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BATTLEFIELD EARTH
By Bill Moyers
AlterNet
December 8, 2004

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/20666/

The environment is in trouble and the religious right doesn't care. It's
time to act as if the future depends on us ­ because it does.

Recently the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical
School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill
Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board,
said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from
the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an environment under
siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is the text of Bill
Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award.

.............

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you
never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just
plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He
enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes
for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best seller "The
End of Nature" <http://tinyurl.com/6he4l> carried on where Rachel Carson's
"Silent Spring" left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover ­- conventional, manageable programs like budget
shortfalls and pollution ­- may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating
perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the
melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic
that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could
yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could
radically alter civilizations:

http://www.nhne.com/climatechange/pentagon-climate-change.pdf

That's one challenge we journalists face ­- how to tell such a story without
coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to
understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
there is an even harder challenge ­- to pierce the ideology that governs
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime
is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the
fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For
the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of
power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven
true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by
what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is
the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the Interior? My
favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us
recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural
resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will
come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the
country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true ­-
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate.
In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the
polls believing in the rapture index. That's right ­- the rapture index.
Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are
the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian
fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true
believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century
by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the
Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of
millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for
adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been
converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True
believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven,
where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political
and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs
during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've
reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West
Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called
to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why
they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and
backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of
Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where
four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released
to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not
something to be feared but welcomed ­ an essential conflagration on the road
to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 ­
just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow,
the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven and sinners will
be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to
read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer ­- "The
Road to Environmental Apocalypse"
<http://sierraactivist.org/article.php?sidF102>. Read it and you will see
how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -­ even
hastened ­- as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers
who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress
before the recent election -­ 231 legislators in total ­ more since the
election -­ are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186
members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from
the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon
Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt.
The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was
Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book
of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that
I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that
59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of
Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible
predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned
to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of
the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel.
And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent
prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the
environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse
foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and
yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil
to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and
fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's
providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or
socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ...
that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he
Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no
shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the
world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth
sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the
people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that
militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the
foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a
powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the journalist
to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a
personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without
expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can
to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the
market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?"
And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center
for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural
environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the
health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I
don't want to believe that ­- it's just that I read the news and connect the
dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment.
This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and
animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental
Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might
damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe
inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles
and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting
coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal
companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and
increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land
in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection
Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars -­ two million of it from
the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council ­ to pay poor
families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have
been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an
end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the
families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve
as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate
change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," [and] scientists who believe
catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides;
language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by
developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer
­ pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy,
7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking back at me from
those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we
do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do
know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust.
Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy?
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain
indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And
Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be
the truth that sets us free -­ not only to feel but to fight for the future
we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for
cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those
photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is
what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" ­- the science of the heart ...
the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the future
depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

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NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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Thursday, February 3, 2005
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GLOBAL WARMING: SCIENTISTS REVEAL TIMETABLE
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent
February 3, 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=607254

A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is
likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.

It pulls together for the first time the projected impacts on ecosystems and
wildlife, food production, water resources and economies across the earth,
for given rises in global temperature expected during the next hundred
years.

The resultant picture gives the most wide-ranging impression yet of the
bewildering array of destructive effects that climate change is expected to
exert on different regions, from the mountains of Europe and the rainforests
of the Amazon to the coral reefs of the tropics.

Produced through a synthesis of a wide range of recent academic studies, it
was presented as a paper yesterday to the international conference on
climate change being held at the UK Met Office headquarters in Exeter by the
author Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,
Germany's leading global warming research institute.

The conference has been called personally by Tony Blair as part of Britain's
attempts to move the climate change issue up the agenda during the current
UK presidency of the G8 group of rich nations, and the European Union. It
has already heard disturbing warnings from the latest climate research,
including the revelation on Tuesday from the British Antarctic Survey that
the massive West Antarctic ice sheet might be disintegrating -- an event
which, if it happened completely, would raise sea levels around the world by
16ft (4.9 metres).

Dr Hare's timetable shows the impacts of climate change multiplying rapidly
as average global temperature goes up, towards 1C above levels before the
industrial revolution, then to 2C, and then 3C.

As present world temperatures are already 0.7C above the pre-industrial
level, the process is well under way. In the near future -- the next 25
years -- as the temperature climbs to the 1C mark, some specialised
ecosystems will start to feel stress, such as the tropical highland forests
of Queensland, which contain a large number of Australia's endemic plant
species, and the succulent karoo plant region of South Africa. In some
developing countries, food production will start to decline, water shortage
problems will worsen and there will be net losses in GDP.

It is when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level,
expected in the middle of this century -- within the lifetime of many people
alive today -- that serious effects start to come thick and fast, studies
suggest.

Substantial losses of Arctic sea ice will threaten species such as polar
bears and walruses, while in tropical regions "bleaching" of coral reefs
will become more frequent -- when the animals that live in the coral are
forced out by high temperatures and the reef may die. Mediterranean regions
will be hit by more forest fires and insect pests, while in regions of the
US such as the Rockies, rivers may become too warm for trout and salmon.

In South Africa, the Fynbos, the world's most remarkable floral kingdom
which has more than 8,000 endemic wild flowers, will start to lose its
species, as will alpine areas from Europe to Australia; the broad-leaved
forests of China will start to die. The numbers at risk from hunger will
increase and another billion and a half people will face water shortages,
and GDP losses in some developing countries will become significant.

But when the temperature moves up to the 3C level, expected in the early
part of the second half of the century, these effects will become critical.
There is likely to be irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest, leading
to its collapse, and the complete destruction of coral reefs is likely to be
widespread.

The alpine flora of Europe, Australia and New Zealand will probably
disappear completely, with increasing numbers of extinctions of other plant
species. There will be severe losses of China's broadleaved forests, and in
South Africa the flora of the Succulent Karoo will be destroyed, and the
flora of the Fynbos will be hugely damaged.

There will be a rapid increase in populations exposed to hunger, with up to
5.5 billion people living in regions with large losses in crop production,
while another 3 billion people will have increased risk of water shortages.

Above the 3C raised level, which may be after 2070, the effects will be
catastrophic: the Arctic sea ice will disappear, and species such as polar
bears and walruses may disappear with it, while the main prey species of
Arctic carnivores, such as wolves, Arctic foxes and the collared lemming,
will have gone from 80 per cent of their range, critically endangering
predators.

In human terms there is likely to be catastrophe too, with water stress
becoming even worse, and whole regions becoming unsuitable for producing
food, while there will be substantial impacts on global GDP.

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NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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GREENHOUSE GAS TURNING OCEANS ACID, SCIENTISTS WARN
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent / New Zealand Herald
February 4, 2005

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10009477

Gigantic changes to the world's oceans, leading to the complete
disappearance of marine life from cod to coral reefs, are now threatened by
the main greenhouse gas causing global warming, British scientists warned
yesterday.

Researchers sounded the alarm about a completely new and potentially
devastating danger to the world from the huge volumes of carbon dioxide
(CO2) produced by industry and transport, which is already known to be
threatening the future of the planet by changing the climate.

Now, they said, it is also rapidly turning the world's oceans acid as it is
dissolved in sea water, and putting an enormous array of marine life at
risk.

Ocean acidification may wipe out much of the microscopic plankton at the
base of the marine food web, and have a knock-on fatal effect right up the
chain, through shellfish to major human food species such as cod.

It is already known to be having a serious impact on some organisms such as
coral, and putting a question mark against the whole future of coral reefs.

The findings about acid seas, which are very recent, are causing alarm in
the international scientific community as they represent a genuinely major
threat to the world that has hitherto been completely unappreciated.

They were set out in detail at the conference on climate change being held
at the UK Met Office headquarters in Exeter, in a paper by a team of
scientists from Britain's Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, who will be
reporting on the conference to Tony Blair, the British prime minister,
singled out the importance of their account.

"This is the first time it has been pulled together," he said. "I think it
is very serious."

Dr Carol Turley, the Plymouth laboratory's Head of Science who presented the
paper, said ocean acidification represented "potentially a gigantic problem
for the world."

She said: "It's very urgent indeed to warn people what's happening. Many of
the marine species we rely on to eat could well disappear and replaced by
others. In cartoon terms, you could say that people should prepare to change
their tastes, and switch from cod and chips, to jellyfish and chips."

Remarkably, the findings about acidifying seas constituted the second
revelation of a new global danger at the conference, which was called
personally by Mr Blair as part of Britain's efforts to focus attention on
climate change during the UK presidency both of the G8 group of rich nations
and the European Union.

On Tuesday the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Professor Chris Rapley,
disclosed that the vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet, previously thought to be
stable, may be beginning to disintegrate -- an event that would cause a
sea-level rise around the world of more than sixteen feet.

Although a growing number of studies about ocean acidification have been
carried out in recent years, it is only very recently that the whole picture
has been put together, and truly stark nature of the threat appreciated.

"The world scientific community is only just waking up to this," said Dr
Turley, who with her colleagues has spent recent weeks briefing senior
scientists on the problem in a range of Government bodies from English
Nature to the Department of Trade and Industry.

The world's oceans have always taken up and given off large volumes of
naturally-occurring carbon dioxide as part of what is known as the carbon
cycle.

But since the industrial revolution the amounts have hugely increased, and
are rapidly increasing still. It is estimated that about 400bn tonnes of
man-made CO2 -- half that ever produced -- have been taken up by the seas,
and much more is going in as the world economy relentlessly expands.

However, the extra volumes are now causing a very simple chemical reaction
with the sea water -- "O-level chemistry," Dr Turley said -- in which the
CO2 and the water (H2O) react to produce carbonic acid (HCO3).

This is changing the basic chemical composition of the sea, which is
slightly alkaline, to acidic, and producing an environment in which many
tiny but vital organisms such as plankton may not be able to survive.

If, for example, the plankton on which cod larvae feed disappear, the cod
will go too, and something else -- such as jellyfish -- will move into their
niche in the ecosystem.

Trials on organisms grown in sea water with raised CO2 levels, from plankton
to scallops, indicate that large numbers of species are likely to be
affected. "The whole composition of life in the oceans will change," Dr
Turley said.

The increasing acidification is known to be affecting coral already and
another paper presented to the conference suggested that in as little as
thirty years all the world's coral reefs may die because of it.

The conference, which closed last night, suggested in its formal conclusions
that the threat from climate change now appeared greater even than in the
last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was
published only in 2001.

"In many cases, the risks are more serious than previously thought," said
the closing statement.

It added: "A number of new impacts were identified that are potentially
disturbing. One example is the recent change that is occurring in the
acidity of the ocean. This is likely to affect the entire marine food
chain."

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NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
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Friday, February 25, 2005
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MYSTERIES OF THE MIND
YOUR UNCONSCIOUS IS MAKING YOUR EVERYDAY DECISIONS
By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
US News & World Report
February 28, 2005

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/050228/health/28think.htm

The snap judgment. The song that constantly runs through your head whenever
you close your office door. The desire to drink Coke rather than Pepsi or to
drive a Mustang rather than a Prius. The expression on your spouse's face
that inexplicably makes you feel either amorous or enraged. Or how about the
now incomprehensible reasons you married your spouse in the first place?

Welcome to evidence of your robust unconscious at work.

While these events are all superficially unrelated, each reveals an aspect
of a rich inner life that is not a part of conscious, much less rational,
thought. Today, long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the fact
that much of what we do is determined by mysterious memories and emotional
forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored anew. "Most
of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious, " says University of
Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan. "Life would be chaos if everything
were on the forefront of our consciousness."

Fueled by powerful neuroimaging technology, questions about how we make snap
decisions, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what
motivates us, and what satisfies us are being answered not through lying on
a couch and exploring individual childhood miseries but by looking at
neurons firing in particular parts of our brains. Hardly a week passes
without the release of the results of a new study on these kinds of
processes. And popular culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Blink,
journalist Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of "thinking without thinking,"
has remained on the bestseller lists for four weeks.

Most of us can appreciate the fact that we make up our minds about things
based on thinking that takes place somewhere just out of our reach. But
today, scientists are finding neural correlates to those processes, parts of
the brain that we never gave their due, communicating with other parts,
triggering neurotransmitters, and driving our actions. Says Clinton Kilts, a
professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory,
"There is nothing that you do, there is no thought that you have, there is
no awareness, there is no lack of awareness, there is nothing that marks
your daily existence that doesn't have a neural code. The greatest challenge
for us is to figure out how to design the study that will reveal these
codes."

Burgeoning understanding of our unconscious has deeply personal and also
fascinating medical implications. The realization that our actions may not
be the pristine results of our high-level reasoning can shake our faith in
the strength of such cherished values as free will, a capacity to choose,
and a sense of responsibility over those choices. We will never be able to
control the rhythm of our heartbeats or the choreography of our limbic
system. And yet, Gladwell writes that "our snap judgments and first
impressions can be educated and controlled . . . [and] the task of making
sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can
be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis."

Mental health. But unconscious processing is not just the stuff of
compelling personal insight. For those with emotional disorders like
anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, and others who suffer from
traumatic brain injuries either from a stroke or an accident, peeling away
the behavioral layers of their dysfunction has revealed fascinating activity
out of conscious awareness that may eventually provide clues to more
effective treatments. Recent research on minimally conscious patients, for
example, shows language centers on fire when they hear personal stories
recounted by a family member. Research on schizophrenia reveals that most
who are afflicted have an impaired ability to smell, which researchers think
may provide some clue to understanding why they have such difficulty
perceiving social cues. Or consider the case of Sarah Scantlin, who was hit
by a drunk driver and lay mute at the Golden Plains Health Care Center in
Hutchinson, Kan., for 20 years. After the Sept. 22, 1984, crash, the doctor
told her parents that it was a miracle she was even alive but that she would
never talk or move again on her own. Last month she began to speak--a simple
"OK" at first, then more words, even short sentences.

How does this happen? What was going on all that time? How do we get some
access to this thing called the unconscious?

According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5
percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions,
emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes
beyond our conscious awareness. From the beating of our hearts to pushing
the grocery cart and not smashing into the kitty litter, we rely on
something that is called the adaptive unconscious, which is all the ways
that our brains understand the world that the mind and the body must
negotiate. The adaptive unconscious makes it possible for us to, say, turn a
corner in our car without having to go through elaborate calculations to
determine the precise angle of the turn, the velocity of the automobile, the
steering radius of the car. It is what can make us understand the correct
meaning of statements like "prostitutes appeal to pope" or "children make
nourishing snacks" without believing that they mean that the pope has an
illicit life and cannibals are munching on children.

Consuming thoughts. Gerald Zaltman uses examples like these in many of his
conversations. He may be an emeritus professor from the Harvard Business
School, but he thinks about layers of consciousness like a neuroscientist.
He is also a founding partner in Olson Zaltman Associates, a consulting firm
that provides guidance to businesses seeking to better understand the
minds--and in this case it is quite literally the minds--of consumers. As a
professor of marketing, Zaltman obviously was very interested in figuring
out what made people buy one thing and not the other. In the world of
neuroscience, this goes to the heart of the profound questions of
motivation. In the world of business, this goes to the bottom line.

When trying to probe the minds of consumers, Zaltman wondered if there was a
way to move beyond the often-unreliable focus group to get at the true
desires of consumers, unencumbered by other noise, which would finally
result in more effective sales and marketing.

His solution became U.S. Patent No. 5,436,830, also known as the Zaltman
Metaphor Elicitation Technique, which is, according to the patent, "a
technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and
behavior." From Hallmark cards to Broadway plays, from Nestle's Crunch bars
to the design for the new Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, ZMET has been
used to figure out how to craft a message so that consumers will respond
with the important 95 percent of their brains that motivates many of their
choices. How? Through accessing the deep metaphors that people, even without
knowing it, associate with a particular product or feeling or place.

Language is limited, Zaltman says, "and it can't be confused with the
thought itself." Images, however, move a bit closer to capturing fragments
of the rich and contradictory areas of unconscious feelings. Participants in
his studies cut out pictures that represent their thoughts and feelings
about a particular subject, even if they can't explain why. He discovered
that when people do this, they often discover "a core, a deep metaphor
simultaneously embedded in a unique setting." They are drawn to seasonal or
heroic myths, for example, or images like blood and fire and mother. They
are also drawn into deep concepts like journey and transformation. His work
around the world has convinced him that the menu of these unconscious
metaphors is limited and universal, in the manner of human emotions like
hope and grief.

And Zaltman has found that even grand metaphors have their practical
applications. The architectural firm Astorino and the design firm Fathom
asked Zaltman for help in designing a new children's hospital that would
make a difficult experience somehow easier for children, their parents, and
the people who work there. With the classic ZMET technique, children,
parents, and staff members cut out pictures they somehow associated with the
hospital and were then interviewed for nearly two hours about these
pictures, exploring the thoughts, feelings, and associations that they
triggered. A stream of metaphors emerged in the conversation. A child
brought in a picture of a mournful-looking pug, which she colored blue
"because he's kind of sad, and that's the way I feel when I'm in the ICU or
just can't get out of my room."

After each picture was thoroughly analyzed by the participants, the images
were scanned, and another interviewer with a computer and a talent for the
Photoshop program sat with the parent, child, or staff member and created a
collage, a personal Rorschach test of the images (box, Page 60). This
snapshot of the participant's unconscious associations with the hospital was
then enlarged to include personal narratives using the collage. The process
is painstaking, but after the transcripts of these sessions are reviewed,
even in all the enormous variety of human expression and emotion, core
themes emerge. In the case of Children's Hospital, says Christine Astorino
Del Sole of the Fathom firm, "the main metaphor was transformation, and the
supporting metaphors were control, connection, and energy."

So how does that translate into the physical space? When patients and their
families walk into the new hospital, which will be completed in 2008, they
will be surrounded by images of butterflies, the ultimate symbol of
transformation. Patient rooms will be more like home, and children will be
able to exercise some control over their personal space. A huge garden,
embodying transformation as well as energy and connection, will be visible
from all rooms and accessible to children and their families. "Before,
design was a guessing game; it was hit or miss," says Del Sole. "But we know
now that at the deepest level this hospital has to be about transformation."
So when a sick child, or a worried parent, or a harassed nurse walks into
this hospital, a deep and reassuring recognition of the potential beauties
of transformation will resonate unconsciously.

Waves of cola. Zaltman, obviously, is not the only person peering into the
mind of the consumer. In a neuroscientific take on the time-honored blind
taste test, Coke and Pepsi once again squared off. In Blink, Gladwell
describes how the Coca-Cola Co. made a costly mistake in using data from
blind taste tests between Coke and Pepsi--in which Pepsi was emphatically
preferred by most cola drinkers--to change the recipe and create the
marketing debacle that was New Coke. Still, even with a less preferred
taste, Coke remains No. 1 in the soft-drink world. More recent research that
was published after Gladwell's book was finished may explain why.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine offered 67 committed Coke and
Pepsi drinkers a choice, and in blind testing, they preferred Pepsi. When
they were shown the company logos before they drank, however, 3 out of 4
preferred Coke. The researchers scanned the brains of the participants
during the test and discovered that the Coke label created wild activity in
the part of the brain associated with memories and self-image, while Pepsi,
though tasting better to most, did little to these feel-good centers in the
brain. P. Reed Montague, director of the Brown Foundation Human Neuroimaging
laboratory at Baylor, explained when the study was released last October:
"There's a huge effect of the Coke label on brain activity related to the
control of actions, the dredging up of memories and self-image." The mere
red-and-white image of Coke made the hippocampus, our brain's vault of
memories, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for
many of our higher human brain functions like working memory and what is
called executive function or control of behavior, light up. The point, says
Montague, is that "there is a response in the brain which leads to a
behavioral effect." And curiously, it has nothing to do with conscious
preference.

The dog comes up and begins to sniff. If it remembers you, and you were a
nice person, then instantly it wags its tail, perhaps even deigns to lick
your wrist. It may avoid you. It may associate you with food or with a swift
kick. And all those images, all those associations are evoked by one healthy
whiff.

Aside from the basic inhibition against walking up to someone and sniffing,
humans are no different. "An odor is not just a name--it is a whole
context," says psychiatrist Dolores Malaspina of the New York State
Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Medical Center. Olfactory
information is "privileged," Malaspina explains, since it is the only one of
our five senses that does not make a brief stop at the brain's relay
station, the thalamus, before going to the ever so intellectual prefrontal
cortex. Smell is unmediated, unfiltered, and it hits the prefrontal cortex
with a wallop of intensity. Researchers have found that smell plays a strong
role in our mating choices, even without our knowing it. And when female
roommates synchronize their menstrual cycles, it is because the unconscious
perception of odor sets off the endocrine system. Our brains, says
Malaspina, "beginning with fetal development, are laid out to give
precedence to olfactory perception."

But what happens if olfactory perception doesn't work properly? Malaspina
and other researchers are looking at the olfactory sense in emotional
disorders and have found some intriguing results. While schizophrenia is
seen as a disorder of hallucinations and delusions, a more compelling and
disruptive element of the disorder is social impairment. Some people with
schizophrenia can't seem to read social cues, or manage social
relationships, or summon a social context for whatever encounter they are
experiencing. And while hallucinations and delusions can be controlled often
through medication, these basic social impairments cause far more difficulty
in dealing with the daily demands of life.

Research has shown that many people with schizophrenia can also suffer from
"clinically meaningful olfactory impairment," which includes dysfunction in
higher brain centers such as the parietal lobes--the part of the brain
that's responsible for integrating sensory output so as to understand
something, like reading social cues or contextualizing those cues. Just as a
smell can elicit an immediate image of a particular time and place, lacking
that ability can deprive someone of a basic social and emotional anchor in
life. "What we are learning is that smell is a good window into the
unconscious basis for sociability and social interest," says Malaspina.
"There is a tremendous explosion of interest in this forgotten sense. And it
was under our noses all the time."

The scenario occurs in hospital rooms throughout the world, thousands of
times every day. A brain-damaged father or mother or child lies in bed, not
completely unconscious, not in a coma, but demonstrating only flickering
consciousness, small behaviors that show there is some evidence of the
person who once was there, some evidence that this person perhaps knows
friends and family members are near by. Medically, these patients are
categorized as existing in a minimally conscious state of awareness; it is
estimated that there are 100,000 to 300,000 Americans in such a state right
now. Sometimes these patients are able to actually utter the name of an
object or to follow a very simple command. But for friends and family, they
are no longer themselves. And because they find language so difficult, it is
also assumed that they are unlikely to follow conversations.

The eye of the mind? But in a stunning study published this month in the
journal Neurology, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to
study the brains of two minimally conscious patients and compared them with
the brains of seven healthy men and woman. The scans revealed that the
minimally conscious patients had less than half of the brain activity of the
others. But then all the subjects were played a tape made by a family member
or friend, recounting happy memories and shared experiences. One minimally
conscious man listened to his sister reminiscing about her wedding and about
the toast that he made. The result was astonishing: All those who were
scanned, including the minimally conscious patients, shared similar brain
activity, some with activation in the visual cortex. "This shows that there
is a life of the mind beyond what is apparent," says Joseph Fins, chief of
the medical ethics division of New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell
Medical Center. But Fins, who was not involved in the study, points out that
philosophical questions also emerge. "Does this mean that they are seeing
words? Visualizing semantic concepts? Does this in some way conceptualize
consciousness?" As Zaltman points out, language is only the narrowest
determination of our thoughts. This study shows that our brains, even
damaged brains, are exquisitely attuned to that fact.

For the brain damaged and for the healthy, despite the evidence of the
prevalence of the unconscious in our daily lives, even as fervent a believer
as Zaltman urges a bit of caution. "I don't think we know what the batting
average is for purely rational reasons or reasons dressed up that way, or
reasons dressed up as purely intuition. Both can get us into trouble--often
do. And both serve us well." It is that great tension between the two, the
intermingling of the known and the unknown, the conscious and the
unconscious, the 5 percent and the 95 percent, that the pioneers exploring
this vast and intricate universe of our minds will continue to probe. But
there will most likely never be a complete understanding. After all, the
enigmas of the mind, and the mechanics of the brain, will forever define the
ultimate mystery of simply being human.

------------

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BODY MODIFICATION'S ROLE IN THE COMING HUMAN-ROBOT APOCALYPSE
By Shannon Larratt
Bmezine.com
August 16th, 2003

http://www.bmezine.com/news/pubring/20030816.html

...........

"As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and
machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make
more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will
bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at
which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex
that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that
stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to
just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that
turning them off would amount to suicide."

--- Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto

...........

The world as we know it ‹ the world dominated by homo sapiens ‹ is quickly
coming to an end. We may well be the last generation of "true humans" that
live out natural lives, and I believe that it is essential that we embrace
body modification in order not only to safely and positively prepare
ourselves for transition into our next evolutionary step, but also to
survive that step. We're not just watching human evolution ‹ we're about to
watch a battle for survival between human and non-human entities in what
you've heard me talking about for years in my online journal: the coming
human-robot apocalypse.

Laugh it up, puny humans, but I'm not kidding. Hear me out before you assume
this is just crazy old Shannon on another conspiratorial rant.


Introduction

...........

"We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no
brakes. Many people who know about the dangers still seem strangely silent.
When pressed, they trot out the 'this is nothing new' riposte ‹ as if
awareness of what could happen is response enough. I think it is no
exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme
evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of
mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and
terrible empowerment of extreme individuals."

--- Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems

...........

Those of you who are not computer scientists may well be writing this off as
insane sci-fi driven paranoia ‹ but it's a belief held for solid reasons by
respected scientists from Ray Kurzweil (a primary AI developer) and Bill Joy
(co-founder of Sun Microsystems), to more far-out theorists such as Hans
Moravec and even Ted Kaczynski. To put it simply, begin with Moore's Law,
which basically states that computing power doubles every two years. This
has consistently rang true since it was first proposed in 1965, and shows no
signs of slowing, even keeping in mind only "traditional" technologies. Many
would suggest that with leaps being made in quantum computing,
three-dimensional circuitry, genetic computing, and so on, that this process
may well accelerate dramatically faster than expected.

Conservative estimates suggest that the computing power of about $1,000
worth of electronics will be able to do about a trillion calculations per
second within five years; coupled with most devices transitioning to
wireless and advances in humanoid robotics (NASA has already demonstrated a
"human" hand, and both Sony and Honda have functioning bipedal robots ‹ and
DARPA is creating a terrifying array of fully autonomous weapons and
monitoring systems from self-arranging minefields to drone fighters to
"Total Information Awareness" data processing entities) it is safe to assume
that the integration of "intelligent" robotic technology will be deeply
pervasive. Given that it will probably dramatically improve (or, let's say,
"make easier") our lives, it is unlikely that this shift will be met with
any resistance. Sandia Labs, along with many universities and research
institutes around the world are demonstrating increasingly advanced learning
machines and computers capable of abstract thought (versus older "rule
based" artificial intelligence systems), in both augmentory and independent
fashions.

The problem will start to become apparent in about fifteen years, by which
time (again going only by the most conservative estimates) the average
computer (and remember that there will be billions of these on the planet)
will have the computational power of the human mind [Ed. Note: Since the
initial publication of this article Kurzweil has pointed out that the
machines will at this point have the hardware power but not the software
power and that the timeline may be slightly more extended than I list here ‹
however, as a programmer I think it is likely that self-writing software
will soon progress at truly explosive rates and his warning may be overly
conservative]. Again let me emphasize that I'm not talking about incredibly
fast serial processing ‹ after all, no matter how fast you make a
calculator, it's not actually "intelligent" any more than a car engine
"understands" the laws of physics. I'm speaking of hugely parallel machines
capable of abstract thinking ‹ able to understand art, philosophy,
literature, and so on as well as any person, coupled with a perfect memory
and a radically faster "execution speed" (electrical circuits switch
thousands of times faster than the electrochemical circuits our minds use).

Advance another twenty years, and a single low cost computer will be about
as powerful as a thousand human minds. At this point in time almost all
agricultural and industrial processes will be machine controlled and humans
will have little involvement in the day-to-day survival of the species. Most
computer scientists predict that at this point computers will begin claiming
consciousness and asserting themselves as individuals... and that's when
human history reaches its end.

Optimists and transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil suggest that the end
result will be a merger of human and robot, and that we'll be able to do
things like "upload" our intelligence into the machines and enjoy the world
through a combination of non-physical presence, virtual reality, and even
nanobot swarms "creating" objects as needed. Unfortunately this is wishful
thinking and will not come about, for one main reason: humans are the weak
part of this equation.

Within a quarter century computers will be thousands of times "smarter" than
people. Within fifty years we're looking at an even dramatically larger
intellectual gap. Ask yourself this: how is humanity's relationship with
apes? We happily destroy their environment, and use their amputated hands as
ashtrays ‹ and have at best 50% more neural processing capacity than they
do. We kill and eat many mammals that we have perhaps only ten times the
brainpower of ‹ when we start talking differentials of 210 to 220, the
intellectual relationship is about the same as the relationship we have with
ants (highly social and "intelligent" creatures, at least in relative
terms). When's the last time you had a good conversation with an ant? When's
the last time you considered an ant's welfare, let alone considered its
welfare equivalent to your own?

..........

"At the present rate of scientific and technological progress, there is a
real chance that we will have molecular manufacturing or superhuman
artificial intelligence well within the first half of this century. Now,
this creates some considerable promises and dangers. In a worst-case
scenario, intelligent life could go extinct."

--- Professor Nick Bostrom, Yale University

............

Cellular interfaces ‹ connections between electronics and neural cells are
getting better and better, promising advances in prosthetics and eventually
amazing things like mind-computer interfaces. As I mentioned, Kurzweil
proposes that the end result of this will be human-computer lifeforms, and
the eventual blurring of human and machine as we become dual entities. The
fundamental flaw in this thinking, in my opinion, is that we fleshbags are
the weak component, and weak, obsolete components are eventually removed and
replaced. Good engineering will not allow for biological components to be
part of the equation, and the notion of "downloading" our consciousness into
machines that have thousands of times the consciousness we have is simply
ludicrous ‹ does anyone reading this want to sign up to download the
consciousness of an ant to replace or augment their own?

Resources are limited. Space is limited. Energy is limited... and the
environmental needs of machines and humans are exclusionary. Even if we
assume they have no desire to replicate, they will still consume resources
and produce waste materials. Logically it is difficult to believe that there
will not come a time very soon where humans ‹ and quite possibly all
biological life on this planet ‹ will enter into conflict with our own
creations. Given their godlike stature next to our own, the outcome should
be rather obvious.

The fact is that advanced technology, if allowed to continue, will first
match, then exceed, and then replace humans. Nothing I've written above is
particularly speculative or out on a limb ‹ if anything I've been
conservative in my statements. So what do we do? Neo-Luddite philosophers
have proposed terrorist actions designed to take down the system, to smash
us back to the stone age where we can't do this type of harm to ourselves,
with many pointing out that even without the "robot apocalypse" issue the
increasingly complex systems we're living under bring with them increasingly
disastrous crashes. As the Unabomber writes:

"If the system breaks down the consequences will be very painful. But the
bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown
will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than
later."

Given all the problems in the world that humans have created, it is
certainly possible that the system will break down on its own, but as long
as it's going strong I have difficulty believing that Luddite terrorists
could actually induce the breakdown, and even if they did, it won't be for
the betterment of humanity. In addition to the fact that modern power
structures give such a plan dubious chances of victory, it doesn't
permanently solve the problem anyway, nor does it allow humans to survive in
the long term ‹ the fact is that unless we become a spacefaring people we
will be destroyed by either an asteroid strike, environmental collapse, the
eventual collapse of our sun, or any number of other statistically
unavoidable fates.

...........

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless
we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a
single planet."

--- Stephen Hawking

"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct."

--- Carl Sagan

...........

I'm just not willing to watch humanity commit suicide because of some
runaway piece of technology. Now, you're probably asking yourself, "OK,
you've got me all scared, but what does this have to do with body
modification? How does my navel ring protect me against homicidal robots?"

I believe that body modification's role is first as a stalling tactic ‹ to
allow us to appreciate and focus on being corporeal and human ‹ and second,
as a preparatory tactic ‹ to help us transition into homo superior. The
preparatory element is of a dual nature. On one hand, by destroying the body
we "distill" humanity, and on the other hand, by embracing the carnal body,
we revel in it and appreciate its value.

Distilling humans: Destroying the Body

One of the strange paradoxes of the human is experience is that it's often
events steeped in pain or the negation of the body that lead us to
transformative religious rapture (or, as the Lizardman put it in his latest
column <http://www.bmezine.com/news/lizardman/20030814.html> for the less
spiritual, "life affirming" experiences). Outside of body modification one
sees this in extreme trauma in the form of out of body experiences and near
death experiences ‹ whether one chooses a spiritual explanation or one more
down-to-earth, the central symptom is the same: an affirmation of humanity.

In the world of BME, we see analogous experiences being explored in rituals
such as suspension, play piercing, shamanic drug use, and even psychosexual
CBT sessions. Again the end goal is the affirmation of humanity ‹ by
breaking down physical existence and leaving the essence of being, only the
part of human that exists outside of or on top of our interaction with the
outside world remains. I use the term "distilling humans" because it reminds
me of the process of distillation which, through the use of a hostile and
aggressive environment breaks a complex substance down into its pure and
impure components. Body ritual allows us to experience life as a pure human,
and in so doing gives us a new appreciation for humanity.

My hope is that if we are able to re-embrace this type of ritual on a
cultural level that we will as a culture feel that being human is valuable ‹
while I'm sure many people would make that claim already, I believe the
average person currently understand it on at best an abstract level and has
little first hand experience with it. This belief is evidenced by the
structure of Western society and the lives its members live, all too eager
to sacrifice these experiences in trade for convenience.

And, that lust for convenience is what sets the stage and builds the
foundation for our replacement as our robotic slaves become not our masters,
but our successors.

Revealing humans: Enjoying the Body

The other thing that separates humans from machines is our sexual nature;
balls-deep sweaty fucking. While machines are already on the cusp of fully
autonomous reproduction (manufacturing) and self-improvement, the
possibility of their means of reproduction ever being a pleasure-driven
cooperative process seems far-fetched. Humans on the other hand are, on a
carnal level, little more than vessels created for the purpose of the
replication and distribution of the ultimate parasite: our genes.

The experiences of body piercing, especially genital piercing, along with
other body modifications is most commonly a sexual act, be it direct (by
making sex feel better) or be it indirect (for example, self-beautifying
acts as an element of mating behavior ‹ that is, attracting sexual
partners). In addition, the experience of being pierced, being tattooed, and
the long term feeling of being modified is guttural ‹ it revels in the
tactile sensations of being alive. It encourages being to alive, to be
animalistic, to know what it feels like to have a body and like it.

