. It seems to me that NO ONE seems willing to present any product or service or person on WHAT IS ACTUALLY TRUE AND HONEST! Wow! It is clear that EVERY company seems to spend massive time and effort in trying to find ways to DECEIVE people into paying for their product or service! I don't know whether we are supposed to conclude from that that there are no products or services actually worth buying! It sure seems to be an implication of everything we see.
In any case, THIS Domain has the intention and goal of actually presenting FACTS, in HONEST WAYS, where NO DECEPTION hopefully exists in any of the thousands of contained pages! Being human, I suppose that is probably not absolutely true, but it sure is as true as I have been capable of trying to make them.
This tends to result in a situation which many people may find unexpected! Nearly every presentation contains BOTH the wonderful strengths of any specific concept or product, but it (hopefully) also contains discussions of the negative short-comings of those same products or concepts. The point is NEITHER to "promote or sell" any particular view NOR to "rip or denigrate" such things, but simply to try to present BOTH sides of important areas which you may want or need to someday consider or analyze. Hopefully, you will find "about equal" presentations on both or all sides of any specific subject, such that YOU can then determine any conclusions that YOU think are most valid.
For examole, where virtually any other information source regarding windmills presents "immensely optimistic" comments or claims, toward "selling" that concept or some specific product, the presentations in this Domain should (hopefully) present HONEST and REALISTIC views of what might be achieved with such a system. Yes, there IS good reason to examine wind power as a possible source of the energy upon which our societies rely. But it needs to be honest and balanced information for anyone to be able to actually make an informed decision!
Long ago, around 1975, I was amazed that Feature Stories in magazines would be titled "We heat our entire home with a Ben Franklin Stove." Technically, that was true, but it was immensely misleading. The story would describe how the occupants would have to wake up every two or three hours all night, and then still have to wake up to a 53°F house in the morning, and that the house was extremely small, around 600 square feet. THOSE occupants considered it acceptable to wake up to a 53°F house! I wouldn't! Maybe I am too spoiled, but I expect to wake up to a house that is around 71°F or 72°F! (At the time of reading such very popular stories, I was fully heating an 11-room, three-story, 1896 farmhouse with a very unusual woodstove that I had Engineered and built for myself, and I would NEVER tolerate having to wake up in the middle of the night just to add more wood! I would also never have been happy to wake up to a house that was not cozy warm in the morning. I am NOT a "morning person!") In any case, technically, it was not a lie that that family said that they were heating their whole house with a woodstove. But millions of people were later very disappointed to buy such Franklin stoves and then find that it did a fine job of heating ONE room and possibly two, but never much more unless they lived in Florida!
So I suppose that I have a grudge against most modern advertising, because I keep looking for SOME commercial that does not wildly exaggerate actual abilities of some product and that does not intentionally deceive viewers/readers into arriving at wrong conclusions. If it were up to me, when ads said FREE, if those very expensive commercials were not ACTUALLY giving away the things they claimed, I would want to see them all sued! Maybe some level of truth in advertising might then re-appear! In any case, THIS Domain makes a serious effort at avoiding such things, and simply presenting honest facts and reliable logic, and even trying to AVOID letting readers accidentally arrive at some wrong conclusions. However, it probably will be a LOT more boring than the exciting commercials that tell you that you have already won a million dollars or will win a Hummer or that the promoter is going to GIVE you gold or money or gasoline or whatever!
The product- or service-related business concepts presented all belong to me, and I have Patented or have Patent procedures in progress for some of them. Nearly all of these are also meant to somehow benefit society. Use or development or marketing of any of them would ONLY be allowed based on a written contract of agreement regarding that particular invention or device or process. NO authority is given to manufacture or promote any of them, based on the mere presence of these presentation pages.
It is even easy to confirm this is all true. An average adult man eats (ballpark) around 2,200 Calories of food each day, and breathes about a total of (ballpark) 14,000 times each day. Each average breath is about half a liter of air, which, when exhaled at body temperature, can contain a maximum of about 22 milliliters of carbon dioxide in it, which is about 0.0405 gram of carbon dioxide per average breath. This includes 0.0110 gram of carbon. In those 14,000 exhales each day, just multiply to find that means a total of 155 grams of carbon CAN leave the body by way of exhaled breath. The exhaled breath does not always contain the absolute maximum amount of carbon dioxide in it, so this daily total is usually a little less than this at around 115 grams of carbon which gets removed from the body each day in exhaled breath. (Still following?) The 2,200 Calorie daily diet included about 0.25 pound or 114 grams of carbon in the food. That amount of carbon is processed throughout the body in the daily Metabolism. We can therefore see that the NORMAL exhaled breath accounts for all the carbon that had entered the body during eating and digestion, and we even see WHY the body weight is therefore generally stable!
In fact, you can probably see that if ANY of the variables are changed, the body weight will likely then also change. Greater Calorie intake (without any increase in Metabolism or breathing rate) pretty much means an increase in body weight. Greater Metabolism and heavier breathing, as, for example, due to a lot of exercise (without any increase in the Calorie intake) and the body weight is nearly certain to decrease. Pretty obvious, isn't it? Probably too many numbers, sorry, but I wanted to build an air-tight case regarding this stuff.
I hope you see that no assumptions were made in the discussion here, and simple and standard scientific knowledge and logic is all that has been used. This line of analysis forces accepting an entirely new (and somewhat bizarre!) set of conclusions! Yes, whether a person is obese or skinny IS related to their rate of Metabolism, but for an unexpected reason, apparently regarding their rate of breathing! A skinny person loses heat more easily from the skin, for having less thermal insulation, and so that person MUST have somewhat faster Metabolism and faster or deeper breathing. The converse is true for obese people, who seem very likely to breathe either more slowly or more shallowly, as a result of this effect.
Exercise CAN certainly contribute toward weight loss, but IF the associated breathing is not sufficient, the body could not actually get rid of the carbon atoms! Isn't that really weird? The consequence is that EXERCISE can get rid of bodyfat by doing TWO things: increasing the Metabolic usage of energy stores (everybody has long known that) AND INCREASING the breathing rate and depth. EITHER ONE ALONE could not do it! It really does not seem to matter whether you can lift 700 pounds or not! It may not even matter whether you are fit or not, as long as you do some activity that causes your Metabolism to speed up AND causes you to breathe either deeper or faster or both! The faster metabolism part is also the actual reason why things like Cocaine and Speeders (Amphetimines) tend to cause people to become skinny, by doing BOTH of those effects, (although such people often also forget to eat!)
There is another confirmation of this stuff. When Researchers do Metabolism Studies on people, what they actual monitor is the carbon dioxide exhaled in the breath! They make an ASSUMPTION that the Metabolic Rate is necessarily proportional to the Respiration Rate, which is actually an extremely solid assumption, as it is necessary for bodily equilibrium. But the fact that we have identified TWO INDEPENDENT PROCESSES here seeems extremely important. If EITHER the Metabolic Rate or the Respiration Rate was somehow restricted, the other would necessarily have to also be restricted by the brain, in order to maintain bodily equilibrium.
I suspect that there is an easy Thesis for a Medical student here! Obtain Physical Exam data for at least 1500 people who have deviated septums (obstructed nose passageways) and that for 1500 others who do not. Do a Scientific Statistical Analysis of the BMI number (a crude system of describing fitness by the metric body weight divided by the metric height squared), and it seems certain that the people with obstructed nasal passageways should be statistically heavier! BECAUSE if less airflow can normally occur, then the brain would necessarily restrict Basal Metabolism in order to maintain chemical equilibrium of the body. If Respiration Data is also available, then even better Statistical Analysis could be done.
When a person is obese, it might therefore be because of EITHER a Metabolic Rate that was too low for the food intake (with the respiration rate automatically then being reduced by the brain) OR due to a Respiration Rate that was too low to carry the carbon out of the body (with the brain then automatically reducing the Metabolic Rate in response).
The implications of this seem staggering! Say that your Metabolism was fine and that your particular body simply had developed a habit of breathing 10% more shallowly or 10% less often than most people do. Maybe due to aging or a change to a sedentary lifestyle. No one would ever notice this minimal difference. But say that you then could somehow LEARN to breathe just 10% more deeply, with 0.50 liter of air in an average breath rather than your normal 0.45 liter. You might have already learned to restrict your food intake to eating 1,980 Calories of food each day, which might keep you from gaining even more weight, but you could not seem to lose any of the weight you have. But now your body would be able to exhale 10% additional carbon dioxide (equivalent to 2,200 Calories per day). (Remember that you had already learned a pattern of only eating 1,980 Calories each day.) Simple calculations indicate that this simple and easy change could represent a WEIGHT LOSS of around 22 POUNDS per year!. It sort of boggles the mind to think that all those expensive weight-loss programs might not be necessary at all, and that many of them are apparently impossible to be effective! And that a person might be able to lose really large amounts of actual bodyfat simply by learning a pattern of breathing a little more deeply (or a little faster)!
