. Put off the title to your job as much as possible and produce what you produce.

Man, I hate that.

HOW TO MAKE AMERICA PRODUCTIVE AGAIN

2011-01-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Who makes things? It is part of human hubris to ask that question because it assumes that only the things humans make are worth being called “made”. In fact, humans make almost nothing. Instead we remake what exists into new forms and uses. But as far as I can tell no human makes a raw product, we simply remake. I wish there was a more honest word for what we do.

I checked the thesaurus for synonyms of “make” but none of the words particularly describe our activities in changing raw products into some other thing. What we actually do is remake materials into new forms and uses. But none of the words in the thesaurus for “remake” actually describe what humans do either.

And what does it mean to make, or remake, something. Is it only the person who puts his hand to the raw product and changes it, or is the person who thought of the process a “maker” also? What about the person who designed the product; are they “makers”? Is the person who saw the design and the process and believed that it could work and so financed the operation, are they “makers”? And is the person who simply grows the products a “maker”, or a kind of miner?

Making is not always the same as production, yet we use the same word for extracting coal, growing crops, assembling cars, or manufacturing widgets. Making, mining and growing are not the same things, but they all seem productive. Even writers and musicians produce, but do they make? As I set out to make suggestions for how to make America productive, am I making anything at all? I am first beset by confusion over what it even means to make and produce.

This is the year 2011. It has been a busy holiday and I am just getting back to business, if one can call it that. My first post of the New Year was about time. Nothing to creative about that I suppose. But back in November of 2010 I wrote a blog about how America has moved from a production society to a consumption society. In that post I said I would follow up with one about how Americans might reverse that trend.

Was that ever presumptuous?! I have been thinking about that promise for over two months now and decided that there is so much to be said that suggestions for making America productive should become my theme for 2011. I don’t intend to neglect the bees. It turns out that bees are one way we can be productive, and at the same time save the world. It isn’t too much to ask is it?

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

2011-01-03T21:22:00.002-07:00

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . .” No, wait! That’s already taken. How about, “To everything there is a season . . . .” What? That’s already been used too? Then how about, “The time of your life”? I know it’s a cliché, but I really mean the “time” of your life. Our lifetime’s take place at certain rhythms that are sometimes obscured and forgotten in our modern world that is driven by technology. It might be interesting to know how things happen through biological time.

One of the fastest things that happen in your body is the transmission of information along your neurons. The rate is variable depending on a lot of factors. In peripheral nerves from your big toe to your spinal cord information can transfer as fast as 225 miles per hour, or 330 ft/sec. That’s about the fastest thing that happens in your body.

Some muscles work quickly and some work slowly. There are muscles in your body that can take several minutes to contract. Then, there are your eyelid muscles. They can contract in about 1/300^th of a second. That is what makes a wink so deadly. A wink can happen so fast that you aren’t really sure if the winker actually winked at the winkee, or not. Then what is the winkee to do? But maybe winking is old fashioned. Does anyone wink anymore? Obviously not at me.

Emptying your stomach can take anywhere from fifteen minutes, if all you put in it was water, to up to six hours, if you ate a big, greasy, pepperoni pizza. Yes, the pepperoni can still be there at 2:00 am! The time it takes, on average, for food to move entirely through your digestive track, from start to, shall we say, finish, is about 12 hours. If you hurry things along much faster than that, there isn’t time for your body to remove enough water from the food. Then you will have, what are politely called, loose stools.

Did you know that if you get less than eight hours of sleep, all your immune cells are measurably less effective. Certain cells that attack and engulf foreign invaders loose efficiency with the loss of only one hour of sleep. Other cells secrete antibodies when you get sick. Even if you are healthy and well rested, it can take up to two or three weeks to produce enough antibodies to be effective. That’s why they say that if you eat right and get plenty of rest, you can get well in two weeks. But if you don’t, it’s going to take fourteen days.

The truly-magic number in human, biological time is six weeks. That probably doesn’t sound familiar to you. But consider these facts. Wound healing generally takes about six weeks. Obviously the timing depends on the wound, but even minor surgery requires about six weeks to repair the damaged capillary bed. And guess how long it generally takes to remove all the nicotine from the body after you quit smoking. About six weeks. If you start a new training regimen, it will take about six weeks to grow new muscle. If you start learning a new skill, like playing a new song on a musical instrument, it will take about six weeks to master. It even takes about six weeks to metabolize 5 lbs. of fat. Six weeks is such a universal estimate of biological function in humans that I have decided to name this time frame a new unit of time called a “hexachron”.

Though we coordinate our lives around a twenty-four-hour clock, a seven-day week, a thirty-day month and a fifty-two-week year, biological time is something else entirely. The biological “time” cycle is most often about six weeks, a hexachron. And you only have a little less than nine hexachrons left this year.

WHY AMERICA DOESN’T PRODUCE

2010-11-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

In 1947, at the end of World War II there were about 7.9 million Americans living and working producing food and materials in agriculture. By 1998 that number had dwindled to 3.4 million. BY the year 2007 it had further eroded to 2.2 million. So what happened to all the farmers? Where did they go? What did they do instead of living on their farms? Why did they leave farming?

While each farmer assuredly has their own individual story about why they left and where they went, collectively there are identifiable reasons. But the one overwhelming cause was the Federal Government. And the shift in populations was perhaps the greatest relocation of people ever accomplished under government coercion. While the US Government did not use the forcible methods of a totalitarian regime such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, they never-the-less accomplished a similar relocation of people. Only in this case people went from a rural existence that was tremendously productive to an urban life that was marginally productive.

With thousands of men returning from the war and the nation on a war economy there was little work for all of them. During the war years the government had erected numerous agencies and enacted many regulations to martial the country’s economy to wage the war. So the government used those same powers to do what many people probably thought was a good thing.

They enacted the G.I Bill which allowed thousands of men to attend college. They created the Veterans Affairs programs to provide returning veterans with support, health care, and training for employment. And they offered subsidized loans for housing so the returning veterans could afford to buy homes and establish families that had long been postponed to defend the country. While intended to reward courageous veterans and defend against economic chaos with so many out of work, these measures also enticed many men to leave the farm and move to the cities where they created overcrowding and urban sprawl.

Men who had been independent business men and farmers now became industrial employees in manufacturing and industry. Others joined the burgeoning crowd of service and white collar workers living in suburbia.

To pay for these measures and the war debt that had accumulated the government raised taxes, of all kinds and all levels. The growing cities saw increased demands for space and services. In order to raise funds for local expenses such as schools, roads, fire and police protection they raised property taxes. But property taxes became a two edge sword. While it raised funds to care for the displaced workers moving to the cities, it raised the cost of farming thus driving more people from the farm.

A well-managed farm of thirty of forty acres can support a family in an almost self-sufficient manner, with a little to spare to sell for cash and to support their local neighbors. But such a family farm could not generate enough money to pay the increased tax burden. More farmers were driven from their farms by higher taxes and into the cities, thereby increasing demand for services and yet higher taxes.

Those who left the farms either attended college and became white collar and service workers, or entered into the building trades and work in manufacturing plants. In the latter occupations, independent men increasingly found themselves employed in settings that were restrictive and dehumanizing, controlled more as machines than men. In response, the movement to unionization that had occurred before the war in response to poor work conditions continued.

While union leaders are often seen as corrupt and greedy, the rank and file members were usually more interested in gaining some independence and control of their lives and decisions, a little more like the independent farmers and businessmen that they had been. But their discontent usually became translated into higher pay and fewer working hours.

So today America is overwhelmingly urban and either white collar, service, or unionized. White collar workers and service employees do not produce product. Expensive union labor has taken America out competition for production.

Agriculture does not have to be based on huge farms of thousands of acres to be successful. Small farms and manufacturing units can be successful, and in some overall way be healthier for the country. There are alternative ways of organizing the country that can be imagined. But they cannot probably be accomplished under present law and government regulation.

There are many people clamoring for lower taxes and reduced government interference. But it is not enough to just proclaim the need to reduce government regulation. There needs to be some kind of vision of what the country can be, and needs to become, so that the regulations can be reduced or changed in specific ways. What those ways are not being addressed by our current leaders, even those who are involved in the so-called Tea Party.

It is shortsighted to complain about the past and criticize present policy without offering solutions. In my next blog I will try to sketch out an alternative view and suggest policies that might help to make America productive.

THE CREATOR LOVES THE CREATION

2010-11-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Creator loves the creation: both the act and the product. Why else would He create? We are told that he has created “worlds without number”. That is not something someone does out of duty. Creating this world is quite enough to impress me. When I have created something I am sometimes tired of the project, and sometimes aware of how it could have been better. But it is still my creation and I love it in a certain way.