So much of Western society denies the body ‹ we barely even exercise, the to
point where our bodies fail and are kept alive by machines often solely
because we've allowed them to atrophy. Two modern phenomena promise to pull
us out of this apathy (and I believe we must embrace both), the first being
body modification, which embraces the body in all its forms and sensations,
and the second being pornography and the sexualization of culture, which
encourages us to revel in physical experience without shame or guilt. Both
of these push us to a state of being that results in a genuine appreciation
for the symptoms of being biological.

Enjoying the body, coupled with distilling the body to appreciate our
humanity, have an end result of putting value in human, rather than simply
listing our general traits (intelligence, toolmaking, whatever) and
considering them valuable in and of themselves.

Stalling Tactic or Preparatory Culture Shift?

Of course, none of the above actually stops the process ‹ all it does is
make us recognize that we are worth saving. As a result, it might increase
public debate, or reduce the speed at which intelligent machines are handed
power, but ultimately it's simply a stalling tactic. As they say, "you can't
stop progress!"

Like I've already mentioned, the Luddite path, the rejection of technology
altogether, is unlikely to be accepted, and in any case is doomed in the
long term. The fact is that with humanity on the course it's on now,
monstrously intelligent machines will arrive, will continue to grow more
powerful, and will eventually have a dominant voice, leading to an all-out
war between biological and non-biological life.

We need to do one of two things (or both) ‹ we need to either avoid this
war, or we need to figure out how to win it.

One of the other side-effects of embracing body modification (and one that
is not brought on by any other cultural phenomena) is that it encourages us
to accept and explore a varied range of esthetic options, as well as a
willingness to alter, modify, and even enjoy mutilating the human body in
order to improve and widen our experience of living.

In order to avoid the human-robot war, we need to create other means of
doing the things we desire the robots to do, and in order to win the
human-robot war, we need humans to be more powerful and more adaptive than
the robots. Both of these propositions need better humans. We need to
improve humans ‹ and isn't that what body modification is all about? We just
need to do it bigger. Body modification sets the stage for a culture that
can accept such a transition, which will then allow us to spread out into
space and across this incredibly gigantic universe ‹ in which case even if
intelligent machines are eventually evolved, we will have also reached a
point where we can peacefully co-exist, or even exist totally separately
should we choose to.

Don't "Replace" Humans; Improve Them

Nature recently reported on experiments at the Shanghai Second Medical
Univeristy by Hui Zhen Sheng in merging human DNA with rabbit DNA. The
researchers successfully brought over one hundred of these chimeras to the
blastocyst stage of growth (an early embryonic stage where stem cells are
produced). In other experiments human neural tissue has been grown in rats,
and I'm sure everyone knows about mergers of plants and animals resulting in
glow in the dark rabbits and other bizarre creations. Scientists have
created freeze-proof animals, disease resistant crops, and many other
"improved" entities, and as we continue to explore and decode the genomes of
both humans and other lifeforms our understanding and control over our
genetic future and evolution grows exponentially.

...........

"They spiced up that genetic cocktail called me with a dash of feline DNA,
so I can jump fifteen feet of razor wire and take out a two hundred and
fifty pound linebacker with my thumb and index finger, which makes me an
awesome killing machine... and a hoot at parties."

--- Max, Dark Angel

..........

The idea of creating chimeric humans is certainly no stranger to
pop-culture, and more seriously, looms very close as a reality ‹ although it
faces massive political, religious, and ethical resistance from a wide range
of sources, mostly from people with irrational attachments to biological
stagnation. Certainly some people point out the valid dangers of genetic
engineering, but being realistic, we're at far less risk engineering humans
than we are engineering super-crops which threaten to destroy our ecosystem
and super-bacteria brought on by increasingly powerful antibiotics ‹ both of
which we are currently doing at an alarming rate (so even without a
human-robot war we may desperately need to artificially evolve ourselves in
order to survive).

..........

" 'Plants' with 'leaves' no more efficient than today's solar cells could
out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage.
Tough omnivorous 'bacteria' could out-compete real bacteria: They could
spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to
dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough,
small, and rapidly spreading to stop ‹ at least if we make no preparation.
We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies."

--- Eric Drexler, Foresight Institute

...........

As I mentioned before, the problem with the transhumanist notion of a
dualist evolution that includes a human-robot merger (a la the miserable
Cybermen of Doctor Who) is that it eventually replaces humans with machines
‹ there is no real transition and I don't believe we can say that these
machines are still "us" or even our "children". They are something new.
Genetic engineering on the other hand ‹ the idea of forcing the punctuation
in punctuated equilibrium ‹ results in not a new lifeform, but an improved
lifeform which still carries our genetics and, on a more abstract level,
still has a "human" soul.

As australopithecus begat homo habilis and then eventually homo sapiens, we
do now have the option of inducing evolution and giving birth to homo
superior. All we have to do is get over our attachment to the mundane
definition of human that the average person clings to, and I believe that a
willingness to embrace voluntary body modification of all forms is an
excellent way to condition society to the most important idea of the 21st
century: humans have reached a stage in their evolution where they have
total control over who they become.

Conclusion

We now need to ask ourselves whether we want to be replaced, or whether we'd
like to be improved... staying who we are now is no longer an option short
of inducing an earth shattering apocalypse. I've been told that my recent
columns are moving from political commentary to religious commentary, and I
make no apologies for that ‹ we, "the modified", are finding ourselves in
the role of missionaries. We need to accept that role, and spread our
message and continue transforming society, for if we do not (along with help
from many other subcultural groups ‹ I'm certainly not so isolationist and
egotistical to suggest that body modification is the only path to
salvation... only one of many that must work together), humanity faces a
terrible finale.

To recap, our role in this period of human transformation is threefold:

1. To experience and embrace the "human spirit" (in both the theological and
physiological sense of the word ‹ the experience is more relevant than the
specific explanation).

2. To revel in and enjoy the "flesh", and put value in the carnal.

3. To publicly and positively show unique modified bodies and encourage
public acceptance of the modified culture.

As such, our role is rather simple ‹ all we have to do is be who we are and
be decent to those around us. The public in general needs first to learn to
accept us, and accept the idea of people controlling their biological
destiny and form. They need to see that modified people are happy people who
play a positive role in society, and by realizing that, become open to the
idea of humanity becoming a beautiful and varied patchwork quilt ‹ which
also brings me to a warning. Most of all we need to resist the possibility
of body modification becoming a uniform; unless we retain uniqueness and a
broad range of expression this strategy will fall short and not achieve any
of its goals (that said, I'm not talking about blind uniqueness for
uniqueness's sake ‹ I'm talking about genuine expressions of self).

Of course, I could be wrong. The leading computer scientists, molecular
scientists, nanotechnologists, and genetic engineers could all be wrong...
Maybe we'll get lucky and develop nothing more than incredibly powerful and
useful tools that never achieve consciousness, let alone life that conflicts
with our own. But we're like a car driving at a hundred and fifty miles an
hour in the dark without headlights ‹ don't you think it might be a good
idea to put on our seatbelts?

So go out and be you ‹ be proud of it, and help everyone you know explore
human life in all its glorious forms! Take us to the future!

............

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

ONLINE ARTICLES:

Why The Future Doesn't Need Us
by Bill Joy
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

Robotic Nation
by Marshall Brain
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

On the Singularity
by Vernor Vinge
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

The Unabomber Manifesto
by Ted Kaczynski
http://hotwired.wired.com/special/unabom/list.html


WEBSITES:

Better Humans
http://www.betterhumans.com/

Kurzweil AI
http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1


BOOKS:

The Age of Spiritual Machines
by Ray Kurzweil

Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future
by Gregory Stock

Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
by Hans Moravec

Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds
by Gregory Paul & Earl Cox

Digital Soul: Intelligent Machines and Human Values
by Thomas Georges

...........

Shannon Larratt is the editor and publisher of BMEZINE.COM, the largest and
oldest full-spectrum body modification publication on the planet. He also is
known for his promotion of radical individualistic politics, spirituality,
and on a more base level, his main vice: exotic cars. Shannon lives in rural
Canada with his family and friends where he is currently producing the BME
movie.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
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Fax: (815) 346-1492

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& Consumer Protection
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------------

Friday March 4, 2005
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THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM
By Derek Kelly, PhD
Asian Times
February 25, 2005

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB25Aa02.html

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

Scam, noun: a swindle, a fraudulent arrangement.

A chronology of climate change

During most of the last billion years the Earth did not have permanent ice
sheets. Nevertheless, at times large areas of the globe were covered with
vast sheets of ice. Such times are known as glaciations. In the past 2
million to 3 million years, the temperature of the Earth has changed (warmed
or cooled) at least 17 times, some say 33, with glaciations that last about
100,000 years interrupted by warm periods that last about 10,000 years.

The last glaciation began 70,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago.
The Earth was a lot colder than it is now; snow and ice had accumulated on a
lot of the land, glaciers existed on large areas and the sea levels were
lower.

15,000 years ago: The last glaciation reaches a peak, with continental
glaciers that cover a lot of the sub-polar and polar areas of the land areas
of Earth. In North America, all of New England and all of the Great Lakes
area, most of Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and the North Dakotas, lie under ice
sheets hundreds of meters thick. More than 37 million cubic kilometers of
ice was tied up in these global sheets of ice. The average temperature on
the surface of the Earth is estimated to have been cooler by approximately 6
degrees Celsius than currently. The sea level was more than 90 meters lower
than currently.

15,000 years ago to 6,000 years ago: Global warming begins. The sheets of
ice melt, and sea levels rise. Some heat source causes approximately 37
million cubic kilometers of ice to melt in approximately 9,000 years. Around
9,500 years ago, the last of the Northern European sheets of ice leave
Scandinavia. Around 7,500 years ago, the last of the American sheets of ice
leave Canada. This warming is neither stable nor the same everywhere. There
are periods when mountain glaciers advance, and periods when they withdraw.
These climatic changes vary extensively from place to place, with some areas
affected while others are not. The tendency of warming is global and
obvious, but very uneven. The causes of this period of warming are unknown.

8,000 years ago to 4,000 years ago: About 6,000 years ago, temperatures on
the surface of Earth are about 3 degrees warmer than currently. The Arctic
Ocean is ice-free, and mountain glaciers have disappeared from the mountains
of Norway and the Alps in Europe, and from the Rocky Mountains of the United
States and Canada. The ocean of the world is some three meters higher than
currently. A lot of the present desert of the Sahara has a more humid,
savannah-like climate, with giraffes and savannah fauna species.

4,000 years ago to AD 900: Global cooling begins. The Arctic Ocean freezes
over, mountain glaciers form once more in the Rocky Mountains, in Norway and
in the Alps. The Black Sea freezes over several times, and ice forms on the
Nile in Egypt. Northern Europe gets a lot wetter, and the marshes develop
again in previously dry areas. The sea level drops to approximately its
present level. The temperatures on the surface of the Earth are about 0.5-1
degree cooler than at present. The causes of this period of cooling are
unknown.

AD 1000 to 1500: This period has quick, but uneven, warming of the climate
of the Northern Hemisphere. The North Atlantic becomes ice-free and Norse
exploration as far as North America takes place. The Norse colonies in
Greenland even export crop surpluses to Scandinavia. Wine grapes grow in
southern Britain. The temperatures are from 3-8 degrees warmer than
currently. The period lasts only a brief 500 years. By the year 1500, it has
vanished. The Earth experiences as much warming between the 11th and the
13th century as is now predicted by global-warming scientists for the next
century. The causes of this period of warming are unknown.

1430 to 1880: This is a period of the fast but uneven cooling of Northern
Hemisphere climates. Norwegian glaciers advance to their most distant
extension in post-glacial times. The northern forests disappear, to be
replaced with tundra. Severe winters characterize a lot of Europe and North
America. The channels and rivers get colder, the snows get heavy, and the
summers cool and short. The temperatures on the surface of the world are
about 0.5-1.5 degrees cooler than present. In the United States, 1816 is
known as the "year with no summer". Snow falls in New England in June. The
widespread failure of crops and deaths due to hypothermia are common. The
causes of this period of cooling are unknown.

1880 to 1940: A period of warming. The mountain glaciers recede and the ice
in the Arctic Ocean begins to melt again. The causes of this period of
warming are unknown.

1940 to 1977: Cooling period. The temperatures are cooler than currently.
Mountain glaciers recede, and some begin to advance. The tabloids inform us
of widespread catastrophes due to the "New Glaciation". The causes of this
period of cooling are unknown.

1977 to present: Warming period. The summer of 2003 is said to be the
warmest one since the Middle Ages. The tabloids notify us of widespread
catastrophes due to "global warming". The causes of warming are discovered -
humanity and its carbon-dioxide-generating fossil-fuel use and
deforestation.

Anyone else find something fishy about the final sentence?

Comments The above chronology of recent (geologically speaking) climate
changes should place global-warming catastrophists (such as those who
developed the Kyoto treaty) in an awkward position. Their fundamental
assumption is that Earth's climate was stable and was doing just fine before
the Industrial Revolution started interfering with climate's "natural"
state. It is the Industrial Revolution, and in particular the use of
fossil-fuel-burning machines, that has led us to the brink of environmental
catastrophe due to global warming caused by increasing amounts of carbon
dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

But it is plain to see that both warming and cooling occurred numerous times
before the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, all the dire predictions of
global-warming consequences - sea-level rise, for example - have happened in
the past. In fact, the greatest warming period was when dinosaurs walked the
land (about 70 million to 130 million years ago). There was then five to 10
times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today, and the average
temperature was 4-11 degrees Celsius warmer. Those conditions should have
been very helpful to life, since they permitted those immense creatures to
find an abundance of food and they survived.

The Cretaceous was an intense "greenhouse world" with high surface
temperatures. These high temperatures were due to the much higher level of
CO2 in the atmosphere at the time - four to 10 times as much as is in our
air today. The biota was a mixture of the exotic and familiar - luxuriant
green forests of now-extinct trees flourished within the Arctic Circle and
dinosaurs roamed. The global sea level was at its highest ever during this
period, peaking during the Late Cretaceous around 86 million years ago. It
is certain that the global sea level was well over 200 meters higher during
this time than it is today. The Earth was immensely hotter, the CO2 vastly
more plentiful, and the sea levels much higher than they are today.

The Earth has also been immensely colder, the CO2 much less plentiful, and
the sea levels much lower than today. Fifteen thousand years ago, the sea
level was at least 90 meters lower than it is today. The land looked bare
because it was too cold for beech and oak trees to grow. There were a few
fir trees here and there. No grass grew, however, just shrubs, bushes and
moss grass. In the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia there
was still tundra. The animals were different from today too. Back then there
were woolly mammoth, woolly rhinos, cave bears (the former three now
extinct), bison, wolves, horses, and herds of reindeer like modern-day
reindeer.

The major "sin" for the global warmists is CO2. The Kyoto treaty is meant to
reduce the amount of this gas so as, they say, to reduce the degree of
warming and eventually return us to some stable climate system. If we look
at the historical situation, however, this is cause for alarm. For one
thing, there has never been a stable climate system. For another, the level
of CO2 in our atmosphere is near its historic low. In the long run, the
greatest danger is too little rather than too much CO2. There has been a
long-term reduction of CO2 throughout the 4.5-billion-year history of the
Earth. If this tendency continues, eventually our planet may become as
lifeless as Mars.

Glaciation has prevailed for 90% of the last several million years. Extreme
cold. Biting cold. Cold too intense for bikinis and swimming trunks. No
matter what scary scenarios global-warming enthusiasts dream up, they pale
in comparison with the conditions another ice age would deliver. Look to our
past climate. Fifteen thousand years ago, an ice sheet a kilometer and a
half thick covered all of North America north of a line stretching from
somewhere around Seattle to Cleveland and New York City.

Instead of reducing CO2, we should, perhaps, be increasing it. We should pay
the smokestack industries hard dollars for every kilogram of soot they pump
into the atmosphere. Instead of urging Chinese to stop using coal and turn
instead to nuclear-generated electricity, we should beg them to continue
using coal. Rather than bringing us to the edge of global-warming
catastrophe, anthropogenic climate change may have spared us descent into
what would be the most serious and far-reaching challenge facing humankind
in the 21st century - dealing with a rapidly deteriorating climate that
wants to plunge us into an ice age. Let's hope Antarctica and Greenland
melt. Let's hope the sea levels rise. All life glorifies warmth. Only death
prefers the icy fingers of endless winter.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

STRIPPING THE GURUS*
Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment*
By Geoffrey D. Falk
Press Release
April 7, 2005

http://www.strippingthegurus.com

Ramakrishna was a homoerotic pedophile.

His chief disciple, Vivekananda, visited brothels in India.

Krishnamurti carried on an affair for over twenty years with the wife of a
close friend. Chögyam Trungpa drank himself into an early grave. One of Adi
Da's nine "wives" is a former Playboy centerfold. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
sniffed laughing gas to get high. Andrew Cohen, guru and publisher of What
Is Enlightenment? magazine, by his own reported admission sometimes feels
"like a god."

These are typical of the "wizened sages" to whom otherwise-sensible people
give their devotion and unquestioning obedience, surrendering their
independence, willpower, and life's savings in the hope of realizing for
themselves the same "enlightenment" as they ascribe to the "perfect,
God-realized" master.

Why?

Is it for being emotionally vulnerable and "brainwashed," as the
"anti-cultists" assert? Or for being "willingly psychologically seduced," as
the apologists unsympathetically counter, confident that they themselves are
"too smart" to ever fall into the same trap? Or have devotees simply walked,
with naïvely-open hearts and thirsty souls, into inherent psychological
dynamics of power and obedience which have showed themselves in classic
psychological studies from Milgram to Zimbardo, and to which each one of us
is susceptible every day of our lives?

Like the proud "Rude Boy" Cohen allegedly said, with a laugh, in response to
the nervous breakdown of one of his devoted followers: "It could happen to
any one of you."

Don't let it happen to you. Don't get suckered in. Be prepared. Be informed.
Find out what reportedly goes on behind the scenes in even the best of our
world's spiritual communities.

You can start by reading this book.

A FREE version of selected sample chapters, containing approximately half of
the material in Stripping the Gurus, can be read online at
<http://www.strippingthegurus.com>. The full (paid) eBook is available for
download at <http://www.millionmonkeyspress.com>, in PDF format.

...........

"Stripping the Gurus is superb. The research is meticulous, the writing
engaging, and the overall thesis: devastatingly true. A stellar book." --
Dr. David C. Lane, California State University

............

INTRODUCTION
By Geoffrey D. Falk
Toronto, Ontario
March, 2005

http://www.geoffreyfalk.com

One of my dear, late mother's most memorable expressions, in attempting to
get her children to behave, was simply: "Be sure your sins will find you
out."

It may take a minute, an hour, a day, a year, ten years or more, but
eventually the details of one's behaviors are likely to surface. Whether
one's public face is that of a saint or a sinner, ultimately "the truth will
out."

This book, then, concerns the alleged sins which have been concealed behind
the polished façades of too many of our world's "saintly and sagely"
spiritual leaders and their associated communities, with a marked focus on
North America over the past century.

Why, though, would anyone write such a book as this? Why not just "focus on
the good," and work on one's own self-transformation instead?

First of all, one hopes to save others from the sorrow inherent in throwing
their lives away in following these figures. Even the most elementary
bodhisattva vow, for the liberation of others from suffering, would leave
one with no moral choice but to do one's part in that. Likewise, even the
most basic understanding as to the nature of "idiot compassion" would
preclude one from ignoring these reported problems just to be "nice" or
avoid offending others.

As a former follower of Carlos Castaneda eloquently put it, in relating the
depressing and disillusioning story of her experiences with him, amid her
own "haunting dreams of suicide":

"[I]f some reader, somewhere, takes a moment's pause and halts before
handing over his or her free will to another, it will all have counted for
something (Wallace, 2003)."

Or, as Margery Wakefield (1991) expressed her own opinion:

"As trite as it may sound, if I can prevent even one other person,
especially a young person, from having to live through the nightmare of
Scientology‹then I will feel satisfied."

Second, I personally spent the worst nine months of my life at one of
Paramahansa Yogananda's approved southern California ashrams (i.e.,
hermitages/monasteries), and have still not recovered fully from that awful
experience. I thus consider this as part of my own healing process. That is,
it is part of my dealing with the after-effects of the "wisdom" meted out in
that environment by its loyal, "Godinspired" participants.

Third, with my own background in Eastern philosophy, we may hope to do all
this without misrepresenting the metaphysical ideas involved. With or
without that, though, it is not the validity of the theoretical ideas of
each path which are, in general, of concern here. Rather, of far greater
interest are the ways in which the leaders espousing those ideas have
applied them in practice, frequently to the reported detriment of their
followers.

Fourth, the mapping of reported ashram behaviors to psychologist Philip
Zimbardo's classic prison study, as presented in the Gurus and Prisoners
chapter, yields significant insights into the origins and pervasiveness of
the alleged problems cataloged herein.

Fifth, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate everything which is
impossible, then what is left, however improbable it may appear, must be the
case. Becoming aware of the reported problems with our world's "sages" and
their admirers, then, eliminates many pleasant but "impossible" hopes one
may have with regard to the nature of spirituality and religion.

This book will not likely change the mind of any loyal disciple of any of
the spiritual figures and paths specifically addressed herein. Indeed, no
amount of evidence of alleged abuse or hypocrisy on the part of those
leaders could do so, for followers who are convinced that they have found
"God in the flesh," in their spiritual hero.

This text may, however, touch some of those devotees who are already halfway
to realizing what is going on around them. And more importantly, in
quantitative good, it may give a "heads up" to persons who would otherwise
be suckered in by the claims of any particular "God-realized being"‹as I
myself was fooled, once upon a time. And thus, it may prevent them from
becoming involved with the relevant organization(s) in the first place.

Ultimately, the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach to life
simply allows the relevant problems to continue. No one should ever turn a
blind eye to secular crimes of forgery, incest, rape or the like. Much less
should those same crimes be so readily excused or forgiven when they are
alleged to occur in spiritual contexts. That is so particularly when they
are claimed to be perpetrated by leaders and followers insisting that they
have "God on their side," and that any resistance to their reported blunders
or rumored powertripping abuses equates to being influenced by Maya/Satan.

To say nothing in the face of evil, after all, is to implicitly condone it.
Or equally, as the saying goes, "For evil to triumph in this world, it is
only necessary for good people to do nothing."

In the words of Albert Einstein:

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

The alert reader will further note that, aside from my own relatively
non-scandalous (but still highly traumatic) personal experiences at Hidden
Valley, all of the allegations made herein‹none of which, to my knowledge,
except where explicitly noted, have been proved in any court of law‹have
already been put into print elsewhere in books and magazine articles. In all
of those cases, I am relying in good faith on the validity of the extant,
published research of the relevant journalists and ex-disciples. I have made
every effort to present that existing reported data without putting any
additional "spin" on it, via juxtapositions or otherwise. After all, the
in-print (alleged) realities, in every case, are jaw-dropping enough that no
innuendo or taking-out-of-context would have ever been required in order to
make our world's "god-men" look foolish.

As the Dalai Lama (1999) expressed his own opinion, regarding the value of
such investigative journalism:

"I respect and appreciate the media's interference.... It is appropriate ...
to have journalists ... snooping around and exposing wrongdoing where they
find it. We need to know when this or that renowned individual hides a very
different aspect behind a pleasant exterior."

Finally, with regard to the use of humor herein, the late Christopher Reeve
put it appropriately: "When things are really bad, you have to laugh."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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------------

Thursday, April 14, 2005
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GLOBAL GENE PROJECT TO TRACE HUMANITY'S MIGRATIONS
By Hillary Mayell
National Geographic News
April 13, 2005

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0413_050413_genographic.html

New DNA studies suggest that all humans descended from a single African
ancestor who lived some 60,000 years ago. To uncover the paths that lead
from him to every living human, the National Geographic Society today
launched the Genographic Project at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

The project is a five-year endeavor undertaken as a partnership between IBM
and National Geographic. It will combine population genetics and molecular
biology to trace the migration of humans from the time we first left Africa,
50,000 to 60,000 years ago, to the places where we live today.

Ten research centers around the world will receive funding from the Waitt
Family Foundation to collect and analyze blood samples from indigenous
populations (such as aboriginal groups), many in remote areas. The
Genographic Project hopes to collect more than a hundred thousand DNA
samples to create the largest gene bank in the world. Members of the public
are also being invited to participate:

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html

"Our DNA tells a fascinating story of the human journey: how we are all
related and how our ancestors got to where we are today," said American
geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells, the project leader. "This
project will show us some of the routes early humans followed to populate
the globe and paint a picture of the genetic tapestry that connects us all."

Wells, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, feels a certain sense of
urgency. Wars, environmental disasters, and increasing globalization are
causing more people to move, and the world is gradually becoming less
culturally and genetically diverse.

"We need to take a genetic snapshot of who we are as a species before the
geographic and cultural context are lost in the melting pot," Wells said. He
cites language as a measure of the disappearance of cultures. "There are
around 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, and by the end of the
century, between half and 90 percent of those are going to be gone."

IBM, as the technology partner of the project, will participate in
collecting the data, storing it, and analyzing it.

"We have some indications, from prior studies about the migration of people,
how the diversity and similarity that we see in peoples of the world might
have happened in the last 50,000 to 10,000 years," said Ajay Royyuru, a
senior manager of IBM's Computational Biology Center. "But what is missing
is the detail, the ability for everyone on the planet to be able to see,
understand, exactly how they got to be where they are."

Tracking Genetic Markers

Each human parent contributes half of a child's DNA, which combines with the
other parent's DNA to form a new genetic combination. This so-called
recombination gives each of us a unique set of attributes: hair, eye, and
skin color; athleticism or lack thereof; susceptibility to certain diseases;
and so on.

However, the chunk of DNA known as the y chromosome, which only males
possess, is passed from father to son without recombining. The y chromosome,
therefore, remains basically unchanged through generations, except for
random mutations. Similarly, women pass mitochondrial DNA, which also does
not recombine, on to both their sons and daughters.

Random mutations to DNA, which happen naturally and are usually harmless,
are called markers. Once a marker has been identified, geneticists can go
back in time and trace it to the point at which it first occurred. This way,
they are able to determine when and where a new lineage began.

If they can be traced to a particular region, these lineages can be used to
track prehistoric migration patterns. However, indigenous identities are
being lost as more and more people move from their ancestral villages.

"And when they do [leave], their kids [absorb] the dominant culture in that
[new] city and lose touch with the old ways," Wells said. "So what we lose
is the context in which their genetic diversity arose. The genes are still
going to be there, but without the geographical context, we can't infer
anything historical from the genetic data."

Battur Tumer, a descendant of Genghis Khan and one of the participants at
the project launch today in Washington, D.C., exemplifies the importance of
finding indigenous populations in their ancestral lands.

Wells's team collected y chromosome data in a region of Asia once ruled by
the 13th-century Mongolian warrior. Their analysis identified a marker that
originated about a thousand years ago and was carried by about 8 percent of
the men living in the region. The marker was found in only one population
outside of Asia‹the Hazaras tribe in Pakistan. The Hazaras have a long oral
tradition that says they're Khan's direct descendants.

Tying the marker to a geographic location and looking at the region's
history‹Genghis Khan's armies often raped the women of vanquished villages,
and his descendants later expanded the empire‹suggests that today roughly 16
million men carry a genetic mutation that probably originated with Khan's
great-great-grandfather.

The spread of that particular mutation was the result of a cultural
artifact‹military success combined with a culture in which men could have
many wives and concubines‹but it exemplifies much of the impetus of the
Genographic Project.

"The shared marker was identified because a focused effort was made to
sample specific populations, going after populations like the Hazara, who
have this oral history and want to test it to see if it's true," Wells said.

"In addition, the people in the region had lived there for centuries, and
enough samples were collected to do an analysis. The indigenous groups
participated because the wanted their stories told."

Public Participation

The Genographic Project is designed to tell everyone's story, though, not
just the stories of indigenous cultures. What is unique about this project
is the extent to which it relies on public participation.

"Most research happens through the hands of researchers, and the public at
large gets to hear about it and learn about it on occasion, but there isn't
a way for them to participate. This project is actually inviting individuals
all over the world to be sort of associate researchers," Royyuru said.
"Success is actually going to be determined by how many and how diverse the
people are that participate, which is a fascinating thing."

The DNA data being collected places a person in a "haplogroup"‹a lineage or
branch on the human family tree that is defined by a set of genetic markers.
Haplogroup R, for instance, is identified by a y chromosome mutation known
as M173. Roughly 70 percent of English men have this lineage, 95 percent of
Spanish men, and 95 percent of Irish men.

"The reason a lot of western Europeans have it is because it defines an
expansion in the end of the last ice age as people moved north out of Iberia
[ancient Spain]," Wells said. "The cool thing is that the penultimate
marker‹if you go back one step from M173‹is M45, which arose in Central
Asia, so it tells you about this journey your ancestors took through the
steppes of Central Asia hunting mammoths and so on. Before that they were
down in the Middle East."

The Middle Eastern marker, M89, represents a wave of migration out of Africa
that occurred around 45,000 years ago. The Haplogroup R lineage ultimately
traces all the way back to marker M168.

"Every non-African has M168, which appeared in eastern Africa around 60,000
years ago," Wells said.

"Some geographies have been better studied than others," Royyuru said. "In
Europe we have a much better understanding of the genotypic diversity that
exists and how that population happens to be so diverse‹who came from where
at what point in time. That is not the case with a large majority of Asia
and Africa. There is certainly some understanding of the possible waves of
migration and the routes that people might have traveled to populate North
and South America, but even those are not definitive."

Should you want to get an idea of your own origins, National Geographic is
selling kits that allow an individual to take a cheek swab, send it to a
laboratory in Arizona, and then track the information on the Genographic
Project Web site:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic

The kits will sell for U.S. $99.95 plus shipping and handling. The net
proceeds from sales of the kits will fund additional research and the Legacy
Project, which will aid indigenous cultures.

Legacy and Controversy

"The three main pillars of the project are field research, public
participation and communication, and the Legacy Project," Wells said. "We
see this as a collaborative effort with the indigenous populations."

The Legacy Project will provide indigenous groups participating in the
Genographic Project with direct help through development projects,
education, and public-awareness campaigns aimed at preserving traditional
cultures.

The idea of creating the world's largest DNA database and collecting blood
samples from indigenous groups could raise objections.

Genographic was specifically designed to dispel many of these concerns. The
kits are designed so that there's no way to tie a kit's identification
number to a specific individual.

Wells emphasizes the public nature of the project.

"We want this to be a very open project. We want to tell the public what it
is we're doing, the goals, the methods, and we want to explain the results,"
Wells said. "We're not doing anything medically relevant, not patenting
anything," he added.

"We see this as information that's part of the [common heritage] of our
species. It's going to be released into the public domain, and people can go
back and reanalyze it and query it and learn about it. We're hoping to
create a virtual museum of human history."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Current Members: 1721

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THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS
by David Myers
Yes! Magazine
Summer 2004 Issue

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=866

What is the good life? The old American Dream offers an answer: It's
individually achieved affluence. It's the indulgences promised by magazine
sweepstakes: a 40-foot yacht, a deluxe motor home, a personal housekeeper.
("Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right," proclaims
a Lexus ad.) In a phrase, it's life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness.

Does money indeed buy happiness? Few YES! readers would answer yes. But ask
another question -- "Would a little more money make you a little happier? --
and many readers will sheepishly nod. There is, we assume, a connection
between fiscal fitness and feeling fine, an assumption that feeds what
Juliet Schor has called the "cycle of work and spend" -- working more to buy
more. According to one 1990s Gallup Poll, one in two women, two in three
men, and four in five people earning more than $75,000 a year say they would
like to be richer.

But we delude ourselves. The good life springs less from earning one's first
million than from loving and being loved, from developing the traits that
mark happy lives, from finding connection and meaningful hope in faith
communities, and from experiencing "flow" in work and recreation.

Rising materialism

Materialism surged during the 1970s and 1980s, as evident in the annual
UCLA/American Council on Education (ACE) survey of nearly a quarter million
entering collegians. The proportion considering it "very important or
essential" that they become "very well-off financially" skyrocketed from 40
to 74 percent, flip-flopping with the shrinking numbers who considered it
very important or essential to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life."
Materialism was up, spirituality down.

What a change in values. In the recent UCLA/ACE surveys, "very well-off
financially" has been the top ranked of 19 rated goals, outranking "becoming
an authority in my own field," "helping others in difficulty," and "raising
a family." And it's not just collegians. Asked by Roper pollsters to
identify what makes "the good life," 38 percent of Americans in 1975 and 63
percent in 1996 chose "a lot of money."

In Luxury Fever, economist Robert Frank reports that, with more people
having more money to spend, late-1990s spending on luxury goods was growing
four times as fast as overall spending. Thousand-dollar-a-night suites at
the Palm Beach Four Seasons Hotel were booked months ahead for weddings, as
were $5000-a-night suites at Aspen. The number of America's 100-foot yachts
doubled to 5,000 compared to a decade ago, and each may cost more than
$10,000 per hour of use. Cars costing more than $30,000 (in 1996 dollars)
increased during the 1990s from 7 to 12 percent of vehicles sold.

Does such unsustainable consumption enable the good life? Does being
well-off make for well-being? Would people -- would you -- be happier if you
could exchange a modest lifestyle for one with a world-class home
entertainment system, winter skiing from your condo along the Aspen slopes,
and being wined and dined on executive class travel? Social psychology
theory and research offer some clear answers.

Are rich people happier?

To a modest extent, yes, rich people are happier. Especially in poor
countries, such as India, being relatively well-off does make for greater
well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, and some sense of control over our
lives.

But in affluent countries, the link between wealth and self-reported
well-being is "surprisingly weak," notes researcher Ronald Inglehart. Once
able to afford life's necessities, more and more money provides diminishing
additional returns.

"People who go to work in their overalls and on the bus are just as happy,
on the average, as those in suits who drive to work in their own Mercedes,"
observes David Lykken, summarizing his own studies of happiness. Even the
very rich -- for example, the Forbes 100 wealthiest Americans in a 1980s
survey by psychologist Ed Diener and his colleagues -- are only slightly
happier than average.

Over time, does our happiness rise with our affluence? A recent windfall
from an inheritance, a surging economy, or a lottery win does provide a
temporary jolt of joy. But as soon as one adapts to the new wealth, the
euphoria subsides.

If personal happiness does not enduringly rise with our rising personal
affluence, does a rising economic tide lift our collective happiness? Are we
happier than in 1957, when economist John Galbraith was describing the
United States as The Affluent Society?

Compared to then, today's America is the doubly affluent society -- with
doubled real incomes (thanks partly to the doubling of married women's
employment) and double what money buys. Americans today own about twice as
many cars per person, eat out more than twice as often, and commonly enjoy
big screen color TVs, microwave ovens, home computers, air conditioning,
Post-it notes, and gobs of other goodies. Materially, these are the best of
times.

So, believing that it is "very important" to be very well-off financially,
and having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over four
decades, are we now happier?

We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are "very
happy" has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich
and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide
rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are
plagued by depression.