There IS a caveat included above! Those larger breaths ARE ABLE TO carry away 10% more carbon. Will it actually do that? Don't yet know! It could happen that if your body has gotten really used to a slowed Metabolism, it might already therefore only be supplying a smaller amount of carbon to the lungs. The CONCENTRATION of carbon dioxide might simply drop lower to carry away the usual amount. So it might not be that your Metabolic Rate would increase just because the limitation of the Respiration Rate was lifted from it. Your brain has to figure this out! Once you have taught your body to breathe slightly more, it MAY then be necessary to also teach your body Metabolic Rate to also increase that small amount. Whether it would do it "because it could" or only after it was re-taught, is not yet known. So it DOES seem important to consider exercise, which would have the effect of teaching your body to increase both.
The footnote also includes some other interesting possible implications.
I recognize that as a Physicist, I am NOT an expert regarding dietary regimens and such, but the above logic is simply LOGIC!
In Hydrogen, the claims are even more outrageous, probably because even fewer people are capable of determining whether they are right or not. (Use the same footnote as above!)
In PV, photovoltaics, ditto, where customers are led to believe that they will be generating enormous amounts of electricity for their family to live a normal life.footnote
The footnotes show that with the simplest of examination, of figuring out how much power (energy) is being claimed and also figuring out how much power is available from the claimed source, MANY such claims are immediately seen as wild speculation (or outright lies).
I guess in a common sense way, this could sound possible. But they added in MANY speculative assumptions in their story! ANY actual examination of the logic and the numbers shows that to be a truly silly claim! Do they really believe that millions of tons of the Earth was launched out into space when the (alleged) huge meteorite ended the dinosaur's reign? I doubt it, and on Earth, such impacts are far more explosive because of all the water that is around that can boil and create pressure. But even say that a MILLION TONS of material from the Earth had gotten launched out into space back then. How much of it would have hit Mars to land there? Well, it is a very simple problem regarding Spherical Geometry. First, consider the Moon, which is very close to us. We can easily calculate that the Moon takes up about five one-millionths of our whole sky. If material had gotten launched out in random directions, roughly 0.000005 of it should have hit the Moon. Not that complicated! If a million tons had gotten launched (an astonishingly large estimate!) only about five tons of it would have likely hit the ENTIRE surface of the Moon. At its AVERAGE distance from us, the angular size of Mars takes up about 1/200,000 the angular area of the Moon, also very easy to calculate. So how much of the million tons (allegedly) ejected from Earth would have hit the ENTIRE surface of the planet Mars? Well, that fraction of the five tons, or a TOTAL of LESS THAN ONE OUNCE of such material spread over the ENTIRE surface of Mars! In the other direction, if Mars had ejected such an enormous amount at some point in the past, the situation would have been essentially the same, where less than HALF AN OUNCE could possibly have hit the ENTIRE area of Antarctica, certainly TOTALLING a size no larger a single kernel of corn! (Keep in mind that THIS would have been if Mars had somehow ejected a MILLION TONS of material!) Such very small particles of material tend to burn up as they enter our atmosphere (as meteors) and only much larger ones usually make it through the atmosphere to land. Yet, those (alleged!) Physicists claim to have found large numbers of such debris in just a very small area of Antarctica. Should DUHH be appropriate? The SIMPLEST of math problems, which you just followed, shows how ridiculous the whole idea is! Also, they didn't bother to even try to determine WHETHER material could actually be given escape velocity speed to escape Mars in the first place. That problem is somewhat more complicated, but it easily shows that there was NO chance that any massive amount of material was ejected, unless the entire planet of Mars was on the verge of being blown apart into two pieces!
There is nothing wrong with SPECULATING about such ideas. Creativity is a good thing! But Physicists are SUPPOSED to immediately do some math and logic analysis to see if what they want to claim is even possible. In this case, it is NOT REMOTELY POSSIBLE, by proof provided by very basic Laws of Science. The really troubling thing is that the entire Physics community endorsed and adopted this insane concept and it is now considered as virtually a certainty! Didn't ANYONE do those simple math exercises we just looked at?
A DIFFERENT obvious problem in Physics! There are all sorts of theories thrown around where someone claims that some large object hit the planet Uranus so hard that it was knocked on its side to now rotate strangely. Or that a similar huge collision knocked the Earth into its tilted axis that causes our seasons. Or around a dozen other similar claims of powerful impacts that allegedly caused enormous changes in the rotation of some planet. That might sound fine to non-Physicists, but in Physics Kindergarden, we all learned about the Conservation of Angular Momentum and its many consequences regarding gyroscopic motions. NO Physicist who has a valid Degree should possibly believe that ANY impact could massively alter the spin axis of any planet. In case they slept that day in Kindergarden, they should get a bowling ball spinning fast, suspended on a gimbal mount and TRY to throw things at it or fire things at it to cause its spin axis to change. It turns out that a smart guy about 200 years ago named Euler PROVED that cannot be done! It is not even a very hard problem to prove!
The Physics community has quite a few other concepts which have absolutely NO actual basis, but which have become universally accepted as fact! Around 1912, Einstein developed a mathematical equation, which another scientist, Schwarzfield, solved in 1916. For one specific situation, he got an answer that became infinite at one specific location. THAT is the ENTIRE support for the alleged existence of Black Holes! People added in assumptions, and later Physicists accepted those assumptions as valid and then added on new ones. NO Black Hole has ever been seen or otherwise detected, but now there are many BOOKS written regarding subtle details of their functioning! Thousands of Physicists have spent their entire careers trying to prove some new assumptions they want to add in! And there may be no such thing as Black Holes!
Many or most modern Physicists now believe that the MAJORITY of the Universe is in zillions of tiny objects that we cannot see and will never be able to see. And what is the basis for that Dark Matter or Hidden Mass? A SINGLE thing that confused Physicists of around the 1950s! Hundreds of years ago, a guy named Kepler discovered some patterns in the movements of the planets, and then later Newton mathematically prove why they existed. The result was that Kepler created three "laws" regarding such things. Kepler and certainly Newton absolutely KNEW that those laws were ONLY valid BECAUSE nearly all the mass of the Solar System is inside the Sun, or what is called a point source. During the 1920s on, understanding of the motions of our Milky Way Galaxy were developing. For some incomprehensible reason, the Physicists decided that Kepler's laws must apply for the Galaxy as they do for the Solar System. And then they soon discovered that the motion of the Galaxy does NOT comply with Kepler's laws. Unbelievable! They first made a horribly wrong assumption (since the mass of the Galaxy is distributed very broadly and Kepler's laws should immediately have been seen as not applying), and then decided that we had enormous problems because the Galaxy was not rotation as Kepler would have said! How could they have made the first huge error, but then how could so many thousands of Physicists seen all this and not even questioned the bad assumptions?
As often happens, I am rambling! Sorry! But there are half a dozen OTHER major areas within Physics where truly poor assumptions had been made and that NO ONE then challenged them! So, in my opinion, modern Physics is currently pretty screwed up! Physicists seem free to dream up the most outrageous idea and then get it adopted without much question! It is truly sad.
One you were probably taught in school was the Twins Paradox, where Einstein's Relativity Theory allegedly identical twins to become different ages! Relativity certainly has many peculiar consequences, but THAT does not happen to be one of them. A Physicist made a really poor assumption in the early 1960s, and no one ever questioned or challenged his claims! It is very frustrating, as Physics is commonly considered as the very pinnacle of intellectual fields. How is it possible that so many very wrong ideas get developed and fully adopted as true?
Of course, maybe they are correct in simply blowing all this stuff off. There have been Physicists before me who have only had worthless and garbage ideas! Who can say for sure that I don't belong in that category? It is up to any reader, who ACTUALLY would read any of these presentations, to try to determine that!
|
An important comment seems appropriate here! I was educated at the
University of Chicago as a scientist, and it seems that they did
a fairly good job inside my skull. I actually think they FAIL with
many of their other students, but for a peculiar reason! Nearly
all of my classmates in Nuclear Physics were incredibly arrogant!
They simply could not imagine that they would EVER make any error!