Gods love for His creation is mysterious to most of us. So much of the creation appears to have no human purpose. The beautifully colored beetle and the lilies of the field are loved by God yet serve no particular purpose to mankind. Yet they are part of the pattern of which we are a part. They are part of the whole that sustains us. We share a common parentage in creation.

Humans have made some strides towards understanding the patterns of creation that binds the earth together, though it is doubtful that we will ever understand it completely. We have found many ways to use parts of the creation in practical ways. We may respect and preserve the creation. But we cannot control it. There is always the wedding of the mysterious and the practical, the Heavenly and the earthly.

Humans are generally interested in the practical, the physical acts that we practice. We often separate abstractions into a separate area. Freedom may be a political, theological, or physical concept. But it is not an abstraction, it must be lived. Love of our fellow man, which the Bible sometimes calls charity, may be a theological or philosophical concept. But it must be practiced. And so it requires a certain skill.

One cannot be free if they cannot earn their own living. One cannot love one’s neighbor if they cannot keep their trash out of their yard, their poison out of their water, or care for themselves so they are not a burden. If one has not learned to play the piano, they are not free to play the piano for a Church service. If one cannot produce something and have nothing to offer, you cannot help your community.

The good man is not the man who committed no crime. Doing good is not the same as doing nothing. Doing good is the ability to do something well. In order to do good you have to know how to do something. Doing good is not just about the Heavenly, but also includes the practical. It is learning and practicing these practical skills that we become Heavenly.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR THE LAND TO HEAL?

2010-10-12T11:36:00.002-06:00

Several years ago I went to Lake Powell with some friends. We climbed up through a place called the Hole in the Rock where some early settlers took their wagons as they traveled down to Bluff to settle the country down there. It was an amazing feat to take the wagons down that canyon wall. People still talk about it today.

Later we went across the lake and followed their trail for a couple of miles on the other side. This country was much friendlier, with rolling hills of grass, sage brush and junipers. No other vehicle had traveled this trail for well over a hundred years, but the ruts of their wagon wheels were still visible in the sand.

This image has stayed with me for a very long time. As impressive as the human accomplishment of determination and ingenuity was, the record of their damage to the land may be even greater. Not because it is such an eyesore. But it is a lasting testimony to how long it takes for the land to recover from mans interference.

When the first American settlers arrived in the plains of Nebraska and Kansas they found top soil that was more than a foot deep. They were amazed at the fertility. Now we routinely add chemical fertilizers. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways of farming that replenish the soil and maintain nature’s richness and variety. But modern farming is often more like strip mining. How many years would it take to replenish the great plains of the United States?

A trail of wagon ruts is no big deal. A mountain side of four-wheeler and motorcycle tracks is probably not significant except in terms of aesthetics. But they are symbols of how little humans know about the earth, and how little value they place on the land. We understand very little about the responsibilities of dominion, the techniques of replenishment, or our position in nature.

IDEALS AND NECESSITIES

2010-09-15T16:36:00.002-06:00

I looked on the internet for images from 1913, the year my Father was born. Should I have been shocked that it seemed like such another world? Not only was it unlike today, it was totally unlike the year I was born, 1945. I am not as impressed with the machinery, prices, or styles as I am that the entire way of life was obviously different.

Most people still lived on their land. Even so-called townsfolk had large lots, gardens, chickens or a milk cow. If one wanted chicken, they had to raise their own, or buy from a neighbor. There was electrical refrigeration so there was no way to keep meat, eggs, or milk fresh. It all had to be pretty much local. That means that most people participated in agricultural activities, or in other words work. And since physical labor was needed, families had to work together. The home wasn’t a place as much as a series of events that required cooperation and participation. This was not some idyllic existence. This was necessity.

But then things changed, and what was necessity became less necessary. Government policy encouraged large farms. People moved to the cities. Cars made it possible to work ever farther away from home. Television made the idyllic seem trivial. And public education took our children away from home. Education is good, of course. But does it really take as many hours of the day as it presently takes. Or is it, perhaps, that school is more about watching the children while parents work (and play)?

Now, we worry because the family doesn’t work together. If we try to work together it must be before early morning when the bus for school leaves, or late afternoon after the school activities. We pay for gym memberships because we don’t do enough physical labor. And we’re never quite sure if our food is good for us or not. The tendency is to think of the way it was then to be an “ideal”.

But as the idyllic has become less necessary, it has also become less possible. In 1913, the benefits, and difficulties, couldn’t be avoided. Now the ideal would have to be upheld mostly by will. There is no necessity for such a way of life, and that makes it very difficult to create or continue.

That does not mean it is less important. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try. It’s just that government and culture will not help you.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR?

2010-08-29T20:33:00.002-06:00

I took my grand-daughter (age 11 at the time) to hear the Vienna Boys Choir perform. On the way home, she and a friend were talking and giggling in the back seat when my grand-daughter suddenly asked, "Papa, why did Heavenly Father make leeches?" I don't know where that question came from. My reply that He must have thought they were important, simply provoked a large, "Yuck!" from my grand-daughter. She obviously disagrees with Heavenly Father.
For several years I was involved in mosquito control activities. One of the most frequently asked question was, “What good are mosquitoes?” At first I took the question quite seriously because it provided me with the opportunity to showcase my otherwise useless biological knowledge and understanding of ecological matters. But it soon became apparent that people didn’t really care about the role mosquitoes might play in the natural ecosystem. For most people, the mere existence of mosquitoes is simply unfathomable.
But recently I had the random thought, “What are people for?” I think maybe people need to think about that a little.

EZEKIEL SAW A WHEEL . . . .

2010-07-28T18:49:00.003-06:00

“Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air.”
(Negro spiritual)

Actually, he saw two wheels, one inside the other (Ezekiel 1:16). When two wheels are set inside each other they are made to turn together, in the same direction, in harmony. And Ezekiel tells us that where the living creatures went, the wheels went. These wheels are united inside one another, turning in the same direction, with similar purpose. Working together favors life.

In contrast, William Blake wrote, in his poem “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time” (second stanza only presented here):
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
What mill wheels did he reference? It is generally thought that he spoke of a wheel outside of a wheel, as found in an industrial mill of his day: the two wheels in opposition to each other. In this arrangement, one wheel turns the other by inter-meshing cogs. These two wheels are divided in space, direction of rotation and purpose. And this image he found “Satanic”.

The word “control” literally means to roll against. It is interesting that as a mechanical principle, opposing wheels are excellent forms of control. But as a metaphor for a culture, or a person, it suggests that sometime after Ezekiel, man began to see himself as turning, not with the forces of creation and God, but against it.

GDP AND FAILURE

2010-07-19T07:19:00.000-06:00

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will not be about production, but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. Why? Because we will spend more. Of course, this is true only if the only our culture values only money. GDP does not measure many other variables such as top soil, stability, creativity, safety, friendliness, food quality, reliability of products, or freedom.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work together, diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth to that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

They will be worth more, financially, to the economy if they divorce. Then they will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and they will need child care. There will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community and to society, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries? Perhaps the GDP could be used as a measure of just how broken and inefficient a nation is: the higher the GDP, the worse off it would be in many of the things that matter most. Is the GDP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

CONTROL

2010-07-14T11:52:00.002-06:00

Humans are obsessed with control. We say we want to “keep things under control”. We try to “control” inflation, erosion, traffic, crowds, development, and even our selves. Much of our efforts are spent in trying to control the forces of nature. But we have been successful enough that we sometimes think we have control.

However, it is impossible to control anything, if we refuse to identify, and set, the limits of the extremes. So while we use the word, we have no real intent. If one cannot limit the cause, one cannot limit the effect. And humans refuse to limit spending, borrowing, cars, houses, or just about anything else, even ourselves. We wish to control the forces of nature, but not limit human nature.

For whatever reason, humans have taken control mostly through violent means. How much of our society depends on explosions? We use the concept in mines, building highways, weapons, inside internal combustion engines, even fighting fires. And wherever there is energy there is always the risk of explosion. We even experience “boom and bust” economic cycles. The industrial revolution could be called the explosion revolution.

When something is very complex we generally assume there must be some single cause. Early scientists discovered a law that for every action there must be an opposite and equal reaction. While this appears to be true, it has led mankind to believe that there must always be central control. In fact, in nature, control is almost always decentralized. But humans have difficulty seeing how order can arise spontaneously from disorder, even though it appears to happen over and over again.

Thus we continuously try to control the world with central control, when all of nature testifies that it is not possible. Nature and human nature are not the same thing.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

2010-06-24T08:38:00.000-06:00

I have decided to get in shape. And the shape I have chosen is a triangle.