I have called this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit "the American
paradox." More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding
ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale,
secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living
but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but
yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In
an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger.

These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better
off materially has not made us better off psychologically. In the U.S.,
Europe, and Japan, affluence has not purchased the good life. The conclusion
startles because it challenges modern materialism: Economic growth in
affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to human morale.

It is further striking that those who strive most for wealth tend to live
with lower well-being, a finding that "comes through very strongly in every
culture I've looked at," reports psychologist Richard Ryan.

In The High Price of Materialism, Ryan's research collaborator, Tim Kasser,
concludes that those who instead strive for intimacy, personal growth, and
contribution to the community enjoy a higher quality of life. This concurs
with those from an earlier survey of 800 college alumni, which found that
those with "Yuppie values" -- those who preferred a high income and
occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close
marriage -- were twice as likely as their other former classmates to
describe themselves as "fairly" or "very" unhappy.

Pause a moment and think: What's the most satisfying event that you have
experienced in the last month? Psychologist Kennon Sheldon and his
colleagues put that question to samples of university students. Then they
asked the students to rate the extent to which 10 different needs were met
by the satisfying event. What were the three emotional needs that most
strongly accompanied that satisfaction? They were self-esteem, relatedness
(feeling connected with others), and autonomy (feeling in control). At the
bottom of the list of satisfaction-predicting factors was money and luxury.

A study by Ed Diener and Martin Seligman confirms that very happy university
students are distinguished not by their money but by their "rich and
satisfying close relationships." The good life is not primarily about money
and consumption.

A new American dream

If materialistic strivings do not entail the good life, then we can ask,
what's the point of luxury fever? "Why," wondered the Old Testament prophet
Isaiah, "do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor
for that which does not satisfy?" What's the point of accumulating stacks of
unplayed CD's, closets full of seldom worn clothes, three-car garages with
luxury cars -- all purchased in a vain quest for an elusive joy? And what's
the point of leaving significant inherited wealth to one's heirs, as if it
could bring them happiness, rather than applying it to a hurting world?

Ronald Inglehart, a social scientist who follows world values surveys, has
discerned the beginnings of a subsiding of materialism and signs of a new
generation maturing with increasing concern for personal relationships, the
integrity of nature, and the meaning of life (or the "search for spiritual
moorings," as George Gallup has called it).

If affluence and materialism are not major ingredients for the good life,
research indicates those that are:

- Close, supportive relationships. We humans have what today's social
psychologists call a deep "need to belong." Those supported by intimate
friendships or a committed marriage are much likelier to declare themselves
"very happy."

- Faith communities. Connection, meaning, and deep hope are often nourished
in congregations. In National Opinion Research Center surveys of 42,000
Americans since 1972, 26 percent of those rarely or never attending
religious services declared themselves very happy, as did 47 percent of
those attending multiple times weekly.

- Positive traits. Optimism, self-esteem, and perceived control over one's
life are among the traits that mark happy experiences and happy lives. Happy
people typically report feeling an "internal locus of control" -- they feel
empowered. When deprived of control over one's life -- an experience studied
in prisoners, nursing home patients, and people living under totalitarian
regimes -- people suffer lower morale and worse health. Severe poverty
demoralizes when it erodes people's sense of control over their life
circumstances.

- Flow. Work and leisure experiences that engage one's skills also enable
the good life. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and
the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, lies a zone in which people
experience flow -- an optimal state in which, absorbed in an activity, they
lose consciousness of self and time. Flow theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
found people reporting their greatest enjoyment not when mindlessly passive,
but when unself-consciously absorbed in a mindful challenge. Most people are
happier gardening than power-boating, talking to friends than watching TV.
Low consumption recreations prove satisfying.

Sustainable joy

All this is good news. Those things that make for the genuinely good life --
close relationships, a hope-filled faith, positive traits, engaging activity
-- are enduringly sustainable. As Jigme Singye Wangchuk, King of Bhutan,
observes, "Gross national happiness is more important than gross national
product."

Fulfilling a new vision of an American dream need not romanticize poverty or
destroy our market economy. But it will require our seasoning prosperity
with purpose, capital with compassion, and enterprise with equity. Such a
transformation in consciousness has happened before; today's thinking about
race, gender, and the environment are radically changed from a half century
ago. And it could happen again.

............

Hope College social psychologist David Myers is author of The Pursuit of
Happiness (Avon) and The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of
Plenty (Yale).

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Current Members: 1721

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

HUMAN EVOLUTION AT THE CROSSROADS
GENETICS, CYBERNETICS COMPLICATE FORECAST FOR SPECIES
By Alan Boyle
MSNBC
May 2, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7103668/

Scientists are fond of running the evolutionary clock backward, using DNA
analysis and the fossil record to figure out when our ancestors stood erect
and split off from the rest of the primate evolutionary tree.

But the clock is running forward as well. So where are humans headed?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says it's the question he's most
often asked, and "a question that any prudent evolutionist will evade." But
the question is being raised even more frequently as researchers study our
past and contemplate our future.

Paleontologists say that anatomically modern humans may have at one time
shared the Earth with as many as three other closely related types --
Neanderthals, Homo erectus and the dwarf hominids whose remains were
discovered last year in Indonesia.

Does evolutionary theory allow for circumstances in which "spin-off" human
species could develop again?

Some think the rapid rise of genetic modification could be just such a
circumstance. Others believe we could blend ourselves with machines in
unprecedented ways -- turning natural-born humans into an endangered
species.

Present-day fact, not science fiction

Such ideas may sound like little more than science-fiction plot lines. But
trend-watchers point out that we're already wrestling with real-world
aspects of future human development, ranging from stem-cell research to the
implantation of biocompatible computer chips. The debates are likely to
become increasingly divisive once all the scientific implications sink in.

"These issues touch upon religion, upon politics, upon values," said Gregory
Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the
University of California at Los Angeles. "This is about our vision of the
future, essentially, and we'll never completely agree about those things."

The problem is, scientists can't predict with precision how our species will
adapt to changes over the next millennium, let alone the next million years.
That's why Dawkins believes it's imprudent to make a prediction in the first
place.

Others see it differently: In the book "Future Evolution," University of
Washington paleontologist Peter Ward argues that we are making ourselves
virtually extinction-proof by bending Earth's flora and fauna to our will.
And assuming that the human species will be hanging around for at least
another 500 million years, Ward and others believe there are a few most
likely scenarios for the future, based on a reading of past evolutionary
episodes and current trends.

Where are humans headed? Here's an imprudent assessment of five possible
paths, ranging from homogenized humans to alien-looking hybrids bred for
interstellar travel.

Unihumans: Will we all be assimilated?

Biologists say that different populations of a species have to be isolated
from each other in order for those populations to diverge into separate
species. That's the process that gave rise to 13 different species of
"Darwin's Finches" in the Galapagos Islands. But what if the human species
is so widespread there's no longer any opening for divergence?

Evolution is still at work. But instead of diverging, our gene pool has been
converging for tens of thousands of years -- and Stuart Pimm, an expert on
biodiversity at Duke University, says that trend may well be accelerating.

"The big thing that people overlook when speculating about human evolution
is that the raw matter for evolution is variation," he said. "We are going
to lose that variability very quickly, and the reason is not quite a genetic
argument, but it's close. At the moment we humans speak something on the
order of 6,500 languages. If we look at the number of languages we will
likely pass on to our children, that number is 600."

Cultural diversity, as measured by linguistic diversity, is fading as human
society becomes more interconnected globally, Pimm argued. "I do think that
we are going to become much more homogeneous," he said.

Ken Miller, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University, agreed: "We have
become a kind of animal monoculture."

Is that such a bad thing? A global culture of Unihumans could seem heavenly
if we figure out how to achieve long-term political and economic stability
and curb population growth. That may require the development of a more
"domesticated" society -- one in which our rough genetic edges are smoothed
out.

But like other monocultures, our species could be more susceptible to
quick-spreading diseases, as last year's bird flu epidemic illustrated.

"The genetic variability that we have protects us against suffering from
massive harm when some bug comes along," Pimm said. "This idea of breeding
the super-race, like breeding the super-race of corn or rice or whatever --
the long-term consequences of that could be quite scary."

Environmental pressures wouldn't stop

Even a Unihuman culture would have to cope with evolutionary pressures from
the environment, the University of Washington's Peter Ward said.

Some environmentalists say toxins that work like estrogens are already
having an effect: Such agents, found in pesticides and industrial PCBs, have
been linked to earlier puberty for women, increased incidence of breast
cancer and lower sperm counts for men.

"One of the great frontiers is going to be trying to keep humans alive in a
much more toxic world," he observed from his Seattle office. "The whales of
Puget Sound are the most toxic whales on Earth. Puget Sound is just a huge
cesspool. Well, imagine if that goes global."

Global epidemics or dramatic environmental changes represent just two of the
scenarios that could cause a Unihuman society to crack, putting natural
selection -- or perhaps not-so-natural selection -- back into the
evolutionary game. Then what?

Survivalistians: Coping with doomsday

Surviving doomsday is a story as old as Noah's Ark, and as new as the
post-bioapocalypse movie "28 Days Later."

Catastrophes ranging from super-floods to plagues to nuclear war to asteroid
strikes erase civilization as we know it, leaving remnants of humanity who
go their own evolutionary ways.

The classic Darwinian version of the story may well be H.G. Wells' "The Time
Machine," in which humanity splits off into two species: the ruthless,
underground Morlock and the effete, surface-dwelling Eloi.

At least for modern-day humans, the forces that lead to species spin-offs
have been largely held in abeyance: Populations are increasingly in contact
with each other, leading to greater gene-mixing. Humans are no longer
threatened by predators their own size, and medicine cancels out inherited
infirmities ranging from hemophilia to nearsightedness.

"We are helping genes that would have dropped out of the gene pool,"
paleontologist Peter Ward observed.

But in Wells' tale and other science-fiction stories, a
civilization-shattering catastrophe serves to divide humanity into separate
populations, vulnerable once again to selection pressures. For example,
people who had more genetic resistance to viral disease would be more likely
to pass on that advantage to their descendants.

If different populations develop in isolation over many thousands of
generations, it's conceivable that separate species would emerge. For
example, that virus-resistant strain of post-humans might eventually thrive
in the wake of a global bioterror crisis, while less hardy humans would find
themselves quarantined in the world's safe havens.

Patterns in the spread of the virus that causes AIDS may hint at earlier,
less catastrophic episodes of natural selection, said Stuart Pimm, a
conservation biologist at Duke University: "There are pockets of people who
don't seem to become HIV-positive, even though they have a lot of exposure
to the virus -- and that may be because their ancestors survived the plague
500 years ago."

Evolution, or devolution?

If the catastrophe ever came, could humanity recover? In science fiction,
that's an intriguingly open question. For example, Stephen Baxter's novel
"Evolution" foresees an environmental-military meltdown so severe that, over
the course of 30 million years, humans devolve into separate species of
eyeless mole-men, neo-apes and elephant-people herded by their super-rodent
masters.

Even Ward gives himself a little speculative leeway in his book "Future
Evolution," where a time-traveling human meets his doom 10 million years
from now at the hands -- or in this case, the talons -- of a flock of
intelligent killer crows. But Ward finds it hard to believe that even a
global catastrophe would keep human populations isolated long enough for our
species to split apart.

"Unless we totally forget how to build a boat, we can quickly come back,"
Ward said.

Even in the event of a post-human split-off, evolutionary theory dictates
that one species would eventually subjugate, assimilate or eliminate their
competitors for the top job in the global ecosystem. Just ask the
Neanderthals.

"If you have two species competing over the same ecological niche, it ends
badly for one of them, historically," said Joel Garreau, the author of the
forthcoming book "Radical Evolution."

The only reason chimpanzees still exist today is that they "had the brains
to stay up in the trees and not come down into the open grasslands," he
noted.

"You have this optimistic view that you're not going to see speciation
(among humans), and I desperately hope that's right," Garreau said. "But
that's not the only scenario."

Numans: Rise of the superhumans

We've already seen the future of enhanced humans, and his name is Barry
Bonds.

The controversy surrounding the San Francisco Giants slugger, and whether
steroids played a role in the bulked-up look that he and other baseball
players have taken on, is only a foretaste of what's coming as scientists
find new genetic and pharmacological ways to improve performance.

Developments in the field are coming so quickly that social commentator Joel
Garreau argues that they represent a new form of evolution. This radical
kind of evolution moves much more quickly than biological evolution, which
can take millions of years, or even cultural evolution, which works on a
scale of hundreds or thousands of years.

How long before this new wave of evolution spawns a new kind of human? "Try
20 years," Garreau told MSNBC.com.

In his latest book, "Radical Evolution," Garreau reels off a litany of
high-tech enhancements, ranging from steroid Supermen, to camera-equipped
flying drones, to pills that keep soldiers going without sleep or food for
days.

"If you look at the superheroes of the '30s and the '40s, just about all of
the technologies they had exist today," he said.

Three kinds of humans

Such enhancements are appearing first on the athletic field and the
battlefield, Garreau said, but eventually they'll make their way to the
collegiate scene, the office scene and even the dating scene.

"You're talking about three different kinds of humans: the enhanced, the
naturals and the rest," Garreau said. "The enhanced are defined as those who
have the money and enthusiasm to make themselves live longer, be smarter,
look sexier. That's what you're competing against."

In Garreau's view of the world, the naturals will be those who eschew
enhancements for higher reasons, just as vegetarians forgo meat and
fundamentalists forgo what they see as illicit pleasures. Then there's all
the rest of us, who don't get enhanced only because they can't. "They loathe
and despise the people who do, and they also envy them," Garreau said.

Scientists acknowledge that some of the medical enhancements on the horizon
could engender a "have vs. have not" attitude.

"But I could be a smart ass and ask how that's different from what we have
now," said Brown University's Ken Miller.

Medical advances as equalizers

Miller went on to point out that in the past, "advances in medical science
have actually been great levelers of social equality." For example, age-old
scourges such as smallpox and polio have been eradicated, thanks to public
health efforts in poorer as well as richer countries. That trend is likely
to continue as scientists learn more about the genetic roots of disease, he
said.

"In terms of making genetic modifications to ourselves, it's much more
likely we'll start to tinker with genes for disease susceptibility. Š Maybe
there would be a long-term health project to breed HIV-resistant people," he
said.

When it comes to discussing ways to enhance humans, rather than simply make
up for disabilities, the traits targeted most often are longevity and
memory. Scientists have already found ways to enhance those traits in mice.

Imagine improvements that could keep you in peak working condition past the
age of 100. Those are the sorts of enhancements you might want to pass on to
your descendants -- and that could set the stage for reproductive isolation
and an eventual species split-off.

"In that scenario, why would you want your kid to marry somebody who would
not pass on the genes that allowed your grandchildren to have longevity,
too?" the University of Washington's Peter Ward asked.

But that would require crossing yet another technological and ethical
frontier.

Instant superhumans -- or monsters?

To date, genetic medicine has focused on therapies that work on only one
person at a time. The effects of those therapies aren't carried on to future
generations. For example, if you take muscle-enhancing drugs, or even
undergo gene therapy for bigger muscles, that doesn't mean your children
will have similarly big muscles.

In order to make an enhancement inheritable, you'd have to have new code
spliced into your germline stem cells -- creating an ethical controversy of
transcendent proportions.

Tinkering with the germline could conceivably produce a superhuman species
in a single generation -- but could also conceivably create a race of
monsters. "It is totally unpredictable," Ward said. "It's a lot easier to
understand evolutionary happenstance."

Even then, there are genetic traits that are far more difficult to produce
than big muscles or even super-longevity -- for instance, the very trait
that defines us as humans.

"It's very, very clear that intelligence is a pretty subtle thing, and it's
clear that we don't have a single gene that turns it on or off," Miller
said.

When it comes to intelligence, some scientists say, the most likely route to
our future enhancement -- and perhaps our future competition as well -- just
might come from our own machines.

Cyborgs: Merging with the machines

Will intelligent machines be assimilated, or will humans be eliminated?

Until a few years ago, that question was addressed only in science-fiction
plot lines, but today the rapid pace of cybernetic change has led some
experts to worry that artificial intelligence may outpace Homo sapiens'
natural smarts.

The pace of change is often stated in terms of Moore's Law, which says that
the number of transistors packed into a square inch should double every 18
months. "Moore's Law is now on its 30th doubling. We have never seen that
sort of exponential increase before in human history," said Joel Garreau,
author of the book "Radical Evolution."

In some fields, artificial intelligence has already bested humans -- with
Deep Blue's 1997 victory over world chess champion Garry Kasparov providing
a vivid example.

Three years later, computer scientist Bill Joy argued in an influential
Wired magazine essay that we would soon face challenges from intelligent
machines as well as from other technologies ranging from weapons of mass
destruction to self-replicating nanoscale "gray goo."

Joy speculated that a truly intelligent robot may arise by the year 2030.
"And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot
species -- to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself,"
he wrote.

Assimilating the robots

To others, it seems more likely that we could become part-robot ourselves:
We're already making machines that can be assimilated -- including
prosthetic limbs, mechanical hearts, cochlear implants and artificial
retinas. Why couldn't brain augmentation be added to the list?

"The usual suggestions are that we'll design improvements to ourselves,"
said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. "We'll put
additional chips in our head, and we won't get lost, and we'll be able to do
all those math problems that used to befuddle us."

Shostak, who writes about the possibilities for cybernetic intelligence in
his book "Sharing the Universe," thinks that's likely to be a transitional
step at best.

"My usual response is that, well, you can improve horses by putting
four-cylinder engines in them. But eventually you can do without the horse
part," he said. "These hybrids just don't strike me as having a tremendous
advantage. It just means the machines aren't good enough."

Back to biology

University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward also believes
human-machine hybrids aren't a long-term option, but for different reasons.

"When you talk to people in the know, they think cybernetics will become
biology," he said. "So you're right back to biology, and the easiest way to
make changes is by manipulating genomes."

It's hard to imagine that robots would ever be given enough free rein to
challenge human dominance, but even if they did break free, Shostak has no
fear of a "Terminator"-style battle for the planet.

"I've got a couple of goldfish, and I don't wake up in the morning and say,
'I'm gonna kill these guys.' Š I just leave 'em alone," Shostak said. "I
suspect the machines would very quickly get to a level where we were kind of
irrelevant, so I don't fear them. But it does mean that we're no longer No.
1 on the planet, and we've never had that happen before."

Astrans: Turning into an alien race

If humans survive long enough, there's one sure way to grow new branches on
our evolutionary family tree: by spreading out to other planets.

Habitable worlds beyond Earth could be a 23rd century analog to the
Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin's evolutionary laboratory: just barely
close enough for travelers to get to, but far enough away that there'd be
little gene-mixing with the parent species.

"If we get off to the stars, then yes, we will have speciation," said
University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward. "But can we ever get off
the Earth?"

Currently, the closest star system thought to have a planet is Epsilon
Eridani, 10.5 light-years away. Even if spaceships could travel at 1 percent
the speed of light -- an incredible 6.7 million mph -- it would take more
than a millennium to get there.

Even Mars might be far enough: If humans established a permanent settlement
there, the radically different living conditions would change the
evolutionary equation. For example, those who are born and raised in
one-third of Earth's gravity could never feel at home on the old "home
planet." It wouldn't take long for the new Martians to become a breed apart.

As for distant stars, the SETI Institute's Seth Shostak has already been
thinking through the possibilities:

- Build a big ark: Build a spaceship big enough to carry an entire
civilization to the destination star system. The problem is, that
environment might be just too unnatural for natural humans. "If you talk to
the sociologists, they'll say that it will not work. Š You'll be lucky if
anybody's still alive after the third generation," Shostak said.

- Go to warp speed: Somehow we discover a wormhole or find a way to travel
at relativistic speeds. "That sounds OK, except for the fact that nobody
knows how to do it," Shostak said.

- Enter the Astrans: Humans are genetically engineered to tolerate ultra
long-term hibernation aboard robotic ships. Once the ship reaches its
destination, these "Astrans" are awakened to start the work of settling a
new world. "That's one possibility," Shostak said.

The ultimate approach would be to send the instructions for making humans
rather than the humans themselves, Shostak said.

"We're not going to put anything in a rocket, we're just going to beam
ourselves to the stars," he explained. "The only trouble is, if there's
nobody on the other end to put you back together, there's no point."

So are we back to square one? Not necessarily, Shostak said. Setting up the
receivers on other stars is no job for a human, "but the machines could make
it work."

In fact, if any other society is significantly further along than ours, such
a network might be up and running by now. "The machines really could develop
large tracts of galactic real estate, whereas it's really hard for biology
to travel," Shostak said.

It all seems inconceivable, but if humans really are extinction-proof -- if
they manage to survive global catastrophes, genetic upheavals and cybernetic
challenges -- who's to say what will be inconceivable millions of years from
now? Two intelligent species, human and machine, just might work together to
spread life through the universe.

"If you were sufficiently motivated," Shostak said, "you could in fact keep
it going forever."

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INVENTING OUR EVOLUTION
WE'RE ALMOST ABLE TO BUILD BETTER HUMAN BEINGS. BUT ARE WE READY?
By Joel Garreau
Washington Post
Monday, May 16, 2005; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051501
092_pf.html

The surge of innovation that has given the world everything from iPods to
talking cars is now turning inward, to our own minds and bodies. In an
adaptation from his new book, Washington Post staff writer Joel Garreau
looks at the impact of the new technology.

Some changes in what it means to be human:

· Matthew Nagel, 25, can move objects with his thoughts. The paralyzed
former high school football star, whose spinal cord was severed in a
stabbing incident, has a jack coming out of the right side of his skull.
Sensors in his brain can read his neurons as they fire. These are connected
via computer to a robotic hand. When he thinks about moving his hand, the
artificial thumb and forefinger open and close. Researchers hope this
technology will, within our lifetimes, allow the wheelchair-bound to walk.
The military hopes it will allow pilots to fly jets using their minds.

· Around the country, companies such as Memory Pharmaceuticals, Sention,
Helicon Therapeutics, Saegis Pharmaceuticals and Cortex Pharmaceuticals are
racing to bring memory-enhancing drugs to market before the end of this
decade. If clinical trials continue successfully, these pills could be a
bigger pharmaceutical bonanza than Viagra. Not only do they hold the promise
of banishing the senior moments of aging baby boomers; they might improve
the SAT scores of kids by 200 points or more.

· At the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, programs seek to modify the metabolisms of
soldiers so as to allow them to function efficiently without sleep or even
food for as much as a week. For shorter periods, they might even be able to
survive without oxygen. Another program seeks to allow soldiers to stop
bleeding by focusing their thoughts on the wound. Yet another program is
investigating ways to allow veterans to regrow blown-off arms and legs, like
salamanders.

Traditionally, human technologies have been aimed outward, to control our
environment, resulting in, for example, clothing, agriculture, cities and
airplanes. Now, however, we have started aiming our technologies inward. We
are transforming our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities
and our progeny. Serious people, including some at the National Science
Foundation in Arlington, consider such modification of what it means to be
human to be a radical evolution -- one that we direct ourselves. They expect
it to be in full flower in the next 10 to 20 years.

"The next frontier," says Gregory Stock, director of the Program on
Medicine, Technology and Society at the UCLA School of Medicine, "is our own
selves."

The process has already begun. Prozac and its ilk modify personality. Viagra
alters metabolism. You can see deep change in the basics of biology most
clearly, however, wherever you find the keenest competition. Sport is a good
example.

"The current doping agony," says John Hoberman, a University of Texas
authority on performance drugs, "is a kind of very confused referendum on
the future of human enhancement." Some athletes today look grotesque. Curt
Schilling, the All-Star pitcher, in 2002 talked to Sports Illustrated about
the major leagues. "Guys out there look like Mr. Potato Head, with a head
and arms and six or seven body parts that just don't look right."

Steroids are merely a primitive form of human enhancement, however. H. Lee
Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that the recent Athens
Olympics may have been the last without genetically enhanced athletes. His
researchers have created super-muscled "Schwarzenegger rats." They're built
like steers, with necks wider than their heads. They live longer and recover
more quickly from injuries than do their unenhanced comrades. Sweeney sees
it as only a matter of time before such technology seeps into the sports
world.

Human enhancement is hardly limited to sport. In 2003, President Bush signed
a $3.7 billion bill to fund research at the molecular level that could lead
to medical robots traveling the human bloodstream to fight cancer or fat
cells. At the University of Pennsylvania, ordinary male mouse embryo cells
are being transformed into egg cells. If this science works in humans, it
could open the way for two gay males to make a baby -- blurring the standard
model of parenthood. In 2004, a new technology for the first time allowed
women to beat the biological clock. Portions of their ovaries, frozen when
they are young and fertile, can be reimplanted in their sixties, seventies
or eighties, potentially allowing them to bear children then.

The genetic, robotic and nano-technologies creating such dramatic change are
accelerating as quickly as has information technology for the past four
decades. The rapid development of all these fields is intertwined.

It was in 1965 that Gordon E. Moore, director of Fairchild's Research and
Development Laboratories, noted, in an article for the 35th-anniversary
issue of Electronics magazine, that the complexity of "minimum cost
semiconductor components" had been doubling every year since the first
prototype microchip was produced six years before. And he predicted this
doubling would continue every year for the next 10 years.

Carver Mead, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, would
come to christen this claim "Moore's Law."

Over time it has been modified. As the core faith of the entire global
computer industry, it is now stated this way: The power of information
technology will double every 18 months, for as far as the eye can see.

Sure enough, in 2002, the 27th doubling occurred right on schedule with a
billion-transistor chip. A doubling is an amazing thing. It means the next
step is as great as all the previous steps put together. Twenty-seven
consecutive doublings of anything man-made, an increase of well over 100
million times-- especially in so short a period -- is unprecedented in human
history.

This is exponential change. It's a curve that goes straight up.

Optimists say that culture and values can control the impact of these
advances.

"You have to make a distinction between the science and the technological
applications," says Francis Fukuyama, a member of the President's Council on
Bioethics and director of the Human Biotechnology Governance Project. "It's
probably true that in terms of the basic science, it's pretty hard to stop
that. It's not one guy in a laboratory somewhere. But not everything that is
scientifically possible will actually be technologically implemented and
used on a large scale. In the case of human cloning, there's an abstract
possibility that people will want to do that, but the number of people who
are going to want to take the risk is going to be awfully small."

Taboos will play an important role, Fukuyama says. "We could really speed up
the whole process of drug improvement if we did not have all the rules on
human experimentation. If companies were allowed to use clinical trials in
Third World countries, paying a lot of poor people to take risks that you
wouldn't take in a developed country, we could speed up technology quickly.
But because of the Holocaust -- "

Fukuyama thinks the school of hard knocks will slow down a lot of attempts.
"People may in the abstract say that they're willing to take that risk. But
the moment you have a deformed baby born as a result of someone trying to do
some genetic modification, I think there will be a really big backlash
against it."

Today, nonetheless, we are surrounded by the practical effects of this curve
of exponential technological change. IBM this year fired up a new machine
called Blue Gene/L. It is ultimately expected to be 1,000 times as powerful
as Deep Blue, the machine that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in
1997. "If this computer unlocks the mystery of how proteins fold, it will be
an important milestone in the future of medicine and health care," said Paul
M. Horn, senior vice president of IBM Research, when the project was
announced.

Proteins control all cellular processes in the body. They fold into highly
complex, three-dimensional shapes that determine their function. Even the
slightest change in the folding process can turn a desirable protein into an
agent of disease. Blue Gene/L is intended to investigate how. Thus,
breakthroughs in computers today are creating breakthroughs in biology. "One
day, you're going to be able to walk into a doctor's office and have a
computer analyze a tissue sample, identify the pathogen that ails you, and
then instantly prescribe a treatment best suited to your specific illness
and individual genetic makeup," Horn said.

What's remarkable, then, is not this computer's speed but our ability to use
it to open new vistas in entirely different fields -- in this case, the
ability to change how our bodies work at the most basic level. This is
possible because at a thousand trillion operations per second, this computer
might have something approaching the raw processing power of the human
brain.

Nathan Myhrvold, the former technology chief of Microsoft, points out that
it cost $12 billion to sequence the first human genome. You will soon be
able to get your own done for $10, he expects.

If an implant in a paralyzed man's head can read his thoughts, if genes can
be manipulated into better versions of themselves, the line between the
engineered and the born begins to blur.

For example, in Silicon Valley, there is a biotech company called Rinat
Neuroscience. DARPA provided critical early funding for its "pain vaccine,"
a substance designed to block intense pain in less than 10 seconds. Its
effects last for 30 days. Tests show it doesn't stifle reactions. If you
touch a hot stove, your hand will still automatically jerk away. But after
that, the torment is greatly reduced. The product works on the inflammatory
response that is responsible for the majority of subacute pain. If you get
shot, you feel the bullet, but after that, the inflammation and swelling
that trigger agony are substantially reduced. The company is deep into
animal testing, is preparing reports for scientific conferences, and has now
attracted venture capital funding.

Another DARPA program, originally christened Regenesis, started with the
observation that if you cut off the tail of a tadpole, the tail will regrow.
If you cut off an appendage of an adult frog, however, it won't, because
certain genetic signals have been switched off. This process is carried out
by a mass of undifferentiated cells called a blastema, also called a
regeneration bud. The bud has the capability to develop into an organ or an
appendage, if it gets the right signals. Early results in mice indicate that
such blastemas might be generated in humans. The program, now called
Restorative Injury Repair, is aimed at allowing regrowth of a blown-off hand
or a breast removed in a mastectomy. (Instances of amputated fingertips
regenerating in children under 12 have long been noted in scientific
journals.) "We had it; we lost it; we need to find it again" was Regenesis's
original slogan. Snooze and Lose?

There are three groups of people usually attracted to any new enhancement.
In order, they are the sick, the otherwise healthy with a critical need, and
the enterprising. This became immediately obvious when a drug called
modafinil entered the market earlier this decade. It is intended to shut off
the urge to sleep, without the jitter, buzz, euphoria, crash, or potential
for paranoid delusion of stimulants such as amphetamines, cocaine or even
caffeine.

The FDA originally approved modafinil for narcoleptics who fall asleep
frequently and uncontrollably. But this widely available prescription drug,
with the trade name Provigil, immediately was tested on healthy young U.S.
Army helicopter pilots. It allowed them to stay up safely for almost two
days while remaining practically as focused, alert and capable of dealing
with complex problems as the well rested. Then, after a good eight hours'
sleep, it turned out they could get up and do it again for another 40 hours,
before finally catching up on their sleep.

But it's the future of the third group -- the millions who, in the immortal
words of Kiss, "wanna rock-and-roll all night and party every day" -- that
holds the potential for changing society. Will people feel that they need to
routinely control their sleep in order to be competitive? Will unenhanced
people get fewer promotions and raises than their modified colleagues? Will
this start an arms race over human consciousness?

Consider the case of a little boy born in Germany at the turn of this
century. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, his
doctors immediately noticed he had unusually large muscles bulging from his
tiny arms and legs. By the time he was 4 1/2 , it was clear that he was
extraordinarily strong. Most children his age can lift about one pound with
each arm. He could hold a seven-pound dumbbell aloft with each outstretched
hand. He is the first human confirmed to have a genetic variation that
builds extraordinary muscles. If the effect can be duplicated, it could
treat or cure muscle-wasting diseases.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals is testing a drug designed to do just that as a
treatment for the most common form of muscular dystrophy. Will athletes try
to exploit the discovery to enhance their abilities?

"Athletes find a way of using just about anything," says Elizabeth M.
McNally of the University of Chicago, who wrote an article accompanying the
findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. "This, unfortunately, is no
exception." Views of the Future

Ray Kurzweil, an artificial-intelligence pioneer and winner of the National
Medal of Technology, shrugs at the controversy over the use of stem cells
from human embryos: "All the political energy that has gone into this issue
-- it is not even slowing down the most narrow approach." It is simply being
pursued outside the United States -- in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore,
Scandinavia and Great Britain, where scientists will probably achieve
success first, he notes.

In the next couple of decades, Kurzweil predicts, life expectancy will rise
to at least 120 years. Most diseases will be prevented or reversed. Drugs
will be individually tailored to a person's DNA. Robots smaller than blood
cells -- nanobots, as they are called -- will be routinely injected by the
millions into people's bloodstreams. They will be used primarily as
diagnostic scouts and patrols, so if anything goes wrong in a person's body,
it can be caught extremely early.

As James Watson, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure
of DNA, famously put it: "No one really has the guts to say it, but if we
could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't
we?"

Gregory Stock of UCLA sees this as the inevitable outcome of the decoding of
the human genome. "We have spent billions to unravel our biology, not out of
idle curiosity, but in the hope of bettering our lives," he said at a 2003
Yale bioethics conference. "We are not about to turn away from this."

Stock sees humanity embracing artificial chromosomes -- rudimentary versions
of which already exist. Right now, the human body has 23 chromosome pairs,
with the chromosomes numbered 1 through 46. Messing with them is tricky --
you never know when you're going to inadvertently step on unanticipated
interactions. By adding a new chromosome pair (Nos. 47 and 48) to the
embryo, however, the possibilities appear endless. Stock, in his book
"Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future," describes it as the
safest way to substantially modify humans because, he says, it would
minimize unintended consequences. On top of that, the chromosome insertion
sites could have an off switch activated by an injection if we wanted to
stop whatever we'd started. This would give future generations a chance to
undo whatever we did.

Stock offers this analysis to counter the argument offered by some
bioethicists that inheritable genetic line engineering should be
unconditionally banned because future generations harmed by wrongful or
unsuccessful modifications would have no control over the matter.

But the very idea of aspiring to such godlike powers is blasphemous to some.
"Genetic engineering," writes Michael J. Sandel, a professor of political
philosophy at Harvard, is "the ultimate expression of our resolve to see
ourselves astride the world, the masters of our nature. But the promise of
mastery is flawed. It threatens to banish our appreciation of life as a
gift, and to leave us with nothing to affirm or behold outside our own
will."

Stock rejects this view. "We should not just accept but embrace the new
technologies, because they're filled with promise," he says. Within a few
years, he writes, "traditional reproduction may begin to seem antiquated, if
not downright irresponsible." His projections, he asserts, are not at all
out of touch with reality.

Adapted from the book "Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing
Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human" by Joel Garreau, to
be published May 17 by Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc. © 2005 by
Joel Garreau. Reprinted with permission.

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11 STEPS TO A BETTER BRAIN
New Scientist Magazine, Issue 2501
May 28, 2005

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18625011.900

It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had -- you
can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties
doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There
are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your
lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and
get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them.

..........

1. SMART DRUGS

Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy
thinking?

Around the age of 40, honest folks may already admit to noticing changes in
their mental abilities. This is the beginning of a gradual decline that in
all too many of us will culminate in full-blown dementia. If it were
possible somehow to reverse it, slow it or mask it, wouldn't you?