In my opinion, they therefore probably made lousy scientists! What an outrageous thing to say! Here is why. ALL humans sometimes make mistakes, make poor assumptions, use poor logic, arrive at poor conclusions. Even them! Even me! A CRITICAL characteristic of being a good scientist is to NOT TRUST OR ASSUME ANYTHING! UC (forced) me to take a Graduate-Level Mathematics class which I thought at the time was the dumbest ever! It was a 13-week course, which had a single goal, to prove that 1 + 1 = 2! Do you agree in my initial attitude? The Professor spent the first THREE WEEKS proving in exquisite detail that 1 + 1 was not LESS than exactly 2. Part of the reasoning was, what if we had not been measuring accurately enough, that maybe 1 + 1 actually equalled 1.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 and we just THOUGHT that quantity was 2! Then three more weeks proving that it was not GREATER than exactly 2. Then three weeks more to prove that the sum was not a Complex number (which might have had a Real component of 2 but also an Imaginary component). And more weeks proving that the sum of 1 + 1 did not happen to be in some Other Dimension (where again, the VISIBLE part might have then looked like 2). On the last day of Class in that thirteenth week, the Professor closed out the logic, of establishing that 1 + 1 was NOT equal to any other number or quantity, and therefore BY DEFAULT it WAS proven that it was exactly equal to 2! Why was that Course so important to me? For two separate important reasons. First, as a good scientist, it was CRITICAL to NEVER ASSUME something is true, just because it LOOKS like it is true. (For thousands of years, everyone on Earth believed that the Earth was Flat, and that it could not possibly be spinning at over 1000 mph or hurtling through space at 66,000 mph in going around that bright thing up in the sky [the Sun]). Second, it is equally critical to NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE RIGHT! Sadly, I know many Physicists who have such huge egos that they cannot imagine that they could ever be wrong, and so even when they dream up silly speculations, they insist that they are correct (without providing any proof or support other than common sense.) SOOOOO! I am highly critical of many people who call themselves scientists who have this self-absorbed attitude! The CORRECT attitude of a good scientist is to ALWAYS ASSUME YOU ARE WRONG, and then therefore start doing the math and Physics to try to confirm that you are right. In my case, I OFTEN have come up with "dumb ideas" which really sounded good to start with, but then when the (mandatory) math and strict logic was applied, showed themselves to be the dumb ideas they were! So THIS is the lesson of this Commentary: IF you want to be a quality scientist, you MUST generally assume that your ideas had been wrong, and then immediately dig into the necessary math and Physics to try to confirm or deny your ideas! "Let's build a 4,200-foot-long bridge across the Golden Gate waterway." "Will it fall down?" "I dunno, let's build it and find out!". Science (and Engineering) cannot be like that! The presentations in this Domain often include a lot of (annoying) formulas and calculations! Generally, they are provided so that any reader might then be able to "do the math" to confirm or deny statements made. After all, are you SURE that 1 + 1 = 2?
|
If a reader of this happens to be an electronics technician or hobbyist, I would have great interest in discussing the possibility of hiring or collaborating on several of these projects that involve various levels of advanced electronic circuitry.
Maybe even more important, if a reader happens to be good at Compositional skills, the weaknesses of these many presentations are pretty evident, even to me! I was trained in College as a Physicist, and my whole life has had strong interests in math and science. NOT in Composition! Rearranging many of the presentations would make them much more readable, no doubt! People usually smile when I tell them that I actually TRY to compose introductory and closing paragraphs, and to not do so much repeating of concepts! I really, really have tried! These are abilities I do not seem to have. In a few cases, the existing web-page is around the fiftieth revision, and you DON'T want to know what the first one was like! So, there are a few which are "tolerable", but only due to massive efforts! I am absolutely sure that an English Major could re-arrange and re-word a presentation in an hour or less. Volunteers would be appreciated, even if it only regarding a specific subject presentation that interests you!
.
Information about my background.
My bizarre approach to trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts
Dell Computers losing at least $300,000 of business, and other interesting subjects!
To cite a presentation or article in our Domain.
And, yes, I realize that the cursor is strange and somewhat annoying, but it also has a cuteness that is entertaining (for a while!) If you are a kid, you might watch to see which is the last butterfly to still be flapping its wings! It might actually be obvious to you if you watch them all for a while! After all, I am a Physicist, and would necessarily make it all logical!
Unusual music! This piece of music is odd enough to get my interest! It is called Pasquinale, and it was composed by the March King, John Philip Sousa, around 1900. Every time I hear it I try to imagine a Marching Band trying to march to it! Or trying to play it!
The US Government owes me $25,000,000!
The US Government also owes me $600!
C. Johnson
At bi-weekly intervals, air samples are collected in sets of three 5-liter evacuated glass flasks, at the South Pole (Lat. 89°59'S. Long. 24°48'W.). They are analyzed for CO2 at SIO (Scripps) using a nondispersive infrared gas analyzer with a water vapor freeze trap. Calibration gases are regularly tested as well to confirm accuracy. The three sample flasks must agree within 0.40 ppmv to be considered acceptable data. Scripps has more thorough description of their procedures and equipment.
The readings are averaged to obtain monthly and annual average values. Our running display uses the annual averaged figures from this South Pole data, interpolated for each 1/10 second.
If the specific interpolated value at the South Pole for that instant were 380 ppmv, this means that the atmosphere was then 0.000380 carbon dioxide (by volume). It is accurately known that the total Earth's atmosphere is 5.136 * 1015 metric tonnes. It is also necessary to apply a density factor of 1.529 (of carbon dioxide to the average atmospheric mixture of gases) to convert the ppm (volume) value to ppm (mass or weight).
Therefore, it is simply necessary to multiply these three numbers 5.136 * 1015 * 0.000380 * 1.529 to get 2984.12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the entire Earth's atmosphere at that instant. THIS is the value that is continuously displayed here. The value has NOTHING to do with actual usage or consumption figures of fossil fuels, which actually generally give larger numbers for the annual increases.
(Published Data)
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations (ppmv) derived from flask and in situ air samples collected at the South Pole
Source: C.D. Keeling, T.P. Whorf, and the Carbon Dioxide Research Group
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)
University of California, La Jolla, California USA 92093-0444
May 2005, August 2007
Month Jan Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Ann. Avg. 1957 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 313.37 -99.99 -99.99 313.87 -99.99 -99.99 314.48 -99.99 -99.99 1958 -99.99 -99.99 314.29 -99.99 -99.99 314.52 -99.99 -99.99 315.31 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 314.78 1959 315.09 315.14 315.09 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 315.96 316.22 -99.99 316.32 -99.99 -99.99 315.64 1960 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 316.38 316.69 316.75 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 316.45 1961 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 316.79 316.86 316.94 317.35 317.68 317.74 317.87 317.67 -99.99 317.08 1962 317.45 317.26 317.06 317.11 317.18 317.25 317.27 317.64 318.07 -99.99 -99.99 318.63 (317.62) 317.62 1963 318.13 317.87 317.47 317.90 318.26 318.22 318.26 318.64 318.56 319.02 -99.99 -99.99 (318.32) 318.35 1964 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 318.68 1965 -99.99 318.68 318.56 318.68 318.89 -99.99 319.38 319.67 -99.99 -99.99 320.17 320.27 -99.99 319.42 1966 320.34 319.99 320.05 320.31 320.44 320.46 -99.99 321.08 321.35 321.46 321.56 321.07 (320.74) 320.72 1967 -99.99 321.01 -99.99 320.86 321.00 320.96 321.06 321.83 322.08 321.80 321.82 321.77 (321.33) 321.32 1968 321.53 -99.99 -99.99 321.61 321.47 321.44 321.50 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 322.65 -99.99 321.91 1969 322.37 -99.99 322.27 322.30 322.58 322.79 323.24 323.60 324.13 323.95 323.97 -99.99 (323.11) 323.12 1970 323.68 323.53 323.43 323.67 323.78 324.18 324.46 324.72 325.19 325.20 325.23 -99.99 (324.34) 324.32 1971 324.80 324.61 324.33 324.47 324.67 324.91 325.15 -99.99 325.77 -99.99 325.74 -99.99 -99.99 325.12 1972 -99.99 -99.99 325.05 325.17 325.31 325.82 326.13 326.85 326.54 326.79 326.94 326.82 (326.00) 326.00 1973 326.74 326.34 326.36 326.82 327.11 327.43 327.73 328.40 328.69 328.63 328.60 328.58 327.62 327.62 1974 328.30 328.08 328.09 327.90 328.01 327.88 328.46 328.68 328.94 329.04 329.12 328.99 328.46 328.49 1975 328.89 328.90 328.85 328.94 328.93 329.07 329.35 329.83 330.22 330.56 330.46 330.27 329.52 329.50 1976 330.30 330.01 329.91 329.63 329.93 329.98 330.46 331.01 331.39 331.71 331.74 331.43 330.62 330.60 1977 331.26 331.00 330.85 331.32 331.40 331.62 332.05 332.45 332.87 333.10 333.31 333.18 332.03 332.03 1978 332.83 332.71 332.83 332.98 -99.99 333.37 333.82 334.28 334.74 334.82 334.58 334.30 (333.70) 333.69 1979 334.01 334.03 333.82 334.17 334.34 334.54 335.15 335.71 335.88 336.00 336.37 336.04 335.01 335.03 1980 336.06 335.75 -99.99 336.10 336.21 336.90 337.45 337.54 337.87 337.90 337.97 338.04 (336.98) 336.98 1981 337.76 337.48 337.43 337.52 337.67 338.15 338.41 338.76 338.81 339.15 338.86 338.91 338.24 338.26 1982 -99.99 338.65 338.38 338.70 338.99 339.18 339.33 340.11 340.30 340.33 340.03 339.96 (339.39) 339.39 1983 339.86 339.84 339.85 340.31 340.63 341.00 