On second thought, all those sines and cosines would probably confuse me. I have enough trouble following street signs. But the shape of things, including signs and sines, have always interested me. Why do things even have shapes? I mean, a chair has a shape suited to sitting in. But why do things like rocks, trees, rivers, and crickets have the shape they have? And who gets to decide what shape they will be? No one ever asked me. As you can see I also have problems with tangents.

But to have a shape, something must be a solid. It’s hard to have a shape if you can’t hold it, and only solids can hold their shape. Solids are a result of the interface between order and disorder, and the arrangements of elemental particles called atoms.

Atoms always strike me as odd things. I think of them as particles, but I am told they are mostly empty space, with a few smaller particles like electrons and protons floating around. But these packages of mostly space can be packaged together in different ways to make what we call the three states of matter.
The nature of what physical state we perceive is less about which specific atoms are involved, although that is often important, and more about how close together these packets of space are packaged. Atoms, which are mostly empty space, when packed close together become the thing we call a solid. And solid things have shapes.

Someone has said that “solids are those parts of the physical world which support when sat on, which hurt when kicked, and kill when shot.” So if I understand this correctly, if we pack something that is mostly empty space closely enough together we get a solid.

But of course, the space in atoms isn’t really empty, it is just empty of material. Uhm, what else is there? Well, I am told that the space in atoms is filled with things such as electronic fields. Fields are empty space so you see the space inside atoms is filled with fields. Is this getting more clear?
But electronic fields actually can fill space, in the same way that a magnetic field can fill space. If one take two magnets and bring like poles together you will feel a resistance filling the space between the two magnets. Depending on how strong the magnets are, and how strong you are, it may be very difficult, or impossible, to push the two together. The space between the two magnets seems to be full of something.

So it doesn’t really matter which atoms we are talking about, just how close together they are, for us to experience solidarity. (Wait, isn’t that a political movement?) Anyway, a solid is a substance in which atoms and their accompanying fields are packed together very closely. If the atoms are not closely packed they can slide around across each other, much like two magnets with like poles seem to slide around each other, instead of ever actually touching. Such a substance can’t hold a shape and is called a liquid.

So, much of what we experience in the physical world, the shape of things, depends simply on how close together the atoms are packaged. Solids are closely packed empty spaces, liquids are less closely packed empty spaces, and gasses are empty spaces packed into a larger empty space, loosely. Seems perfectly clear to me.
Of course, once atoms are brought into close proximity to one another, they have to fit together according to their shape, like a pattern on wall paper. That is where it becomes important which shape of atom is involved. Some fit together in hexagons, some as cubes, and some even as triangles. That’s my kind of shape.

PROGRESS

2010-06-04T10:55:00.002-06:00

I have just recently been through a time of perplexity and complexity. It occurs to me that whatever good we might accomplish in this life is not done by raw intelligence, information, or determination alone. It requires knowledge, skill, and subtle characteristics such as restraint and judgment. Much knowledge, and many of these characteristics, come from our past, handed down through generations. There are at least two forces in our modern world that threaten past knowledge and character development.

In our modern world, run as it is from electronic connections, we value the ‘new and improved’ over the ‘tried and true’. The newest electronic equipment or software package is desired, even when older ones perform tasks perfectly well. Often the promise of the new simply means more applications that are seldom, or never, used anyway. Progress is always seen as forward and upward towards something better. But, of course that assumption depends entirely on what one defines as better. A straight line can also go straight down. Without the past we have no way of knowing what trajectory we are on.

Another difficulty we face today is the question, which past do we learn from? Multiculturalism has clouded this issue by attempting to make all pasts equally valuable. To the individual all pasts may be equally valid. But to a culture it is not so simple. The past that has given us freedom, democracy, order, the rule of law, and economic opportunity is not the same past that is based upon tyrants, social justice, bribery, or the collective domination of community. For example, science, which today is often seen as anti-religious, was born only from Christianity where the habit of reason and critical thinking was actually encouraged for centuries. Science did not arise spontaneously in other cultures where different religions held sway such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. Not all pasts are of the same significance in the modern culture.

At one time, humans were thought to exist in our own sphere, somewhere between the angels and the animals. With this knowledge we were able to act benevolently towards the latter and reverentially towards the former. It generated a thoughtful approach to life and our own proper role. This idea has been mostly abandoned, and modern man sees himself as just another animal. Animals are seldom benevolent towards one another, and have little regard for the future. They do not plan ahead and the capacity of self-restraint or wisdom. That’s progress, of a sort.

TOP SOIL

2010-05-08T18:41:00.003-06:00

Can an object have conflicting characteristics simultaneously?
• Could an object be strong and flexible at the same time?
• How about an object that is soft and rigid simultaneously?
• Could something drain and retain all at once?

Well, in fact, these kinds of objects are quite common. Almost all biological objects are combinations of attributes, often in opposition to each other. Wood is strong and flexible. Sponges are soft and rigid. Good top soil both drains and retains water.

Man-made objects are often quite different. Humans tend to focus on the characteristic they need for a given task and engineer for that task over everything else. Modern industry simply doesn’t know how to make top soil. It can make steel that is strong and inflexible, or steel cables that are flexible, but lack the same strength. And modern agriculture usually practices water retention and water drainage as two separate issues, never practiced at the same time, in the same place, or in the same way.

Modern humans have bedroom communities in which to live, but they have to work many miles away. Men have stores where they get their food, but the food must be shipped long distances. Mankind has an extended learning period to function in the world, so they put their children into school far away from home, work or the natural world to learn.

Could it be possible for people to live in small communities scattered across the land, live and work in their own fields and businesses close by, and educate their children in their own homes or businesses? That was the way it was for centuries. Many now believe that is impossible because we are now too big. But there is reason the world must be structured the way in is in the United States now. In fact, most of the world is not structured in the modern way at all.

Our present world of full of these odd behaviors developed only after World War II through government programs and incentives. The government purposely encouraged the movement of people off the land and into towns in order to benefit large industry. This was part of the progressive dream. Society would take care of us all and the efficiency of society was all that was important. Not the sanctity of freedom and human life. In fact, our country accomplished this massive reallocation of the population, greater than Pol Pot or Mao Tse Tung ever dreamed of, in the course of a single generation.

The world could be more like top soil, more organic, more able to retain and drain water simultaneously, if it were more organic.

HOW BEES HAVE ALWAYS LIVED

2010-03-28T18:58:00.002-06:00

Bees have been around for a long time. Most of that time, literally millions of years, they have built their hives on their own, in hollow trees or caves, or even sometimes in the open.

Humans have been stealing their honey for perhaps fifteen thousand years. No, I have no personal recollection of that, but that is what people who study such things tell me.

People appear to have been “keeping” bees in some form or another for about four thousand years. There are historical records from Egypt and even older civilizations that make reference to beekeeping operations. But for most of that time, beekeeping mostly just consisted of providing a hollow log of straw skep. The bees themselves were usually killed each year in order to extract the honey.

It wasn’t until 1851, about one hundred and sixty years ago, that Lorenzo Langstroth invented the modern bee hive with moveable frames. This invention allowed easy manipulation of the bees and extraction of excess honey without destroying the bees. But this hive is not a large departure from their normal wild existence, and bees seemed to thrive just fine.

In 1851 the majority of people still lived a rural existence, closely tied to agriculture and the land. Even those who lived in small towns usually had gardens and often domestic animals. Not everyone kept bees, but many did.

Bee keeping, for the next one hundred years after the Langstroth hive, was a modest affair with a few hives set aside on a corner of many farms, and mostly just ignored until honey harvest. Requeening had to occur every few years, but it was not religiously attended to because the bees did pretty well on their own. Farming was basically a nurturing activity, not the extractive activity it has become today. Bees were valued for their pollination, honey and wax for candles. They were not yet an industry.

But that has all changed in the past few years. In my next post I will explore the massive changes that have occurred very rapidly in the last few years.

OF SPACE, TIME, AND BEES

2010-03-24T19:29:00.000-06:00

Modern urban life has removed us to a great extent from natural cycles and, therefore, a feeling for changes as they occur through time. The study of history is sometimes seen by modern students, and many lay people, as irrelevant and useless. Geography is also sometimes seen in an archaic light. There seems to be less interest in where things are located, and why they are there, than there once was. Now we just want a gps systems to tell us how to get there.

But the distribution of events through time and space can sometimes shed light on current events that are explanatory, and sometimes even prescriptive. This blog will be the first in a series of blogs in which I will explore how bee keeping has changed through time, and how bee distribution in space has had an effect on all people whether they know it or not.

Space and time are the constant parameters of the human drama. Much of physics is devoted to these subjects. Chemistry is about invisible events that occur in short time spans and within a miniscule topography. Biology has adopted (I believe wrongly) how living things change through time as a central tenet.