A few drugs that might do the job, known as "cognitive enhancement", are
already on the market, and a few dozen others are on the way. Perhaps the
best-known is modafinil. Licensed to treat narcolepsy, the condition that
causes people to suddenly fall asleep, it has notable effects in healthy
people too. Modafinil can keep a person awake and alert for 90 hours
straight, with none of the jitteriness and bad concentration that
amphetamines or even coffee seem to produce.

In fact, with the help of modafinil, sleep-deprived people can perform even
better than their well-rested, unmedicated selves. The forfeited rest
doesn't even need to be made good. Military research is finding that people
can stay awake for 40 hours, sleep the normal 8 hours, and then pull a few
more all-nighters with no ill effects. It's an open secret that many,
perhaps most, prescriptions for modafinil are written not for people who
suffer from narcolepsy, but for those who simply want to stay awake.
Similarly, many people are using Ritalin not because they suffer from
attention deficit or any other disorder, but because they want superior
concentration during exams or heavy-duty negotiations.

The pharmaceutical pipeline is clogged with promising compounds -- drugs
that act on the nicotinic receptors that smokers have long exploited, drugs
that work on the cannabinoid system to block pot-smoking-type effects. Some
drugs have also been specially designed to augment memory. Many of these
look genuinely plausible: they seem to work, and without any major side
effects.

So why aren't we all on cognitive enhancers already? "We need to be careful
what we wish for," says Daniele Piomelli at the University of California at
Irvine. He is studying the body's cannabinoid system with a view to making
memories less emotionally charged in people suffering from post-traumatic
stress disorder. Tinkering with memory may have unwanted effects, he warns.
"Ultimately we may end up remembering things we don't want to."

Gary Lynch, also at UC Irvine, voices a similar concern. He is the inventor
of ampakines, a class of drugs that changes the rules about how a memory is
encoded and how strong a memory trace is -- the essence of learning. But
maybe the rules have already been optimised by evolution, he suggests. What
looks to be an improvement could have hidden downsides.

Still, the opportunity may be too tempting to pass up. The drug acts only in
the brain, claims Lynch. It has a short half-life of hours. Ampakines have
been shown to restore function to severely sleep-deprived monkeys that would
otherwise perform poorly. Preliminary studies in humans are just as
exciting. You could make an elderly person perform like a much younger
person, he says. And who doesn't wish for that?

..........

2. FOOD FOR THOUGHT

You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate
mastermind diet?

Your brain is the greediest organ in your body, with some quite specific
dietary requirements. So it is hardly surprising that what you eat can
affect how you think. If you believe the dietary supplement industry, you
could become the next Einstein just by popping the right combination of
pills. Look closer, however, and it isn't that simple. The savvy consumer
should take talk of brain-boosting diets with a pinch of low-sodium salt.
But if it is possible to eat your way to genius, it must surely be worth a
try.

First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best
fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that
skipping breakfast reduces people's performance at school and at work.

But it isn't simply a matter of getting some calories down. According to
research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary
snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory
and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara
Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted
children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got
tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. Beans are
also a good source of fibre, and other research has shown a link between a
high-fibre diet and improved cognition. If you can't stomach beans before
midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. The yeast
extract is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been
demonstrated in many studies.

A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline,
which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Researchers at Boston University found that when healthy young adults were
given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the
brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low
levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer's disease, and
some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related
memory loss.

A salad packed full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene and vitamins C
and E, should also help keep an ageing brain in tip-top condition by helping
to mop up damaging free radicals. Dwight Tapp and colleagues from the
University of California at Irvine found that a diet high in antioxidants
improved the cognitive skills of 39 ageing beagles -- proving that you can
teach an old dog new tricks.

Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to
face the stresses of the afternoon. That's because yogurt contains the amino
acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine
and noradrenalin, among others. Studies by the US military indicate that
tyrosine becomes depleted when we are under stress and that supplementing
your intake can improve alertness and memory.

Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose
levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed
goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, which contain trans-fatty
acids. These not only pile on the pounds, but are implicated in a slew of
serious mental disorders, from dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder) to autism. Hard evidence for this is still thin on
the ground, but last year researchers at the annual Society for Neuroscience
meeting in San Diego, California, reported that rats and mice raised on the
rodent equivalent of junk food struggled to find their way around a maze,
and took longer to remember solutions to problems they had already solved.

It seems that some of the damage may be mediated through triglyceride, a
cholesterol-like substance found at high levels in rodents fed on
trans-fats. When the researchers gave these rats a drug to bring
triglyceride levels down again, the animals' performance on the memory tasks
improved.

Brains are around 60 per cent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what
should you eat to keep it well oiled? Evidence is mounting in favour of
omega-3 fatty acids, in particular docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. In other
words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food. Not only will it
feed and lubricate a developing brain, DHA also seems to help stave off
dementia. Studies published last year reveal that older mice from a strain
genetically altered to develop Alzheimer's had 70 per cent less of the
amyloid plaques associated with the disease when fed on a high-DHA diet.

Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with
strawberries and blueberries. Rats fed on these fruits have shown improved
coordination, concentration and short-term memory. And even if they don't
work such wonders in people, they still taste fantastic. So what have you
got to lose?

..........

3. THE MOZART EFFECT

Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and
expect to become a genius.

A decade ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of
Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that
listening to Mozart improved people's mathematical and spatial reasoning.
Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than
after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last
year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems
to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in
the brain.

This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental faculties.
But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not everyone who has
looked for the Mozart effect has found it. What's more, even its proponents
tend to think that music boosts brain power simply because it makes
listeners feel better -- relaxed and stimulated at the same time -- and that
a comparable stimulus might do just as well. In fact, one study found that
listening to a story gave a similar performance boost.

There is, however, one way in which music really does make you smarter,
though unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than just selecting
something mellow on your iPod. Music lessons are the key. Six-year-old
children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no
extra instruction, got a 2 to 3-point boost in IQ scores compared with the
others. Similarly, Rauscher found that after two years of music lessons,
pre-school children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who
took computer lessons.

Maybe music lessons exercise a range of mental skills, with their
requirement for delicate and precise finger movements, and listening for
pitch and rhythm, all combined with an emotional dimension. Nobody knows for
sure. Neither do they know whether adults can get the same mental boost as
young children. But, surely, it can't hurt to try.

..........

4. BIONIC BRAINS

If training and tricks seem too much like hard work, some technological
short cuts can boost brain function.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2501/25011901.jpg

............

5. GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT

Put your mind to work in the right way and it could repay you with an
impressive bonus.

Until recently, a person's IQ -- a measure of all kinds of mental
problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal
reasoning -- was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by
genetics. But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called
working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the
intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could
boost your IQ too.

Working memory is the brain's short-term information storage system. It's a
workbench for solving mental problems. For example if you calculate 73 - 6 +
7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work
out the answer. And the amount of information that the working memory can
hold is strongly related to general intelligence.

A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm,
Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory
may grow in response to training. Using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults
before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks
such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five
weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions
associated with this type of memory.

Perhaps more significantly, when the group studied children who had
completed these types of mental workouts, they saw improvement in a range of
cognitive abilities not related to the training, and a leap in IQ test
scores of 8 per cent. It's early days yet, but Klingberg thinks
working-memory training could be a key to unlocking brain power. "Genetics
determines a lot and so does the early gestation period," he says. "On top
of that, there is a few per cent -- we don't know how much -- that can be
improved by training."

...........

6. MEMORY MARVELS

Mind like a sieve? Don't worry. The difference between mere mortals and
memory champs is more method than mental capacity.

An auditorium is filled with 600 people. As they file out, they each tell
you their name. An hour later, you are asked to recall them all. Can you do
it? Most of us would balk at the idea. But in truth we're probably all up to
the task. It just needs a little technique and dedication.

First, learn a trick from the "memonists" who routinely memorise strings of
thousands of digits, entire epic poems, or hundreds of unrelated words. When
Eleanor Maguire from University College London and her colleagues studied
eight front runners in the annual World Memory Championships they did not
find any evidence that these people have particularly high IQs or
differently configured brains. But, while memorising, these people did show
activity in three brain regions that become active during movements and
navigation tasks but are not normally active during simple memory tests.

This may be connected to the fact that seven of them used a strategy in
which they place items to be remembered along a visualised route. To
remember the sequence of an entire pack of playing cards for example, the
champions assign each card an identity, perhaps an object or person, and as
they flick through the cards they can make up a story based on a sequence of
interactions between these characters and objects at sites along a
well-trodden route.

Actors use a related technique: they attach emotional meaning to what they
say. We always remember highly emotional moments better than less
emotionally loaded ones. Professional actors also seem to link words with
movement, remembering action-accompanied lines significantly better than
those delivered while static, even months after a show has closed.

Helga Noice, a psychologist from Elmhurst College in Illinois, and Tony
Noice, an actor, who together discovered this effect, found that non-thesps
can benefit by adopting a similar technique. Students who paired their words
with previously learned actions could reproduce 38 per cent of them after
just 5 minutes, whereas rote learners only managed 14 per cent. The Noices
believe that having two mental representations gives you a better shot at
remembering what you are supposed to say.

Strategy is important in everyday life too, says Barry Gordon from Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Simple things like always putting
your car keys in the same place, writing things down to get them off your
mind, or just deciding to pay attention, can make a big difference to how
much information you retain. And if names are your downfall, try making some
mental associations. Just remember to keep the derogatory ones to yourself.

............

7. SLEEP ON IT

Never underestimate the power of a good night's rest.

Skimping on sleep does awful things to your brain. Planning,
problem-solving, learning, concentration, working memory and alertness all
take a hit. IQ scores tumble. "If you have been awake for 21 hours straight,
your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk," says Sean
Drummond from the University of California, San Diego. And you don't need to
pull an all-nighter to suffer the effects: two or three late nights and
early mornings on the trot have the same effect.

Luckily, it's reversible -- and more. If you let someone who isn't
sleep-deprived have an extra hour or two of shut-eye, they perform much
better than normal on tasks requiring sustained attention, such taking an
exam. And being able to concentrate harder has knock-on benefits for overall
mental performance. "Attention is the base of a mental pyramid," says
Drummond. "If you boost that, you can't help boosting everything above it."

These are not the only benefits of a decent night's sleep. Sleep is when
your brain processes new memories, practises and hones new skills -- and
even solves problems. Say you're trying to master a new video game. Instead
of grinding away into the small hours, you would be better off playing for a
couple of hours, then going to bed. While you are asleep your brain will
reactivate the circuits it was using as you learned the game, rehearse them,
and then shunt the new memories into long-term storage. When you wake up,
hey presto! You will be a better player. The same applies to other skills
such as playing the piano, driving a car and, some researchers claim,
memorising facts and figures. Even taking a nap after training can help,
says Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

There is also some evidence that sleep can help produce moments of
problem-solving insight. The famous story about the Russian chemist Dmitri
Mendeleev suddenly "getting" the periodic table in a dream after a day spent
struggling with the problem is probably true. It seems that sleep somehow
allows the brain to juggle new memories to produce flashes of creative
insight. So if you want to have a eureka moment, stop racking your brains
and get your head down.

...........

8. BODY AND MIND

Physical exercise can boost brain as well as brawn.

It's a dream come true for those who hate studying. Simply walking sedately
for half an hour three times a week can improve abilities such as learning,
concentration and abstract reasoning by 15 per cent. The effects are
particularly noticeable in older people. Senior citizens who walk regularly
perform better on memory tests than their sedentary peers. What's more, over
several years their scores on a variety of cognitive tests show far less
decline than those of non-walkers. Every extra mile a week has measurable
benefits.

It's not only oldies who benefit, however. Angela Balding from the
University of Exeter, UK, has found that schoolchildren who exercise three
or four times a week get higher than average exam grades at age 10 or 11.
The effect is strongest in boys, and while Balding admits that the link may
not be causal, she suggests that aerobic exercise may boost mental powers by
getting extra oxygen to your energy-guzzling brain.

There's another reason why your brain loves physical exercise: it promotes
the growth of new brain cells. Until recently, received wisdom had it that
we are born with a full complement of neurons and produce no new ones during
our lifetime. Fred Gage from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California,
busted that myth in 2000 when he showed that even adults can grow new brain
cells. He also found that exercise is one of the best ways to achieve this.

In mice, at least, the brain-building effects of exercise are strongest in
the hippocampus, which is involved with learning and memory. This also
happens to be the brain region that is damaged by elevated levels of the
stress hormone cortisol. So if you are feeling frazzled, do your brain a
favour and go for a run.

Even more gentle exercise, such as yoga, can do wonders for your brain. Last
year, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported
results from a pilot study in which they considered the mood-altering
ability of different yoga poses. Comparing back bends, forward bends and
standing poses, they concluded that the best way to get a mental lift is to
bend over backwards.

And the effect works both ways. Just as physical exercise can boost the
brain, mental exercise can boost the body. In 2001, researchers at the
Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio asked volunteers to spend just 15
minutes a day thinking about exercising their biceps. After 12 weeks, their
arms were 13 per cent stronger.

..............

9. NUNS ON A RUN

If you don't want senility to interfere with your old age, perhaps you
should seek some sisterly guidance.

The convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame on Good Counsel Hill in
Mankato, Minnesota, might seem an unusual place for a pioneering
brain-science experiment. But a study of its 75 to 107-year-old inhabitants
is revealing more about keeping the brain alive and healthy than perhaps any
other to date. The "Nun study" is a unique collaboration between 678
Catholic sisters recruited in 1991 and Alzheimer's expert David Snowdon of
the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and the University of Kentucky in
Lexington.

The sisters' miraculous longevity -- the group boasts seven centenarians and
many others well on their way -- is surely in no small part attributable to
their impeccable lifestyle. They do not drink or smoke, they live quietly
and communally, they are spiritual and calm and they eat healthily and in
moderation. Nevertheless, small differences between individual nuns could
reveal the key to a healthy mind in later life.

Some of the nuns have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, but many have
avoided any kind of dementia or senility. They include Sister Matthia, who
was mentally fit and active from her birth in 1894 to the day she died
peacefully in her sleep, aged 104. She was happy and productive, knitting
mittens for the poor every day until the end of her life. A post-mortem of
Sister Matthia's brain revealed no signs of excessive ageing. But in some
other, remarkable cases, Snowdon has found sisters who showed no outwards
signs of senility in life, yet had brains that looked as if they were
ravaged by dementia.

How did Sister Matthia and the others cheat time? Snowdon's study, which
includes an annual barrage of mental agility tests and detailed medical
exams, has found several common denominators. The right amount of vitamin
folate is one. Verbal ability early in life is another, as are positive
emotions early in life, which were revealed by Snowdon's analysis of the
personal autobiographical essays each woman wrote in her 20s as she took her
vows. Activities, crosswords, knitting and exercising also helped to prevent
senility, showing that the old adage "use it or lose it" is pertinent. And
spirituality, or the positive attitude that comes from it, can't be
overlooked. But individual differences also matter. To avoid dementia, your
general health may be vital: metabolic problems, small strokes and head
injuries seem to be common triggers of Alzheimer's dementia.

Obviously, you don't have to become a nun to stay mentally agile. We can all
aspire to these kinds of improvements. As one of the sisters put it, "Think
no evil, do no evil, hear no evil, and you will never write a best-selling
novel."

............

10. Attention seeking

You can be smart, well-read, creative and knowledgeable, but none of it is
any use if your mind isn't on the job.

Paying attention is a complex mental process, an interplay of zooming in on
detail and stepping back to survey the big picture. So unfortunately there
is no single remedy to enhance your concentration. But there are a few ways
to improve it.

The first is to raise your arousal levels. The brain's attentional state is
controlled by the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin. Dopamine
encourages a persistent, goal-centred state of mind whereas noradrenalin
produces an outward-looking, vigilant state. So not surprisingly, anything
that raises dopamine levels can boost your powers of concentration.

One way to do this is with drugs such as amphetamines and the ADHD drug
methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin. Caffeine also works. But if you
prefer the drug-free approach, the best strategy is to sleep well, eat foods
packed with slow-release sugars, and take lots of exercise. It also helps if
you are trying to focus on something that you find interesting.

The second step is to cut down on distractions. Workplace studies have found
that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain a deep state of concentration after
a distraction such as a phone call. Just a few such interruptions and half
the day is wasted.

Music can help as long as you listen to something familiar and soothing that
serves primarily to drown out background noise. Psychologists also recommend
that you avoid working near potential diversions, such as the fridge.

There are mental drills to deal with distractions. College counsellors
routinely teach students to recognise when their thoughts are wandering, and
catch themselves by saying "Stop! Be here now!" It sounds corny but can
develop into a valuable habit. As any Zen meditator will tell you,
concentration is as much a skill to be lovingly cultivated as it is a
physiochemical state of the brain.

............

11. POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Thought control is easier than you might imagine.

It sounds a bit New Age, but there is a mysterious method of thought control
you can learn that seems to boost brain power. No one quite knows how it
works, and it is hard to describe exactly how to do it: it's not relaxation
or concentration as such, more a state of mind. It's called neurofeedback.
And it is slowly gaining scientific credibility.

Neurofeedback grew out of biofeedback therapy, popular in the 1960s. It
works by showing people a real-time measure of some seemingly uncontrollable
aspect of their physiology -- heart rate, say -- and encouraging them to try
and change it. Astonishingly, many patients found that they could, though
only rarely could they describe how they did it.

More recently, this technique has been applied to the brain -- specifically
to brain wave activity measured by an electroencephalogram, or EEG. The
first attempts were aimed at boosting the size of the alpha wave, which
crescendos when we are calm and focused. In one experiment, researchers
linked the speed of a car in a computer game to the size of the alpha wave.
They then asked subjects to make the car go faster using only their minds.
Many managed to do so, and seemed to become more alert and focused as a
result.

This early success encouraged others, and neurofeedback soon became a
popular alternative therapy for ADHD. There is now good scientific evidence
that it works, as well as some success in treating epilepsy, depression,
tinnitus, anxiety, stroke and brain injuries.

And to keep up with the times, some experimenters have used brain scanners
in place of EEGs. Scanners can allow people to see and control activity of
specific parts of the brain. A team at Stanford University in California
showed that people could learn to control pain by watching the activity of
their pain centres.

But what about outside the clinic? Will neuro feedback ever allow ordinary
people to boost their brain function? Possibly. John Gruzelier of Imperial
College London has shown that it can improve medical students' memory and
make them feel calmer before exams. He has also shown that it can improve
musicians' and dancers' technique, and is testing it out on opera singers
and surgeons.

Neils Birbaumer from the University of Tübingen in Germany wants to see
whether neurofeedback can help psychopathic criminals control their
impulsiveness. And there are hints that the method could boost creativity,
enhance our orgasms, give shy people more confidence, lift low moods, alter
the balance between left and right brain activity, and alter personality
traits. All this by the power of thought.

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NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
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RELIGIOUS ZEAL SETS U.S. APART FROM ALLIES, POLL FINDS
NEARLY 40 PERCENT SAY RELIGIOUS LEADERS SHOULD LOBBY POLITICIANS
Associated Press / MSNBC
June 6, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8113152/

Religious devotion sets the United States apart from some of its closest
allies. Americans profess unquestioning belief in God and are far more
willing to mix faith and politics than people in other countries, AP-Ipsos
polling found.

In Western Europe, where Pope Benedict XVI complains that growing secularism
has left churches unfilled on Sundays, people are the least devout among the
10 countries surveyed for The Associated Press by Ipsos.

Only Mexicans come close to Americans in embracing faith, the poll found.
But unlike Americans, Mexicans strongly object to clergy lobbying lawmakers,
in line with the nation¹s historical opposition to church influence.

A nation of many faiths

³In the United States, you have an abundance of religions trying to motivate
Americans to greater involvement,² said Roger Finke, a sociologist at Penn
State University. ³It¹s one thing that makes a tremendous difference here.²

The polling was conducted in May in the United States, Australia, Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.

Nearly all U.S. respondents said faith is important to them and only 2
percent said they do not believe in God. Almost 40 percent said religious
leaders should try to sway policymakers, notably higher than in other
countries.

³Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian policies and religious leaders
have an obligation to speak out on public policy, otherwise they¹re wimps,²
said David Black, a retiree from Osborne, Pa., who agreed to be interviewed
after he was polled.

In contrast, 85 percent of French object to clergy activism ‹ the strongest
opposition of any nation surveyed. France has strict curbs on public
religious expression and, according to the poll, 19 percent are atheists.
South Korea is the only other nation with that high a percentage of
nonbelievers.

Australians are generally split over the importance of faith, while
two-thirds of South Koreans and Canadians said religion is central to their
lives. People in all three countries strongly oppose mixing religion and
politics.

Free-market factor?

Researchers disagree over why people in the United States have such a
different religious outlook, said Brent Nelsen, an expert in politics and
religion at Furman University in South Carolina.

Some say rejecting religion is a natural response to modernization and
consider the United States a strange exception to the trend. Others say
Europe is the anomaly; people in modernized countries inevitably return to
religion because they yearn for tradition, according to the theory.

Some analysts, like Finke, use a business model. According to his theory, a
long history of religious freedom in the United States created a greater
supply of worship options than in other countries, and that proliferation
inspired wider observance. Some European countries still subsidize churches,
in effect regulating or limiting religious options, Finke said.

History also could be a factor.

Many countries other than the United States have been through bloody
religious conflict that contributes to their suspicion of giving clergy any
say in policy.

Mixing politics and religion

A variety of factors contribute to the sentiment about separating religion
and politics.

³In Germany, they have a Christian Democratic Party, and they talk about
Christian values, but they don¹t talk about them in quite the same way that
we do,² Nelsen said. ³For them, the Christian part of the Christian values
are held privately and it¹s not that acceptable to bring those out into the
open.²

In Spain, where the government subsidizes the Catholic Church, and in
Germany, which is split between Catholics and Protestants, people are about
evenly divided over whether they consider faith important. The results are
almost identical in Britain, whose state church, the Church of England, is
struggling to fill pews.

Italians are the only European exception in the poll. Eighty percent said
religion is significant to them and just over half said they unquestioningly
believe in God.

But even in Italy, home to the Catholic Church, resistance to religious
engagement in politics is evident. Only three in 10 think the clergy should
try to influence government decisions; a lower percentage in Spain, Germany
and England said the same.

Policy debates on the pulpit

Within the United States, some of the most pressing policy issues involve
complex moral questions ‹ such as gay marriage, abortion and stem cell
research ‹ that understandably draw religious leaders into public debate,
said John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of
Akron.

The poll found Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to think
clergy should try to influence government decisions ‹ a sign of the
challenges ahead for Democrats as they attempt to reach out to more
religious voters.

³Rightly or wrongly, Republicans tend to perceive religion as,
quote-unquote, Œon their side,²¹ Green said.

The survey did find trends in belief that transcend national boundaries.
Women tend to be more devout than men, and older people have stronger faith
than younger people.

The Associated Press-Ipsos polls of about 1,000 adults in each of the 10
countries were taken May 12-26. Each has a margin of sampling error of plus
or minus 3 percentage points.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
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will receive it twice.

"News,
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& Consumer Protection
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------------

Sunday, July 10, 2005
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"GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL": JARED DIAMOND ON GEOGRAPHY AS POWER
Stefan Lovgren Interviews Jared Diamond
National Geographic News
July 6, 2005

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0706_050706_diamond.html

Why did history unfold differently on different continents? Why has one
culture -- namely that of Western Europe -- dominated the development of the
modern world?

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, scientist Jared
Diamond argues that the answer is geography. The physical locations where
different cultures have taken root, he claims, have directly affected the
ability of those societies to develop key institutions, like agriculture and
animal domestication, or to acquire important traits, like immunity to
disease.

Now the book has been turned into a three-part National Geographic Special,
which airs on PBS on three consecutive Mondays, July 11, July 18, and July
25, at 10 p.m.

National Geographic News spoke with Diamond, a professor of geography,
environmental health science, and physiology at the University of California
in Los Angeles.

............

National Geographic: Why over the past 10,000 years has the development of
different societies proceeded at such different rates?

Jared Diamond: I say the answer is location, location, location. It's
overwhelmingly due to the difference in the wild plant and animal species
suitable to domestication that the continents made available. All the
interesting stuff like technology, writing, and empires requires a
productive economy that is producing enough food to feed technological
experts, bureaucrats, kings, and scribes. Hunter-gatherer societies don't
produce enough food surpluses to support those extra people. Agriculture
does.

National Geographic: Where did the first farming societies appear?

Jared Diamond: The first farming, as far as we know, appeared in [the Middle
East region known as] the Fertile Crescent some 11,500 years ago, and
shortly thereafter in China. These places had the greatest variety of wild
plants and animals suitable for domestication. Only a tiny fraction of wild
plants and animals were both useful and possible to domesticate. Those few
species were concentrated in a few areas, of which the two with the greatest
variety were the Fertile Crescent and China.

National Geographic: What were the benefits of the agricultural lifestyle
compared to the hunter-gatherer existence?

Jared Diamond: Farming lets you feed far more people than hunting and
gathering. In a one-acre [0.4-hectare] wheat field there's more to eat than
in a one-acre forest. In a one-acre sheep pasture, there are more animals to
eat than in a one-acre forest. Also, farming lets you settle down in
villages next to your wheat fields and pastures, whereas hunter-gatherers
have to move around.

National Geographic: You point out that knowledge and new technology spread
east and west much easier than north and south.

Jared Diamond: The reason is easy to understand if one understands
geography. Climate, temperature, seasons, and habitat all depend strongly on
latitude. Above 85 degrees north, you don't have tropical rainforest, you
have Arctic ice fields. Certainly plants and animals tend to be adapted to
particular habitats and climates. The same is also true of people. The
practices of the farming societies in the Fertile Crescent are easily
transferred west [to Europe].

National Geographic: What is the link between agriculture and war?

Jared Diamond: Farming makes possible the development of technology,
including military technology. Wars are not something new invented by those
nasty Europeans. Everyone about whom we have enough knowledge has been
involved with wars. Groups of people are competing with neighbor groups, and
any group that develops some advantage is likely to be able to fight off,
conquer, drive out, or exterminate their rivals. Throughout human history
there's been this reward for developing more potent technology, including
military technology.

National Geographic: The Spaniards certainly used weapons technology to
their advantage in defeating the Incas.

Jared Diamond: In the battle of Cajamarca [in 1532, in what is now Peru],
169 Spaniards faced an army of 80,000 Inca soldiers. In the first ten
minutes, there were 7,000 Incas dead. When the dust settled, not a single
Spaniard was dead. [Spanish conquistador] Francisco Pizarro got a slight
wound. That's because the Spaniards have the steel sword and the Incas have
wooden clubs. It really showed the power of military technology.

National Geographic: In a way, the Spaniards also unwittingly deployed
powerful biological weapons, including smallpox.

Jared Diamond: It is estimated that 95 percent of Native American casualties
throughout North and South America were due to disease rather than military
conquest. Smallpox killed about 50 percent of the Incas in the first
epidemic.

National Geographic: Why did the Spaniards pass this disease on to the Incas
and not the other way around?

Jared Diamond: It turns out that most of the nasty, infectious diseases of
human history came to us from domestic animals. Thirteen of the fourteen
herd domestic animals were Eurasian species. The only herd domestic animal
of the New World was the llama, but the llama didn't live in really big
herds. So we didn't get diseases from llamas, but we did get diseases from
pigs and sheep. And Eurasian people in general got exposed to these diseases
at childhood and therefore developed an immune system. In the New World,
smallpox arrives and nobody is exposed to it, so it's hitting everybody,
including adults.

National Geographic: When the European settlers arrived in southern Africa,
it was the same story at first. But as the settlers went north, they soon
began to encounter problems.

Jared Diamond: People of the north were farmers themselves, and it's
possible that they had been exposed to smallpox. What we're sure of is that
Africans had tropical diseases [such as malaria] to which they had some
resistance. But Europeans did not have resistance. In tropical Africa, the
disease advantages were reversed. Instead of Europeans carrying diseases
that wipe out the locals, the locals carry diseases that wipe out the
Europeans. That's why the Europeans never settled in large numbers in Africa
outside of the temperate zone of southern Africa and the highlands of Kenya.

National Geographic: Africans developed complex farming societies, and they
were able to stave off the European intruders. Yet ultimately the Europeans
conquered Africa through colonialism. Is that why much of modern Africa is
mired in poverty?

Jared Diamond: Africa today, paradoxically, is the poorest continent. I say
paradoxically because this is where humans evolved, so [humans] had a huge
head start in Africa. Tropical diseases kept the Europeans out at first, but
those tropical diseases nonetheless pose a big public health and economic
burden on Africa today. That is linked with colonialism. Europeans could not
settle in large numbers, but what they still could do was to extract wealth
from Africans, initially slaves, then rubber, diamonds, and copper.
Basically that means robbing Africans and setting up legalized institutions
for corruption. Colonialism also changed the Africans' traditional way of
life. They moved to cities next to the mines where their immunities no
longer provided protection against tropical diseases.

National Geographic: There is a scene in the film where you react very
strongly to seeing some children dying of malaria in a Zambian hospital. Is
there a disconnect between thinking about these huge issues as a prominent
academic and seeing them in action up close?

Jared Diamond: There is a difference between understanding something
intellectually and having something in your face. When I wrote Guns, Germs
and Steel, I had a whole chapter on Africa and a chapter on diseases in
Africa. I was perfectly aware of the statistics on malaria and so forth, but
that is impersonal and sanitized. It's different from standing there in a
hospital and seeing kids who were then the age that my kids had been and
having flashbacks to one of my own kids in a hospital. That's just an
emotional experience and very different from the sanitized statistics.

National Geographic: Do you worry that audiences may sense an inevitability
in your argument -- as if we're destined to be either poor or wealthy
depending on where we are born, and that there is not much we can do about
it?

National Geographic: If you make a complex argument, there will be people
out there who will simplify and misuse it. I recognize that there are people
who will say geography deals out these immutable cards and there's nothing
we can do about it. But one can show the evidence and say there is something
we can do about it. Look at Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan. They recognized
that their biggest disadvantage was public health. They didn't say, We got
these tropical diseases -- it's inevitable. Instead they said, We have these
tropical diseases and they are curable and all it takes is money so let's
invest in curing the diseases. Today they are rich, virtually First World
countries. That shows that poverty is something you can do something about.

People have a misunderstanding that geography means environmental
determinism, and that poor countries are doomed to be poor and they should
just shut up and lie down and play dead. But in fact, knowledge is power.
Once you know what it is that's making you poor, you can use that knowledge
to make you rich.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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& Consumer Protection
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------------

Sunday, July 17, 2005
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MORE ON 'GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL'
WEBSITE, PROGRAM OVERVIEWS, TRANSCRIPTS

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/index.html

OVERVIEW

Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns,
Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years ­ from
the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life
in the twenty-first century.

Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more
than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand
the roots of global inequality.

- Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?

- Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?

- Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?

- Why did farming never emerge in Australia?

- And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental,
environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both
his theories and his own endurance tested.

The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High
Definition digital video, and combined ambitious dramatic reconstruction
with moving documentary footage and computer animation. They also include
contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of international historians,
archeologists and scientists.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thrilling ride through the elemental forces
which have shaped our world ­ and which continue to shape our future.

WEBPAGES & TRANSCRIPTS:

EPISODE ONE: OUT OF EDEN
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode1.html

EPISODE ONE TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript1.html

...

EPISODE TWO: CONQUEST
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode2.html

EPISODE TWO TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript2.html

...

EPISODE THREE: INTO THE TROPICS
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode3.html

EPISODE THREE: TRANSCRIPT
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript3.html

------------

EPISODE ONE: OUT OF EDEN
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode1.html

EPISODE ONE TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript1.html

Jared Diamond¹s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New
Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively
simple question:

³Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black
people had little cargo of our own?²

Diamond realized that Yali¹s question penetrated the heart of a great
mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality.

Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so
much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did
Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the agents of conquest: guns, germs
and steel? It was these agents of conquest that allowed 168 Spanish
conquistadors to defeat an Imperial Inca army of 80,000 in 1532, and set a
pattern of European conquest which would continue right up to the present
day.

Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual
skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed
that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European
descent -- and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a
terrible paradox of history that these extraordinary people should be the
conquered, and not the conquerors.

To examine the reasons for European success, Jared realized he had to peel
back the layers of history and begin his search at a time of equality ­ a
time when all the peoples of the world lived in exactly the same way.

Time of Equality

At the end of the last Ice Age, around thirteen thousand years ago, people
on all continents followed a so-called Stone Age way of life ­ they survived
by hunting and gathering the available wild animals and plants. When
resources were plentiful, this was a productive way of life.

But in times of scarcity, hunting and gathering was a precarious mode of
survival. Populations remained relatively small, and the simple task of
finding food occupied every waking moment.

Around eleven and a half thousand years ago, the world's climate suddenly
changed. In an aftershock of the Ice Age, temperatures plummeted and global
rainfall reduced. The impact of this catastrophe was felt most keenly in an
area known as the Fertile Crescent, in the modern Middle East. Here,
hunter-gathers had thrived on some of the most useful and plentiful flora
and fauna in the world. They had even developed semi-permanent settlements
to exploit the resources around them.

Now, with their food options disappearing from the menu on a daily basis,
these people did something remarkable. They began to cultivate the hardiest
species of surviving plants and animals, even bringing seeds back to their
villages and planting new stock.

They were becoming farmers.

An Agricultural Revolution

Diamond learns that the act of transplanting a wild plant and placing it
under human control totally transforms that plant's DNA. Characteristics
which aid survival in the wild, disappear in favor of qualities which suit
human consumption. The plant becomes domesticated ­ and wholly dependent on
human control for survival.

Only a handful of places in the world played host to this agricultural
revolution. In most cases, plant domestication was a precursor to the
development of advanced civilizations. Along with the Fertile Crescent in
the Middle East, independent domestication of wild plants is believed to
have occurred in Ancient China, in Central and Southern America, in
sub-Tropical Africa, and in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

So, Diamond asks, why did each of these parts of the world go on to develop
advanced civilizations, while the farmers of New Guinea were apparently left
behind?

The luck of the draw

Diamond discovers that the answer lies in a geographical luck of the draw ­
what mattered were the raw materials themselves.

Of all the plant species in the world, only a limited number are possible,
or useful, to domesticate. To Diamond's astonishment, most of these species
are native to Europe and Asia ­ species like wheat, barley and rice, which
grew wild in abundance in only these parts of the world.

Two more species are native to Tropical Africa (sorghum and yams) while only
one is native to the Americas (corn), and to Papua New Guinea (taro). Not a
single domesticable plant grows wild in Australia.

And that's not all. Diamond discovers a similar dramatic inequality in the
distribution of domesticable animals.

Animals dramatically increase the productivity of farming, through their
meat, milk, leather, dung, and as beasts of burden. Without them, farmers
are trapped in a cycle of subsistence and manual labor.