341.41 341.88 342.33 342.29 342.54 342.35 341.19 341.17 1984 342.05 -99.99 341.71 341.84 341.87 342.01 342.80 343.20 343.46 343.50 343.32 343.15 (342.56) 342.58 1985 343.01 342.83 342.73 342.76 343.12 343.45 343.93 344.52 344.86 344.95 344.79 344.64 343.80 343.82 1986 344.63 344.57 344.50 344.62 344.69 345.02 345.54 345.93 346.18 346.16 346.17 346.04 345.34 345.32 1987 345.89 345.79 345.75 346.11 346.20 346.61 347.19 347.63 348.07 348.10 348.19 348.31 346.99 346.99 1988 348.29 348.06 347.87 348.20 348.33 348.58 349.07 349.58 349.75 349.89 349.85 349.83 348.94 348.95 1989 349.81 349.76 349.66 349.73 349.93 350.18 350.59 351.12 351.37 351.30 351.33 350.99 350.48 350.44 1990 350.76 350.40 350.64 350.90 351.36 351.59 352.05 352.55 352.75 352.57 352.83 352.63 351.75 351.77 1991 -99.99 352.34 352.28 352.44 352.54 352.96 353.39 353.67 354.09 353.89 353.95 353.77 (353.15) 353.12 1992 353.56 353.15 353.03 353.23 353.74 354.00 354.61 354.94 355.26 355.37 355.11 354.88 354.24 354.24 1993 354.72 354.49 354.22 354.42 354.50 354.84 355.20 355.70 356.04 356.05 356.02 355.69 355.16 355.16 1994 355.49 355.49 355.51 355.63 355.69 355.99 356.47 357.11 357.61 357.53 357.71 357.52 356.48 356.48 1995 357.45 357.36 357.36 357.63 357.81 357.95 358.34 358.75 359.15 359.29 359.43 359.47 358.33 358.35 1996 359.36 359.30 359.25 359.36 359.40 359.71 360.15 360.52 360.71 360.70 360.74 360.70 359.99 359.99 1997 360.56 360.46 360.32 360.48 360.58 360.90 361.24 361.52 361.95 362.01 362.11 362.15 361.19 361.20 1998 362.10 362.30 362.41 362.69 363.00 363.54 364.04 364.56 364.99 365.02 365.10 364.98 363.73 363.70 1999 364.96 364.75 364.81 364.99 365.05 -99.99 365.66 365.92 366.37 366.51 366.74 366.80 (365.66) 365.65 2000 366.46 366.49 366.76 366.45 366.58 366.78 367.10 367.53 367.65 367.75 367.88 367.83 367.10 367.05 2001 367.81 367.10 367.04 367.36 367.60 367.92 368.29 368.83 369.44 369.57 369.46 369.25 368.31 368.34 2002 369.31 369.50 369.61 369.68 369.99 370.38 370.87 371.46 371.69 371.83 371.81 371.61 370.64 370.66 2003 371.93 371.78 371.71 371.99 372.32 372.57 372.96 373.40 373.90 373.82 373.65 373.61 372.80 372.80 2004 373.59 373.41 373.85 373.88 374.06 374.46 374.85 375.35 375.52 375.60 375.51 375.25 374.61 374.61 2005 375.18 374.98 375.16 375.50 375.88 376.39 376.87 377.29 377.59 377.72 377.79 377.82 376.51 376.51 2006 377.68 377.47 377.51 377.73 377.93 378.24 378.68 379.10 379.34 379.37 379.32 379.34 378.48 378.48
Monthly values are expressed in parts per million (ppm) and reported in the 2003A SIO manometric mole fraction scale. The monthly values have been adjusted to the 15th of each month. Missing values are denoted by -99.99. The "annual" average is the arithmetic mean of the twelve monthly values. In years with one or two missing monthly values, annual values were calculated by substituting a fit value (4-harmonics with gain factor and spline) for that month and then averaging the twelve monthly values.
Calibration details are discussed by Francey et al. (2003). Monthly values are calculated as the mean of the daily values from a smooth curve fit to the data using curve-fitting routines described by Thoning et al., 1989, (J. Geophys. Res. 94, 8549-8565).
People blame ALL of our financial problems on Banks that gave home loans to millions of people who could not possibly have afforded the homes they wanted to buy. Yes, the Banks have some responsibility, but the PEOPLE who KNOWINGLY were agreeing to get such loans that they knew that they would never be able to pay off were probably even more guilty. There was also a common mindset that ANYONE could buy ANY (expensive) house and immediately sell it for $50,000 more than it was bought for, which APPEARED to create $50,000 cash for the person who "flipped" the house.
During the 1990s, I often described America as having a network of incredibly tightly strung violin strings, where if ANY of them would break, then EVERYTHING would come apart.
I sometimes described an "island economy" where one person mowed lawns and another cut hair and a third made shoes. They charged each other exactly one dollar, and all three were happy! But over many years, they all felt they were not being properly rewarded and they each raised their prices many time. Now, they charge each other $1,000 to mow the lawn, $1,000 for a haircut and $1,000 for a pair of shoes. They are all happy. Are they any better off than at the start? There is no REALITY to those increases, and the fact that they all made the same increases caused there to be no actual effects at all. But now they each have a pile of money to count, which seems to make them feel happy. They seem willing to overlook that a loaf of bread which used to cost 25 cents now costs each of them $250! And they all describe themselves as prosperous! (They are actually wrong about that!)
I have noticed that the "experts" today are all telling everyone to pay off their credit card debts. That certainly is correct guidance, but there are TWO huge problems! The first is that few people have the money around to be ABLE to pay them off or even pay them down! The second problem is even worse, and no one seems to ever mention it! The whole ATTRACTION of credit cards (say, ten years ago) was to be able to have and use products that they knew they could not possibly afford! In other words, GETTING and USING attractive products. The experts today are expecting people to have absolutely reversed that basic characteristic of human nature! They expect people today to PAY FOR PRODUCTS THEY USED TEN YEARS AGO! Which means that they would thereby guarantee that there was NO chance that they would ever be able to get to use MODERN products! Not with credit cards, because they are no longer allowed to. Not with cash, because they would be using up any available cash TO PAY FOR THOSE ANCIENT PLEASURES!
So, among the other catastrophes that we are starting to encounter, a really huge 900-pound gorilla in the room is the fact that the very POSSIBILITY of using credit cards in the future is somewhat unlikely at all. The MAJORITY of American families have absolutely no idea how to live today without being able to put a lot of debt into the distant future on credit cards. It is hard to see how long that learning curve will take before they are again able to live within their own means. Considering that many millions will soon not have jobs at all, their level of "means" figures to be very low indeed.
But this will get FAR worse!. There is little doubt that by the Summer of 2009, people will be TALKING about similarities to the Great Depression of the 1930s. But it seems likely that around then, millions of people wwho lost their jobs will be defaulting on their credit card payments, and VISA and MasterCard (and Banks) will get hurt to a level that the current (2008) Wall Street crisis may seem minor! Among other things, all the people who now use credit cards to survive, may then be denied that ability, but the government will likely need to print up several trillion additional dollars to solve that problem.
There will be so many problems which are EACH unimaginably huge, that it is hard to see how even the US government will be able to afford to throw enough money at all the problems to try to solve them. So I believe that by about 2011 or 2012, the entire financial situation in the US may seem absolutely hopeless. It seems certain that the almighty dollar will necessarily be devaluated, maybe to about half of its current value. So IF any people actually had any cash (or stocks), it would suddenly be worth half as much.
It is hard to see how the situation in the US could significantly improve even by 2020. So the situation may be similar to but even worse than the Great Depression. One reason it seems likely to be worse is that in the 1930s, there were only MEN competing for the few (manual labor) jobs, where now the work force is nearly twice as large because of the fact that women are also working. And since the US enthusiastically passed NAFTA and GATT in the early 1990s, there are essentially NO high-paying manufacturing jobs still remaining in the US. Where will the jobs be, for possibly 50 million unemployed Americans who will all be on the verge of starvation, without any home or apartment, and possibly even without any motor vehicles?
A really troubling aspect of this is the immense number of handguns in the US, MORE than the number of people! Say that YOUR family scrimps and saves and you will actually be able to have enough money to buy food to eat. Your neighbors will all know that, especially all of those who do not have jobs and do not have any money or even an apartment. But they will certainly have many handguns. Doesn't it figure that at some point, they will figure it out? That, in total desperation and starvation, they will walk up to YOUR door and demand your food and money. They will get it. The only real question will be whether any of your family will still be alive. And Police will be of no use, as EVERY community will have such events happening every day, and there are not nearly enough Police even now.
Even though the Global Warming catastrophe will certainly be far worse, at least it figures to be a number of decades away, while these economic problems seem likely to begin seriously in 2009 and CONTINUE for at least ten years. Sadly, everyone will become so focused on economic problems that environmental issues may be neglected. However, BECAUSE of the extreme severity of the coming economic problems, at least there can be a dark benefit that far fewer people will be able to be using up gasoline and diesel and Jet-fuel in wasteful vehicles.
Additional note of June 2009: It is really troubling to me that our leaders seem to often have incomplete logic behind their concepts! An excellent example is the Chrysler bailout. Rather than letting Chrysler totally fail and it assets sold off to pay for some debts, the Federal Government decided that would be too disruptive to the weak economy, so they did some tricky things to supposedly enable Chrysler to continue. They got Fiat to agree to take over Chrysler's operation by giving Fiat 6 billion dollars, and even then Fiat knew that it was a bad idea! Chrysler went into bankruptcy, which has always taken at least five months in the Courts in the past, but through some trickery, Chrysler was declared out of bankruptcy in a month! That would be wonderful if that thinking was complete! But it is not!