Over the next few weeks I will discuss how bees and bee keeping has changed over time and in relationship to space. I hope you come back and visit.

QUANTITY AND QUALITY

2010-02-24T15:20:00.002-07:00

We often make a distinction between quantity and quality. In chemistry it is sometimes sufficient to know that something is present or not. What is in the water? At other times it is important to know the exact amount of something. Exactly how much mercury is in the water? However, there are times when both are important, and we fool ourselves when we ask the wrong questions.

For example, we often ask ourselves, “should I do something, or not”. This would seem like a qualitative question like, “is something there or not?” But the truth is that we are going to do “some thing”. Maybe we will only sit and stare in indecision, but that is doing something. We are never going to do “or not” (unless we die). Likewise, there is always going to be something anywhere we look. We can’t look carefully at water and not find something there, even if it is only water.

Deciding to do something still doesn’t tell us how much of it to do. One can decide to go to a movie, but that doesn’t mean they must do nothing else all day. One needs to acquire money, but that doesn’t always mean we should do nothing but acquire money. Could there be a time when one has enough?

So while the concepts of quantity and quality may be useful in certain narrow areas of study, they are not of much use in day to day living. This is because there is always a quantity involved. The big question is “how much”. And the question of “how much” is a value question which humans are very poor at answering. It is a rare human who voluntarily says, “I have enough”.

HAS THE WORM TURNED?

2010-02-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

It may surprise some people to know that earthworms are not native to the North American continent. They were introduced here by early colonists when they brought earthworm cocoons embedded in potted plants they brought with them. Through agriculture, fishing and on their own earthworms have been disseminated across the continent. In some forested area they are spreading at the rate of about seven meters a year.

The glaciated forests of North America existed for millions of years without earthworms as part of their soil makeup. These forests depend on a rich top soil layer of slowly composting leaf litter and a unique microbial population to supply nutrients to the thin mineral soils. As the worms invade an area, they hasten the breakdown of the leaf litter. The trees of the northern forests of the US depend on the leaf litter to help tree seedlings to survive. The thick leaf litter provides protection against temperature extremes, moisture loss and protection from browsing animals. The leaf litter is essential to seedling survival. So as the leaf litter layer is destroyed by earthworms, the reproductive success of the forest is compromised.

Normally, this earthworm activity has been seen as a good thing because it hastens nutrient liberation and spreads nutrients deep into the soil. However, this conclusion was reached based upon the studies of Charles Darwin from the limited sample of the English countryside. There is no indication that he knew earthworms were not universally distributed. What may be good for a damp cold climate may be less beneficial to a different environment. The reported thick top soil of the American mid-west may have existed because there were no earthworms to hasten decomposition. We'll never know since they are now ubiquitous.

There is also evidence that the microbial makeup of the northern soils is changed with invasions of the earthworm. Some of this is undoubtedly due to the changes in leaf litter and soil nutrition. But there is growing suspicion that the collection of earthworm mucus within the soil structure may also account for some of the changes in microbial balance.

Researchers at the Hebei Agricultural University in China examined earthworm mucus for antibacterial activity and found a short peptide (small protein like chemical) that possessed antibacterial properties against several common bacterial strains. What role this chemical plays in the actual protection of the earthworm, the amount produced and how broadly this peptide protects against bacteria is yet to be determined.

Once again we see that "Man doesn't know what he doesn't know."

LIVING TOGETHER

2010-02-03T11:08:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the most important truth can be hidden in plain sight. There are over 250,000 flowering plants that have been described. That is probably a modest estimate, but I am not a Botanist and don’t want to over-sell. There are over 750,000 insects described. That number is actually much bigger and is expected to go over a million.

Together this means that two thirds of all life forms are monopolized by these two groups. This is not an accident. These two groups of living things live together in an intimate way. Flowering plants could not exist without the service of insects to aid them in sexual reproduction, which we call pollination. And most insects could not exist without the shelter, surface, and food (nectar, pollen and plant parts) provided by the plants. These two groups are completely symbiotic: dependent on living together.

This concept of living together is a delicate and changing arrangement. There are flowers like Passiflora incarnata, the Maypop, common in the southern United States in areas like Tennessee, that are only pollinated by Xylocopa virginica, a carpenter bee. If the bee is lost, the flower will also become extinct. Or the “bearclaw poppy”, Arctomecon humilis, which is only pollinated by a solitary bee, named Perdita meconis, unknown until just a few years ago. If the flower is lost the bee will go extinct. These last two live near the Virgin River in Southwest Utah, or Northwest Arizona, as you see it.

Sometimes this balance between organisms is upset and we call the result predation, or parasitism, or disease, or extinction, or pollution or some other term. The problem is that it is very difficult to know what will upset the balance between any two or three organisms. How do we know what to avoid, or how to avoid it. It is akin to a complex structure built out of toothpicks. It is hard to predict which tooth pick can be removed and which cannot without causing the collapse of the whole system. Generally humans don’t have a clue what we are doing in this regard.

Mankind has put a lot of energy into killing insects. Many insects compete with us for our food. Some insects transmit diseases. But ironically, mankind relies heavily on the flowering plants for food and fiber. High mountain peaches, cherries, apples, pears, and apricots are just a few of the hundreds of plants we find desirable that rely on insects. So if plants need insects, and insects need plants, and man needs plants, then doesn’t man need insects?

THE DOG CHASES THE TAIL

2010-01-24T08:39:00.002-07:00

Evolution is a dog chasing its tail.

Humans do not do well in the natural world. That is precisely the reason we have built our unnatural world. The natural world is cold and hot, full of predators, disease and discomfort. So it did not take long for humans to change the world to be more hospitable. But of course, changing our circumstances changed the natural world, which then requires us to change our circumstances in another way.

This IS the natural world. When a coyote makes a meal of a prairie dog, it decreases the world by one prairie dog. Repeated at regular intervals, by enough coyotes, and the world we become prairie dog shy, and the coyote will have to begin to dine on other tidbits, or die itself. This will make the world coyote shy.

People who study evolution often get very excited about the fact that animals generally have abundant offspring and only the fit survive. Of course, the factor that determines which offspring survive is the environment. However, the surviving offspring change the environment, literally determining which environments survive and which collapse, or change. This brings to mind the phrase, “ever learning but never arriving at the truth”.

People cannot live apart from this cycle. People may forget they are a part of nature, but that does not remove them from being a part of nature, Environmentalists who want to eradicate human presence and industrialists who want to eradicate nature, both miss the mark. What is needed is for humans to try to be a part of the cycle so as to not harm the cycle. But if we fail it will not matter greatly because nature will make the correction for us. God has made it so.

The gene changes the environment and the environment selects the gene. They are both going nowhere. But that doesn’t mean the humans are going nowhere. The natural world is the platform humans walk through as they enact their own character and salvation. Nature is simply Gods way of preserving the platform.

THE HUNGRY AMERICAN

2010-01-17T16:45:00.001-07:00

The number of farms in the United States since I was born in 1945 has declined by half. Of course the size of individual farms has increased accordingly. Not all farm land has been simply moved into larger farm holdings. Some has been lost to non-farm holdings and activities. It was recently estimated that the number of arms in the US at the beginning of 2010 was 2.08 million. This is a decline of 0.6 percent from the previous year. We have the fewest number of Americans living on farms as we have ever had in the history of the country.

While many people enjoy gardening for some of their food, growing food is not as simple as it seems. Further, many people live in circumstances where they could not grow a substantial amount of their food if they wanted, or needed, too. Only sixty three percent of Americans own their own home and many of these homes are condos or in suburbs with restricted lot size and water availability. Keeping animals is very difficult to impossible in most suburban locations.

In the most recent American Bee Journal an article showed that the number of bee colonies kept in the United States has declined to the lowest level since the Second World War. However, the loss has come primarily from hobbyists, people who run ten or fewer hives. The big operators have gotten bigger and the little guys have gotten out. The bee journal suggested this was due to the increased difficulties of keeping bees in recent years due to disease and other stresses in the environment.

However, I think it is because of the cultural changes that have occurred in the last fifty years: where many people no longer own their own homes, those that do have smaller tracts of land, with many zoning and homeowners association rules restrictions on the use of their land, and when the average stay in a house is less than five years.

The end result is that the knowledge of how to grow food, at least enough to support a family, produce honey, or in other ways care for ourselves is being lost. The ability to do so has already been destroyed. This has occurred due to government policies that reward production but ignores the damage done by the producer.

One of the damages government policies and large corporate farms have cause is the massive reallocation of people off of the land and into cities where they are employed by corporations, or not at all. When Pol Pot, or the Chinese, or Stalin, did this it was universally condemned. When we do it we call it progress.