Of all the animal species in the world, only 14 have ever been domesticated.
12 of these are native to Eurasia. One, the llama, is native to South
America ­ and the farmers of New Guinea managed to domesticate the pig. But
pigs can't pull plows, and until the arrival of Europeans in the twentieth
century, all New Guinean farming was still done by hand.

From tools to cities

Diamond realized that the development of successful and productive farming,
starting nearly twelve thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent, was the
critical turning point in the origins of global inequality. From this point
on, one group of people ­ the natives of Eurasia ­ would have a head start
on the path to civilization.

Successful farming provides a food surplus, and allows some people to leave
the farm behind and develop specialized skills ­ such as metal-working,
writing, trade, politics, and war-making. Plus, the simple geography of the
continent of Eurasia ­ one coherent landmass spread on an east-west axis,
with universal latitudes and climates ­ allowed these technologies and ideas
to spread beyond the Middle East with ease.

Without the environment, or the time, to develop similar skills, the farmers
of New Guinea became trapped in their highland isolation.

Diamond concludes that from the end of the Ice Age, geography ensured that
different societies around the world would develop at different speeds. If
Yali's people had had all the geographic advantages of Europeans, perhaps
they could have conquered the world.

Epilogue

Diamond believes the blueprint for global inequality lies within the land
itself, its crops and animals. But can this way of seeing the world really
shed light on the great turning points of human history?

Can Jared Diamond explain how a few hundred Europeans were able to conquer
the New World, and begin an age of domination: the age of guns, germs and
steel?

------------

EPISODE TWO: CONQUEST
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode2.html

EPISODE TWO TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript2.html

On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city of
Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru.

They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified ­ ahead of them are camped
80,000 Inca troops and the entourage of the Emperor himself.

Yet, within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors lie slaughtered;
the Emperor languishes in chains; and the victorious Europeans begin a reign
of colonial terror which will sweep through the entire American continent.

Why was the balance of power so unequal between the Old World, and the New?

Can Jared Diamond explain how America fell to guns, germs and steel?

Two Empires

Spaniard Francisco Pizarro has gone down in history as the man who conquered
the Inca. Leading a small company of mercenaries and adventurers, this
former swineherd from a provincial town in Spain managed to demolish one of
the most sophisticated Empires the world has ever seen.

From Pizarro's home town of Trujillo, Jared Diamond pieces together the
story of the Spaniards' victory over the Inca, tracing the invisible hand of
geography.

On the surface, the Spaniards had discovered a foreign empire remarkably
similar to their own. The Inca had built an advanced, politically
sophisticated, civilization on the foundations of successful agriculture.
They had ruthlessly conquered their neighbors in South America, and by 1532
governed a vast territory, the length and breadth of the Andes.

But as Jared discovers, the Inca lacked some critical agents of conquest.

Horses vs Llamas

Thirteen of the fourteen domesticable mammal species in the world were
native only to the continent of Eurasia. Among these had been the horse.

As Diamond learns, the horse was fundamental to the farming success of
Eurasian societies, providing not only food and fertilizer but also,
crucially, load-bearing power and transport ­ transforming the productivity
of the land.

The only non-Eurasian domesticable animal species in the world was the llama
­ native, by chance, to South America. The Inca relied on llamas for meat,
wool and fertilizer ­ but the llama was not a load-bearing animal. Llamas
can't pull a plow, nor can they transport human beings.

And unlike horses, llamas could never be ridden for war.

Spanish horsemanship, based on principles of cattle-herding, was famous
throughout Europe for its manoeuvrability and spontaneity ­ skills learned
by Pizarro's conquistadors in their youth. Horses could charge, mounted
soldiers could slay with brutal efficiency. Diamond realizes that, to a
people like the Inca, who had never seen humans ride animals before, the
psychological impact of these alien mounted troops must have been huge.

Steel vs bronze

But Pizarro's men only brought 37 horses to Peru. So where did the rest of
their shock value lie?

Well, once again, the Europeans had something the Americans didn't ­ they
had steel.

For thousands of years throughout Eurasia, metal-working technology had
evolved from the simplest ore-extraction of the first Neolithic villages, to
the highly-sophisticated forging of steel, in cities like Toledo and Milan.
Geography had endowed Europe with rich sources of iron and wood, and a
climate conducive to high-temperature metallurgy.

Thanks to the geographic ease with which ideas spread through the continent
of Eurasia, discoveries like gunpowder could also migrate thousands of
miles, from China to Spain.

And political competition within Europe fuelled a medieval arms race.
Pizarro's conquistadors were armed with the latest and greatest in weapons
technology ­ guns, and swords.

The Inca, by comparison, had never worked iron or discovered the uses of
gunpowder. Geography had not endowed them with these resources. Nor had they
received technologies from other advanced societies within the Americas.
This included a technology even more critical to Spanish success than their
weapons, writing.

Writing

On the eve of battle, Pizarro and his men discuss how to tackle the vast
army of the Inca. It seems an impossible task. But they have a secret weapon
up their sleeve ­ the weapon of past experience.

Jared Diamond travels to the library of Salamanca University, to read for
himself the published accounts of Hernan Cortes' conquest of Mexico.

Only twelve years before Cajamarca, Cortes and his men had faced similar
odds against the vast army of the Aztec Empire. But somehow Cortes had
captured the Emperor and conquered the land for Spain.

Cortes and his soldiers sent their written accounts back to the general
public in Europe, where they were widely published. Diamond discovers a
repository of dirty tricks at Salamanca ­ a collection of handbooks for
would-be conquistadors. And on the eve of battle, it was the printed lessons
of Cortes that inspired Pizarro and his men.

By contrast, the Inca Emperor Atahualpa had never heard of Cortes, or even
of his own neighbors, the Aztecs. Thanks to the geography of the Americas,
it was practically impossible for any ideas, technologies, or even news, to
spread from north to south. So whilst the Mayan civilisation of Central
America had invented a form of written communication, it had never got as
far as Peru. The Inca were isolated ­ and Atahualpa had never even seen a
book before.

Showdown

So, when presented with a copy of the Bible on November 16th, 1532,
Atahuallpa throws the alien object to the floor, prompting a furious and
surprise attack from the conquistadors. The combined impact of mounted
troops, gunpowder and sharpened steel lead to a massacre, and Atahuallpa is
personally seized by Pizarro himself.

In a matter of hours, the Inca Empire lies in ruins. But the story of
Eurasian triumph isn't over.

Lethal gift of livestock

Seven thousand Inca died at Cajamarca. Over the course of a generation, the
Spaniards killed tens of thousands more. But Diamond learns that up to 95%
of the native population of the entire Americas were wiped out after the
conquest. Genocide alone can't account for this number.

Instead, he discovers, native Americans fell victim to European germs ­
infections which they had never encountered before.

And Diamond realizes that European diseases like smallpox were a fatal
inheritance of thousands of years of mammal domestication ­ the lethal gift
of livestock.

European farmers, rearing cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and donkeys,
lived in close proximity with their animals - breathing, eating and drinking
animal germs. Eventually some diseases crossed over to the human population
and the resulting epidemics wiped out millions of Europeans.

But each time, a few people would survive and the immunities they'd
developed passed through their genes to the next generation. The
conquistadors who sailed to the Americas carried immunities like these.

But in Peru, the llama was never brought indoors, and never milked so the
prospect for the spread of disease was severely reduced.

But then the Europeans arrived and a single Spanish slave arrived, infected
with smallpox and the consequences were devastating. The disease emptied the
continent, killing millions of indigenous people who lacked any prior
exposure, and therefore any immunity. The European triumph was complete.

So Diamond has shown how guns, germs and steel had conquered the New World.
But will his theories work in every corner of the globe?

------------

EPISODE THREE: INTO THE TROPICS
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode3.html

EPISODE THREE: TRANSCRIPT
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript3.html

So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of
people ­ Europeans ­ endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their
rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans to colonize
vast tracts of the globe ­ but what happened when this all-conquering
package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity?

Can Jared Diamond's theories explain how a continent so rich in natural
resources, could have ended up the poorest continent on earth?

Guns Germs and Steel triumph again...?

Jared's journey begins on a steam train in Cape Town, designed to carry
civilisation to the heart of the so-called 'dark continent'. In the cape,
Jared discovers a landscape and way of life that feels very European ­ farms
growing cattle, wheat, grapes and barley; settler communities dating back
over three hundred years.

He realizes that the first European settlers in southern Africa were dealt a
very lucky hand by geography ­ they landed in one of the few temperate zones
of the southern hemisphere ­ a climate to which their crops an animals were
ideally suited. These foundations of their historical success worked for
them even 6,000 miles from home and they were able to sweep aside the
indigenous hunting communities with ease ­ assisted by the impact of
European germs.

But these settlers were not ones to stand still. A mass migration known as
the Great Trek took thousands of Dutch settlers north and east ­ into
unknown territory ­ and, as they found to their cost, into Zulu land.

The Zulus had built a sophisticated African state based on military conquest
­ and now they resisted European invasion. But eventually, overcoming the
limitations of their weapons and inheriting new, automatic weapons form
industrialized Europe, the settlers triumphed over their rival African
tribes - at the cost of thousands of lives.

Jared observes that the story of Guns, Germs and Steel seems to be unfolding
all over again...

But having swept aside native opposition beyond the cape, Jared asks, could
the settlers build a new life of their own?

Enter the Tropics

As the settlers traveled further north, life suddenly became a lot harder.
The foundations of their success, their crops and animals, refused to grow.
They were forced to barter for food from their neighbours. And they started
to fall ill with a mysterious and terrifying fever. It was a complete
reversal of the usual pattern of European conquest.

So what had changed?

Jared realizes that, unlike elsewhere in the world - where Europeans had
landed in a temperate zone and traveled from east to west, maintaining
similar climates - here in Africa, Europeans landed in the south and
migrated north, moving through latitude zones and experiencing radically
different climates.

In fact, as they crossed the Limpopo River, they had entered the tropics.

Temperate crops such as wheat simply can't survive in a tropical climate.
Nor can European animals ­ plagued by the diseases which thrive in the
tropics.

But all around them, Europeans could see successful, agricultural Africans
growing their own crops, farming their own animals. How could they do this?

Jared sets out to learn more about the secrets of tropical Africa.

The African Story

Stopping off in a school, Jared discovers that the enormous diversity of
modern tropical Africa is reflected in the hundreds of languages still
spoken across the continent ­ many of which are mastered by kids at a very
young age.

But the inherent similarity of these languages indicates a common ancestral
root ­ a single language spoken by a group of ancient tropical farmers from
the Niger-Congo region, who have come to be known as Bantu.

About 5,000 years ago, these Bantu farmers began to spread beyond their
native north-west region, moving into new lands, picking up crops and
animals as they went. Eventually, Bantu culture spread across most of
tropical Africa, reaching as far as the Zulu territories of the south.

Physical evidence for this vast tropical diaspora is scant, but
archaeologists have found clues at a site on the banks of the Limpopo known
as Mapungubwe ­ the place of the jackal. Here there is evidence for a
complex, agricultural state supporting thousands of people throughout
southern Africa ­ farming sorghum and cattle, forging iron, exporting gold
and tin and importing exotic materials and precious stones from as far away
as India and China.

The discovery of Mapungubwe overturned centuries of prejudice about African
history and proved the continent played host to a sophisticated tropical
civilization centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

But, Jared wonders, how did the Africans achieve all this in a climate
tailor-made for the spread of disease?

Germs reversed

Elsewhere in the world, European germs laid the foundations for European
conquest - decimating native populations who had no previous exposure to
diseases like smallpox. But in tropical Africa, the indigenous peoples
seemed to survive both imported European germs, and the tropical fevers
which were decimating European settlers.

Jared discovers that smallpox in fact may have evolved in tropical Africa ­
and had certainly been present in the continent for thousands of years. So
African cattle-farmers had evolved antibodies and immunities similar to
their European rivals; they had even invented methods of smallpox
vaccination, conferring immunity for life.

And their lifestyles were designed to avoid infection from mosquitoes,
carriers of the deadly malaria parasite. Over centuries of exposure,
tropical Africans evolved degrees of physical immunity to the worst effects
of this tropical disease. But they also learned to live in high or dry
locations, away from the natural habitat of the mosquito, and to limit the
level of disease transmission by keeping their communities relatively small.

African civilization had evolved strategies which helped them survive ­ even
thrive ­ in the topics.

So, Jared asks, where did this civilization go?

An Empire robbed

Geography endowed Africa with one last temptation for European colonizers ­
natural resources, like copper, diamonds and gold. So, unable to build their
own societies in the tropics, European governments turned to cheap African
labour instead to maximize the profit from these resources.

Over the course of two generations, brutal regimes throughout central Africa
ripped tropical civilization to shreds. They tore men women and children
from their homes, and forced them to live and work together in the pursuit
of industrial raw materials.

Jared discovers that the very tracks of steel on which he has been riding
throughout his journey, were built on the back of this colonial
exploitation.

And the legacy these regimes left behind? A continent plagued by disease.
When colonial governments destroyed a way of life built up over thousands of
years, they left tropical Africans naked to the forces of their environment.

Today, diseases like malaria are resurgent throughout tropical Africa ­
malaria is still the number one killer of African children under
5-years-old.

Brought to a children's hospital in Zambia, Jared discovers for himself the
tragic consequences of this disease.

Possible futures...?

So, Jared concludes, what has his epic journey through world history taught
him, after all?

That modern global inequalities have been shaped by geography's influence
over our history.

That geography ­ and advantages such as guns, germs and steel ­ are the
great forces that have shaped the history of our world and continue to shape
the experience of countries like Zambia.

But does that mean that Jared is a determinist? That he believes the peoples
of the world are destined to follow their geographic destiny, for either
good or bad?

Well, no ­ and for countries like Zambia, there is light at the end of the
tunnel. Other tropical nations have managed to lift the burden of diseases
like malaria. Government-funded research, new drugs, even a vaccine, today
offer hope to the people of Zambia.

Jared concludes that we can only achieve a better future if we have a more
comprehensive understanding of our past. Only by recognizing the role which
geography, and our environment, have played in our history, can we begin to
overcome today's problems.

Because while geography and history may give us our start in life, they
should never dictate our destiny.

------------

PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: JARED DIAMOND ON GEOGRAPHY AS POWER (7/10/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9545

RUSHING INTO A DARK AGE (1/16/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8719

THE ENDS OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW THEM (1/4/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8665

BOOK REVIEW: 'COLLAPSE': HOW SOCIETIES DESTROY THEMSELVES (1/3/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8651

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GOD AND COUNTRY
By Hanna Rosin
The New Yorker Magazine
Issue of 2005-06-27
Posted 2005-06-20

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050627fa_fact

In the last days before the 2004 Presidential election, Patrick Henry
College, in Purcellville, Virginia excused all its students from classes,
because so many of them were working on campaigns or wanted to go to the
swing states to get out the vote for George W. Bush. Elisa Muench, a junior,
was interning in the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, which is
overseen by Karl Rove. On Election Day, she stood on the South Lawn with the
rest of the White House staff to greet the President and Mrs. Bush as the
returned from casting their votes in Texas. Muench cheered along with
everyone else, but she was worried. Her office was "keeping up contact with
Karl," and she knew that the early exit polls were worse than expected.
Through the night, she watched the results, as Bush's electoral-vote total
began to rise. The next morning, after Kerry conceded, she stood in the
crowd at the Bush campaign's victory party, in clothes she'd been wearing
all night, and "cried and screamed and laughed, it was so overwhelming."

I found Muench in the Patrick Henry cafeteria at lunchtime one day a few
months later. She is twenty-one years old and has clear, bright hazel eyes
and sandy-brown hair that she straightens and then curls with an iron.
Patrick Henry is a Christian college, though it is not affiliated with any
denomination, and it gives students guidelines on "glorifying God with their
appearance." During class hours, the college enforces a "business casual"
dress code designed to prepare the students for office life -- especially
for offices in Washington, D.C., fifty miles to the east, where almost all
the students have internships, with Republican politicians or in
conservative think tanks. When I met Muench, she was wearing a cardigan and
a navy skirt. The boys in the cafeteria all had neatly trimmed hair, and
wore suits or khakis and button-down shirts; girls wore slacks or skirts
just below the knee, and sweaters or blouses. Most said grace before eating,
though they did it silently and discreetly, with a quick bow of the head.

Muench told me that she loved working for Rove -- answering the phone and
having a senator on the line, meeting Andrew Card, the chief of staff ("He's
a nice guy"), and Vice-President Dick Cheney ("He's really funny"). She took
a bus from Patrick Henry at six every morning to arrive at the White House
by seven-thirty. Her work with Rove, she told me, affirmed her belief that
he was a political genius.

In her sophomore year, Muench had become the first -- and, so far, the only
-- woman at Patrick Henry to run for a student-government executive office,
when she entered the race for vice-president. Campaigns are unusually
intense at Patrick Henry; candidates hire pollsters and form slates. One of
Muench's friends, Matthew du Mée, was on an opposing slate, and the race
caused a strain. (Both lost.) Muench's internship with Rove has given her a
reputation, much envied on campus, as someone worth knowing. The day we
spoke, a sophomore leaned across the table and asked, "How much do you make,
starting salary, working on the Hill?"

"I'm not sure," Muench said.

"I heard one of the graduates working for Joe Pitts is making, like,
thirty-two thousand dollars. That's not that much." (Pitts is a Republican
congressman.)

"Well, it's not too bad if you're a single person," Muench told him.

"Do you have any intentions of running for office?" the sophomore asked.

"Yes," she said.

At that moment, Muench's cell phone rang. It was Cheney's office, calling to
thank her for volunteering for the Vice-President's Christmas party, and to
ask if she would allow her name to be put on a list for future openings.

Muench, like eighty-five per cent of the students at Patrick Henry, was
homeschooled, in her case in rural Idaho. Homeschoolers are not the most
obvious raw material for a college whose main mission, since its founding,
five years ago, has been to train a new generation of Christian politicians.
Politics, after all, is the most social of professions, and many students
arrive at Patrick Henry having never shared a classroom with anyone other
than their siblings. In conservative circles, however, homeschoolers are
considered something of an élite, rough around the edges but pure -- in
their focus, capacity for work, and ideological clarity -- a view that helps
explain why the Republican establishment has placed its support behind
Patrick Henry, and why so many conservative politicians are hiring its
graduates.

Patrick Henry's president, Michael Farris, is a lawyer and minister who has
worked for Christian cause for decades. He founded the school after getting
requests from two constituencies: homeschooling parent and conservative
congressmen. The parents would ask him where they could find a Christian
college with a "courtship" atmosphere, meaning one where dating is regulated
and subject to parental approval. The congressmen asked him where they could
find homeschoolers as interns and staffers, "which I took to be shorthand
for 'someone who shares my values,' " Farris said. "And I knew they didn't
want a fourteen-year-old kid." So he set out to build what he calls the
Evangelical Ivy League, and what the students call Harvard for
Homeschoolers.

Farris is fifty-three but seems younger, with thick brown hair and a
slightly amused expression. He and his wife, Vickie, began to homeschool
their children (they have ten) in 1982, and the next year he founded the
Home School Legal Defense Association, to challenge state laws that made it
difficult to homeschool children. In 1993, he ran, unsuccessfully, for
lieutenant governor of Virginia. At the time, evangelicals had yet to emerge
as a national political force; many preferred to keep their distance from
secular culture, which is one reason that Patrick Henry parents educated
their children at home. Since then, Rove has built an entire campaign around
mobilizing Christian conservatives. In a speech at the American Enterprise
Institute after the 2000 election, he said that the President had lost the
popular vote because fewer than expected "white, evangelical Protestants"
had come to the polls. One of Rove's principal strategies for victory in
2004 was working to increase this group's numbers, and on Election Day four
million more evangelicals voted than in 2000.

Farris's manifesto for the school, "The Joshua Generation," embraces the
Rove principle: the "Moses generation," he wrote, had "left Egypt," and now
it was time for their children to "take the land." Farris is the author of
nine nonfiction books and three novels, all with Christian themes, and in
them he warns against "MTV, Internet porn, abortion, homosexuality, greed
and accomplished selfishness"; he calls public schools "godless
monstrosities." But students are not expected to avoid the secular world
entirely. Farris told them at chapel recently that one day "an Academy Award
winner will walk down the aisle to accept his trophy. On his way, he'll get
a cell-phone call; it will be the President, who happens to be his old
Patrick Henry roommate, calling to congratulate him."

When the Farrises began homeschooling their kids, they were one of only a
few thousand American families who did so. Now about a million and a half
children, as many as two-thirds of whom are thought to be evangelicals, are
taught at home. Farris bought the land for the Patrick Henry campus with
four hundred thousand dollars from the Home School Legal Defense
Association's reserves; he raised the rest of the money for the college,
nine million dollars, from parents and donors such as Tim LaHaye, the author
of the best-selling "Left Behind" series. LaHaye's portrait hangs in the
main hall.

Farris was competing against established Christian schools such as Bob Jones
University, which sells textbooks and videos for homeschoolers. Some
families, though, believe that a traditionalist approach to Christian
education is limiting, and Patrick Henry was designed to appeal both to the
protectiveness of these parents and to their ambitions, promising an
"authentic Christian environment" as well as preparation for "careers of
influence" in politics.

Three times a year, the White House chooses a hundred students for a
three-month internship. Patrick Henry, with only three hundred students, has
taken between one and five of the spots in each of the past five years --
roughly the same as Georgetown. Other Patrick Henry students volunteer in
the White House. Tim Goeglein, the Administration's liaison to the
evangelical community, said that the numbers reflect the abilities of the
Patrick Henry students, who "have learned a way to integrate faith and
action." For the White House, it is also a way to reach out to its base
while building a network of young political operatives.

Of the school's sixty-one graduates through the class of 2004, two have jobs
in the White House; six are on the staffs of conservative members of
Congress; eight are in federal agencies; and one helps Senator Rick
Santorum, of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Karen, homeschool their six
children. Two are at the F.B.I., and another worked for the Coalition
Provisional Authority, in Iraq. Last year, the college began offering a
major in strategic intelligence; the students learn the history of covert
operations and take internships that allow them to graduate with a security
clearance.

All seniors do a directed research project that is designed, Farris told me,
to mimic the work that an entry-level staffer would be assigned. "A whole
lot of elected members of Congress started off as Hill staffers," Farris
said. "If you want to train a new generation of leaders, you have to get in
on the ground floor."

One afternoon in March, Matthew du Mée sat at a counsels' table in the
Virginia Supreme Court. Behind him was an audience of two hundred people,
including many of Patrick Henry's donors. Du Mée and another senior, Rayel
Papke, were representing one side of a mock case against a team from Balliol
College at Oxford University. The details of the case, which involved an
international treaty, were fictitious, but Farris had persuaded three of the
court's justices to preside. Papke had got up at 1 a.m. to prepare. Du Mée
was calmer; as he waited for the debate to begin, he said, "The only help I
need is the Lord's."

Du Mée is twenty-two years old but, like many homeschooled boys, can seem
both younger and older. He is tall, with an angular face and ears that stick
out a bit. His hair usually bears the fresh imprints of a comb, like a
schoolboy's or a senator's. When the round began, he was both deliberate and
aggressive, and he deployed legal jargon with ease: he reminded me of a
youthful version of Theodore Olson, Bush's former Solicitor General. Each
team had to answer questions from the justices about dozens of legal
precedents; du Mée seemed to have all the decisions memorized.

Last year, two Patrick Henry teams flew to Oxford for a mock trial that
turned on the intricacies of British contract law. The Oxford kids hadn't
known much about Patrick Henry back then. When one of them noticed that
Papke looked nervous, he said, "Don't worry, we'll get drunk tonight." Papke
just smiled. Patrick Henry won; Oxford drank alone.

Faith Brobst, a former White House intern, and Christy Ross, du Mée's
fiancée, who was also the debate-team captain, were at the Virginia Supreme
Court, helping out. Brobst was wearing a cherry-red suit, Ross a
peacock-blue one, with stockings and pumps -- the uniform of Washington
wives in waiting. The Oxford boys seemed to blink when they saw them. "So
bright, and they match," one of them said, politely.

The judges announced that the Patrick Henry team had won, by a 3-0 decision.
Don Hodel, the former president of Focus on the Family, a Christian advocacy
group, who is a Patrick Henry supporter, came up and congratulated du Mée,
and invited him and Ross to visit him at his home in Colorado.

At Patrick Henry, debate plays roughly the role that football does at Notre
Dame. When I asked Farris why, he said, "No one ever asked George Bush or
John Kerry to arm wrestle. They need these verbal-communications skills to
defend their ideas. There's no training like arguing against the best minds,
and then beating them." Referring to du Mée, he said, "Maybe one day he'll
be the one standing before the Supreme Court, arguing to overturn Roe v.
Wade."

When du Mée arrived at Patrick Henry, in 2001, after being homeschooled by
his parents, in Phoenix, Arizona (his father was a computer analyst, and his
mother stayed at home), the school issued a press release. He'd got a
perfect 1600 on the S.A.T. but ignored solicitation letters from Yale,
Harvard, and Stanford, and the fact that he chose Patrick Henry was seen as
a turning point for the school, which was then less than two years old. Du
Mée told me, "I considered going to an Ivy League, where I could have been
more of a Christian witness" -- meaning an example to others who might not
share his faith. But he decided that he wanted a school "more edifying to
Christ."

Du Mée's transcript reads as though he had gone through a Beltway-staffer
training camp. He took classes on the Presidency, on Congress, and on
constitutional law. In his senior year, he volunteered at the White House
one day a week, answering the telephone comment line, and he has interned
twice with Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican. Du Mée's
first directed research project was a thirty-page evaluation of a bill
giving tax credits for donations to fund private-school scholarships, which
Franks had introduced. He wrote another with Ross, on reforming the U.N.,
complete with policy briefs.

Ross is du Mée's usual debate partner, and this year they won four of the
six national tournaments they competed in. Some of the younger Patrick Henry
teams make a point of taking explicitly Christian positions, such as arguing
for teaching alternatives to evolution, but du Mée and Ross tend to be more
subtle; they focus, instead, on issues like merit pay for teachers. They met
during freshman orientation, and before they began spending "exclusive time"
together, in junior year, du Mée called Ross's father to tell him. Last
year, du Mée asked if he could court her by writing her father an
eighteen-page single-spaced letter that began "My name is Matthew du Mée and
I was a good kid."

When Ross was sixteen, she wrote in her journal, "I don't want to spend my
life having crushes on different guys." She pledged to "love Christ with my
whole heart and not fall in love with a guy for five years," a period that
she chose after hearing a lecture that compared committing to Christ to
sticking to a long-term business plan. Du Mée's courtship proposal came
exactly five days before her pledge expired.

Over Christmas break, du Mée drove to Ross's house, in Evansville, Indiana,
to propose in front of her parents and six siblings. She accepted, and gave
him a hug -- they wanted their first kiss to be at their wedding. They
decided to get married right after graduation and move to Phoenix. Ross
would look for a job, but only to pay back loans. Eventually, they want to
adjust to living on one salary so that she can homeschool their kids. Du Mée
would "really, really like to run for political office," he said. "U.S.
Congress would be great." First, he's hoping for a government-relations job
at a private company. The next year, he'll apply to law school. When he
graduates, he'll be ready, he thinks, "to do some little state offices." The
fact that he was homeschooled and keeps a running conversation with Jesus in
his head does not seem to him a barrier. "It's pretty normal," he said.

On a Wednesday afternoon, I sat in on a class on the Presidency. There were
fourteen students, all of whom arrived on time and got out their laptops to
take notes. Today, they were talking about Machiavelli. The professor,
Robert Stacey, who has a trim ginger-colored beard and is a popular, lively
teacher, pushed the students to think about Machiavelli's suggestion that
leaders create fear to maintain their authority. He brought up the example
of the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993.
One student asked, "Did they really represent such a big threat to our
country?"

"No, but it unified the country, in an us-versus-them sort of way," another
answered.

Then Stacey moved on to Machiavelli's principle that politics is governed by
conspiracies and lies. "Come on, we know politicians lie," he began. "This
is a bit sensitive. How about our beloved George W. Bush? Does he deceive us
with what he says in public? Does he lie?"

The students, who had been fully engaged on the subject of Machiavelli and
Waco, were silent. Bush has been President since they were teen-agers, and
the school newspaper's editorials never deviate from the White House
position. Finally, one student said, "No, I don't think so."

Stacey didn't say anything. After a pause, the student said, "I mean, it
would be nice if he didn't."

Stacey, who has a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia, told
me that he loved Patrick Henry, because the students "really want to be
here, which is very satisfying for a professor." He is an evangelical
Christian, but he worries that his students sometimes revert to jargon they
picked up from their parents, "that the nation's founders just fell out of
Heaven, that America is a Christian Nation, capital 'C' capital 'N.' I want
them to understand that these are myths, that the claims they're making are
superficial." When he asks his students to defend a position, Stacey said,
"'The Bible says so' is never the answer."

Still, when students enroll at Patrick Henry, they sign a ten-part statement
of faith, agreeing that, among other things, Hell is a place where "all who
die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."
The curriculum for the first two years follows a "Christian Classical" model
-- basically, Western Civ from a Biblical perspective. Students read Plato,
Aristotle, Virgil, Locke, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Beckett. They also study Euclidean geometry and biology; the school uses a
standard science textbook, but the professor, Jennifer Gruenke, who also has
a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, tells students that the earth was
created in a week. For the last two years, they switch to a "vocational"
model, and receive credit for internships and research projects. Elisa
Muench, for example, took a class on how to analyze polls, and is preparing
a senior project on political realignments. Most of the students major in
government; the few literature majors tend to be girls.

Patrick Henry's campus is small, with one main building and a group of dorms
clustered around a lake; the kids call it "the fishbowl." It can be a
competitive, anxious place. Many students schedule their days in
fifteen-minute increments and keep daily checklists over their desks (do
crunches, read Bible, take vitamins, study). "Everyone here is going for the
same prize," Abby Pilgrim, a junior, told me. "Nothing here is chill."

So far, each class has lost about a fifth of its students, either because
they can't keep up or because they want a less intense college experience.
The S.A.T. scores are in the 1220-1410 range, and tuition and board cost
around twenty thousand dollars, although some students are offered
scholarships. The students are almost all white, with about a dozen who are
Asian or Hispanic. At the moment, there are no African-American students,
although Farris says that he is trying to recruit them through the National
Black Home Educators Resource Association.

The school has to make room for a student like Farahn Morgan, a ballerina
who is trying out to be a Rockette and likes to provoke her roommates by
saying she's going to Victoria's Secret ("People, everyone wears a bra!"),
and for a junior like Ben Adams, who sent out a nine-page e-mail to the
entire student body before the spring formal reminding the girls to dress
modestly. "Lust is sin," it said. "It is sin for you to tempt us. It is . .
. unloving. Unsisterly. Un-Christlike." Nearly every week, minor culture
wars break out on campus. One student wrote an article entitled "Why Bono
May Be a Better Christian Than You." Another responded, in an outraged
op-ed, that the band members "live like heathens."

Often, the campus looks like a scene from "Meet Me in St. Louis," with young
men and women talking to one another through open windows, or exchanging a
chaste goodbye at the downstairs door -- men and women are not allowed in
the living areas of each others' dorms. Girls talk about not "stumbling" a
guy, the equivalent of tempting him, and resident advisers keep a close eye
on them to make sure they don't wear shirts that show any bra. If they do,
they'll get a friendly e-mail -- "I think I saw you in dress code
violation," followed by a smiley emoticon. (Not everyone takes the
strictures well: one woman I spoke to would sometimes cry in the stairwell
after being criticized by other girls for dressing inappropriately; she is
transferring.) Smoking, drinking, and "public displays of affection in any
campus building" are forbidden. Matthew du Mée, who was an R.A., told me
that if he saw a boy and girl sitting too close for too long he would pull
the boy aside and tell him to stop, because "the guy is supposed to be the
leader in the relationship."

A faction of homeschooling parents lobbied Farris not to admit girls to the
college, but he told me that he considered that an "extreme" position. "All
women, moms included, benefit from a great education," he said. Men and
women compete openly. When all the best papers in a constitutional-law class
that Farris taught were turned in by girls -- and not for the first time --
Farris yelled at the boys to grow up. The new careerist code of the Joshua
Generation can become a problem for the girls, however. Even the most
ambitious ones, those who wake up at 3 a.m. to study, told me without
reservation that as soon as they had children they would quit their jobs to
raise them.

During spring break, in April, I went to see Elisa Muench at her parents'
ranch, in Idaho, off a gravel road at the edge of the Camas prairie. The
family has three horses, and they galloped down at the sound of Elisa's
voice. In the living room, antlers and an antique gun were mounted over a
piano. Around the house I saw scattered signs of devotion: a newsletter from
Focus on the Family, a pile of Christian best-sellers Elisa's mother, Mary,
who retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserve, was at her
one-day-a-wee job as a nurse anesthetist in Clarkston, an hour and a half
away. Her father, Alan, who was a surgeon in the Army, and retired as a
colonel, now works full time on the ranch. While I talked to him about
Elisa, her younger brother, Lee, who is fifteen years old and is being
homeschooled, sat with us

As a child, Elisa lived on Army bases in Italy and Alaska. Then, when she
was twelve, her parents left the military and moved the family to the ranch.
They worried about the local public schools' test scores and "social
atmosphere." So they ordered textbooks and videos from a Christian
publisher, and taught Elisa and her brother and sister themselves. The
Muenches told Elisa that she could go to the public high school, but she
thought her education was better at home and, she told me, "I liked having a
Christian curriculum. I knew if I was in a biology class or something I'd
just start debating them on evolution."

Elisa took part in Idaho's mock legislative session for high-school
students, and was elected Speaker of the House. She read biographies of
Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. On her desk at home hangs a poster that a
friend made for her: "Elisa Muench, Republican, for Idaho's Senator." When
she was near graduation, her mother read about Patrick Henry in a Christian
magazine. They visited the school and prayed about it, and, when Elisa was
offered a scholarship, they saw it as a sign that Patrick Henry was the
right place for her.

At Patrick Henry, where she has hung photographs of the Bushes and the
Cheneys on her walls, Elisa tries to read the Bible every day, usually in
the morning before working out. She told me that in any other school she'd
be considered a true conservative, which is what she considers herself, "but
at Patrick Henry I'm more liberal." Elisa has another year to go, but school
has already changed in an important way: last semester, ten of her friends
got engaged, including her roommate. "It was insane," Elisa said. She
herself has courted twice, but courtship presumes that couples are
considering marriage, and that, she told me, makes everything move too fast,
before a relationship has gone anywhere at all. She would have serious
discussions about children and insurance before the first kiss. Then, at
some point, the boys realized "how much I really loved politics and wanted
to be a part of it," and the prospect of her commitment to a career became a
problem.