The vehicles that Fiat makes in Italy cannot be sold in the US, due to our many Federal Regulations. Everyone agrees that it would be at least TWO FULL YEARS before Fiat could ever start building (small) cars in the US that could be sold here. A recent news report announced that Fiat/Chrysler would be able to START making economy cars around December 2011. See the problem? Our government rushed through Chrysler's bankruptcy process, hurting some investors in the process, with the apparent intention of getting Chrysler back into operation manufacturing cars in the US, thereby re-employing all those thousands of workers who lost their jobs in the Bankruptcy. The PROBLEM is: So you put them all back in the factories, but WHAT DO THEY BUILD? The factories are NOT set up to build the little Fiats which can be sold in Europe, so they cannot do that. For two years, they will not be able to even START building the alleged future Chrysler cars which are tiny and efficient. The ONLY vehicles that they are set up to build are essentially OBSOLETE! The giant gas-hogs which made most of Chrysler's profits for many years, but which no one will now buy. And if no one would buy them before the Bankruptcy, even fewer would buy them from a company that seemed clearly to simply be "making work" for those thousands of workers! So unless the Federal Government is willing to buy decks of cards for all those thousands of alleged Chrysler employees to occupy their time with for the next two years, what else are they going to do? And no one can expect Fiat to be spending billions of dollars for that sort of activity, as they are fully occupied in just making and selling their Fiats in Europe!
How can anyone expect that Fiat will be willing to wait for more than two years before re-activating the American factories? How can anyone expect the American workers to wait for more than two years to get jobs back in uncertain factories? And why would anyone believe that millions of customers would jump to buy totally untested vehicles beyond two years from now, where much of any profits that occurred would certainly go to Italy and Fiat Corporate?
With such a poorly thought-through plan, Chrysler is certainly toast. The American public is already upset in paying so many billions of dollars to keep Chrysler and GM afloat so far, and that purse will certainly soon dry up. And leaders will then FINALLY face the unavoidable fact that Chrysler assets will start getting hauled away to Italy! Those assets cannot then even be sold to try to pay off any debts, since Fiat was given full control of them!
This Domain contains an assortment of fairly simple devices which YOU might make:
Each person is free to make their own decisions in life. But I have to wonder about the Poli Sci Profs. They ARE knowledgeable in world conflicts, since that is what they Teach about! One would assume that they CARE about their subject, but that appears to have been an incorrect assumption! But further, I would have thought that those 32 Professors would have had a SELFISH reason for wanting to possibly promote this concept. There are almost one hundred thousand Political Science instructors in the US. Few of them ever become noted for anything! But I had thought that at least ONE of those 32 Professors would have seen an OPPORTUNITY for him/her, in that how many Poli Sci Profs ever even TRY to end a major war? Even if the concept turned out not to work, I had thought that a Professor who chose to alert others in Poli Sci about "a possible way to end the war in Iraq." would likely have gained massive respect and reputation among colleagues! Like, regarding future EMPLOYMENT possibilities??? And I had NOT expected any of them to commit years of their life to developing a concept, but merely maybe an hour or two to see if there might be any positive feedback. Sure, if all the feedback was negative, he/she would have wasted an hour of valuable time!
Do our leaders actually CARE about solving these things? I am not insisting that I have any brilliant ideas, but only that leaders should be willing to at least CONSIDER ideas other than their own! Says something about trying to do Christian Good Deeds, doesn't it?
In any case, it looks like the leaders and politicians insist on forging ahead with their own assumptions that massive amounts of money is the ONLY solution to all problems! That is even sadder, that they have such narrow perspectives! Either brute force (Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, etc) or massive amounts of American taxpayer money is always the only solution to all problems! Spock would say "Interesting!"
Only one even sent an e-mail back, and that was to tell me to stop wasting my time! I tried assorted newspapers and TV networks and TV programs such as Meet The Press, the Charlie Rose Show, Think Tank, McLaughlin Group, the PBS News Hour, Nightline and others, with no responses at all except for a couple automated responses. I tried to contact Tom Friedman in several ways. I then tried to contact all the news reporters I could in Iraq, such as John Burns, Sabrina Tavernise, Bobby Ghosh, Richard Engel, Dexter Filkins, George Packer, and many others. No responses. I even tried contacting an assortment of Arabic newspapers and television media such as al Jazeera. No responses.
I am tempted to wonder if no one really cares! Or if no one really wants to stop that war. Or that there is some immense confidence that the leaders suddenly know what they are doing! In any case, after six months of really serious effort to get ANYONE to simply listen to the concept, with zero interest after hundreds of e-mails and dozens of letters, I really do not know what else to try. The only remaining thought I had was to hire someone to translate it into Arabic and then submit it again to Arabic newspapers and television.
I had really figured that at least a few people would have responded, if only to tell me that it is a dumb idea! But no one ever even had enough interest to learn what the actual concept was, to form such an opinion! These days, people are all so BUSY that they are only willing to waste 10 seconds in reading the first sentence of any communication they get, upon which they then believe they TOTALLY UNDERSTAND every nuance of any subject, and to also find the correspondence to have wasted their time! Very strange! I will always believe that it was Iraq's one true chance at avoiding an incredibly bloody massive civil war, which will certainly involve Muslims around the world.
Do our leaders actually CARE about solving these things? I am not insisting that I have any brilliant ideas, but only that leaders should be willing to at least CONSIDER ideas other than their own! Some friends have told me that the fact that I am giving away the construction plans to the two devices causes people to assume that they have no value! I suppose that might be true, which is really sad. Says something about trying to do Christian Good Deeds, doesn't it?
In any case, it looks like the leaders and politicians insist on forging ahead with their own assumptions that massive amounts of money is the ONLY solution to all problems! That is even sadder, that they have such narrow perspectives! Either brute force (Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, etc) or massive amounts of American taxpayer money is always the only solution to all problems!
The US Government had insisted on capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi almost immediately after 9/11/01, and they soon offered a $25,000,000 reward for anyone who enabled them to find either one of them. For four years, they had ZERO success, and rarely seemed to even have much of an idea of what REGION either of them were in!
On Apr. 25, 2006, I sent the following e-mail to half a dozen National News media organizations, including Charlie Rose, ABC Nightline, Think Tank, Foreign Exchange, Meet the Press:
Hi, The video of Zarqawi today may have extremely important evidence in it! For the past two years, I have been trying to get word to the CIA regarding this regarding the many outdoor videos of bin Laden. I know that you have contact with people high in the CIA, so I ask that you inform them of the following. Around two years ago, our Intelligence demonstrated a "face recognition system" at the Super Bowl game. Each face scanned was quickly compared to images of many terrorists and criminals. I don't think the success of that demonstration was ever presented, but the basic concept is what I see of value. I have recommended that UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) be flown at low altitude up and down every valley of Afghanistan, with (two) side directed cameras taking an image every second. The result would be "a database of background images from every location" (with around 150 feet spacing between images, if the images are taken once per second and the aircraft flown at 100 mph). Now that Zarqawi made a similar video (probably in Iraq), I recommend the same be done there. The existing "face recognition program software" could then be used WITHOUT MODIFICATION. Instead of hundreds of thousands of photos of faces, the database would be filled with hundreds of thousands of these UAV photos of backgrounds. Then a frame of a bin Laden or Zarqawi video could be entered as the "suspect face", to be compared with all the hundreds of thousands of background images in the database. The existing system should then be able to identify a "few" reasonably possible locations which could have been the background of Zarqawi. Within seconds, our Intelligence could know EXACTLY where Zarqawi was on last Friday when he allegedly made that video! In any case, such "evidence" seems extremely valuable to me! I have never gotten any response in any previous attempts to apprise our Intelligence regarding this concept. I truly believe they might then capture or kill Zarqawi and/or bin Laden within days! I was educated as a Nuclear Physicist at the University of Chicago, so I like to think that I have some idea regarding this working as described! So I hope you will try to pass word along for me, and for our country's security. Carl Johnson
Forty-two days later, they found Zarqawi and killed him. The news reports in the first few hours (as on BBC) described that they had analyzed the videotape and figured out where he was, and they announced that that was how they got him. However, just hours later, they were announcing a very different story, where some local people had turned him in.
I can understand why they would have done that. They would clearly want to be able to use the same method in finding Usama bin Laden from the videotapes that he would regularly make outdoors. Obviously, they would not want UBL to know that it was a bad idea to do any more outdoor videotapes. So I understand that that would have wanted the news media to present a different story.
Still, they had chased Zarqawi for more than four years without finding him. Then I provide my method and 42 days later, Zarqawi is dead, and the initial news reports described essentially my exact concept! It seems to me that I deserve the $25 million reward that the US government offered for information toward the capture or killing of Zarqawi! Some how, I don't think I will ever be given it!
It is interesting to hear that the IRS is still sending out Stimulus checks. I am a Pastor of a Christian Church. The IRS had sent me the postcard in May that told me I was going to receive the $600 check, but when I looked at their web-site at the start of September, the page there said that I had been rejected because I had not made enough money! Our Church obviously failed me by not paying me enough to qualify for getting the extra Stimulus money!