When things change, and they always do, there will be many hungry Americans.

LIVING TOGETHER

2010-01-14T14:38:00.003-07:00

I watched my little bee break out of its cocoon today. I was surprised at how proud I felt over her success. The male hatched out while I wasn’t looking, but I did see him for a few minutes. Man, are they fast! When he left I could hardly tell which direction he went.

You probably didn’t know that bees have cocoons. Most folks think all bees are honey bees, the kind that live in hives and make honey. (Do honey bees “make” honey, or do they “gather” it? Technically, honey is nectar from plants, so bees simpy gather it. Of course it is changed while in the bee’s stomach and then stored in the hive, so I guess they make it also.)

But my little pet bee that hatched out today is what is sometimes called a solitary bee because each female bee builds a single nest, deposits her off-spring with provisions and then dies. She works alone. I like to call them native bees because they were the only bees on the American continent until the early pilgrims brought the honey bee with them. Specifically this little bee that hatched out of its cocoon today in mid-March is named Osmia lignaria by the scientific community. Others call it the Blue Orchard Bee, or the Mason Bee.

She’s a cute little bee that doesn’t look much like a honey bee. To begin with she is black, or a very dark blue if the light is just right. She is also smaller than a honey bee, probably about a quarter of an inch or a little more in length. Somehow she is endearing in a way I didn’t expect. I can’t quite exxplain it, but she was just cute in a way that I had never thought about a honey bee. She sat for a few minutes, groomed some stray hairs, walked a few paces, defecated following her long winter in the cocoon, sat in the sun for a few minutes, and then, in a flash, was gone also.

We had lived together all winter now. I got my bees last fall and have been carefully storing them, first outside, then in a refrigerator all winter. I hope to release them this spring, let them pollinate some orchards and then collect their babies for release the next year. I guess it is sort of free-range bee ranching, but without the branding and roundup necessary in running cattle.

I have been fascinated by things “living together” since my senior year in college when I took a course in Parasitology, the study of parasites. I know that sounds gross, but I found the concept of things living cooperating and adapting to live together especially fascinating.

In fact, every animal ever examined has at least one specific animal that lives exclusively in, or on, the host. In addition every animal examined shares some collection of animals that live in, or on, it with some other species. Inescapably then, there are more “parasites” than free living animals in the world. The term for these co-dependent creatures is “symbionts”, and most symbionts do not cause disease or in anyway harm their hosts. Many benefit their hosts and are in turn benefitted.

Bees aren’t parasites. But they are symbionts. Their entire lives are entertwined with the flowering plants that provide them both pollen and nectar. But in turn the flowering plants are entirely dependent on the bees to provide the very intimate service of reproduction. Or maybe flowers are the symbionts of the bees? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

But in turn, this mutual intimate relationship between insects and flowers benefits humans with the very world in which we live. About eighty or ninty percent of all flowering plants are pollinated by animals. There are about 200,000 animal pollinators in the world, and the great majority are insect. And the most successful insect pollinators are bees. The world as we know it simply ceases to exist without pollinators.

So in yet another sense I have been living with my little Blue Orchard Bee much longer than just the past winter. I have been living with bees all my life. In fact, I owe my very existence, at least as it now exists, to the birds and the bees.

And that’s why I have my little bees. If I can create a home for these little creatures, I create a little earth for me. When I tend the bees, they attend to my needs by providing sweet fruit, healthy vegetables, new seeds and beautiful flowers. And maybe by building a better world for myself, I also create a better garden for my neighbor’s, more flowers for my community, and just a better world for my world. Not a bad deal. And I got to watch my little bee hatch this morning, on top of it all.

THE FAILURE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

2010-01-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

The industrial revolution has failed. Oh sure, it increased industrial production for the world, providing us with machines, technologies and things. But men assumed that living things could be industrialized. That potatoes could be planted, tilled, harvested and rotated in a way similar to the manufacture of cell phones. We have also assumed that humans would be happy working for others and living in city tenements. I think that has been sufficiently shown to be untrue.

The industrial process is basically extractive. That is, it takes materials, makes them into something else, uses that object, and in the end discards the item (and much waste along the way. But there are hidden costs to this approach which are typically not paid by the industrialists. The taking of raw materials leaves behind residua that the taker usually abandons: waste, extraction damage, pollution, and human dislocation to name a few.

Farming on the other hand is primarily a nurturing activity, where animals and plants are nurtured, cared for, used and recycled. Traditional farming has not only been about production and profit, but about home, pride of ownership, love and care of the land and property. It has, and is in much of the world, been practiced in a small community which provided support and connection. But when a farm is treated industrially the losses may be more hidden.

What is lost on an industrial farm (meaning essentially all farming in the United States today)? Some of the losses are topsoil, energy, homes, employment, exercise, human displacement, decay of country towns, water pollution, air pollution, food pollution, production inequalities and loss of pride of ownership and community. Even disregarding these costs, which are not covered by the corporate farms, American agriculture is one of the most expensive in the world. Corporations like to tell about their production. They do not like to talk about their efficiency.

This is all exemplified in the honey industry. But that is the next blog.

KILL THE INSECTS?

2009-10-15T14:34:00.002-06:00

Sometimes the most important truth can be hidden in plain sight. There are over 250,000 flowering plants that have been described. That is probably a modest estimate, but I am not a Botanist and don’t want to over-sell. There are over 750,000 insects described. That number is actually much bigger and is expected to go over a million. Together this means that two thirds of all life forms are monopolized by these two groups. This is not an accident. These two groups of living things live together in an intimate way. Flowering plants could not exist without the service of insects to aid them in sexual reproduction, which we call pollination. And most insects could not exist without the shelter, surface, and food (nectar, pollen and plant parts) provided by the plants.

This concept of living together is a delicate and changing arrangement. Sometimes this balance between organisms is upset and we call the result predation, or parasitism, or disease, or extinction, or some other term. The problem is that it is very difficult to know what will upset the balance between any two or three organisms. How do we know what to avoid or how to avoid it. It is akin to a complex structure built out of toothpicks. It is hard to predict which tooth pick can be removed and which cannot without causing the collapse of the whole system. Generally humans don’t have a clue what we are doing in this regard

Mankind has put a lot of energy into killing insects. Ironically mankind relies heavily on the flowering plants for food and fiber. High mountain peaches, cherries, apples, pears, and apricots are just a few of the hundreds of plants we find desirable that rely on insects. So if plants need insects, and insects need plants, and man needs plants, then doesn’t man need insects?

TO BEE, OR NOT TO BEE

2009-10-09T08:31:00.003-06:00

The Natives are restless and, like their human counterparts, their land is being taken from them. I’m not speaking of the Algonquin, Sioux or Navajo. I am speaking about tribes with names like Megachilidae, Colletidae, Osmia, and Bombus. These are tribes of the Native bees of North America. They have lived here for centuries prior to the invasion of the European interlopers, the Honey bee. There are somewhere between 3500 and 4000 species of Native bees in North America. That means that all pollination done in North and South America prior to the 1600’s was accomplished by these little known creatures.

They are cataloged and typed by several different names. Sometimes they are collectively called “pollen bees” because they carry far more pollen than honey bees. They are also known as “solitary bees” because they do not form large colonies. Each female develops her own nest without honey stores or workers. They are largely invisible to the average person, but of huge significance to the world. There are so many different types of these Native bees that it is hard to talk about them all at once. But there are a few simple facts that are relative to most.

Perhaps most importantly, Native bees are highly efficient pollinators. They often do the lion's share of pollinating crops, although this is not always recognized or appreciated. They have a number of advantages over honeybees as pollinators.
• Many are active early in the spring, before honey bee colonies reach large
size.
• Native bees are active earlier in the day and later in the afternoon than
honeybees, thus providing more pollination time.
• Native bees tend to stay in a crop rather than fly between crops, providing
more efficient pollination.
• Native bees seldom forage more than a couple of hundred yards from their
nest, whereas Honey bees may travel many miles.
• Because they fly faster than honeybees, they can pollinate more plants.
• Unlike honeybees, the males also pollinate the crop.
• Native bees are usually gentle, and do not sting since they have no honey
stores to defend. When they do sting, it is mild.
• Many native bees do not get disoriented in greenhouses.