Elisa believes the Bible dictates that "there are different roles for men
and women"; as a White House intern, she saw women with young children
working "long, long hours," and she doesn't want that. Her mother, who had
her first child at twenty-seven, tells her that she regrets having waited so
long. But the expectation of most of the guys she knows at Patrick Henry --
that wives should just "fade out," that she should instantly take on the
identity of a wife and mother "and consider it a blessing" -- is not
something that she's comfortable with. "I just think there's more that God
called me to do, and that's a hard thing to say around here," she told me.

Elisa Muench often has the feeling that nothing in her life is settled. When
she tells her father or her old drama teacher that she wants to work at the
White House, she does it tentatively, like someone testing out a identity.
She knows that she is different from some of the other interns she has
worked with -- they had fake I.D.s and slept with their boyfriends -- but
she told me that the kids in school who annoy her the most are the ones
locked into their Bibles, like one who, when they were studying Nietzsche,
kept saying, "But God isn't dead!" She said, "What happens when they meet
people who don't even read the Bible?" Once, she shook hands with George
Bush and noticed that his hands were soft, not real rancher's hands, like
her dad's. "You meet him and think, He's just a man. What's that expression?
He puts on pants just like you."

At lunch one day, I talked with Farahn Morgan, the dancer, about the other
students. Morgan had been homeschooled but also spent a lot of time in dance
studios, and had a keener sense of social dynamics than many of her peers.
The predominant view among Patrick Henry students is that "you choose your
life path, not that things happen to you," she said. "A lot of people here,
if they lose control -- even for a second -- they have a breakdown."
Sometimes, instead of going to church, Morgan sits in her car alone and
listens to sermons on the radio.

Patrick Henry is trying a complicated experiment: taking young evangelicals
who have been raised in rarefied, controlled atmospheres and training them
to become political leaders without somehow being corrupted by the secular
world's demands -- or, for that matter, moving to the middle. There are
already young, ambitious politicians who talk openly about their
relationship with Jesus and still get ahead. Whether someone like Matthew du
Mée could actually climb the Republican Party hierarchy is far from clear,
however. And, if he and his classmates do succeed, the real question may be
how their party changes in response to them.

Some of the alumni are already demonstrating the risks of Farris's
experiment. Having left Patrick Henry, they confront women at work who
curse, colleagues who look at them skeptically when they talk about Jesus,
or their own guilt when they fail to share the Word. They find that it's not
easy to reconcile being a witness and working in Washington. The development
office at Patrick Henry has asked graduates who work at the White House and
in Congress if it can use their pictures in promotional materials, but
almost all have declined. Even Elisa Muench says that when she's in
Washington she won't advertise her connection.

But Matthew du Mée is not at that point yet; he has every reason to feel
secure and happy. He and Christy Ross were married on June 4th, at a church
near her home in Indiana, and he has a lead on a good job in Phoenix. He
told me that he was glad to move on; his view of what's out there hasn't
changed much since he was choosing a college, and imagined all the people
who were waiting to hear his message. "We are all called to be lights out
there in this world," he said, "and I'm looking forward to that."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Saturday, August 6, 2005
Current Members: 1728

Current NHNE News List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

NHNE News List RSS News Feed:
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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

THE DESTRUCTION OF MECCA:
SAUDI HARDLINERS ARE WIPING OUT THEIR OWN HERITAGE
By Daniel Howden
The Independent
August 6, 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article304029.ece

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented
onslaught by religious zealots.

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone.
The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of
millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers,
with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline
interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they
prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine --
violently opposed to all forms of idolatry -- that this week decreed that
the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the
region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell
to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and
Medina."

According to Dr Angawi -- who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's
two holiest cities -- as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the
lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be
bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and
the end of their future," said Dr Angawi.

Mecca is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world. It is home to the
Grand Mosque and, along with the nearby city of Medina which houses the
Prophet's tomb, receives four million people annually as they undertake the
Islamic duty of the Haj and Umra pilgrimages.

The driving force behind the demolition campaign that has transformed these
cities is Wahhabism. This, the austere state faith of Saudi Arabia, was
imported by the al-Saud tribal chieftains when they conquered the region in
the 1920s.

The motive behind the destruction is the Wahhabists' fanatical fear that
places of historical and religious interest could give rise to idolatry or
polytheism, the worship of multiple and potentially equal gods.

The practice of idolatry in Saudi Arabia remains, in principle at least,
punishable by beheading. This same literalism mandates that advertising
posters can and need to be altered. The walls of Jeddah are adorned with ads
featuring people deliberately missing an eye or with a foot painted over.
These contrived imperfections are the most glaring sign of an orthodoxy that
tolerates nothing which fosters adulation of the graven image. Nothing can,
or can be seen to, interfere with a person's devotion to Allah.

"At the root of the problem is Wahhabism," says Dr Angawi. "They have a big
complex about idolatry and anything that relates to the Prophet."

The Wahhabists now have the birthplace of the Prophet in their sights. The
site survived redevelopment early in the reign of King Abdul al-Aziz ibn
Saud 50 years ago when the architect for a library there persuaded the
absolute ruler to allow him to keep the remains under the new structure.
That concession is under threat after Saudi authorities approved plans to
"update" the library with a new structure that would concrete over the
existing foundations and their priceless remains.

Dr Angawi is the descendant of a respected merchant family in Jeddah and a
leading figure in the Hijaz -- a swath of the kingdom that includes the holy
cities and runs from the mountains bordering Yemen in the south to the
northern shores of the Red Sea and the frontier with Jordan. He established
the Haj Research Centre two decades ago to preserve the rich history of
Mecca and Medina. Yet it has largely been a doomed effort. He says that the
bulldozers could come "at any time" and the Prophet's birthplace would be
gone in a single night.

He is not alone in his concerns. The Gulf Institute, an independent
news-gathering group, has publicised what it says is a fatwa, issued by the
senior Saudi council of religious scholars in 1994, stating that preserving
historical sites "could lead to polytheism and idolatry".

Ali al-Ahmed, the head of the organisation, formerly known as the Saudi
Institute, said: "The destruction of Islamic landmarks in Hijaz is the
largest in history, and worse than the desecration of the Koran."

Most of the buildings have suffered the same fate as the house of Ali-Oraid,
the grandson of the Prophet, which was identified and excavated by Dr
Angawi. After its discovery, King Fahd ordered that it be bulldozed before
it could become a pilgrimage site.

"The bulldozer is there and they take only two hours to destroy everything.
It has no sensitivity to history. It digs down to the bedrock and then the
concrete is poured in," he said.

Similarly, finds by a Lebanese professor, Kamal Salibi, which indicated that
once-Jewish villages in what is now Saudi Arabia might have been the
location of scenes from the Bible, prompted the bulldozers to be sent in.
All traces were destroyed.

This depressing pattern of excavation and demolition has led Dr Angawi and
his colleagues to keep secret a number of locations in the holy cities that
could date back as far as the time of Abraham.

The ruling House of Saud has been bound to Wahhabism since the religious
reformer Mohamed Ibn abdul-Wahab signed a pact with Mohammed bin Saud in
1744. The combination of the al-Saud clan and Wahhab's warrior zealots
became the foundation of the modern state. The House of Saud received its
wealth and power and the hardline clerics got the state backing that would
enable them in the decades to come to promote their Wahhabist ideology
across the globe.

On the tailcoats of the religious zealots have come commercial developers
keen to fill the historic void left by demolitions with lucrative
high-rises.

"The man-made history of Mecca has gone and now the Mecca that God made is
going as well." Says Dr Angawi. "The projects that are coming up are going
to finish them historically, architecturally and environmentally," he said.

With the annual pilgrimage expected to increase five-fold to 20 million in
the coming years as Saudi authorities relax entry controls, estate agencies
are seeing a chance to cash in on huge demand for accommodation.

"The infrastructure at the moment cannot cope. New hotels, apartments and
services are badly needed," the director of a leading Saudi estate agency
told Reuters.

Despite an estimated $13bn in development cash currently washing around
Mecca, Saudi sceptics dismiss the developers' argument. "The service of
pilgrims is not the goal really," says Mr Ahmed. "If they were concerned for
the pilgrims, they would have built a railroad between Mecca and Jeddah, and
Mecca and Medina. They are removing any historical landmark that is not
Saudi-Wahhabi, and using the prime location to make money," he says.

Dominating these new developments is the Jabal Omar scheme which will
feature two 50-storey hotel towers and seven 35-storey apartment blocks --
all within a stone's throw of the Grand Mosque.

Dr Angawi said: "Mecca should be the reflection of the multicultural Muslim
world, not a concrete parking lot."

Whereas proposals for high-rise developments in Jerusalem have prompted a
worldwide outcry and the Taliban's demolition of the Bamiyan buddhas was
condemned by Unicef, Mecca's busy bulldozers have barely raised a whisper of
protest.

"The house where the Prophet received the word of God is gone and nobody
cares," says Dr Angawi. "I don't want trouble. I just want this to stop."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Saturday, August 6, 2005
Current Members: 1728

Current NHNE News List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

NHNE News List RSS News Feed:
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/rss

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

WHERE DO HUMAN BEINGS COME FROM?
APE TO MAN ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL
PRNewswire
Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Premieres Sunday, August 7, 2005

http://www.historychannel.com/apetoman/

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050803/nyw151.html?.v=20

NEW YORK - It has long been considered the most compelling question in our
history: Where do human beings come from? Although life has existed for
millions of years, only in the past century-and-a-half have we begun to use
science to explore the ancestral roots of our own species. The search for
the ultimate answer has taken a number of twists and turns, with careers
made and broken along the way. APE TO MAN is the story of the quest to find
the origins of the human race -- a quest that spanned more than 150 years of
obsessive searching. APE TO MAN is a world premiere on The History Channel
on August 7 at 9-11 pm ET/PT.

The search for the origins of humanity is a story of bones and the tales
they tell. It was in 1856 that the first bones of an extinct human ancestor
were encountered, unearthed by a crew of unskilled laborers digging for
limestone in Western Europe. The find, which would be known as Neanderthal
Man, was seeing the light of day for the first time in more than 40,000
years. At the time, the concept of a previous human species was virtually
unthinkable. Yet just a few years later, Charles Darwin's work The Origin of
Species first broached the subject of evolution, and by the end of the
nineteenth century, it had become the hottest topic of the age. Adventurers
had embarked on the search for the Missing Link, the single creature that
represented the evolutionary leap from apes to humans. APE TO MAN examines
the major discoveries that have led us to the understanding we have today,
including theories that never gained full acceptance in their time, an
elaborate hoax that confused the scientific community for years, and the
ultimate understanding of the key elements that separate man from apes.

Highlights of APE TO MAN include:

- Reenactments of the work of Eugene DuBois, an Amsterdam physician who left
his practice in 1890 in search of the Missing Link and found what would be
called Homo erectus, a 500,000-year old ape-like skeleton, in Sumatra.
DuBois' assertion that he has found the Missing Link results in his
rejection by the scientific community. Only later did people realize the
impact of the discovery.

- Examination of the key elements that marked the evolution from ape to man,
including the ability to walk upright, the use of tools, the harnessing of
fire, the ability to form communities, and the ability to reason and plan.

- The story of Piltdown Man, a skeleton discovered in England in 1912 which
was, for a time, considered by many to be the definitive Missing Link, but
later discovered to be one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of science.

- Raymond Dart's 1924 discovery of Taung Child, a fossilized skull of a
child in Africa that is nearly two million years old. It was the oldest
finding to date, but was completely ignored by the scientific community
because people still believed in the erroneous story of Piltdown Man.

Two key shifts in thinking led to our understanding today -- the shift to
Africa as the birthplace of the human species; and the shift from thinking
that brain size was the driving force of evolution, to the understanding
that the use of tools was really the key step.

Executive Producer for The History Channel is Marc Etkind. APE TO MAN is
produced by Lion Television for The History Channel. Executive Producer is
Bill Locke. Producer is Anna Thomson. Director is Nic Young.

Now reaching more than 88 million Nielsen subscribers, The History Channel®,
"Where the Past Comes Alive®," brings history to life in a powerful manner
and provides an inviting place where people experience history personally
and connect their own lives to the great lives and events of the past. In
2004, The History Channel earned five News and Documentary Emmy® Awards and
previously received the prestigious Governor's Award from the Academy of
Television Arts & Sciences for the network's "Save Our History®" campaign
dedicated to historic preservation and history education. The network
received its second Peabody Award in 2005. The History Channel web site is
located at:

http://www.HistoryChannel.com

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WILL WE EVER ARRIVE AT THE GOOD DEATH?
By Robin Marantz Henig
New York Times
August 7, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/magazine/07DYINGL.html

The death rattle is what's so unnerving. People who sit beside someone who
is close to death, someone in a stage the experts call ''active dying,''
might hear a sound that's not quite a snore, not quite a gurgle, not quite a
rasp. It doesn't hurt; it probably isn't something the dying person is even
aware of. But it sounds terrible.

''Once the so-called death rattle starts,'' says Charles G. Meys, a hospice
nurse with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, ''that's usually an
indication that the person is not coming back.''

The sound, made with each intake of breath, is merely air moving across
phlegm. ''Healthy people can cough it up or spit it out or swallow it,''
Meys says, but a dying person is just not strong enough, so the secretions
collect in the upper airways. ''And as they breathe in and out, it makes
that sound -- that sound that we have learned to fear.'' To those watching,
the person seems to be gasping for breath, asking to be saved.

Meys tells family members that he can offer atropine to dry up the airways
and soften the death rattle, and most of them ask for it. ''But it's not for
the dying person,'' he says. ''It's for the family.''

Charles Meys is the vanguard of dying in contemporary America. He's a
hospice nurse of the kind that people in pain wish for: compassionate,
soft-spoken, dedicated. He doesn't look the part of a nurse: he's 50 years
old and a skinny 6-foot-3, with intense brown eyes and a long, graying
ponytail. His mission is to help people get ready to die -- even if it
means, as it does surprisingly often, allowing them to deny that they're
dying.

Hospice today is as different from its grass-roots origins as Charles Meys
is from Florence Nightingale. It began in the 1960's as an
antiestablishment, largely volunteer movement advocating a gentle death as
an alternative to the medicalized death many people had come to dread.
People still dread those deaths; surveys show most of us want to die at
home, not in a hospital, and want to die naturally, not hooked up to life
support. But in recent years, hospice itself has become institutionalized,
and it no longer means quite what most people take it to mean. Today there
are hospice patients on ventilators, hospice patients with feeding tubes,
hospice patients getting pacemakers, hospice patients receiving blood
transfusions and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, hospice patients who panic
when they can't breathe and call 911.

It's all part of the new trend in hospice toward ''open access,'' meaning
that terminally ill patients can continue chemotherapy and other treatments
and still get hospice benefits through Medicare. The idea began in the
1980's, when AIDS patients started enrolling in hospices and weren't quite
ready to give up all medical options. Today hospice workers are also
aligning with doctors in a field known as palliative medicine -- an approach
that emphasizes pain relief, symptom control and spiritual and emotional
care for the dying and their families. With hospice becoming so inclusive,
and with palliative care on its way to becoming a new medical subspecialty
with its own licensing exam, the natural, machine-free deaths we say we want
are starting to look a lot like the medicalized deaths they were meant to
replace.

The trend reflects society's deep ambivalence about dying. During the long
and public agony over the death of Terri Schiavo, debate centered on the
right to make end-of-life decisions. But underlying the political posturing
was a shared assumption that was barely acknowledged: the belief that dying
is something over which we have some control. This death-denying culture has
led to a system of care for the terminally ill that allows us to indulge the
fantasy that dying is somehow optional.

In many ways, we act as if we can avoid death indefinitely if only we're
quick enough or smart enough or prepared enough. Even hospice workers call
their field by a new name that accentuates the positive: they used to say
they specialized in ''death and dying,'' but today the umbrella term is
''end of life.'' The shift is subtle but significant -- an emphasis on
''life'' rather than ''death.''

What we have, then, is a medical system for the dying that is as ambivalent
about dying as we are ourselves.


Goldie Gold was ambivalence personified. When I met her at the beginning of
the summer, she was, at 72, still an attractive woman, even though her hair
was sparse from recent chemotherapy. She sparkled and flirted with Charles
Meys during his twice-weekly hospice visits, and she had a beautiful smile.

The story of Gold's final illness raises some questions that underlie the
modern American death. How do we let go of a life? How much intervention is
too much? When do all the small fixes stop making sense? How does a person
know when to say, ''O.K., so this is what I'll finally die of''? We rarely
ask such questions, because we don't believe, in our bones, that a terminal
disease will end in an actual death. We don't want to cut short a closing
life by even a matter of days. We want to be able to say that we did
everything we could.

But the denial of death comes at a cost -- a cost that goes beyond mere
dollars and cents (though the dollars and cents involved are no small
thing). Saving a dying person from one condition ''extends life a bit,
changes the manner of dying, and may or may not, on balance, be a good
thing,'' writes Dr. Joanne Lynn, former president of Americans for Better
Care of the Dying, in her book ''Sick to Death and Not Going to Take It
Anymore!''

Gold put a brave face on her situation. ''I'm not afraid of dying,'' she
said one wet summer afternoon, her head resting on a fluffy baby blue
pillow. ''But I'm terribly unhappy about not living.''

Gold was a smart, feisty woman, an atheist who called herself ''an ethical
Jew and an ethnic Jew.'' Pictures of her family -- handsome husband, three
children, eight grandchildren -- were scattered around her tidy one-bedroom
apartment in Greenwich Village, perched beside plush white couches and
grinning down from the walls and shelves.

After raising her children in Howard Beach in Queens, Gold returned to
Manhattan, where she grew up. For 25 more years, she and her husband, Neil,
a taxi driver, thrived on its vibrant street life. Then Neil got sick with
pancreatic cancer, and Gold nursed him for two years until 1998, when he
died in a hospital, with Gold and their children there with him in the
I.C.U.

Shortly after her husband died, Gold was found to have non-Hodgkins
lymphoma. She went through aggressive chemotherapy and was declared cured.
But last Thanksgiving she got a new diagnosis, metastatic ovarian cancer,
and things were looking grim.

Gold pursued chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, but after several
months of that, her children persuaded her to sign up for hospice care as
well. They wanted her to get the services hospice offered: home visits by
nurses, social workers, dietary counselors and doctors; free medicine, with
free delivery; free medical appliances, hospital beds, walkers; services
from home health aides, physical therapists, chaplains; short-term 24-hour
nursing care if she needed it; short-term hospitalization if she needed it;
bereavement services for her survivors; and all of it covered by Medicare.

Medicare regulations require that hospice patients must have a prognosis of
less than six months if the disease runs its normal course. Gold probably
understood that, but she may have expected to beat the odds -- after all,
Neil was given three months, and he lasted two years. And she had already
beaten the odds once herself, with the lymphoma.

Gold was able to stay upbeat, as long as she was feeling basically well. She
remained feisty and provocative, sprinkling her conversation with language
that could get a bit salty. But one night in June, she had trouble
breathing. It was a Sunday night. She panicked. Her live-in home health aide
panicked. They dialed 911.

Dialing 911 is something that can get hospice patients into situations they
don't want to be in. Once they're in an emergency room, all their careful
planning to avoid high-tech interventions is subsumed by the medical
imperative. Emergency-room workers don't have time to wonder whether a dying
person will benefit from rescue efforts, or whether the patient they pound
back to life will ever recover anything like normal functioning. In fact,
when physicians are asked whether they will abide by a patient's advance
directives, like do-not-resuscitate orders, the majority of them say, in
essence, ''It depends.'' In July of last year, the Archives of Internal
Medicine published a survey that found that 65 percent of physicians
wouldn't necessarily follow a living will if, for example, its instructions
conflicted with the doctor's own ideas of the patient's prognosis or
expected quality of life.

For a dying person, a trip to the emergency room might feel like a way to
defeat death, but of course it won't. One study of patients in hospital
intensive care units, where the sickest E.R. patients go, showed that of
elderly patients who survived their time in the I.C.U. -- and who therefore
were counted as medical successes -- 50 percent were dead within the year.

But Gold was frightened, and even though she knew she was dying, she didn't
want to die. So she asked the medics to take her to Sloan-Kettering. She was
admitted that Sunday night and didn't get out until Wednesday, after
physicians had drained an accumulation of fluid in her abdomen, a common
result of her kind of cancer. They took seven liters' worth.

''That's a lot of fluid, and it probably accounted for her distress,'' Meys
told me later. ''But when patients on hospice call 911, it's not necessarily
because they're in physical distress. It could be emotional distress.'' Meys
says he has seen it often: people who act as if they have accepted their
terminal status but who really have not. ''They may say, 'I'm ready for the
end, I'm ready for the disease to run its course.' But in a moment of pain
or distress, they get frightened, and they're not ready.''

Meys came to nursing late, enrolling in nursing school at SUNY Binghamton at
age 36 after several years spent teaching at a middle school and traveling
through Europe and Africa. His first job was at New York University Medical
Center, where he worked with many cancer and AIDS patients and saw a lot of
people die. ''I hate to say it, but I was put off by the way they treat some
people in hospitals,'' he says. ''Some doctors did really wonderful work,
but others -- well, it seemed to me that other doctors treated people past
the point where you'd think it was appropriate.'' If a stroke patient had
been mentally incapacitated, for instance, ''and their quality of life was
what I would perceive as being pretty poor, doctors would still be drawing
their blood every day, balancing this medication and that, checking to see
if the potassium is too high or the calcium is too low. To me, that was just
staving off the inevitable -- it didn't make any sense.''

Meys's travels in Africa had made him want to find a way to ''do something I
thought was useful,'' he said. But his work as a hospital nurse wasn't it.
So in 1996 he quit his job at N.Y.U. He considered the Peace Corps, but by
then, after a solitary life, he had met his wife, Nancy, and they wanted to
stay in New York. So Meys took a job with the Visiting Nurse Service of New
York and in 2002 became a part of its hospice program.

In early June, Meys took me to meet Goldie Gold, who had just gotten home
from the hospital after her 911 phone call. She was sitting up at the table
in her little dinette, dressed in a T-shirt and slacks, bantering with her
private health aide, a pretty blond woman from Colombia named Martha Bernal.
(''I love this girl,'' Gold told me. ''She's magical; I want to adopt
her.'') As Gold and I spoke, Bernal hovered nearby, hugging Gold and sitting
on her lap and speaking baby talk and putting girlish barrettes in her hair.
It almost felt as if Bernal were trying to keep us from discussing anything
that might upset the older woman, or maybe it was Gold who was trying to
protect Bernal.

For whatever reason, we didn't talk much about dying that day. We talked
about how she was getting ready to begin more chemotherapy the following
week, and about how sad she was that her children had to watch her go
through cancer treatment after having done so with their father seven years
before. ''He was a saint as a patient,'' she said. ''I don't know if I can
be as brave.''

When I visited again in early July, the weather was wet and unseasonably
chilly, and Gold was sicker. She was lying in a hospital bed that had
recently been squeezed into her bedroom, and she had such bad acid reflux
(which causes severe heartburn) that she was unable to keep down any food.
She apologized each time she burped, and again whenever she vomited into a
white plastic-lined wastebasket. Now she was wondering whether it was time
to give up. ''I think about stopping everything,'' she said. But her
oncologist wanted her to keep fighting: ''The doctor says, 'We're not there
yet,' when I talk about stopping. So I say, 'That's easy for you to say;
you're not the one who's throwing up.'''

If she didn't eat or drink, she didn't have reflux and didn't throw up. I
asked Gold if she was hungry or thirsty; she wasn't. So I asked why she kept
eating. She didn't quite understand my question, and I didn't press it. But
still I wondered: why did she keep eating? Out of habit? Obedience? Fear of
worrying her loved ones? Bernal kept pressing food on her, spooning
applesauce into her mouth as if she were a child, bringing her a can of diet
ginger ale with a straw, urging her to eat a piece of the cheese danish that
her son dropped off that morning. But each spoonful or sip came right back
up within minutes, and Gold was clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed by her
vomiting. Why not leave her be, I wondered, and have starvation be the way
she dies?

Meys was in Gold's apartment that rainy day in July, taking her blood
pressure, feeling her pulse, checking her back for bed sores, checking her
ankles for the swelling that had bothered her the week before. Mostly he
talked to her, crouching at her bedside. He gently stroked her arm and
admired her manicure as they talked about symptoms. Gold's big complaint was
the reflux, so Meys made a phone call to the pharmacy for Carafate, a drug
often taken for ulcers, which would coat her esophagus and might provide
some relief.

''You're taking Protonix and Pepcid now and they're not doing you any
good,'' he told her. ''But this should help. You have to stop taking the
Pepcid, but you can keep taking the Protonix, and then start the Carafate
too. It comes in liquid form, but I think you'll be able to keep it down.''
He reminded Gold that it might take three days to see any result. He ticked
off the days: Saturday, Sunday, Monday. ''By Monday this should help you
feel better,'' he said. He repeated all the instructions to Bernal too.

But by Monday Gold was back in the hospital. Meys was disturbed to find out
that Gold had never even started taking the Carafate, which arrived from the
drugstore on Friday afternoon; she and Bernal seemed to have misunderstood
his instructions and were afraid that it would interact badly with the pills
Gold was already taking. ''If we can't treat the symptoms,'' Meys said to me
in frustration, ''what good is hospice?''

Gold had gone to the hospital for another tap to drain the fluid in her
abdomen. While she was there, her oncologist, who had been so gung-ho up to
that point, sat down with Gold and her children and agreed that it was time
to shift gears: the chemotherapy wasn't working, and there would be no more
of it, not for symptom relief, not for treatment. As the family tried to
wrestle with this new information, the oncologist admitted Gold to the
hospital -- a surprise to everyone, since the fluid tap was usually done as
an outpatient procedure. Was Gold much sicker than they realized?

In the hospital, Gold's doctors diagnosed aspiration pneumonia, which forced
her to remain hospitalized for another five days so she could get
antibiotics intravenously. Another bit of ambivalence: here was a woman who
had just been told that it was time to stop all chemotherapy, yet when she
developed an infection, no one even raised the question of whether to treat
it. Treating pneumonia is done almost instinctively, it seems; even Meys
seemed flummoxed when I asked him whether antibiotics should have been
withheld. It would have seemed a shame, I guess, to let her die, after all
her struggling, of something so easily fixed. But what did she gain from
those extra days? What did her anguished children gain? And what did society
gain by spending thousands of dollars on her care? Since she was about to
die anyway, did anyone ask: Is pneumonia the thing that Goldie Gold should
die of?

You could argue that Gold should have been allowed to die of starvation at
her home, or of pneumonia in the hospital. But you could just as easily
argue that it was better to help her hold on for as long as she could. Who
can count the value of an extra week, or the feeling that you went out
fighting?


Gold said she was willing to enter hospice care in the first place only
because of the recent innovation of open access. When her husband was dying,
she didn't sign him up for hospice because she didn't want him to think she
had given up on him. But with open access, there was no need to renounce
treatment to enroll. That was why Gold was able to continue chemotherapy for
the first three months that she was a hospice patient. It's a classic case
of having your cake and eating it: you can enroll in hospice and get the
wide range of support services free through Medicare's hospice benefit and
still allow yourself to believe that you can live forever.

The concept of hospice originated in Great Britain, where Dame Cicely
Saunders, a social-worker-turned-physician who died July 14 at age 87,
opened the world's first modern hospice, St. Christopher's, in 1967. The
first American hospice, built on the St. Christopher's model, opened in
Connecticut in 1974 with financing from the National Cancer Institute. From
then the movement grew, led by a handful of nurses and a slightly larger
handful of volunteers.

As a home-based health care service (except for a few free-standing
residential hospices), hospice seemed to be a way to achieve more humane
care and to reduce the nation's ballooning health care bill. At the time,
roughly a quarter of Medicare expenditures were for people in the last year
of life. So Congress decided to push hospice through Medicare partly as a
cost-cutting measure. This has led to an explosion in hospice nationwide:
from about 1,500 programs in 1985, taking care of about 160,000 people,
there are now about 3,300 hospices in the United States, caring for some
950,000 people a year. But strangely, there has been little change in the
proportion of Medicare expenditures spent on people in the last year of
life. Although the absolute dollar amount has changed -- it was, on average,
$25,000 for someone who died in 1999 -- the proportion remains stubbornly at
about 25 percent.

Roughly two million Americans die anticipated deaths -- as distinct from
deaths from accidents, violence or sudden illness -- every year. Of these,
about one-third died while in hospice care -- some 710,000 people in 2003,
the most recent year tabulated. This is a significant rise from the early
1980's. But even as the hospice philosophy penetrates the health care
marketplace, gaps remain. The length of stay in particular is a concern,
with most hospice patients dying within two or three weeks of enrollment.
This means that hospice, despite its growing public profile, despite its
comprehensive coverage and despite open access, is still thought of as a
place of last resort.

This is where palliative medicine comes in. In simplest terms, palliative
medicine is the care a patient gets at first diagnosis of a terminal
illness; it's a kind of pre-hospice care. The term itself was created as a
euphemism, introduced in 1975 by an oncologist in Montreal, Dr. Balfour
Mount. Mount realized that his French-speaking patients would respond poorly
to a facility that was called a hospice, since the word in French refers to
an almshouse for the aged and infirm. The word ''palliative,'' derived from
the Latin for ''to cloak'' or ''to shield,'' was already being used to mean
treatment to relieve symptoms rather than to cure the underlying disease. It
seemed a small step from there to the way the word has come to be used, as a
branch of medicine that takes as its mission the prevention and relief of
suffering, in particular the suffering associated with terminal illness.

One leader in the American palliative-care movement is Dr. Diane Meier, a
petite whirlwind of a woman who is head of the palliative-care program at
Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and is director of the Center to Advance
Palliative Care, a national advocacy group with headquarters at Mount Sinai.
She has taken on palliative care as her personal mission -- a mission that
began about a decade ago, when she peered into the open door of a hospital
room and saw a patient writhing, arms and legs tied to the bed, trying to
remove his feeding tube.

Meier asked in horror what was going on and learned that the patient had
first come to Mount Sinai about six or eight months earlier with a lung
mass. He was found to have lung cancer and a single brain metastasis and was
advised to have surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. He refused all three.
His wife, it turned out, died of lung cancer two years earlier, and he did
not want to go through what she had gone through. Against their better
judgment, the hospital staff sent the man home, under the watchful, worried
eye of his three children.

Dying at home is not easy. Even though surveys indicate that about 70
percent of Americans say they want to die at home, few realize how grueling
the work of dying can be. Almost everyone eventually needs care from either
a paid assistant or, more often, a relative -- and the toll is enormous.
Think of it: the aide or family member is expected to bathe, dress and feed
the dying person, to assist in the bathroom and to keep track of the
narcotics and other powerful medications, as well as doctor visits. Even
loving, healthy people have trouble when they're thrust into this role for a
family member or friend; what of family members who are ill themselves, or
resentful, overburdened, exhausted, depressed?

Few services were available at the time to the Mount Sinai patient. His
cancer spread, and one day the man's son found him unresponsive on the
kitchen floor, where he had fallen during a seizure brought on by brain
metastases. The son called 911.

Readmitted to Mount Sinai, the man was sedated by a combination of
antiseizure medication and the cancer itself. He was plagued by delirium and
was only sporadically alert. He was in no position to reiterate his earlier
decision to refuse therapy. The doctors decided that the only way to get
food into the man, who was having trouble swallowing, was through a feeding
tube, which has to be inserted through the nose, down the throat and into
the stomach. It's uncomfortable to get it in and to have it in, and the
patient kept pulling it out. The doctors restrained his hands. He pulled it
out with his knees. They restrained his feet. Still he somehow managed to
dislodge the tube 17 times, and each time the hospital staff replaced it.

Why, Meier asked the intern in charge of the man's care, do you keep
reinserting that tube, when it's so clear the patient doesn't want it?

''He looked at me, and I will never forget this young man's face,'' Meier
told me. ''And he said, 'Because if we don't do this, he'll die.'''

Meier describes this as her ''light-bulb moment,'' the instant that
clarified for her that there was a way to bring medicine back to its
original goals of healing and the relief of suffering. ''I realized that
this young man really cared about this patient, wanted to do the best for
him, was upset about the suffering he was causing -- but he didn't see any
other way to do it.'' Meier decided to help people like him find another
way.

Had there been a palliative medicine program in place in the hospital -- of
the kind Meier estimates are in place in or planned for about half of the
400 major teaching hospitals nationwide -- the intern could have asked for a
palliative consultation for the distressed patient Meier had witnessed. The
palliative team might have advised how to care for a terminally ill patient
who was rejecting his feeding tube. They might have offered some
alternatives instead: prescribing antianxiety medication, for instance, or
taking out the tube and offering small amounts of semisolid foods. Since the
palliative physicians would have been the intern's peers -- unlike nurses,
who would have lacked the authority to insist on leaving the patient alone
-- they could have presented their treatment perspective in a way that, in
theory, might have got a more receptive response. This is generally how
palliative-care consultations are now offered and received around the
country.

The American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine accredits fellowship
training programs, and close to 2,000 internists, family physicians and
other doctors have passed its certification exam. The next step would be for
the American Board of Medical Specialties to recognize palliative medicine
as a formal subspecialty, like neurology or cardiology. Meier says she hopes
this will happen in the next few years.

But while a palliative perspective is making inroads into hospital-based
medicine, there is still something of a turf battle today between palliative
medicine and hospice. Is hospice a subcategory of palliative care, or is it
the other way around? Is it better to focus end-of-life care in the hospital
or the home? Will palliative medicine put physicians back in charge of
dying, remedicalizing the experience all over again? Will it turn suffering
into just another disease to be cured?


Death often comes as something of a surprise - which is odd, when you think
about it, because people who die tend to be old and sick already. Some 80
percent of the Americans who die every year are on Medicare; the vast
majority of them are suffering from one or more forms of what Joanne Lynn
calls ''serious, eventually fatal chronic illness.'' But death doesn't
usually announce itself in advance, like the Grim Reaper knocking on the
door in an old New Yorker cartoon. The major killers have idiosyncratic
''dying trajectories,'' says Lynn, most of which make the prediction of the
actual time of death virtually impossible.

Cancer has a dying trajectory that best fits the hospice model: a very
gradual decline in function, usually over months or even years, so gradual
as to be hardly noticeable, and then a sudden turn, a sharp decline and,
within a couple of months, death. It's with cancer deaths that physicians
can make prognoses that are closest to accurate. When a patient with
advanced cancer takes to bed with no clear and correctable cause, that
usually means death is a matter of weeks, or at most a few months, away.

But cancer is involved in only about 25 percent of anticipated deaths. Other
common causes of death, together accounting for another 35 percent, are
heart disease and lung disease. The dying trajectory for organ failure,
which includes not only heart and lung failure but also failure of the liver
or kidneys, is trickier than that for cancer. This one is a
downward-spiraling roller coaster, a long, slow decline punctuated by
valleys of periodic, and unpredictable, crises. The person often recovers
from each crisis, though not quite to the same level of function. Eventually
there's a crisis that turns out to be the final one. And there are those
people -- with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease -- who can dwindle over
many years. These are the people who are the most difficult to care for.