Where's My Stimulus Payment
This table describes the status of your refund Social Security Number: ***-**-9715
You did not qualify for the Stimulus payment because your qualifying income was not high enough. Qualifying income includes wages and net earnings from self-employment that is includable in taxable income, Social Security benefits, certain Railroad Retirement benefits and Veterans disability compensation, disability pension, and survivors benefits received from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
I had truly been looking forward to receiving that $600, as it would have been immensely helpful at that time! But my concern about this is NOT regarding myself, but the very fact that the IRS had set a MINIMUM INCOME in order to qualify for receiving the Stimulus Checks! What a bizarre thing to do! And yet they are thinking about giving Exxon Mobil an additional $4 billion in tax relief each year! Politics and government is obviously WAY above my head, as I do not understand any part of that!
OK. As a Physicist, this would seem out of my bailiwick. But Physicists are VERY logical people, and I believe I see TWO things that should IMMEDIATELY (Oct 2008) be done! Of course, no one of actual importance will ever read this, so my thoughts on this really do not matter, do they? And you are free to agree or disagree with the following, but I do NOT intend to be "debating" this matter with thousands of people who each feel they have even better ideas!
First, we must note that the ORIGINAL intent of the Stock Market was to provide a constant supply of money that is needed to support the many businesses which need it to operate. Fine. It provided the money for companies to use to start and build their businesses.
And as long as stock market transactions were SLOW, it seemed to work pretty well. Millions of INDIVIDUAL stockholders may or may not decide to buy or sell stock on a particular day, and CHANGES in the overall RATING (value) of any one company would or could rarely change by more than 1% in a week or a month. Fine.
But the PURPOSE of the Stock Market greatly changed, primarily about 30 years ago. It became a GAMBLING GAME for a very small number of people. Unfortunately, it was and is not an entirely FAIR gambling game, as those same people have the capability of MANIPULATING the market to their own PERSONAL ends.
The well-being of a company is no longer of any importance at all! And the value that a stock trades at has often changed at fantastic speeds, where the (alleged) total value of a company sometimes DOUBLES in a single day, or HALVES! This has NOTHING to do with the actual company, and rarely has much to do with the company's sales or success. A simple RUMOR which is good or bad can cause EVERYONE to suddenly want to either buy or sell the stock of that company, and there is NO importance any more of whether the rumor was even true!
An example seems appropriate, which has been repeated EVERY DAY for many years! A stock is described as having a particular value, say $10 per share, at the start of a trading day. One of those few powerful people (who have access to massive money or credit) decides that he thinks he can make some money on the stock of that company. So he BUYS UP maybe 100,000,000 shares of that company, maybe in a quick series of purchases. ALL THE OTHER TRADERS AND INVESTORS SEE the enormous traffic in the stock of that company AND that the stock price is rapidly going up. So THEY want to buy in (with the intent of also getting very rich very fast). And everyone then sees that the traffic in that stock is growing even faster and the prices are shooting up even faster. So, maybe by the end of the SAME DAY, the price of a share of that company's stock has risen spectacularly to maybe $20.
And at THIS point, the person who STARTED this whole thing decides to SELL those 100 million shares he bought that same morning. But now he can SELL them at $20 per share when he had bought them that same morning for $10 per share. In this single company's stock, in a single day, he first SPENT one billion to buy the stock, but then RECEIVED TWO billion later that same day! In a single day, with a single stock, he has just made a personal profit of one billion dollars!
And he is proud of himself for having accomplished something!
But what did he actually accomplish? After he sells all his stocks, everyone else will see the massive selling (which is NEVER identified as being from ONE seller or a million sellers, which is incredibly useful in this situation for them!) and they will also sell. And the amount they could sell for will drop rapidly, possibly back to the original $10 per share.
Did the COMPANY benefit at all from this? No, because their total value of all their stock did not change after the whole day was done.
The Trader made his billion dollars. Where did that money come from? Was it printed up just to give to him? No. It actually came from the LOSSES of exactly one billion dollars by OTHER INVESTORS and TRADERS! Those are the large numbers of people who got in late, and had to buy that stock for $18 or $20 per share, but then quickly discovered that the price soon plummeted and they had to TRY to sell it for $14 or $12 or $10 per share, thereby losing money on EVERY share of it. EACH of them might have only owned a few hundred or few thousand shares, so their INDIVIDUAL losses might have been moderate. But COLLECTIVELY, they necessarily lost that billion dollars that day!
IF there was any sort of MEDIA REPORT which indicated that that particular company was ABOUT TO ANNOUNCE a cure for cancer or some super-efficient vehicle, it even gives the people who dream up such schemes a sort of CREDIBILITY upon which the herd of later investors would enthusiastically jump! And they KNOW that! In some cases, the Traders KNEW some such fact BEFORE it was otherwise known, but that sort of Insider Trading was made illegal when a lot of them were cheating other investors in such ways. But it still happens every day, but the Traders are just far more cautious now to make sure not to leave any evidence that they had previously known of what was about to happen or be said. The entire process has evolved a lot, to a point where actual Inside Information (for which they could be sent to prison) is generally no longer even necessary, and simply a RUMOR is all that is needed to enable doing this. And they know that they could NEVER be sent to prison for acting on a rumor!
They DON'T call that cheating each other, and essentially they ALL need to do such things just to be competitive with all the others who do it. And so there has developed an astounding tunnel-vision regarding ONLY looking for HUGE PROFITS TODAY, where no other considerations matter. Such as the effects on the company whose stocks are used for such trickery.
There is a slightly more legal variant of this, which is definitely used by every Trader, every day! Say that we see a Stock that is currently $10.00. And a Trader FEELS LIKE GAMBLING! He THINKS that stock will rise by 1%, up to $10.10 that day. So he buys the 100 million shares. It turns out that IF HE WAS RIGHT IN HIS GAMBLE, and he would sell all those shares at the end of the day, he would "earn" ten cents on each of those shares, or $10 million on that single stock in that single day. AND, of course, he knows that the EFFECT of his buying all that stock will be seen by all other traders and investors, which NEARLY GUARANTEES that his "gamble" will turn out to be true, and not actually much of a gamble at all!
This IS what the modern Stock Market is! It has virtually NOTHING to do with the initial reasons for stock markets! It is simply a giant game of Monopoly, where if you are big enough and have access to enough money, you can CAUSE self-perpetuating profits for yourself (but at the cost of the exact same amount of losses by other investors!)
The Stock Market is obviously a lot more complex than this simplified description, but the core of its operation is essentially as described here. MOST stocks are now bought and sold by DAY TRADERS, people who ONLY intend to own any particular stock for a very brief time. MUTUAL FUNDS have made this even worse, as the few individuals who operate such funds can buy and sell billions of dollars of stocks every day, and they do.
A significant point to be made here is that REALITY has very little place in this whole operation! The ACTUAL value of all the assets of General Motors is irrelevant! It is ONLY what the few handfuls of individuals who can buy and sell billions of dollars of stocks believe that matters! And, because of the rather incestuous arrangement, those people tend to follow each other's movements with similar movements of their own, because they do NOT want to be found to be the person who moved too slow and therefore caused his Fund to be left out of great profits.
Another amazing factor is an absolute lack of transparency. Absolutely no one seems to know WHO is buying or selling or HOW MUCH or even whether they actually have the funds to back such purchases! In fact, there have been MANY times when Traders officially BOUGHT massive amounts of stock when they did not have the available money to do so, ASSUMING that they would again sell it all within a few hours, at the expected profit, in order to provide the money that SHOULD HAVE EXISTED in order to even start the whole thing! There is a LOT of this sort of trickery which occurs every day related to the Stock Market, but since NO ONE EVER IS ABLE TO KNOW (due to the lack of transparency), they are all able to get away with such things! It is truly unbelievable that it can work at all! It is virtually ONLY a gambling game between a very small numbers of heavy hitters!
For at least five years, I have speculated about an even darker possibility that I see possible. I usually describe it about like this: Imagine that you have a roomful of people who all agree that the HEALTH of the stock market is critically important to their individual successes and wealth. Under NO conditions, could they ALLOW any really bad things to ever occur. These people would be those couple dozen people who each have the capability of buying or selling billions of dollars of stock at any personal whim.
So they see that some important stock seems to be dropping in price. One or more of them immediately offers to buy a billion dollars of that stock. Since all investors and Traders would immediately see that huge purchase, any public sense of panic would vanish, and PROBABLY millions of private investors might each then decide to buy a little bit, where the person would then be able to sell off the billion dollars of stocks, smoothly and INVISIBLY.
I often felt that such an incestuous relationship was the ONLY explanation for days when there was horrendous business news, but then the Stock Market shot UP by 400 points! Such things should NOT be possible! I remember one day a year or two ago when Ford announced a tremendous loss of billions of dollars, the unemployment figure had greatly risen, and two other pieces of major negative business news occurred, and yet the Stock Market shot up that day! I tend to think that COULD NOT have happened without some sort of collusion like what I had speculated. Of course, since there is no transparency, there could never have been any way to prove that my suspicions might have been true!
That would ELIMINATE much of the INCENTIVE of the Brokers to be Day Trading to swipe some quick millions of dollars, because they would NOT be allowed to be buying or selling that large a fraction of their holdings ON ANY SINGLE DAY. It would inspire and require LONGER-TERM PLANNING on the part of Traders and Investors, getting back to the INITIAL REASON for the Stock Market to exist.