Because of these differences, many Native bees are far more efficient pollinators than honey bees. Some experts suggest they accomplish more than 100 times what the Honey bee does. For example 250 Mason bees can pollinate one acre of apples. The same job would generally require a honeybee hive of about 20,000 bees.
Native bees have been shown to increase crop yields when they are present. Over 50 species of native bees specialize in plants such as watermelon or sunflower and over 80 species have been shown to be involved in berry crop pollination in Maine and Massachusetts. Native bees tripled the production of cherry tomatoes in one study in California. Many of these crops simply would not exist without native bees.
Often, growers don't realize how much pollination is performed by native bees. Signs of inadequate pollination are often misinterpreted as weather problems or disease. In one study it was found that of the 1700 bees trapped, only 34 were honeybees. This means that Native bees were performing almost all of the pollination in that area. Experts suggest that the economic value of pollination by Native bees greatly outweighs the traditional value of honey and wax produced by honeybees.
The drastic decline in feral and domestic honey bees has made it even more important to conserve and study wild bee populations.

The number of Native bees has also declined, but the reasons for these declines appear to be different from honey bees and are not well understood. Though some Native bees can be managed and used in commercial agriculture, most of them are regional. We do not know enough yet about their biology to know why they are declining, or how to manage them effectively.

So the fading drum beat of declining natives is once again affecting the North American continent. Likewise there may be serious consequences to the conqueror. However, if we can understand and preserve these native tribes, we may, at the same time, better feed the world. Towards this end biologists at Mesa State College will be collecting, identifying and attempting to culture local species of native bees in the future.

ART AND SCIENCE

2009-10-05T21:38:00.002-06:00

Science is uniquely concerned with physical things. Historically science is born of questions such as: How many are there? Why do apples fall down? How does a falling thing fall? What shape is it? How big is it. How much does it weigh? Why does that object act that way? This requires scientists to restrict their attention to a limited single object and study that one object carefully.

This study may require tremendous physical skill and special techniques. The scientist may have to invent new methods and perfect new skills to conduct his studies. Often numerous studies are done which simply attempt to establish a pattern or direction. But from this careful, and sometimes lengthy, study the scientist attempts to distil some kind of general understanding about the object or event that they have studied.

This general understanding is sometimes called a theory. As it becomes more reliable and useful, it is sometimes is called a Law. These general ideas can then be used to compare other similar objects, evaluate the theory further, and make predictions about events under certain conditions.

But the overall conclusion is that scientists tend to begin with some real-world physical object or phenomenon and conclude with a general idea. They turn the world of reality into the world of imagination and thought.

In contrast, art appears to be concerned with ideas. Much of art, including visual art, music, language arts and performance, appears to be born from such matters as: religious concepts, political movements, cultural characteristics, imaginary events or social ideals. This requires the artist to restrict their attention and focus on a specific idea they wish to explore.

This exploration may require an extended period of time to consider all the ramifications of the idea they wish to explore. This is followed by an extended period of time when the artist may have to invent new methods and exert considerable skill in his chosen medium to produce a model. Often the artist may make several models or attempts to capture the ideas he is contemplating.

In the end the artist creates a physical object which represents his view of the purely ethereal idea he has been contemplating. The important thing is that the end product is a function of the physical world. It may be visual, audible, or palpable; but it is real. This object can then be used to test the accuracy of the artists (and societies) understanding of the idea, explore the ramifications of the idea, explain the idea more fully to others, or even test the truthfulness of the idea.

But the overall conclusion is that artists tend to begin with some non-physical idea and conclude with a real object or physical manifestation that can be detected by the senses. They turn the imaginary world of ideas into reality.

It seems that both groups of people are concerned with understanding our world, arriving at some form of truth and increasing understanding. Even the skills and talents involved are very similar in a general sense. What appears significantly different is that they initiate their mental journeys from separate starting points.

Unfortunately, because of their opposite trajectories, scientists and artists often see themselves as in conflict. Understanding similarities enriches each field significantly. This can be especially powerful in educational endeavors where numerous studies and pilot projects have shown that using one approaches to study the other is especially effective.

For example, having students write about math or science has increased understanding for many students. Writing computer programs that artistically animates scientific phenomenon has proven animate to be an excellent learning tool. The discipline of assigning an artist to explore a specific scientific concept in an art class leads to greater understanding of both art and science.

The world appears to need fewer engineers and poets, and far more people who understand the relationship between ideas and objects. The creation of ideas has an effect on the physical world. The creation of objects has an effect on the creation of ideas.

CHOICES

2009-09-25T16:27:00.003-06:00

I am working on several projects besides my day job right now. One of them is a fantasy novel and another is a music CD about Adam and Eve and the garden. I write on my novel everyday. I wrote and arranged all the music last year so I basically only work on the music about once a week in the studio.

In my novel I just wrote a scene last night in which a person is offered everything they could possibly want, riches, fame , adulation, power. On the other hand they could choose a canteen of cold water and a sword. The soldier, knowing her own values, chose the canteen and sword.

In the night I awoke (literally) with the realization that was exactly the choice placed before Adam and Eve. This thought has haunted me all day as I have wondered in my mind, in between classes and at slow moments, if I know who I am and what I would choose. Do I make music and write for fame, adulation, riches and power? Or are words and music my canteen and weapon? What is worrying me is, I am not sure I know.

SWEET MEDICINE

2009-09-10T14:49:00.003-06:00

In 1976 my wife and I were involved in a head-on collision that left me semi-scalped from my eyebrows to about half-way back on my head. It looked pretty awful but was actually not a serious injury. The doctors sent me home with instructions to apply hydrogen peroxide to the wound several times each day to avoid infection.

Hydrogen peroxide is a compound that has two molecules of hydrogen and two molecules of oxygen. That makes it the same as water, except that it has one extra oxygen. When it is applied to injured human tissue, it is exposed to an enzyme that liberates the extra oxygen, leaving water and a single oxygen floating around. That single oxygen is highly reactive and attaches itself to any bacteria in the wound and damages the bacteria’s cell membrane, killing the bacteria. The oxygen that is released, however, causes the tissue to foam in a dramatic way.

On the first morning after the accident my young children were talking to me about what had happened as I applied the hydrogen peroxide to my forehead. They watched in horror as my entire forehead foamed up with hydrogen peroxide. They were both fascinated and appalled. The fascination proved to be the bigger factor as they insisted on being present for every subsequent application. I became the only Dad they had ever heard of with a foaming head. In fact, they asked if they could bring their neighborhood friends to watch. Sensibly, I did not allow this.

“But what does hydrogen peroxide have to do with honey?” you ask. It turns out that honey has the necessary components to produce miniscule amounts of hydrogen peroxide over an extended period of time. Honey is about 30% glucose. But it also contains glucose oxidase, an enzyme from the stomach of bees that is secreted into honey by the bee. This enzyme, in the presence of oxygen and water, can break glucose down into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide.

However, this enzyme does not function in honey because the pH of honey is too low. Honey generally has a pH reading somewhere between

3 and 4.5, and glucose oxidase requires a pH of about 6. Also, for glucose oxidase to function requires at least 2300 parts per million (ppm) of sodium to be present. Honey usually has only about 30 ppm. So good clean honey, stored in a proper container, is stable with no reaction occurring.

Human tissues contain an abundance of sodium, and the pH is generally slightly more than 7. If honey is applied to injured human tissue, the pH is slowly raised where the honey comes in contact with the injured skin. The abundance of salt in the body combines to activate the glucose oxidase. This causes the honey to produce minute doses of hydrogen peroxide over an extended period of time, directly to the place where it may be needed to combat possible infection. However, the honey isn’t as fun to watch as the hydrogen peroxide because you miss the foaming part.

Honey is also a supersaturated sugar solution and will not support the growth of bacteria because it pulls the water out of any bacteria present. Honey’s low pH also creates an environment that inhibits most bacteria growth. Finally, some honey has been shown to contain anti-bacterial compounds isolated from the floral nectars. In all, honey can be used as a home remedy for dressing wounds.

As you might guess, honey varies in its medicinal effectiveness, depending on the floral source of the honey and other factors such as water content, glucose content, glucose oxidase content, and other parameters. Some honeys, such as Manuka Honey from New Zealand, have greater medicinal properties than others. This lack of uniformity is one reason why honey isn’t used more aggressively in regular medical treatment.

Well, that, plus the fact that the honey is far less exciting to watch than plain hydrogen peroxide!

HEALTH CARE

2009-09-05T20:11:00.001-06:00

I’ve been trying to decide if I am healthy or not. Of course, I’ve been blind since the third grade, but it hasn’t really hampered me a lot. That’s because I wear glasses. Part of the health care industry I suppose. I have high blood pressure, but with the little pills I can still run for over an hour and climb to Hanging Lake. My left thumb aches now when I play the mandolin or guitar too much. But I always considered Ibuprofen the breakfast of champions.

So, if I am coping and working and being productive, am I healthy? I certainly don’t feel sick or diseased. So with all the discussion going on about fixing our health care system, I have been trying to decide if I need it. Just exactly what is the health care system?