Death generally comes for most of us ''with unpredictable timing from
predictably fatal chronic disease,'' Lynn wrote in ''Sick to Death and Not
Going to Take It Anymore!'' But since the diseases are ''predictably
fatal,'' why do we so often feel blindsided by death, even the death of an
elderly person suffering from a long-term condition? Because the hardest
thing to do is to really, deeply believe that we or our loved ones will die.

This explains why people keep going back to the hospital for more care.
''Even knowing that one more transfusion will not make a difference or that
one more round of antibiotics or one more trip to the intensive care unit
will not help,'' wrote James Hallenbeck, an assistant professor at Stanford
University, in his book ''Palliative Care Perspectives,'' ''many have
trouble breaking the cycle.'' Patients and their families and even their
physicians say they despise the miserable roller-coaster ride, he wrote, yet
they often act ''as if they are addicted to it.''

What we're addicted to, it seems, is the belief that we can micromanage
death. We tend to think of a ''good death'' as one that we can control,
making decisions about how much intervention we want, how much pain relief,
whether it's in the home or the hospital, who will be by our sides. We even
sometimes try to make decisions about what we will die from. This can be
valuable, as when a cancer patient with little hope of survival, like Goldie
Gold back in mid-July, rejects debilitating chemotherapy. But often, our
best-laid plans can go awry. Dying is awfully hard to choreograph.

Charles Meys had a patient this summer who thought he had in fact arranged
his dying, just as he had arranged most other things in his life. Meys
didn't know this patient well -- like most people in hospice, he was under
Meys's care for only a short time -- but he got an impression of him as a
man who stuck to his decisions even in the face of conflicting new
information. The patient, age 88, had been taking 10 to 12 different
medications, many of them more than once a day, for hypertension and
Parkinson's disease, and in early 2005 he had been put on dialysis three
times a week because his kidneys were failing.

He was angry, he was tired and at the beginning of June he decided to stop
everything. No more medications, he said -- his Parkinson's was making the
pills too hard to swallow anyway, and if his wife chopped them up they
tasted awful -- and no more dialysis. This was when he was assigned to Meys.

The patient and his doctors assumed that it would be kidney failure that
killed him. Usually, death from kidney failure is relatively peaceful: a
short time after dialysis is withdrawn, the patient slips into a coma and,
soon after, quietly dies. To this man, that kind of death seemed preferable
than the agony of living indefinitely with three chronic, progressive,
debilitating diseases.

''I told him the first day I met him that it was entirely his decision,''
Meys recalls, ''but that he had to realize that his blood pressure was
extremely high, and that there were certain hazards associated with allowing
it to stay that high without treatment,'' like stroke or heart attack.

The man's withdrawal from dialysis did not spell the end for him. He lived
on and on, his kidneys performing their job at suboptimal but tolerable
levels for weeks. Still, he kept to his plan.

Three weeks after he stopped dialysis, his hypertension still untreated, he
suffered a stroke. Dying of kidney failure was the death this man chose. But
dying after a stroke -- which can be ''hellish,'' Meys says, with the risk
of incontinence, immobility and a long, dependent lingering -- was the death
he got.


The uncertainty of prognosticating death makes it hard to devise a system of
care for dying patients. Hospice was the first -- and to date, most
comprehensive -- attempt, but it has several weaknesses. It depends on an
accurate prediction of the time and manner of death. It is also essentially
home-based care, with Medicare regulations requiring that any licensed
hospice program have at least 80 percent of its services offered to people
at home. But not everyone can manage a home death.

''There are some families who say, 'If she dies at home, I'll never be able
to go back in that house,''' says Dr. Kathleen Foley, former chief of the
pain and palliative-care service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
in New York. ''Or an elderly woman will say: 'I can't let my husband die in
this bed. I'd never be able to sleep in it again.''' Or someone might
realize, at the last minute, that the idealized fantasy home death -- with
the whole extended family gathered around the beloved scion in the
four-poster bed -- is just that, a fantasy, and that a hospital death
somehow feels safer, more comfortable or more appropriate. ''We have to
recognize that reality, that some families just never could have kept their
loved one home to die,'' Foley told me. ''We want hospice to be able to
provide most of the care in those last days. But if the patient ends up
dying in the hospital, that may be best for everyone.''

Goldie Gold ended up in a residential hospice because her children didn't
feel they could cope with sole responsibility for the round-the-clock care
she eventually required. On July 22, they moved her by ambulance from her
apartment in the Village to the Hospice Inn in Melville on Long Island. By
that point Gold was already spending most of her time in a delirious state,
and her daughter Jaymie Corinella, who is 45, decided that Gold wouldn't
even notice her surroundings. ''Jaymie told me that in order to keep Goldie
at home, they would have to spend all their energy trying to juggle
everything, wondering how they could patch together 24-hour care for her,''
Meys said that afternoon. ''If they put her in a facility, Jaymie said to
me, 'We can just focus on loving her.'''

Hospice's biggest recruitment hurdle is its reputation as last-ditch,
brink-of-death care. Most sick people still don't ask for it; it seems too
much like giving up. Doctors are hesitant to recommend hospice, because it
requires them to speak frankly about the inevitability of a patient's death
-- something that most physicians are unwilling to do and that most patients
are unable to hear.

The six-months-to-live requirement for hospice admission was part of the
1982 legislation that made hospice a benefit under Medicare. Today hospice
administrators chafe under it, and some would like to have it removed. But
the rule serves an important purpose, says Carolyn Cassin, director of
Continuum Hospice Care, the largest hospice in New York City. It limits the
number of people entitled to the expensive benefit -- and it provides an
important psychological demarcation.

''It throws down the gauntlet'' is how Cassin puts it. ''It's not a bad
length of time for Americans, who don't want to die too soon. With six
months left, you'll still feel pretty good for most of that time. You could
still make that trip to see your grandchildren or go to Hawaii or see the
Eiffel Tower.''


Who can say what it's really like to die? You get only one chance to do it,
and there's no reporting back from the field. In her book ''Handbook for
Mortals,'' written with Joan Harrold, Joanne Lynn, who is also a senior
scientist at the RAND Corporation, wrote about a seriously ill patient who
opens his eyes and sees a nurse. ''Am I dead yet?'' he asks. ''No,'' says
the nurse. He thinks for a moment and then asks, ''How will I know?''

''Studying death is somewhat like studying a black hole,'' Hallenbeck, the
Stanford palliative-care expert, says. ''You can study around it, but with
death, like with black holes, there's something intrinsic to the very
process that defies our ability to analyze it.''

Not long ago, Hallenbeck was the palliative-care consultant for two patients
at the same time: an old woman dying of breast cancer and her middle-aged
son, who was dying, too. The son, who had colon cancer, died first. The
woman sat with Hallenbeck at her son's bedside, finding herself in the odd
-- and you would think unbearable -- position of watching her own child's
death from the disease that was also killing her. She studied her son's
face, asleep yet not asleep, not quite of this earth but not quite dead yet
either. As Hallenback recalled, he breathed a little raggedly, making
catlike purrs, and his features were slack, mouth open and eyes at
half-mast. Then the old woman turned to Hallenbeck. ''I guess he's getting
close,'' she said. Hallenbeck nodded. The old woman turned back to gaze at
her son. ''Doesn't look so bad, does it?'' she murmured.

It's true: the last stage of dying can look surprisingly peaceful -- at
least to the people who have seen it over and over. But what's going on
inside? Hallenbeck has spent a good deal of time wondering about that. He
says he would love for someone to attach electrodes to a dying person's head
to record electroencephalogram readings of the brain-wave patterns of dying
-- patterns that he suspects would look much like those of someone in a
dream. But he adds that such an experiment would probably never be done. The
moment of dying is considered too sacred, too intimate, for any scientist to
ask to intrude with his electrode machines. Even though many people die with
wires and tubes protruding from their bodies, those are theoretically there
for the benefit of the dying person, not for the furthering of what some
would see as a ghoulish kind of knowledge.

Still, scientists are able to guess some things about the dying person's
state of mind. They have observed that anywhere from 25 to 85 percent of the
actively dying are in altered states of consciousness during their final
days. This is a wide range, probably explained by variations in how the
investigators defined ''altered state'' and how they determined the dying
person's mental status. Most things about a dying person's state of
consciousness must be inferred. Dying people may say things that sound
delusional; they'll talk about seeing their long-dead relatives assembling
in the sick room, or they'll ask, ''Where are the train tickets?'' or ''How
can I travel with all this baggage?'' Hallenbeck considers this altered
state to be a hallmark of dying. ''I'm pretty comfortable saying I'm not
sure what this is about or what it signifies,'' he says. ''But what I am
comfortable saying is that we'll all get a chance to find out.''

Hallenbeck distinguishes toxic delirium -- by which he means altered states
caused by pain medication and other drugs -- from terminal delirium, which
is sometimes part of the dying process. The distinction is often made by
process of elimination; if the patient is not taking drugs known to affect
mental status, the presumption is that the delirium must be caused by
something else, something intrinsic to dying. No one knows for sure what
that ''something else'' might be -- activity in the optic region of the
brain, perhaps, or the effects of the release of endorphins and other brain
chemicals; a side effect of the dehydration common in the last days of life;
a result of electrolyte imbalance; a psychological tool for tidying up
unfinished business. According to Hallenbeck, all of this is prime material
for further investigation.

But even if scientists can't say for sure what's going on inside a dying
person's head, or why, they do tend to know how the last hours look. With
the exception of those who die suddenly -- that is, those who die from
trauma, heart attack or stroke -- death has many familiar hallmarks.

Imagine that the person dying is you. This is something that is all but
impossible to do -- even in dreams we usually force ourselves awake before
the last, fatal moment -- but it's an interesting exercise. So try to
picture it: you've been in hospice care for, say, three weeks, and Charles
Meys has been coming to your home twice a week to take your pulse and listen
to your heart and talk about how to treat your pain and constipation. Today
he tells your caretaker that you may have only a few days left to live.

Your hands are cold to the touch; so are your feet. You twitch occasionally.
Your face is drawn, your lips are dry and you don't get out of bed even to
use the bathroom. Using the bathroom is irrelevant by now anyway; you
haven't eaten anything for days, so your urinary and digestive tracts have
just about shut down. Slowly, though you can't necessarily feel it, all your
other organs are shutting down, too.

If you could see yourself, you'd see that your lips might look blue. Your
hands and feet might be blue as well. You breathe rapidly, except for the
long stretches of time when you don't really seem to breathe at all.

You spend your time in a kind of limbo between waking and sleeping. You know
who you are and where you are, yet you're seeing visions. Those relatives
who have been dead for years appear and disappear at your bedside. You want
to tell them something, but you don't talk to them, nor do you mention them
to your caretaker. Indeed, you don't talk much to anyone, imaginary or real.

Sometimes you moan, but you're probably in no distress; that's just what
happens when your throat muscles go flaccid. Toward the end, your jaw moves
up and down with every breath, almost as if you're chewing something. And as
you breathe, you make an eerie sound. It's the death rattle; you are not
coming back.


The scariest part about dying, at least to me, is how it ends: with the
immutable fact of no longer existing. But there are other common fears:
dying alone and dying in pain. Today, say specialists in end-of-life care,
no one has to do either.

Palliative care began as the control of pain, and pain relief remains the
hallmark of most end-of-life care, no matter where it takes place. At
Continuum Hospice Care, six full-time doctors specialize in pain and symptom
control at the end of life, and Cassin, the C.E.O., tells her staff members
that ''no patient you come in contact with should ever be in pain.'' She
does not mean just physical pain, either, but also the kinds of pain that
are more difficult to diagnose: emotional pain -- which Cassin describes as
''I'm frightened''; psychological pain -- ''my family hurts, my friends
hurt''; and spiritual pain -- ''I don't know where I'm going, I haven't been
a very good person, I haven't done the right things with my life.'' As she
explains to her nurses and health aides, ''You have just as much
responsibility to alleviate that as you do to alleviate the physical pain --
and if you can't, you can know who to call in to help you, know when to call
a chaplain, a massage therapist, a pet therapist, a doctor, a volunteer to
play the harp.''

Pain relief is much better than it used to be, but it comes at a cost, and
for different patients, balancing the risks and benefits can be tricky. For
one thing, the more you medicate someone for pain, the less likely the
patient is to stay alert. Morphine, the most commonly used pain medication
for the dying, can increase the dulling of the senses, contributing to the
inability to think clearly, to articulate coherent thoughts. At the end of
life, when clarity is slipping away, this befuddlement can be difficult to
bear. ''It's hardest for the family,'' Foley says. ''They already feel so
bad about losing their loved one, and if he takes this medication and
becomes confused or delirious, they feel like they're losing him that much
sooner.''

Pain medications can also make the patient constipated, sometimes so badly
that a nurse must empty the bowels manually in order to avoid fecal
impaction. Occasionally, laxatives act unpredictably, causing patients to
soil themselves before they can get to a toilet. All of this can be
mortifying. Just as some might rather stay awake and suffer, others might
rather stay continent and suffer.

For all that palliative-care physicians have learned about pain relief,
however, most terminally ill patients still don't get enough -- partly
because of fear of complications, partly because of uncertainty about how
much the patient is suffering. In 1995, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
published a landmark study, which surveyed the dying experiences of more
than 9,000 Americans in the early 1990's. The investigators surveyed family
members who had observed the deaths and reported that half of the patients
had spent at least half of their last 72 hours on earth in moderate to
severe pain. Of course, studies like this, which depend on family
observations, might be misleading, since relatives can easily misinterpret
the reflexive moans and twitches of active dying, which need not indicate
pain. Still, the overall impression was one of a dying process that was
unnecessarily hard.

''There's no reason for anyone who's dying to be in pain,'' Meys says.
''Pain is how we start. If we haven't controlled pain, then nothing will be
good.''


My father died while sitting on the toilet. The terrible unseemliness of
this, the image of him falling to the cold tile floor with his pants down
around his ankles, has haunted me in the nine years since his death. I was
living in a distant city, not involved at all in those final moments, but I
imagine it anyway: my mother hearing the thump, rushing up the stairs and
shouting: ''Sidney! Sidney!'' through the closed bathroom door, opening it
at last to see him slumped there, stripped not only of life but of dignity.
For months, she held onto the torn pants that the medics ripped off during
their doomed attempts at C.P.R.

And yet, as humiliating as it would have been for my father and horrifying
as it was for my mother, this was in many ways a good death. My father was
chronically ill with kidney disease and had spent the previous five years
getting dialysis three times a week. He had trouble walking. Yet at age 76
he was still active, still independent, still engaged; he still drove and
went to movies and visited with friends and went to art museums. He had
spent the last day of his life at a three-hour figure-drawing class that he
loved. The heart attack that killed him was probably merciful in its
deadliness. Had he recovered, he might have emerged permanently damaged,
presenting his family with decisions to make about surgical intervention and
end-of-life care that could have been wrenching.

So we were spared many of the horrors I encountered while researching this
article: no futile bouts in the intensive care unit, no fighting off the
tubes or vents or machines, no need to ask ourselves what it was my father
would have wanted.

But just as we were spared something terrible, we were denied something good
too: the chance to make my father's death not only mercifully quick but
meaningful. I found myself, as I read about hospice deaths and talked to my
friends about the way their loved ones died, trying to imagine what kind of
death I'd want for my mother, my husband, myself. I'd like a hospice nurse
taking care of us, a nurse like Charles Meys, with comforting hands and a
gentle voice and a direct, nonjudgmental gaze. And for myself, rather than
dying of a sudden heart attack like my father's, I'd wish for foreknowledge.
I'd like to know that death was imminent, and approximately when it would
come, and approximately how. But beyond that, the fantasizing stops. Like a
dreamer seeing herself fall off a cliff, I can't let myself get to the
bottom, can't imagine the final splat.


Most of us will be old and sick when we die and will have had years to tell
our loved ones just what it is about dying that most frightens us and, in
broad brush strokes, just how we hope to die.

The trouble is, most of us aren't talking. The silence is another example of
our ambivalence about death, our unwillingness to look it straight in the
face even as we make noises about accepting it. We're all so coy about the
words we use. Last spring, on a visit to the Zicklin Residence, a new 18-bed
hospice in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, only one of the four patients
I interviewed admitted that she was dying. The others, despite the fact that
they had needed medical prognoses of less than six months to get into
Zicklin, all danced around the subject, and I, like their doctors and
nurses, was hesitant to press the point. If they were choosing denial, who
was I to force them to confront the ugly truth?

''I don't use the word 'dying' very often,'' says Cassin, whose company owns
the Zicklin Residence. ''I try not to say 'dying' or 'terminal' or 'end of
life.' I say 'the last phase of your life.'''

This hesitation about saying things out loud was a surprise to me. The big
push in the early hospice movement was to get people talking frankly about
death and dying. To pioneers like Cicely Saunders and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,
the medical profession's unwillingness to talk about death, its complicity
in pretending that the patient would eventually recover, was the very thing
that made dying so terrible.

Yet it seems, for all the medical edifices we've built to cater to the
dying, we haven't really changed much in the past 35 years. For months, I
kept butting up against euphemisms. When I talked to a patient to whom Meier
referred me -- a smart, thoughtful woman with advanced ovarian cancer who
was officially part of Mount Sinai's palliative-care program -- she said
quickly: ''Palliative care? Oh, no, I'm not ready for that yet.'' When I
talked to a home hospice patient with advanced AIDS -- a charming,
introspective, plain-spoken man who confided that he had plans to end his
life if the pain got too bad -- he made me call it not ''dying'' but
''passing over,'' not ''assisted suicide'' but ''hastening death.''

Even Goldie Gold, who spent a lifetime being blunt, pulled her punches a
little at the very end. A few days before she died, on July 26, of
multiple-organ failure, she turned to her daughter Jaymie and said, ''This
will be my final curtain.''

These euphemisms can have profound implications about what kind of system is
in place to cater to the dying -- and what kind of treatment we can expect
for ourselves when our time comes. According to the National Hospice
Foundation, one-quarter of American adults over 45 say they would be
unwilling to talk to their parents about their parents' death -- even if
their parents had been told they had less than six months to live. Half of
all Americans said they were counting on friends and family members to carry
out their wishes about how they wanted to die -- but 75 percent of them had
never spelled out those wishes to anyone. A significant subset of that 75
percent had probably never even articulated their wishes to themselves.

As J. Donald Schumacher, president of the National Hospice and Palliative
Care Organization, said last April to the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions, ''Americans are more likely to talk to their
children about safe sex and drugs than to their terminally ill parents about
choices in care as they near life's final stages.''

Diane Meier has worked against this reticence, not only in her professional
life but in her personal life as well. Her father, 81 years old, suffered a
debilitating stroke 10 years ago and was recently advised to have a
diagnostic procedure for a possible aortic aneurysm, which might have
required an operation. Meier, who is her father's health care proxy, refused
the procedure, and would have refused the operation too. ''I know that the
more doctors do to my parents, the more problems they will create; I know
that deep in my heart,'' she says. ''I'm hoping to screen and protect them
from that kind of well-intended but harmful intervention.''

As for how she will face her own death, she admits that she doesn't know.
''I hope and I pray that when that time comes for me, my work will give me
greater restraint and perspective than I otherwise would have,'' says Meier,
who is 53. ''But my guess is that I'd be panicked and terrified, the same as
everyone else.''

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THE BREAKING POINT
By Peter Maass
The New York Times Magazine
Cover Story
August 21, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/magazine/21OIL.html

The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern
coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras Tanura's control
tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's dominion -- supertankers
coming and going, row upon row of storage tanks and miles and miles of
pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in June, is the funnel through which
nearly 10 percent of the world's daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing
in the control tower, you are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of
oil, yet not a drop can be seen.

The oil is there, of course. In a technological sleight of hand, oil can be
extracted from the deserts of Arabia, processed to get rid of water and gas,
sent through pipelines to a terminal on the gulf, loaded onto a supertanker
and shipped to a port thousands of miles away, then run through a refinery
and poured into a tanker truck that delivers it to a suburban gas station,
where it is pumped into an S.U.V. -- all without anyone's actually glimpsing
the stuff. So long as there is enough oil to fuel the global economy, it is
not only out of sight but also out of mind, at least for consumers.

I visited Ras Tanura because oil is no longer out of mind, thanks to record
prices caused by refinery shortages and surging demand -- most notably in
the United States and China -- which has strained the capacity of oil
producers and especially Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of all. Unlike
the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries created an artificial shortfall, today's
shortage, or near-shortage, is real. If demand surges even more, or if a
producer goes offline because of unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not
be enough oil to go around.

As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil
company, pointed out, ''One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of
oil will go up.'' This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances
have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting
off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is
far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot
with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by
some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near
future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running
out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and
geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of
producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world
requires. ''One thing is clear,'' warns Chevron, the second-largest American
oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ''the era of easy oil is
over.''

In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once
considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The
consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If
consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of
a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could
bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport
fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say,
almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life
would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The
suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant
trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas
rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of
many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of
course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.

But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia.
To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22
percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their country's output
beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the
12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about
84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other
producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is
almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New
fields in other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to
offer only small increments. For example, the much-contested and
as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are
believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of what
the Saudis possess.

But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs cannot
be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is underground, unseen by
geologists and engineers, who can, at best, make highly educated guesses
about how much is underfoot and how much can be extracted in the future. And
there is a further obstacle: the Saudis will not let outsiders audit their
confidential data on reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which
not only is the product hidden from sight but so is reliable information
about it. And because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might
arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its
impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness.

Of course the Saudis do have something to say about this prospect. Before
journeying to the kingdom, I went to Washington to hear the Saudi oil
minister, Ali al-Naimi, speak at an energy conference in the mammoth Ronald
Reagan Building and International Trade Center, not far from the White
House. Naimi was the star attraction at a gathering of the American
petro-political nexus. Samuel Bodman, the U.S. energy secretary, was on the
dais next to him. David O'Reilly, chairman and C.E.O. of Chevron, was
waiting in the wings. The moderator was an éminence grise of the oil world,
James Schlesinger, a former energy secretary, defense secretary and C.I.A.
director.

''I want to assure you here today that Saudi Arabia's reserves are
plentiful, and we stand ready to increase output as the market dictates,''
said Naimi, dressed in a gray business suit and speaking with only a slight
Arabic accent. He addressed skeptics who contend that Saudi reservoirs
cannot be tapped for larger amounts of oil. ''I am quite bullish on
technology as the key to our energy future,'' he said. ''Technological
innovation will allow us to find and extract more oil around the world.'' He
described the task of increasing output as just ''a question of investment''
in new wells and pipelines, and he noted that consuming nations urgently
need to build new refineries to process increased supplies of crude. ''There
is absolutely no lack of resources worldwide,'' he repeated.

His assurances did not assure. A barrel of oil cost $55 at the time of his
speech; less than three months later, the price had jumped by 20 percent.
The truth of the matter -- whether the world will really have enough
petroleum in the years ahead -- was as well concealed as the millions of
barrels of oil I couldn't see at Ras Tanura.


For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own firm,
Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies on mergers
and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate
of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid adviser on energy policy to the
2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying
member of the global oil nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things.
Yet he is one of the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask
hard questions of itself.

Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for
business executives. The group was presented with the usual dog-and-pony
show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors tend to be, with the
size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry, Simmons became perplexed. As
he recalls in his somewhat heretical new book, ''Twilight in the Desert: The
Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,'' a senior manager at Aramco
told the visitors that ''fuzzy logic'' would be used to estimate the amount
of oil that could be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What
could be fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its
promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil remained
to be recovered.

Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of the
charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate the
policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia provides
only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does not release
details about how much oil is extracted from each reservoir and what methods
are used to extract that oil, and it does not permit audits by outsiders.
The condition of Saudi fields, and those of other OPEC nations, is a closely
guarded secret. That's largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed
in 1983 to limit the output of member countries, were based on overall
reserves; the higher an OPEC member's reserves, the higher its quota. It is
widely believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of
their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota -- and thus the
largest possible revenue stream.

In the days of excess supply, bankers like Simmons did not know, or care,
about the fudging; whether or not reserves were hyped, there was plenty of
oil coming out of the ground. Through the 1970's, 80's and 90's, the
capacity of OPEC and non-OPEC countries exceeded demand, and that's why OPEC
imposed a quota system -- to keep some product off the market (although many
OPEC members, seeking as much revenue as possible, quietly sold more oil
than they were supposed to). Until quite recently, the only reason to fear a
shortage was if a boycott, war or strike were to halt supplies. Few people
imagined a time when supply would dry up because of demand alone. But a
steady surge in demand in recent years -- led by China's emergence as a
voracious importer of oil -- has changed that.

This demand-driven scarcity has prompted the emergence of a cottage industry
of experts who predict an impending crisis that will dwarf anything seen
before. Their point is not that we are running out of oil, per se; although
as much as half of the world's recoverable reserves are estimated to have
been consumed, about a trillion barrels remain underground. Rather, they are
concerned with what is called ''capacity'' -- the amount of oil that can be
pumped to the surface on a daily basis. These experts -- still a minority in
the oil world -- contend that because of the peculiarities of geology and
the limits of modern technology, it will soon be impossible for the world's
reservoirs to surrender enough oil to meet daily demand.

One of the starkest warnings came in a February report commissioned by the
United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.
''Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past decade, oil
companies have conducted extensive exploration over that period, but their
results have been disappointing,'' stated the report, assembled by Science
Applications International, a research company that works on security and
energy issues. ''If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect
that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future. . . . The
image is one of a world moving from a long period in which reserves
additions were much greater than consumption to an era in which annual
additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption. This is but
one of a number of trends that suggest the world is fast approaching the
inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production.''

The reference to ''peaking'' is not a haphazard word choice -- ''peaking''
is a term used in oil geology to define the critical point at which
reservoirs can no longer produce increasing amounts of oil. (This tends to
happen when reservoirs are about half-empty.) ''Peak oil'' is the point at
which maximum production is reached; afterward, no matter how many wells are
drilled in a country, production begins to decline. Saudi Arabia and other
OPEC members may have enough oil to last for generations, but that is no
longer the issue. The eventual and painful shift to different sources of
energy -- the start of the post-oil age -- does not begin when the last drop
of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are
unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch
time comes long before the last drop.

''The world has never faced a problem like this,'' the report for the Energy
Department concluded. ''Without massive mitigation more than a decade before
the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous
energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and
evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.''

Most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of peak
oil. One of the industry's most prominent consultants, Daniel Yergin, author
of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum, dismisses the doomsday
visions. ''This is not the first time that the world has 'run out of oil,'''
he wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion essay. ''It's more like the
fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the
oil industry.'' Yergin says that a number of oil projects that are under
construction will increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that
technological advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered
from existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today's technology, only about 40
percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped to the surface.)

Yergin's bullish view has something in common with the views of the
pessimists -- it rests on unknowns. Will the new projects that are under way
yield as much oil as their financial backers hope? Will new technologies
increase recovery rates as much as he expects? These questions are next to
impossible to answer because coaxing oil out of the ground is an
extraordinarily complex undertaking. The popular notion of reservoirs as
underground lakes, from which wells extract oil like straws sucking a
milkshake from a glass, is incorrect. Oil exists in drops between and inside
porous rocks. A new reservoir may contain sufficient pressure to make these
drops of oil flow to the surface in a gusher, but after a while -- usually
within a few years and often sooner than that -- natural pressure lets up
and is no longer sufficient to push oil to the surface. At that point,
''secondary'' recovery efforts are begun, like pumping water or gas into the
reservoirs to increase the pressure.

This process is unpredictable; reservoirs are extremely temperamental. If
too much oil is extracted too quickly or if the wrong types or amounts of
secondary efforts are employed, the amount of oil that can be recovered from
a field can be greatly reduced; this is known in the oil world as ''damaging
a reservoir.'' A widely cited example is Oman: in 2001, its daily production
reached more than 960,000 barrels, but then suddenly declined, despite the
use of advanced technologies. Today, Oman produces 785,000 barrels of oil a
day. Herman Franssen, a consultant who worked in Oman for a decade, sees
that country's experience as a possible lesson in the limits of technology
for other producers that try to increase or maintain high levels of output.
''They reached a million barrels a day, and then a few years later
production collapsed,'' Franssen said in a phone interview. ''They used all
these new technologies, but they haven't been able to stop the decline
yet.''


The vague production and reserve data that gets published does not begin to
tell the whole story of an oil field's health, production potential or even
its size. For a clear-as-possible picture of a country's oil situation, you
need to know what is happening in each field -- how many wells it has, how
much oil each well is producing, what recovery methods are being used and
how long they've been used and the trend line since the field went into
production. Data of that sort are typically not released by state-owned
companies like Saudi Aramco.

As Matthew Simmons searched for clues to the truth of the Saudi situation,
he immersed himself in the minutiae of oil geology. He realized that data
about Saudi fields might be found in the files of the Society of Petroleum
Engineers. Oil engineers, like most professional groups, have regular
conferences at which they discuss papers that delve into the work they do.
The papers, which focus on particular wells that highlight a problem or a
solution to a problem, are presented and debated at the conferences and
published by the S.P.E. -- and then forgotten.

Before Simmons poked around, no one had taken the time to pull together the
S.P.E. papers that involved Saudi oil fields and review them en masse.
Simmons found more than 200 such papers and studied them carefully. Although
the papers cover only a portion of the kingdom's wells and date back, in
some cases, several decades, they constitute perhaps the best public data
about the condition and prospects of Saudi reservoirs.

Ghawar is the treasure of the Saudi treasure chest. It is the largest oil
field in the world and has produced, in the past 50 years, about 55 billion
barrels of oil, which amounts to more than half of Saudi production in that
period. The field currently produces more than five million barrels a day,
which is about half of the kingdom's output. If Ghawar is facing problems,
then so is Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the entire world.

Simmons found that the Saudis are using increasingly large amounts of water
to force oil out of Ghawar. Most of the wells are concentrated in the
northern portion of the 174-mile-long field. That might seem like good news
-- when the north runs low, the Saudis need only to drill wells in the
south. But in fact it is bad news, Simmons concluded, because the southern
portions of Ghawar are geologically more difficult to draw oil from.
''Someday (and perhaps that day will be soon), the remarkably high well flow
rates at Ghawar's northern end will fade, as reservoir pressures finally
plummet,'' Simmons writes in his book. ''Then, Saudi Arabian oil output will
clearly have peaked. The death of this great king'' -- meaning Ghawar --
''leaves no field of vaguely comparable stature in the line of succession.
Twilight at Ghawar is fast approaching.'' He goes on: ''The geological
phenomena and natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are
conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its conclusion,
in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom would have us
believe.'' Simmons concludes, ''Saudi Arabia clearly seems to be nearing or
at its peak output and cannot materially grow its oil production.''

Saudi officials belittle Simmons's work. Nansen Saleri, a senior Aramco
official, has described Simmons as a banker ''trying to come across as a
scientist.'' In a speech last year, Saleri wryly said, ''I can read 200
papers on neurology, but you wouldn't want me to operate on your
relatives.'' I caught up with Simmons in June, during a trip he made to
Manhattan to talk with a group of oil-shipping executives. The impression he
gives is of an enthusiastic inventor sharing a discovery that took him by
surprise. He has a certain wide-eyed wonder in his regard, as if a bit of
mystery can be found in everything that catches his eye. And he has a
rumpled aspect -- thinning hair slightly askew, shirt sleeves a fraction too
long. Though he delivers a bracing message, his discourse can wander. He is
a successful businessman, and it is clear that he did not achieve his
position by being a man of impeccable convention. He certainly has not lost
sight of the rule that people who shout ''the end is nigh'' do not tend to
be favorably reviewed by historians, let alone by their peers. He notes in
his book that way back in 1979, The New York Times published an
investigative story by Seymour Hersh under the headline ''Saudi Oil Capacity
Questioned.'' He knows that in past decades the Cassandras failed to foresee
new technologies, like deep-water and horizontal drilling, that provided new
sources of oil and raised the amount of oil that can be recovered from
reservoirs.

But Simmons says that there are only so many rabbits technology can pull out
of its petro-hat. He impishly notes that if the Saudis really wanted to,
they could easily prove him wrong. ''If they want to satisfy people, they
should issue field-by-field production reports and reserve data and have it
audited,'' he told me. ''It would then take anybody less than a week to say,
'Gosh, Matt is totally wrong,' or 'Matt actually might be too optimistic.'''

Simmons has a lot riding on his campaign -- not only his name but also his
business, which would not be rewarded if he is proved to be a fool. What, I
asked, if the data show that the Saudis will be able to sustain production
of not only 12.5 million barrels a day -- their target for 2009 -- but 15
million barrels, which global demand is expected to require of them in the
not-too-distant future? ''The odds of them sustaining 12 million barrels a
day is very low,'' Simmons replied. ''The odds of them getting to 15 million
for 50 years -- there's a better chance of me having Bill Gates's net worth,
and I wouldn't bet a dime on that forecast.''

The gathering of executives took place in a restaurant at Chelsea Piers;
about 35 men sat around a set of tables as the host introduced Simmons. He
rambled a bit but hit his talking points, and the executives listened
raptly; at one point, the man on my right broke into a soft whistle, of the
sort that means ''Holy cow.''

Simmons didn't let up. ''We're going to look back at history and say $55 a
barrel was cheap,'' he said, recalling a TV interview in which he predicted
that a barrel might hit triple digits.

He said that the anchor scoffed, in disbelief, ''A hundred dollars?''

Simmons replied, ''I wasn't talking about low triple digits.''


The onset of triple-digit prices might seem a blessing for the Saudis --
they would receive greater amounts of money for their increasingly scarce
oil. But one popular misunderstanding about the Saudis -- and about OPEC in
general -- is that high prices, no matter how high, are to their benefit.

Although oil costing more than $60 a barrel hasn't caused a global
recession, that could still happen: it can take a while for high prices to
have their ruinous impact. And the higher above $60 that prices rise, the
more likely a recession will become. High oil prices are inflationary; they
raise the cost of virtually everything -- from gasoline to jet fuel to
plastics and fertilizers -- and that means people buy less and travel less,
which means a drop-off in economic activity. So after a brief windfall for
producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and once-voracious
economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have collapsed before, and not
so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a barrel after an untimely increase in
OPEC production and a reduction in demand from Asia, which was suffering
through a financial crash. Saudi Arabia and the other members of OPEC
entered crisis mode back then; adjusted for inflation, oil was at its lowest
price since the cartel's creation, threatening to feed unrest among the
ranks of jobless citizens in OPEC states.

''The Saudis are very happy with oil at $55 per barrel, but they're also
nervous,'' a Western diplomat in Riyadh told me in May, referring to the
price that prevailed then. (Like all the diplomats I spoke to, he insisted
on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivities of relations with Saudi
Arabia.) ''They don't know where this magic line has moved to. Is it now
$65? Is it $75? Is it $80? They don't want to find out, because if you did
have oil move that far north . . . the chain reaction can come back to a
price collapse again.''