This is in total contrast to the current approaches of Washington, of PROVIDING hundreds of billions of (taxpayer) dollars to allegedly stabilize Wall Street. Washington can't seem to realize that by ENSURING plenty of money, with the current rules, it ENCOURAGES every Trader to make his best guess as to WHEN he should "buy absolutely everything!" Given the depressed level that they all believe the Market is now in, they each see an OBVIOUS way that they can make THEMSELVES many billions of dollars, by buying enormous amounts of stock when it is low and then selling it ALL a few days later. Why doesn't Washington see that they will be FEEDING such greedy people? That some of our taxpayer billions will DIRECTLY go into billions of personal profits, leaving the Market no better than before? And it is ALL because the Traders are ALLOWED to make fantastically huge purchases and sales of stocks every few minutes!
The ONE PERCENT PER DAY rule would also eliminate the tremendous surges and then personal incentives of Traders to be buying and selling obscene amounts of stock, just to be running with the herd! The Stock Market would NECESSARILY be based more on sanity, as it should be! The ACTUAL VALUE of the total assets (minus liabilities) of any company would be carefully examined before making any major stock commitment in that company.
As long as Traders can expect to be able to make billions of dollars in what they call daily "profit taking", nothing will really change! It would not matter much what the government might try to invoke, human nature would find a way to bypass it, because they can taste those enormous profits!
This simple concept would FORCE all investors and Traders to essentially adopt Warren Buffet's LONG view of the Stock Market. Of ONLY buying when there was ACTUAL perceived value existing, and no longer running thither and yon in buying and selling stocks as if they were simply scoring markers in a game of Monopoly!
I actually have a SECOND recommendation as well! I believe that if my friend Peter Jennings was still with us, he would have instituted the following, so if it should ever be adopted, my hope would be that it be called the Jennings approach!
I believe that Peter would have invited: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Melissa Gates, President Sarcozy of France, Tony Blair, Robert Redford, Charlie Rose, Michael Jordan, Will Smith, Richard Petty, Bono, President da Silva of Brazil, at least one prominent Japanese and two prominent Chinese and two prominent Indian, and a few others; to a regular meeting in a remote location such as Mr. Redford's Ranch. There, with NO ONE ELSE than them present, they would have free-wheeling discussions about ALL matters that are critical to the world's people. NO politicians are in that mix (but Jimmy Carter seems a possible exception to that), and no bureaucrats.
The point would be that they would bring up all kinds of ideas and probably immediately shoot them down. And occasionally, if they felt they needed "expert advice" regarding the Economy or Nuclear Power or Global Warming or anything else, THEY could decide to invite SEVERAL experts in the appropriate fields (for only one day) where they would then be able to ask their questions. Several so that they could hear differing views on any specific issue.
The theory would be that they would FIND A CONSENSUS regarding what should be said or done. And THEN, EACH of them would return to their normal life and start to have Press Conferences, where they EXPLAIN TO THE PUBLIC WHY they feel confident that the solution they have adopted seems to make sense. A member of the public would therefore see Bono on TV describing the EXACT same plan that Tony Blair similarly presented, which is identical to the plan that Michael Jordan and Bill Gates would be saying.
The POINT of this is that THE PUBLIC would very quickly see that MANY of the famous people THAT THEY RESPECT all seem to be in complete agreement about what is needed to be done.
This is actually a modern version of what Franklin Roosevelt had done to INSPIRE CONFIDENCE in the American people in 1933. The people's lives had actually not materially improved, but they all FELT confident that FDR "knew how to lead them back to prosperity and happiness". (As it turned out, FDR made many bad decisions regarding things to try, but as long as the people BELIEVED in his leadership, they were all confident that the US would recover.)
So the final aspect of this suggestion is that the group of 20 people probably would KNOW when they needed to get together. If Peter Jennings was still with us, he certainly would have known, and he would certainly have simply called each of them and asked them if their schedules could include a Meeting for a few days at XX/XX/XX to XX/XX/XX. But it seems good that if the PUBLIC saw need for them to meet, THEY could somehow initiate the process for them as well!
PEOPLE would feel INVOLVED. They would feel CONFIDENT. And they would TRUST those people who they had earlier learned to have great respect for.
A CENTRAL problem in coming years will be there will be few JOBS for the many millions of people who are out of work. A similar situation occurred during the 1930s, but it was actually BETTER then because there were millions of MANUFACTURING jobs in the US then. Now, there are not, because the NAFTA and GATT agreements had enabled and encouraged nearly all manufacturers to move their factories to countries where workers are ENTHUSIASTIC at working for 50 cents per hour, instead of American workers who were generally unhappy at being paid $30/hour for the same work.
A complicating factor is that, because BOTH men and women now work, there are essentially twice as many American people who will be searching for the few jobs which will be available. An interesting aspect of this is that it figures that there will be soon millions of workers who WILL BE WILLING to work for BELOW minimum wage, out of desperation to earn enough for food for their family! How will employers deal with that, as they will get into deep trouble if they ever pay any employee less than Minimum Wage!
In any case, I believe there is a really obvious AND WONDERFUL solution for much of this!
In the 1930s, FDR set up many work programs, where millions of people earned money (from the government) for manual labor, in building the road system of the country and other infrastructure systems.
Leaders seem to start becoming aware of how terrible the infrastructure of the US has become, because very little funding has been allocated for repairs for many years. So there is definitely a NEED for massive work on the infrastructure in the US.
It will be interesting to see IF the government chooses to approach this as they traditionally have, of HIRING giant contractors to do the repairs, ASSUMING those contractors would hire huge numbers of workers to do the work. This happens to be an extremely inefficient approach, I believe. An obvious example was when President Bush gave $100 billion (of our taxpayer money) to a handful of very large contractors (who also happened to be good friends of his!) and where it was found by Reporters later that only about $1 billion of actual work had gotten done. The other $99 billion sort of disappeared inside those giant corporations! Is THAT what they are going to do on a much larger scale this time?
It seems that the approach that FDR used in the 1930s was far wiser. The government DIRECTLY offered to hire millions of manual laborers, at modest pay rates, and those jobs were all rapidly filled. Those millions of workers did not have much Prosperity right then, but at least they had consistent income so that their families were able to eat.
I am mentioning this here for a reason! Around 1990, I had invented and (nearly) fully Designed an impressive NEW transportation system for the US. The transportation would NOT require any fossil fuels to be burned, a wonderful side benefit! Automobiles and (most) trucks would be replaced by a system where people and products traveled at 200 mph instead of the 55 mph on highways, with NO traffic jams or any other delays. Better yet, the system is so efficient that the fees for traveling from Chicago to New York should be around $5 (one way), less than 1/20 of the cost of an airplane trip (which would actually involve about the same total amount of travel time!)
When you have been at drive-through banks, you have seen the pneumatic tubes and canisters which transfer papers and money very rapidly into and out of the bank. In the late 1980s, I discovered a way where a large version of that concept could transport people and products in very large canisters (which I called pods), AND that it was possible to use a well-known Bernoulli Effect of Physics to enable the pods to essentially FLY inside of a system of fixed tubes. This results in very little friction, and extremely efficient operation. FAR better than the average 21% overall efficiency of modern cars!
HERE is where the SOLUTION arrives!
First, such a National system would require many MILLIONS of pods to be manufactured, either to transport products or to transport people. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler happen to already have many very large factories, which could easily be converted to making such pods rather than conventional vehicles. MILLIONS OF JOBS would be involved and VERY RELIABLE for many years!
Second, the system of the tubes themselves are designed as being EXISTING concrete culverts (of 5 foot diameter). My plan involved installing THREE of these concrete tubes down the Median of each Interstate highway (one each direction and the third to take the traffic when either needed any repairs). Many other locations of such tubes could be installed in other locations, as desired. MILLIONS OF CONSTRUCTION JOBS for several years would provide reliable income for other Americans.
Third, the infrastructure of the US would not just be REPAIRED, but REPLACED with an entire system that was GREEN (no fossil fuels), VERY FAST, and incredibly useful.
Fourth, hundreds of thousands of computer and electronics workers would assemble the computer control system for this system. Each pod would have a bar-coding pattern on its side, and as it passed scanners along the system, its exact position would always be known to the computer. When that pod needed to be diverted into a different tube path to get to the desired destination, the system would use all that information to divert just that one pod, leaving all the other pods ahead of it and behind it on their original path.
I trust you see that quite a few million people would be earning at least moderate amounts of income, for a number of years while the American economic system gradually recovered from its problems. And at the end, we would wind up with a wonderful NEW transportation system that was far BETTER than anything existing today.
Finally, NO NEW TECHNOLOGIES are necessary or involved! This could be started IMMEDIATELY!
WITHOUT something like this, the US is certain to have severe economic and financial problems for quite a few years. It seems extremely obvious to me that this concept SHOULD be at least carefully examined, and then probably IMMEDIATELY implemented!
A web-site which provides a more extensive overview of this TRANS system is at TRANS.