So I Googled the definition and found several different ones, but most of them sounded something like this: the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially: freedom from physical disease or pain. Having looked this up before, I wasn’t too surprised. The problem with this definition is that it hardly anyone I know qualifies. I mean, is near- sightedness a disease? How about guitar induced inflammation? It hurts.

So if health is defined more or less as the absence of disease, what then is disease? So I looked that up. “Disease is a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms.” In other words, disease is the state of being unhealthy.

I find it odd that a country would spend such a huge amount of money on an industry that cannot be defined accept in terms of itself. No one seems to know what the health care industry is for.

Is it to keep us from dying? That isn’t possible. The earth is a finite resource and cannot support an infinite number of living things of any kind. Is the health care system about preventing disease? That too is impossible. For one thing death comes at the hand of disease and since death comes to all men we cannot prevent disease.

More significantly not all diseases are alike. Infectious diseases are probably a part of biology. From the earliest imagine life form, living things have required a surface to live on. When surface area became crowded the next most logical step was to simply live on top of some other living thing. And living things living on living things is a perfect description of infectious disease. It’s just biology. But there are other kinds of disease such as physiological diseases. These are diseases that are the result of mechanical type malfunctions in machinery, whether due to use or simply being constructed incorrectly by the blind forces of development. In these types of disease cells may go awry, systems may malfunction, parts may not fit, or accidents happen that misalign pieces.

Perhaps the reform we need is to define what the Health Care Industry really is. How can we tell if something is broke if we don’t know what it does? How can we know how to fix something if we don’t know what it does? Or maybe some people really don’t care what it is supposed to do. Maybe there are other reasons to dabble with a third of the nation’s gross national product.

DEBT IS BONDAGE

2009-08-15T15:42:00.002-06:00

(I initiated this blog to discuss science ideas and concepts. However, after taking the summer off, I find that science education does not seem to be the most pressing issue in my mind. I apologize if you came here for scientific enlightenment, but this entry will deal with a more pressing issue; FREEDOM.)

Debt is bondage. When you owe money on your car you are not free to buy another car. When you owe too much on your credit card you are not free to use your credit card for an emergency expense. When you owe money on your home you are not free to quit your job or move to another state. For a long time Americans have been prosperous enough to work around these limitations to a degree, but it does not change the fact that when a person owes money they are not totally free.

The crime that has been committed by the elected representatives in this country, for more than fifty years now, has been to slowly place the nation into debt. This debt has been accumulated for multiple reasons, many for seemingly good and kind humanitarian reasons. The reasons do not matter. We have spent money we did not have and borrowed to make up the difference. We can argue about the causes of these actions and the needs that have been addressed, but the bottom line is that now the United States is massively in debt. Now the United States is in bondage.

We would never have allowed a foreign invader to put us in bondage. But we have sold our liberty, and the liberty of our children, for questionable causes. Of course it is good to care for the poor. It is admirable to respect our elders. It is compassionate to care for the sick. But if I borrow money to donate to the needy, however that is defined; I will soon be a slave to my creditors.

Every responsible citizen knows they cannot have everything they want. Every successful household has discussions concerning what is wanted and what is needed. This is how reasonable people run their lives to avoid slavery and bondage. Can it really be true that different economic realities and rules exist for governments and world order? Of course not.

The argument has been for many years, and by every political party, that we need to be compassionate and we need to be efficient. Liberty has never been either. Liberty has been cruel and caused the death and suffering of millions who seek it. Liberty has always been messy and costly. Yet, among all men, it is the one attribute desired uniformly, regardless of culture, religion, or creed.

Americans may still be brave. But we are no longer free. We have allowed our elected representatives to again and again make foolish decisions that have left us debtors and in bondage. I do not know the motives of these many men and women who have participated. Some have resisted, but most have not. I will not say that they are wicked, evil, well meaning, idealistic, or selfish. It doesn’t really matter. The end result is that I am not longer a freeman.

The only sensible solution is the one every responsible person recognizes and applies in their life daily. Carefully manage our affairs. Do not spend what we do not have. Save some money for emergencies. Do not invest in new and risky ventures. Work hard and be frugal until the debt is paid. Deny one-self of many niceties in order to assure the necessities. Are there any candidates running for office today with these values and the ability to live by them when elected?

LUNCH WITH BLOODSUCKERS

2009-08-02T19:17:00.003-06:00

When I was young I reveled in Edgar Rice Burroughs “Tarzan” books. I don’t know if I read all twenty three or not, but I read a lot of them. And while I didn’t exactly know what a tsetse fly was then, I knew it was dreaded and carried deadly disease. So I was excited years later when I found myself in a class studying African sleeping sickness, transmitted by the “dreaded tsetse fly”.

Tsetse flies are large flies, about the size of our western horsefly, that are only found in Africa. They feed during the day, and both males and females feed exclusively on blood. In feeding they transmit a microscopic parasite called a Trypanosome that in turn causes African Sleeping Sickness.

Now, there is a great fascination by young boys, of almost any age, with gory things like blood sucking. It is a recent phenomenon that so many young girls and women have become interested in blood sucking.

One fascinating subject is how a blood sucking insect finds its food. It is surprising to me how little is known about the insect food-selection process.

It quickly becomes apparent that the simple act of getting lunch, is actually a multistep, multisensory, complex, interaction of senses, behaviors and environmental cues for an insect. For example, how does an insect even know when it’s time to eat? It is generally thought that mosquitoes feed at dusk. But how do they know when it is dusk? Is it by day length and light? That certainly seems to be one cue. However, mosquitoes kept in captivity will become restless, act “hungry”, and feed when kept in constant light conditions, if presented with other cues. Then there are those species that feed at two in the morning; you know the one that wakes you up with that dreaded buzzing in your ear.

Blood sucking insects can’t really expect dinner to remain in a fixed position until the next meal, like a McDonald’s resteraunt. So how do they locate a blood source? It is commonly thought that they follow a carbon dioxide plume, but carbon dioxide is actually only an exciter. The mosquitoes get excited whenever the concentration of carbon dioxide changes, whether it increases or decreases. They don’t follow the carbon dioxide as much as they react to it. Since carbon dioxide levels fluxuate continually, why don’t they react then? When presented with several selections on the menu, why do they always pick me? How do they decide between an arm and a leg, and which position on the arm is most attractive? The questions seem endless.

This is all complicated by the fact that there are over 3000 species of mosquito in the world and each has its own peculiar time, place, and preferred host for feeding.

Now for the amazing part: only half of mosquitoes take a blood meal, the females. The males feed entirely on plant sources of sugar. Females only require blood during reproduction. The rest of the time she lives on plant nectar also. So various floral and plant sources provide the great bulk of day-to-day mosquito energy needs. Yet our knowledge of when, where, why, and how they seek floral nectars is minimal.

Better understanding of the feeding habits of blood sucking insects would aid in the development of better control strategies, and improved disease prevention since most blood sucking insects are capable of transmitting disease. Answering questions like “How do tsetse flies know when it is dinnertime?” and “What flowers do mosquitoes prefer?” are what biologists do.

I have a couple of ideas about how to answer these questions. If you’re interested, wait until you are moved upon by some mysterious change in the carbon dioxide concentration and give me a call. We’ll do lunch.

END OF TERM

2009-05-19T12:41:00.003-06:00

There is an unexpected loneliness in the room
Light is filtered by dust and mineral spots
And diffused through plastic grids
The air smells of dust
Flecks of dry skin from a year of study
And the unwanted dirt from dry boots, shoes and sandals

Outside there is unexpected companionship
Insects visit flowers and birds visit insects
Even a lonely toad on the edge of the wet grass
Finds a cricket for a companion
The gardener’s footprint remains in the moist soil

Loneliness and silence are eternal companions
Gently close the door and join the others.
It is not loneliness in the room
It is an immense emptiness

It's been awhile since I have posted. The end of the semester always gets way to busy, no matter how hard one works at it. School seems as if it should be the least lonely place; everyone crammed together and all engaged in a common cause. Yet it seems lonely after a time. We all look forward to leaving the sterile confines, the mere ideas, the artificial activities and joining the forces of life. That is where true companionship lies. By the end of spring term we begin to wonder, like Mr. Chips, if it all really means anything anyway. It's time to tend the bees, plant the garden, sit in the evening air in companionable silence. I'll get back to science soon. But for now it is time for the heart.

THE AMOEBOID BRAIN

2009-04-09T12:32:00.003-06:00

If you lived on the surface of a rock in a pond and were only about 5 micrometers thick (a micron is 1/1000th of a millimeter), your life would be very different. You couldn't really fall down, since down is an extremely tiny distance. Up wouldn't make much sense either because it is relative to down. There would, of course, be forward and back, if you had some way to tell which was which. If you were quite round it might be more difficult. If you had an elongated shape I suppose you could have a right and left, but if you are more or less amorphous, those two concepts would be just a hazy notion of sideways to some degree or another.

Thus is the life of most amoeba, I suppose. If you find this thought intriguing you might enjoy reading the classic short book by Edwin A. Abbott called "Flatland: a romance of many dimensions". He explores life of a Mr. A. Square in a land of two dimensions. But A. Square's life must be very much like an amoeba's.

Yet amoeba can do some amazing things. If you place amoeba in a container and place a food supply in any direction from them, they will all eventually turn and begin to move in that direction. If you place toxic chemicals in their environment, they will move away from the source of irritation. If they like the dark, they can find the deepest shadows.

This is even more amazing. Amoebas grow by simple fusion, dividing in two. If you take a population of any given species of amoeba from some pond and allow them to develop large numbers, and then mix them with another population of the same species but from a different pond, they will live happily together. However, if you then cut off their food supply; they will eventually eat members of the other population, but will starve to death before eating members of their own type. They can recognize their own progeny. I sometimes look at my grand kids and can't even do that.

The amoeboid world is pretty slow as well. All amoebas live in aquatic environments. Life in the fast lane for an amoeba might be a fish swimming by and creating a current. They don't float free in the water normally, but are restricted to their two dimensional world, to which they cling tenaciously with their ever changing arms called pseudopodia. But they know all of this, and if they should be suspended in water by the fishy currents, they cease trying to move until they are safely settled back onto a nice two-dimensional plane.

Living in water, you might expect that they aren't very fast also. One of the faster amoebas around can sprint at speeds of 0.5 to 3.0 micrometers per second. I think that makes their fastest time for a "one millimeter dash" around 5 minutes. However, many amoebas are slower than that. Still they seem to get where they want to go.

You might wonder why it is important to know anything about amoeba. There are actually a lot of reasons, some involving disease, other involving their role in nature and the food chain.

But the reason that I find most interesting is that they seem to be able to do a lot of the things I can do, but with only a single cell. True, they can't do algebra, but then I'm not very good at that either. They don't talk, or at least in an audible language. They do communicate very complicated information chemically. In fact, amoeba can talk to one another. By secreting chemicals, they can tell other amoeba what they are doing and what they want the other amoeba to do. This is exactly what the cells of your brain do: secrete chemicals that communicate with other brain cells. That is exactly what the brain is composed of cells speaking a chemical language to one another.

So do amoebas think? I guess that all depends on what thinking is, and thinking may just not be what you think it is. And amoeba may prove to be more interesting than you think.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF GETTING YOUR WIRES CROSSED

2009-04-01T11:43:00.002-06:00

Imagine you have built a small robot car that is powered by two electric motors, one to each rear wheel. If the right motor revolves more rapidly than the left motor, the car will veer to the left. If the left motor is faster than the right the car will turn right.

Imagine this car has two light sensors on the front of the car, set several inches apart. These light sensors are connected to the motors of the car and control the power to the electric motors such that the more light that hits the sensor the faster the motor turns. The right sensor is connected to the right motor, and the left sensor is connected to the left motor.

Imagine we have placed this car in a darkened gymnasium. It will not move because there is no light. But we have placed a remote controlled light bulb in the center of the floor. When we turn the light on the car will begin to move. However, because of the distance between the two sensors, the amount of light striking the right sensor will be greater than the amount of light striking the left sensor. This will cause the right motor to revolve faster and the car will veer away from the light until it is exactly facing away from the light so that the amount of light to each sensor is equal. It will also go as far away from the light as possible until the sensors are no longer stimulated.

Imagine you are observing this with a friend from the rafters of the gym. Your friend might say something like, “Wow, that thing really doesn’t like the light. It runs and hides. How did you make it do that?” Of course, it doesn’t “like” or “dislike” anything. It’s a robot. It just appears to be a little like a cockroach.

Stay with me here. This is actually very applicable to you.

Imagine you make one small change in your robot; you connect the right sensor to the left motor and the left sensor to the right motor. Then you turn the light off, reposition your robot in the gym, and you resume your perch in the rafters.

When you turn on the light the robot moves, but this time it turns toward the light because the sensor on one side drives the motor on the opposite side. Your friend says, “Oh look, it likes the light and is moving towards it.” But wait, something is drastically wrong. As the robot gets closer and closer to the light, each sensor gets more light, and this makes each motor go faster. The robot hurtles directly at the light with increasing speed. You friend screams, “Look out! It’s attacking!” as the robot hurtles into the light demolishing light and robot in one grand violent act. “Wow!” Your friend observes after a stunned silence. “That robot really hates the light.”

Imagine you painstakingly reassemble your robot. This time you add one more tiny change: a governor on the light sensors so that it increases speed until a certain light intensity is reached. Above that intensity the robot turns off the motor it is wired to.

Meanwhile, back in the gym, this time the robot turns towards the light and rushes towards it as before, but as it gets close it slows, and stops, and sits staring adoringly at the light bulb, never moving a motor. Your friend observes, “Oh look, it’s in love with the light.”

What has this got to do with you and me? Maybe nothing. But cockroaches, and bees, and most insects, have brains that connect to the same side of the body (muscles as motors) as their sensors, whether those are eyes or antennae. You and I have crossed nervous systems. The left brain controls the right side of the body and the other way around. Does that partly explain human aggression? And is the difference between love and violence a simple breakdown of the speed governor, the braking system? I don't know.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

2009-03-31T11:18:00.003-06:00

One of the surprising, but moving experiences of my life was one night when I first watched a cell actually divide in two. We all have learned that cells do this. I had seen television specials, documentaries and teaching films showing cell division. So it was surprising to me that when I actually saw the event myself, I found it profoundly emotional. Maybe that’s just me.

Later I was similarly affected in a class where I had students place corn pollen in a special solution, and we watched the pollen tubes grow before our very eyes. This growth can occur in just minutes and is easily observed under a microscope. Corn pollen can grow up to twelve inches to reach a plants ovary. As I sat at a microscope and watched a mystery of life occur before my eyes, I was surprisingly moved.

Pollen is normally deposited on the stigma of a flowering plant, a structure rising some distance above the ovary (in human terms). The pollen tube grows down to the ovary and bursts, releasing two sperm cells onto the ovary. One sperm cell unites with the ovary to create the embryo. The other sperm cell unites with a special cell to form the endosperm. The endosperm will become the food supply that nourishes the new embryo and/or humans in many instances. We intercede and eat the endosperm of such as plants as wheat, barley, oats, corn, peaches, pears, cherries, apricots, grapes, berries, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and more.

Getting pollen to the stigma is a bit of a trick for plants since they are generally immobile and can’t get together in some central location to socialize. The process is called pollination, and generally it occurs in one of two ways: either by wind or by an intermediary animal.

Bees are the best known of these pollinators, although not the only ones. And while most folks think honey bees are the best pollinators, this isn’t true. In fact, honey bees are not even native to North America. They were first brought by the early pilgrims and quickly spread out to fill the continent. But prior to that there was a rich population of Native bees on this continent that pollinated everything necessary very efficiently. In fact, North America has one of the richest populations of these solitary bees in the world.

There are approximately 4000 species of Native bees in North America. These bees do not form large colonies with honey stores like honey bees do. Instead, each female mates and sets about establishing her own nest. She finds an appropriate site and lays her eggs one at a time, provisioning each egg with pollen and nectar for the year. After laying her last eggs she dies. But the new generation lives invisibly within her nest for the remainder of the year. This generation will hatch out at appropriate times the following year to complete the cycle.

Many of these bees are extremely local, being found in only specific regions. Some are tied to the life cycle of a single plant and are found only where that plant thrives. Others are more general and widespread. Many of them nest in the ground. Others nest in hollow stems, or old beetle holes in logs. Many are very small, significantly smaller than honey bees. They are not even colored in what most of us would think typical bee coloration. Because they spend most of the year inside a nest, are active for only short periods, and may not look like ordinary bees, they are invisible to most lay people.

However, “by their fruits ye shall know them”. Native bees out-pollinate honey bees by tremendous amounts. Two hundred and fifty native bees can pollinate an acre of apples. It would take a honey bee hive of 50,000 honey bees to serve the same orchard. Native bees are the hidden pollinators. Often, when they are not present, crop yield is poor and losses are attributed to weather or disease, when instead it is a lack of pollinators. These little creatures are generally out of human sight, and out of human mind.

Symbiosis II

2009-03-27T12:03:00.001-06:00

When a relationship no longer provides mutual benefit, it is dead.