The results of that Cycle are ATP molecules that are compact energy carriers, and also liquid water and dissolved carbon dioxide gas. These are now waste products of the body, and they are primarily transported by the blood to the lungs, where the water can evaporate to make the outgoing breath get up to near 100% relative humidity (to be able to get rid of the greatest amount of water per breath) and also up to about 4.4% total concentration of carbon dioxide (limited by Dalton's Law of Partial pressires).
By the way, you might see the connection here between when you do serious exercise and then have to breathe heavily for a while? The body has to have that heavy breathing to actually get RID of the carbon dioxide it produced! In doing strenuous exercise, you DO use up some bodyfat molecules (but a disappointingly small amount of them. We will shortly see in the Technical paragraph below that even when we exercise hard enough where our breath is TWICE normal, that only removes the carbon from around 1/1100 pound of bodyfat per minute. A full hour of such strenuous exercise and we can remove only around 1/20 pound of bodyfat!). Due to the requirements of the exercise, the body naturally accesses some of your energy supplies, first, the sugars, which are most easily accessed fast, but then eventually the bodyfat stores. As those sugar or lipid molecules are oxidized, carbon dioxide molecules are formed, which get carried in the blood to the lungs and then exhaled with the next outgoing breath. If you do TWICE as much exertion, then twice as much of the lipid (bodyfat) molecules get oxidized, and twice as much exhaled breath is needed to carry all that carbon away from the body! Now you know! (You also breathe more heavily to get more oxygen INTO the body, to be able to do all that oxidization of all that carbon into carbon dioxide. The body has an immense number of unique chemical reactions, and we have greatly simplified the matter here!)
This brief discussion is intended to show you that virtually ALL the carbon that can leave your body must leave by your exhaled breath, and that all the impressive claims of flashy advertising which claim otherwise are simply not credible. IF some program causes you to BREATHE MORE HEAVILY, either deeper breathing or faster breathing or both, THAT WILL directly increase your body's ability to get rid of undesired bodyfat. Such a program also needs to cause your Metabolism to speed up to actually process/oxidize some bodyfat and make the carbon dioxide available to the lungs. So the next time you see any of those ads on TV or elsewhere, THINK about whether they are describing any credible way where your breathing is increased. If not, there is no realistic reason to spend money to buy what they are promoting!
On a more technical level, each INCOMING breath draws in air which is at the natural 0.038% of carbon dioxide, and each outgoing breath contains around a maximum of 4.4% of carbon dioxide. When sitting, we breathe around 12 times per minute and each normal breath is around 0.5 liter of air. This all means that in each minute of normal breathing, we CAN exhale around 0.26 liter of carbon dioxide. The actual exhaled air is often not quite saturated with carbon dioxide so the actual average is a little less than this, often at around 0.17 liter per minute.
This means that each minute, we each (normally) exhale around 0.30 gram of carbon dioxide, or around 1/1500 of a pound. (In an entire year of normal breathing, we each exhale around 330 pounds of carbon dioxide!) This includes around 1/5500 pound (or 0.08 gram) of actual carbon atoms. If they had come from lipid bodyfat molecules, that represents around 1/2200 pound (0.2 gram) of bodyfat which would disappear during that minute (of normal breathing). At 3500 Calories per pound of bodyfat, that means that around 1.6 Calories of bodyfat (or other energy sources) would get used up every minute. Since a day includes 1440 minutes, that accounts for the 2,200 Calories of energy that our metabolism needs to use up every day to keep us alive. Also, 1.6 Calories per minute times 60 minutes is around 100 Calories per hour of sedentary activity, which also agrees with the ASHRAE figures for heat given off by a human body.
This then confirms that each minute of regular breathing involves exhaling the carbon atoms from the equivalent of 1/2200 pound (0.2 gram) of bodyfat. That is essentially the ONLY process the body has of removing carbon from itself!
In a bizarre Physicist's-view of this matter, I tend to wonder if someone could somehow "extra-ventilate" for an extended time, and whether that might result in some bodyfat loss WITHOUT even having to work out? Strange, huh? But actually I doubt that one, because there is no clear reason that the body would DECIDE to process extra bodyfat, just because it now could. And whether anyone could be trained to learn to keep up the (10%) faster or deeper breathing on a regular basis is not known. Sounds like something a Research Lab should do a Study on!
However, Physicists also try to see reasons for failure in such hypotheses. In this case, if the body was actually not doing any extra work, maybe the brain would see no reason to initiate additional Metabolic activity. Human and animal patterns suggest that no wasteful decisions like that are made, in order to maintain maximum survival capability for some future emergency. So even if the breathing was slightly increased, it might be that the CONCENTRATION of carbon dioxide in the exhaled breath might simply become reduced!
Another Physicist's aspect of this, which seems far more interesting, is the question of whether overweight people might breathe more shallowly than other people. I have not located any research that has ever been done on this subject. Wouldn't it be sort of funny of the entire obesity problem might be eased or even solved by simply teaching overweight people to breathe slightly more deeply? I have no idea whether that would actually be of value or not, but it certainly seems to be worthy of serious scientific investigation!
For comparison, a C-4 Corvette, a rather aerodynamic car, has an aerodynamic drag of about 117 pounds and a tire drag of about 48 pounds at 60 mph, for a total vehicle Drag of.165 pounds. So the numbers we are using are very optimistic!
By multiplying that total Drag by the vehicle velocity (88 feet/second, which is what 60 mph is), we get 11,440 lb-ft/sec. This can be converted into other forms, such as 20.8 horsepower or 15.5 kilowatts.
IF WE ASSUME THE VEHICLE AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY EFFICIENT we would then see that a one-hour drive would use up 15.5 kWh of power. So say that it was a battery-powered, electric motor vehicle. Once the batteries had used up the necessary 15.5 kWh of electricity, it would have to be replaced by re-charging the batteries.
It is clear that we would need just over 9 hours of charging at the maximum 15 amperes that a standard home electrical outlet could provide or that a standard heavy-duty extension cord could carry. NINE HOURS!
To drive ONE hour, NINE hours of charging would be required, simply by the basic Laws of science regarding Conservation of Energy!
But MOST promotional literature for electric vehicles talks about two-hour or three-hour recharge times, and they nearly always make sure to mention that a standard outlet and a standard heavy-duty extension cord could be used! Do you see where their statements are attempting to violate very basic laws of science?
What they are usually doing is applying the common aspects of trickery used in most modern advertising. A woodstove might be advertised as "able to heat your entire home" and also "able to hold a fire for 20 hours.". Each statement is potentially true, and they probably have tested evidence that each is NOT a lie so they do not get sued! But their advertising LEADS READERS TO THINK THAT BOTH ARE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME, which turns out to simply be impossible! It COULD be fired hard to produce enough heat for a small house, but then the wood gets used up fast and is gone in an hour. But if it is used to only heat one small room on a mild day, yes, it might hold a fire for 20 hours.
In the case of electric vehicles, a common statement is that it can be re-charged in just two hours. Yes, that might be true if you had only gone to the grocery store! And they make SEPARATE claims regarding high speed or long driving range. If I was forced to have to make such a statement, I would probably arrange for a vehicle to travel at ONE mph! At that speed, the aerodynamic Drag is extremely low, and even the Tire Drag is lower. Extremely little electricity would get used up in going that mile in that hour! Say a (private) Test Track was set up to allow this vehicle to constantly circle a track. In a MONTH the vehicle would have traveled around 720 miles, and the batteries STILL probably would not actually yet need to be re-charged. Such a test, with some Stamp of Approval from some Independent Observer, would be able to actually claim that the vehicle had gone 720 miles and more before needing to be re-charged. The manufacturer would then feel free to brag about a 720-mile range.
It would technically not be a lie, but no one would ever ride in a vehicle that only traveled at 1/3 walking speed! But it certainly could be done as just described, and that manufacturer would certainly promote the daylights out of such a statement, knowing that it would sell massive numbers of their vehicles. Of course, once people actually BOUGHT the vehicles and they all found that it could not even go an hour, 60 miles, at highway speed, people would know they had been deceived. But exactly what could they do about it? The manufacturer would have an Attested confirmation that their vehicle had traveled 720 miles without needing a re-charge. Would any Judge find them guilty of any crime? I don't see how. And THEY know that!
The point here is that modern promotional and advertising executives feel that there are NO rules regarding ethics or principles or morals regarding getting their advertising commissions! They are willing to say absolutely anything. If a manufacturer had also been deceitful to have done silly Test Runs as I just described, there is virtually no limit to what they might feel free to claim.
Regarding many claims, remembering that this is a technology that is still being born, it certainly seems that claims are made that actually only apply to ONE PART of the complete system. I have seen statements where a manufacturer announces 98% efficiency of the electric motor. That might technically be a true statement, but any real SYSTEM requires wires and controls and batteries and chargers and much more, all of which degrade any possible claims regarding (overall) efficiency. I remember seeing, in the 1970s, advertising of a very poorly efficient fireplace which claimed "98% combustion efficiency". That statement was actually true, but irrelevant! Their heat transfer efficiency was horrendous, around 20%, so the best any owner could ever actually see was just under 20% (the product of the two efficiencies.) No one stopped that company from claiming that because it was actually true. But they quickly angered so many buyers that word got out about their ethics and they soon disappeared!.