High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude
costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively
expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be
rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those
tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and
liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the
going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if
consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies. So
even if high prices don't cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market
share to rivals into whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much
prefer to channel their energy dollars. A concerted push for greater energy
conservation in the United States, which consumes one-quarter of the world's
oil (mostly to fuel our cars, as gasoline), would hurt producing nations,
too. Basically, any significant reduction in the demand for oil would be
ruinous for OPEC members, who have little to offer the world but oil; if a
substitute can be found, their future is bleak. Another Western diplomat
explained the problem facing the Saudis: ''You want to have the price as
high as possible without sending the consuming nations into a recession and
at the same time not have the price so high that it encourages alternative
technologies.''

From the American standpoint, one argument in favor of conservation and a
switch to alternative fuels is that by limiting oil imports, the United
States and its Western allies would reduce their dependence on a potentially
unstable region. (In fact, in an effort to offset the risks of relying on
the Saudis, America's top oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico.) In addition,
sending less money to Saudi Arabia would mean less money in the hands of a
regime that has spent the past few decades doling out huge amounts of its
oil revenue to mosques, madrassas and other institutions that have fanned
the fires of Islamic radicalism. The oil money has been dispensed not just
by the Saudi royal family but by private individuals who benefited from the
oil boom -- like Osama bin Laden, whose ample funds, probably eroded now,
came from his father, a construction magnate. Without its oil windfall,
Saudi Arabia would have had a hard time financing radical Islamists across
the globe.

For the Saudis, the political ramifications of reduced demand for its oil
would not be negligible. The royal family has amassed vast personal wealth
from the country's oil revenues. If, suddenly, Saudis became aware that the
royal family had also failed to protect the value of the country's treasured
resource, the response could be severe. The mere admission that Saudi
reserves are not as impressively inexhaustible as the royal family has
claimed could lead to hard questions about why the country, and the world,
had been misled. With the death earlier this month of the long-ailing King
Fahd, the royal family is undergoing another period of scrutiny; the new
king, Abdullah, is in his 80's, and the crown prince, his half-brother
Sultan, is in his 70's, so the issue of generational change remains to be
settled. As long as the country is swimming in petro-dollars -- even as it
is paying off debt accrued during its lean years -- everyone is relatively
happy, but that can change. One diplomat I spoke to recalled a comment from
Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the larger-than-life Saudi oil minister during the
1970's: ''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will
end long before the world runs out of oil.''

Until now, the Saudis had an excess of production capacity that allowed
them, when necessary, to flood the market to drive prices down. They did
that in 1990, when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait eliminated not only Kuwait's
supply of oil but also Iraq's. The Saudis functioned, as they always had, as
the central bank of oil, releasing supply to the market when it was needed
and withdrawing supply to keep prices from going lower than the cartel would
have liked. In other words, they controlled not only the price of oil but
their own destiny as well.

''That is what the world has called on them to do before -- turn on the taps
to produce more and get prices down,'' a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh
told me recently. ''Decreasing prices used to keep out alternative fuels. I
don't see how they're able to do that anymore. This is a huge change, and it
is a big step in the move to whatever is coming next. That's what's really
happening.''

Without the ability to flood the markets with oil, the Saudis are resorting
to flooding the market with promises; it is a sort of petro-jawboning.
That's why Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, told his Washington audience that
Saudi Arabia has embarked on a crash program to raise its capacity to 12.5
million barrels a day by 2009 and even higher in the years after that. Naimi
is not unlike a factory manager who needs to promise the moon to his
valuable clients, for fear of losing or alarming them. He has no choice. The
moment he says anything bracing, the touchy energy markets will probably
panic, pushing prices even higher and thereby hastening the onset of
recession, a switch to alternative fuels or new conservation efforts -- or
all three. Just a few words of honest caution could move the markets;
Naimi's speeches are followed nearly as closely in the financial world as
those of Alan Greenspan.

I journeyed to Saudi Arabia to interview Naimi and other senior officials,
to get as far beyond their prepared remarks as might be possible. Although I
was allowed to see Ras Tanura, my interview requests were denied. I was
invited to visit Aramco's oil museum in Dhahran, but that is something a
Saudi schoolchild can do on a field trip. It was a ''show but don't tell''
policy. I was able to speak about production issues only with Ibrahim
al-Muhanna, the oil ministry spokesman, who reluctantly met me over coffee
in the lobby of my hotel in Riyadh. He defended Saudi Arabia's refusal to
share more data, noting that the Saudis are no different from most oil
producers.

''They will not tell you,'' he said. ''Nobody will. And that is not going to
change.'' Referring to the fact that Saudi Arabia is often called the
central bank of oil, he added: ''If an outsider goes to the Fed and asks,
'How much money do you have?' they will tell you. If you say, 'Can I come
and count it?' they will not let you. This applies to oil companies and oil
countries.'' I mentioned to Muhanna that many people think his government's
''trust us'' stance is not convincing in light of the cheating that has gone
on within OPEC and in the industry as a whole; even Royal Dutch/Shell, a
publicly listed oil company that undergoes regular audits, has admitted that
it overstated its 2002 reserves by 23 percent.

''There is no reason for any country or company to lie,'' Muhanna replied.
''There is a lot of oil around.'' I didn't need to ask about Simmons and his
peak-oil theory; when I met Muhanna at the conference in Washington, he
nearly broke off our conversation at the mention of Simmons's name. ''He
does not know anything,'' Muhanna said. ''The only thing he has is a big
mouth. We should not pay attention to him. Either you believe us or you
don't.''


So whom to believe? Before leaving New York for Saudi Arabia, I was advised
by several oil experts to try to interview Sadad al-Husseini, who retired
last year after serving as Aramco's top executive for exploration and
production. I faxed him in Dhahran and received a surprisingly quick reply;
he agreed to meet me. A week later, after I arrived in Riyadh, Husseini
e-mailed me, asking when I would come to Dhahran; in a follow-up phone call,
he offered to pick me up at the airport. He was, it seemed, eager to talk.

It can be argued that in a nation devoted to oil, Husseini knows more about
it than anyone else. Born in Syria, Husseini was raised in Saudi Arabia,
where his father was a government official whose family took on Saudi
citizenship. Husseini earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Brown
University in 1973 and went to work in Aramco's exploration department,
eventually rising to the highest position. Until his retirement last year --
said to have been caused by a top-level dispute, the nature of which is the
source of many rumors -- Husseini was a member of the company's board and
its management committee. He is one of the most respected and accomplished
oilmen in the world.

After meeting me at the cavernous airport that serves Dhahran, he drove me
in his luxury sedan to the villa that houses his private office. As we
entered, he pointed to an armoire that displayed a dozen or so vials of
black liquid. ''These are samples from oil fields I discovered,'' he
explained. Upstairs, there were even more vials, and he would have possessed
more than that except, as he said, laughing, ''I didn't start collecting
early enough.''

We spoke for several hours. The message he delivered was clear: the world is
heading for an oil shortage. His warning is quite different from the calming
speeches that Naimi and other Saudis, along with senior American officials,
deliver on an almost daily basis. Husseini explained that the need to
produce more oil is coming from two directions. Most obviously, demand is
rising; in recent years, global demand has increased by two million barrels
a day. (Current daily consumption, remember, is about 84 million barrels a
day.) Less obviously, oil producers deplete their reserves every time they
pump out a barrel of oil. This means that merely to maintain their reserve
base, they have to replace the oil they extract from declining fields. It's
the geological equivalent of running to stay in place. Husseini acknowledged
that new fields are coming online, like offshore West Africa and the Caspian
basin, but he said that their output isn't big enough to offset this growing
need.

''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's
hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field
are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go
from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004.
You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to
cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if
demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to
open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million
barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising
demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production
of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of
years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not
sustainable.''

Husseini speaks patiently, like a teacher who hopes someone is listening. He
is in the enviable position of knowing what he talks about while having the
freedom to speak openly about it. He did not disclose precise information
about Saudi reserves or production -- which remain the equivalent of state
secrets -- but he felt free to speak in generalities that were forthright,
even when they conflicted with the reassuring statements of current Aramco
officials. When I asked why he was willing to be so frank, he said it was
because he sees a shortage ahead and wants to do what he can to avert it. I
assumed that he would not be particularly distressed if his rivals in the
Saudi oil establishment were embarrassed by his frankness.

Although Matthew Simmons says it is unlikely that the Saudis will be able to
produce 12.5 million barrels a day or sustain output at that level for a
significant period of time, Husseini says the target is realistic; he says
that Simmons is wrong to state that Saudi Arabia has reached its peak. But
12.5 million is just an interim marker, as far as consuming nations are
concerned, on the way to 15 million barrels a day and beyond -- and that is
the point at which Husseini says problems will arise.

At the conference in Washington in May, James Schlesinger, the moderator,
conducted a question-and-answer session with Naimi at the conclusion of the
minister's speech. One of the first questions involved peak oil: might it be
true that Saudi Arabia, which has relied on the same reservoirs, and
especially Ghawar, for more than five decades, is nearing the geological
limit of its output?

Naimi wouldn't hear of it.

''I can assure you that we haven't peaked,'' he responded. ''If we peaked,
we would not be going to 12.5 and we would not be visualizing a
15-million-barrel-per-day production capacity. . . . We can maintain 12.5 or
15 million for the next 30 to 50 years.''

Experts like Husseini are very concerned by the prospect of trying to
produce 15 million barrels a day. Even if production can be ramped up that
high, geology may not be forgiving. Fields that are overproduced can drop
off, in terms of output, quite sharply and suddenly, leaving behind large
amounts of oil that cannot be coaxed out with existing technology. This is
called trapped oil, because the rocks or sediment around it prevent it from
escaping to the surface. Unless new technologies are developed, that oil
will never be extracted. In other words, the haste to recover oil can lead
to less oil being recovered.

''You could go to 15, but that's when the questions of depletion rate,
reservoir management and damaging the fields come into play,'' says Nawaf
Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst who is regarded as being
exceptionally well connected to key Saudi leaders. ''There is an
understanding across the board within the kingdom, in the highest spheres,
that if you're going to 15, you'll hit 15, but there will be considerable
risks . . . of a steep decline curve that Aramco will not be able to do
anything about.''

Even if the Saudis are willing to risk damaging their fields, or even if the
risk is overstated, Husseini points out a practical problem. To produce and
sustain 15 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia will have to drill a lot more
wells and build a lot more pipelines and processing facilities. Currently,
the global oil industry suffers a deficit of qualified engineers to oversee
such projects and the equipment and the raw materials -- for example, rigs
and steel -- to build them. These things cannot be wished from thin air or
developed quickly enough to meet the demand.

''If we had two dozen Texas A&M's producing a thousand new engineers a year
and the industrial infrastructure in the kingdom, with the drilling rigs and
power plants, we would have a better chance, but you cannot put that into
place overnight,'' Husseini said. ''Capacity is not just a function of
reserves. It is a function of reserves plus know-how plus a commercial
economic system that is designed to increase the resource exploitation. For
example, in the U.S. you have infrastructure -- there must be tens of
thousands of miles of pipelines. If we, in Saudi Arabia, evolve to that
level of commercial maturity, we could probably produce a heck of a lot more
oil. But to get there is a very tedious, slow process.''

He worries that the rising global demand for oil will lead to the petroleum
equivalent of running an engine at ever-increasing speeds without stopping
to cool it down or change the oil. Husseini does not want to see the fragile
and irreplaceable reservoirs of the Middle East become damaged through
wanton overproduction.

''If you are ramping up production so fast and jump from high to higher to
highest, and you're not having enough time to do what needs to be done, to
understand what needs to be done, then you can damage reservoirs,'' he said.
''Systematic development is not just a matter of money. It's a matter of
reservoir dynamics, understanding what's there, analyzing and understanding
information. That's where people come in, experience comes in. These are not
universally available resources.''

The most worrisome part of the crisis ahead revolves around a set of
statistics from the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the
U.S. Department of Energy. The E.I.A. forecast in 2004 that by 2020 Saudi
Arabia would produce 18.2 million barrels of oil a day, and that by 2025 it
would produce 22.5 million barrels a day. Those estimates were unusual,
though. They were not based on secret information about Saudi capacity, but
on the projected needs of energy consumers. The figures simply assumed that
Saudi Arabia would be able to produce whatever the United States needed it
to produce. Just last month, the E.I.A. suddenly revised those figures
downward -- not because of startling new information about world demand or
Saudi supply but because the figures had given so much ammunition to
critics. Husseini, for example, described the 2004 forecast as unrealistic.

''That's not how you would manage a national, let alone an international,
economy,'' he explained. ''That's the part that is scary. You draw some
assumptions and then say, 'O.K., based on these assumptions, let's go
forward and consume like hell and burn like hell.''' When I asked whether
the kingdom could produce 20 million barrels a day -- about twice what it is
producing today from fields that may be past their prime -- Husseini paused
for a second or two. It wasn't clear if he was taking a moment to figure out
the answer or if he needed a moment to decide if he should utter it. He
finally replied with a single word: No.

''It's becoming unrealistic,'' he said. ''The expectations are beyond what
is achievable. This is a global problem . . . that is not going to be solved
by tinkering with the Saudi industry.''

It would be unfair to blame the Saudis alone for failing to warn of whatever
shortages or catastrophes might lie ahead.

In the political and corporate realms of the oil world, there are few
incentives to be forthright. Executives of major oil companies have been
reluctant to raise alarms; the mere mention of scarce supplies could
alienate the governments that hand out lucrative exploration contracts and
also send a message to investors that oil companies, though wildly
profitable at the moment, have a Malthusian long-term future. Fortunately,
that attitude seems to be beginning to change. Chevron's ''easy oil is
over'' advertising campaign is an indication that even the boosters of an
oil-drenched future are not as bullish as they once were.

Politicians remain in the dark. During the 2004 presidential campaign, which
occurred as gas prices were rising to record levels, the debate on energy
policy was all but nonexistent. The Bush campaign produced an advertisement
that concluded: ''Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so
people drive less. That's John Kerry.'' Although many environmentalists
would have been delighted if Kerry had proposed that during the campaign, in
fact the ad was referring to a 50-cents-a-gallon tax that Kerry supported 11
years ago as part of a package of measures to reduce the deficit. (The gas
tax never made it to a vote in the Senate.) Kerry made no mention of taxing
gasoline during the campaign; his proposal for doing something about high
gas prices was to pressure OPEC to increase supplies.

Husseini, for one, doesn't buy that approach. ''Everybody is looking at the
producers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as if it's our job to fix
everybody's problems,'' he told me. ''It's not our problem to tell a
democratically elected government that you have to do something about your
runaway consumers. If your government can't do the job, you can't expect
other governments to do it for them.'' Back in the 70's, President Carter
called for the moral equivalent of war to reduce our dependence on foreign
oil; he was not re-elected. Since then, few politicians have spoken of an
energy crisis or suggested that major policy changes are necessary to avert
one. The energy bill signed earlier this month by President Bush did not
even raise fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes
-- whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful because
we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.

------------

PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:

OIL EXPERT PREDICTS APOCALYPSE, BUT FEW ARE LISTENING (8/22/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9787

SAUDIS WARN OF SHORTFALLS AS OIL HITS $61 (7/7/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9524

PERSPECTIVE: END-TIME FOR USA UPON OIL COLLAPSE (6/27/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9454

SIMULATED OIL MELTDOWN SHOWS U.S. ECONOMY'S VULNERABILITY (6/25/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9444

EXXONMOBIL EXPECTS PEAK OIL IN 5 YEARS (5/27/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9244

THE END OF OIL IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK (4/21/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9056

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT OIL (4/5/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8987

JOE FIRMAGE ON "PEAK OIL", "THE SINGULARITY" & KEN WILBER (11/2/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8199

OIL & GAS RUNNING OUT MUCH FASTER THAN EXPECTED (10/6/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6054

WORLD OIL SUPPLY COMFORTABLY EXCEEDS DEMAND (6/18/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5550

NEW BOOK: WHEN THE OIL RUNS OUT, HORRIFIC PROBLEMS WILL FOLLOW (5/14/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5304

OIL MORE PLENTIFUL THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT (4/27/2002):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/3067

AGE OF OIL ABOUT TO END (6/24/2000):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/427

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NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
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------------

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
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"Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of
artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future in which
information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable
humanity to transcend its biological limitations -- transforming our lives
in ways we can't yet imagine." -- Bill Gates

...........

WILL THE FUTURE BE A TRILLION TIMES BETTER?
By Janet Maslin
New York Times
October 3, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/books/03masl.html

In "The Singularity Is Near," <http://www.singularity.com/> the inventor and
prognosticator Ray Kurzweil postulates that we are fast approaching a time
when humankind melds with technology to produce mind-boggling advances in
intelligence. We will be able to play quidditch as Harry Potter does. We
will control the aging process. We will be smarter by a factor of trillions.
We will be so smart that we understand what Ray Kurzweil is talking about.

Qubits, foglets, gigaflops, haptic interfaces, probabilistic fractals: Mr.
Kurzweil is not writing science for sissies. He is envisioning precise
details about how and when the Singularity - a fusion of symbiotic advances
in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology that creates "a profound and
disruptive transformation in human capability" - will be upon us. Mark the
calendar for big doings in 2045 in case he's right.

Most science books at this level of sophistication leave the armchair
quantum-mechanics buff in the dust. But "The Singularity Is Near" works
simultaneously on different levels. Anyone can grasp Mr. Kurzweil's main
idea: that mankind's technological knowledge has been snowballing, with
dizzying prospects for the future. The basics are clearly expressed. But for
those more knowledgeable and inquisitive, the author argues his case in
fascinating detail.

As evidence that the concept of Singularity is as grandiose as it is
controversial, Mr. Kurzweil deals almost offhandedly with prospects like "a
cool, zero-energy-consuming computer with a memory of about a thousand
trillion trillion bits and a processing capacity of 1042 operations a
second, which is abut 10 trillion times more powerful than all human brains
on Earth." And all he's talking about is reconfiguring the atomic structure
of a rock. The book gets much headier when it looks at the reverse
engineering and replication of the human brain.

Where Mr. Kurzweil's thinking turns quidditch-wizardly is with concepts like
virtual reality created by tiny computers in eyeglasses and clothing, or
cell-size devices that can operate within the bloodstream. These innovations
and their far-reaching effects, he says, exist not only within the province
of science fiction (they sneak into audacious roller-coaster rides like
"Minority Report" and "Being John Malkovich") but are also already in the
works.

Others (most recently Joel Garreau in "Radical Evolution") have argued about
the Singularity's imminence and consequences. But Mr. Kurzweil approaches
the subject with the glee of a businessman-inventor as well as the expertise
of a scientist. The fact that a dollar bought one transistor in 1968 and
about 10 million transistors in 2002 has not escaped his notice.

"The Singularity Is Near" is startling in scope and bravado. Mr. Kurzweil
envisions breathtakingly exponential progress, and he is merely
extrapolating from established data. To his way of thinking, "when
scientists become a million times more intelligent and operate a million
times faster, an hour would result in a century of progress (in today's
terms)." The underpinnings of this logic go beyond the familiar to suggest
that the pace of evolution (he has no doubts about Darwin) is logarithmic -
another indication that the future is almost here.

Like string theory's concept of an 11-dimensional universe, Mr. Kurzweil's
projections are as abstract and largely untested as they are alluring.
Predictions from his earlier books (including "The Age of Spiritual
Machines" and "The Age of Intelligent Machines") have been borne out, but
much of his thinking tends to be pie in the sky. He promotes buoyant
optimism more readily than he contemplates the darker aspects of progress.
He is more eager to think about the life-enhancing powers of nanotechnology
than to wonder what happens if cell-size computers within the human body run
amok.

In the last part of the book, he engages in one-sided batting practice with
his critics. He introduces each complaint only to swat it into oblivion. By
and large he is a blinkered optimist, disinclined to contemplate the dangers
of what he imagines. The Manhattan Project model of pure science without
ethical constraints still looms over the Singularity and its would-be
miracles.

"What if not everyone wants to go along with this?" a straw man asks Mr.
Kurzweil. For purposes of simulated debate, the book drums up an assortment
of colorful naysayers. This voice is that of Ned Ludd, the opponent of
technological advances who gave Luddites their name, but Charles Darwin and
Timothy Leary also chime in. Mr. Kurzweil also gives a speaking part to
George 2048, a mid-21st-century machine with a reassuring personality. His
boldest move is to let bacteria from two billion years ago argue among
themselves about the wisdom of banding together to form multicellular
life-forms.

If the author is right, Singularity-phobes will look no less shortsighted
when the dividing line between humans and machines erodes. "This is not
because humans will have become what we think of as machines today," he
writes, "but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and
beyond." In other words, "technology will be the metaphorical opposable
thumb that enables our next step in evolution."

Mr. Kurzweil ultimately describes himself as a Singularitarian in a
religious sense. Not for him the "deathist rationalization" (that is,
"rationalizing the tragedy of death as a good thing") of traditional
religion: his own vision of eternal life is expressed in these pages. He
underscores his conviction by putting on a cardboard "The Singularity Is
Near" sign and posing for a crazy-man photo. He won't look crazy if the
Singularity arrives on cue.

------------

ABOUT THE BOOK:

http://www.singularity.com/aboutthebook.html

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR:
WHEN HUMANS TRANSCEND BIOLOGY
By Ray Kurzweil, Viking Press

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of
the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will
be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both
enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic
legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material
progress, and longevity.

For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has
been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of
technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he
presented the daring argument that with the ever-accelerating rate of
technological change, computers would rival the full range of human
intelligence at its best. Now, in The Singularity Is Near, he examines the
next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and
machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be
combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing
ability of our own creations.

That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our
intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times
more powerful than it is today -- the dawning of a new civilization that
will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our
creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between
human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to
assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In
practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be
stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology will make
it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive
information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble
problem.

While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be
profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near
maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human
development. As such, it offers a view of the coming age that is both a
dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely
inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

Hardcover: 672 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (September 22, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0670033847

------------

ENDORSEMENTS:

"Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of
artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future in which
information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable
humanity to transcend its biological limitations -- transforming our lives
in ways we can't yet imagine." -- Bill Gates

...

"A brilliant book with deep insights into the future from one of the leading
futurists of our time." -- Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts
and Sciences, MIT

...

"If you have ever wondered about the nature and impact of the next profound
discontinuities that will fundamentally change the way we live, work, and
perceive our world, read this book. Kurzweil's Singularity is a tour de
force, imagining the unimaginable and eloquently exploring the coming
disruptive events that will alter our fundamental perspectives as
significantly as did electricity and the computer. -- Dean Kamen, physicist
and inventor of the first wearable insulin pump, the HomeChoice portable
dialysis machine, the IBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human
Transporter; recipient of the National Medal of Technology

...

"One of our leading AI practitioners, Ray Kurzweil, has once again created a
'must-read' book for anyone interested in the future of science, the social
impact of technology, and indeed the future of our species. His
thought-provoking book envisages a future in which we transcend our
biological limitations, while making a compelling case that a human
civilization with superhuman capabilities is closer at hand than most people
realize." -- Raj Reddy, founding director, Robotics Institute, Carnegie
Mellon University; recipient of the Turing Award from the Association for
Computing Machinery

...

"Ray's optimistic book well merits both reading and thoughtful response. For
those like myself whose views differ from Ray's on the balance of promise
and peril, The Singularity Is Near is a clear call for continuing dialogue
to address the greater concerns arising from these accelerating
possibilities." -- Bill Joy, cofounder and former chief scientist, Sun
Microsystems

------------

SINGULARITY-RELATED ARTICLES:

To locate articles and information on "The Singularity", you can search
NHNE'S News List Database:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
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Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Current Members: 1740

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THE MORMON ODYSSEY
By Elise Soukup
Newsweek
October 17, 2005 Issue

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9630255/site/newsweek/

Joseph Smith Jr. was struggling. It was a spring day in 1820, in upstate New
York -- an era of fiery Protestant revivals and a region so seared by
evangelical fervor that it was known as the "burned-over district." Smith
was 14, from a family of small means but grandiose expectations. His
grandfather prophesied that a family member would revolutionize the world of
religion; his father had a series of prophetic dreams about his family's
salvation; his aunt became a local celebrity by claiming that she had been
healed by Jesus himself. And so it was natural that Smith would wonder about
his own faith. His mother had just joined the Presbyterians; should he? Or
should he stay outside the mainline churches the way his father had?

Turning to the family Bible, Smith came to a verse in James that struck him
powerfully: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God ... and it shall
be given him." Inspired, Smith went into a grove of trees to pray. As he
began, a dark force seized him -- until, Smith said, God himself intervened.
"At this moment of great alarm," Smith recalled, "I saw a pillar of light
exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended
gradually until it fell upon me." God and Jesus appeared and delivered a
startling message: he shouldn't join any of the churches of the world, for
they had long ago fallen away from Christ's true Gospel.

This experience, known as the First Vision by Smith's followers, ultimately
gave the world a new faith: Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, which now has more than 12 million members and, thanks to
the vigorous missionary tradition started by Smith himself, is one of the
fastest-growing Christian denominations in the United States.

Prophet and polygamist, mesmerizer and rabble-rouser, saint and sinner:
Smith is arguably the most influential native-born figure in American
religious history, and is almost certainly the most fascinating. This year
marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the bicentennial is prompting
fresh and searching looks at Smith, the faith he built and the legacy he
left behind. The church is opening Smith's life and contributions to
research -- a new stance for an institution whose early experience with
persecution has often made it defensive and secretive. This summer, Brigham
Young University hosted a six-week multifaith seminar, funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and Smith's papers are now being
consolidated and published.

Smith's times are much like our own, and his story has a particular
resonance in the first years of the 21st century. Like us, he lived in an
era of evangelical energy, deep patriotism, economic transformation, sharp
political divisions and anxiety about foreign forces' inflicting harm on the
homeland. Smith's teachings placed America at the center of existence at
just the moment in our history -- in the wake of the successful War of 1812
-- when nationalism was on the rise.

From Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts and a 2008
presidential prospect, to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate,
Mormons are increasingly visible in different spheres of American society,
particularly in politics and the Fortune 500. Traditionally conservative but
not really part of the religious right, the church opposes gay marriage and
abortion (unless the mother's life is in danger or in cases of rape or
incest). In the emotional case of Terri Schiavo earlier this year, however,
the church diverged from many conservative Christians when it responded to
news media by saying, "Members should not feel obligated to extend mortal
life by means that are unreasonable." There is also room for policy
differences among public figures who happen to be Mormon: Romney opposes
fetal-stem-cell research, while Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah supports it.
Meanwhile, the faith's traditional views on morality and the family are
fueling its rapid growth in the developing world, where, despite a broad
feeling of global anti-Americanism, the church is expanding even more
rapidly than it is within the United States.


And it all began with the teenage Joseph Smith. For Mormons, Smith's
importance is singular. "He stands alone as a source of doctrine," says
Dallin H. Oaks, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the
church's highest governing bodies. The characteristic features of the LDS
Church -- sacred temple rites, personal revelation, tithing and a history of
polygamy -- come directly from Smith. So does the emphasis on high moral
standards, family ties and community service: Mormonism appeals to the
fundamental human impulse for connection, security and a promise of rewards
not only on earth but beyond time and space.

Smith knew that his testimony required a leap of faith. "I don't blame
anyone for not believing my history," he said shortly before his death. "If
I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself."
Three years after his first vision, Smith reported that an angel named
Moroni, an ancient prophet from the Americas, told him God wanted him to
bring forth new scripture -- a set of gold plates containing an account of
Jesus during a post-resurrection visit to America as well as a history of an
ancient Israelite people there. The plates were buried in a hill near
Smith's house and were accompanied by a Urim and Thummim -- stones attached
to a breastplate that were supposed to help him translate the text from
"reformed Egyptian," an unknown tongue, into English.

His translation, known as the Book of Mormon, gave the sect its nickname and
brought him national attention -- but still didn't give him the "true
church" he yearned for. In 1829 Smith was visited by resurrected prophets
and apostles who, he said, finally conferred on him the authority to
re-establish Christ's church on earth. He officially founded that church in
Fayette, N.Y., on April 6, 1830. His missionaries, sent to surrounding
communities, had luck in Kirtland, Ohio: they baptized Sidney Rigdon, a
prominent Campbellite minister, and some 100 of his congregation, virtually
doubling church membership. During 1831, Smith asked his followers to move
to Kirtland or to Jackson County, Mo., which he said was the Biblical site
of the Garden of Eden and the future land of Zion.

This sudden influx of believers was unwelcome in Missouri, where the Saints
were seen as a cultural, political and economic threat. During the next five
years, the Missouri Saints were driven by mobs from Jackson County to Clay
County to Far West, Mo. As prejudice increased, Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs
issued an "extermination order" in 1838, and Smith and his followers fled to
Nauvoo, Ill. Smith's increasing political activism there (he was commander
of the local militia, justice of the peace and a candidate for U.S.
president) inflamed Nauvoo's non-Mormons, who saw the makings of a dangerous
theocracy. After Smith ordered an antagonistic printing press destroyed, he
was jailed. "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter," he said, sensing his
fate. "But I am calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of
offense towards God, and towards all men." On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed
the jail, fatally shooting Smith and his brother Hyrum and injuring two
other LDS men. Smith was 38.

His church survived (largely because follower Brigham Young led most of the
remaining Saints west to Utah) and, 161 years later, thrives -- yet remains
mysterious to many. Central tenets of Mormonism seem confusing -- even
literally incredible -- to those outside the faith. An angel named Moroni?
"Plural" marriage? A resurrected Jesus visiting the New World? These are
questions posed by potential converts, and also by historians and scientists
testing Smith's claims.

Moses' burning bush isn't around to be carbon-dated or dissected, but Smith
and his followers left behind documentation that can be subjected to modern
historical analysis. The record reveals a complicated man. The church's
early converts, many of whom learned about it from missionaries, were
sometimes shocked when they met Smith in person. He was uneducated, he lost
his temper, he enjoyed power -- and perhaps most startling for converts was
the fact that, on occasion, his ventures failed. Simply put, he didn't
always seem like a prophet. "It was very hard, even in his own times, to
remain neutral on him," says Mark Scherer, church historian for Community of
Christ, a branch that followed Smith's son Joseph III instead of Brigham
Young after Smith's death. "Either you thought the guy walked on water or
you thought the guy was a huge fraud." Smith was involved in dozens of
lawsuits. By the end of his life, he had accrued some 30 wives, massive debt
and hundreds of enemies. "I never told you I was perfect," he told his
followers. "But there is no error in the revelations which I have taught."


That's a matter of debate. Last year, molecular biologist and former LDS
bishop Simon G. Southerton applied available DNA studies in his book,
"Losing a Lost Tribe," to argue that Native Americans are descendants of
Asians, contradicting the Book of Mormon account of an Israelite family's
coming to the New World in the sixth century B.C. and eventually flourishing
into two distinct civilizations. "Decades of serious and honest scholarship
have failed to uncover credible evidence that these Book of Mormon
civilizations ever existed," he wrote. While LDS scholars, of course, reject
that conclusion, some are re-examining common theories about the Book of
Mormon's geography, suggesting that it takes place near an isthmus in
southern Mexico instead of across the Western Hemisphere, as many readers
previously assumed.

Within limits, the church encourages internal debate, arguing that doubt can
be an important precursor to faith. "I think the Lord expects us to think,"
President Gordon B. Hinckley, the incumbent prophet who Mormons believe
leads the church through divine revelation, told NEWSWEEK. "That which comes
easily departs easily. That which comes of struggle remains." What
authorities do not accept, however, is those who publicly doubt and actively
preach against church doctrines and leaders. In 1993 six LDS academics
(known as the September Six for the month of their disciplinary action) were
tried in church courts for issues related to spreading allegedly false
historical and feminist teachings. Five were excommunicated. In the late
1970s LDS leaders limited access to church records, prompting charges that
they were discouraging unauthorized accounts of church history. "Some
authorities apparently preferred that we have no history except that kept by
public-relations writers," wrote Leonard J. Arrington, the then director of
the church's historical department.

The reins are looser now. The church is likely always to be more comfortable
with orthodoxy than with inquiry, and this year's celebrations won't bring
the unsolicited airing of dirty laundry (a church-sponsored art exhibit
about Smith made no mention of his polygamy, for example). But there is no
longer the sense that documents are being squirreled away. LDS historian
Richard Bushman, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and
author of the new biography "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," recently
gave two lectures in which he tackled some of the more difficult elements of
Smith's life in front of audiences that included high-ranking LDS leaders.
"I ran the risk of making them bridle at me," he says. "But they liked the
talks. And that leads me to believe that we don't have to bury our stuff
anymore. We're able to deal with the problems and accept them."

No single Mormon doctrine or practice has been more controversial than
polygamy. Smith said he was commanded by God to take plural wives like
Abraham and other Old Testament figures. Most historians agree that he
married his first plural wife, a 16-year-old who worked in his house, about
1833 -- and some 30 more in the next decade. Not everyone believed God
sanctioned the marriages. His associate Oliver Cowdery called the first
plural marriage "a dirty, nasty, filthy affair" (Cowdery later rejoined the
church). Though the LDS Church stands by polygamy as a divine -- albeit
revoked -- revelation, others are suspicious of Smith's motives. "He
committed ministerial abuse," says Scherer, whose church long denied that
Smith practiced polygamy. "He figured out a way to commit adultery and to do
it sacramentally."

In Utah after Smith's death, polygamy was practiced openly: at its height,
at least 25 percent of adults in some communities were members of polygamous
households. In 1890, facing intense pressure from federal authorities, the
then prophet Wilford Woodruff issued a "manifesto" forbidding the practice.
While some breakaway groups still follow polygamist lifestyles, the LDS
Church adamantly opposes the practice. However, LDS doctrine holds that some
polygamist marriages will exist in the celestial kingdom, the highest tier
of heaven. Smith taught that humans (who were spirits in a "pre-existence")
come to earth to get a body and to be tested. After death, everyone is
placed into one of three kingdoms, depending on his level of righteousness.
Those in the highest degree will dwell with God, their families will be
eternal and they'll even become gods themselves -- as God did. Lorenzo Snow,
fifth LDS prophet, articulated doctrine when he said, "As man is, God once
was; as God is, man may be."

Because of Mormonism's unique theology, some of which challenges early
Christian creeds, many Christian denominations don't consider the LDS Church
to be Christian. "There is no rightful claim by historic Mormon doctrine to
the name Christian, because they deny almost every one of the major
fundamental doctrines of Christendom," says Norman Geisler, founder of the
Southern Evangelical Seminary. But for Latter-day Saints, who believe in the
Jesus Christ of both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon, the cold
shoulder from other denominations is baffling. "I am devastated when people
say I am not a Christian, particularly when generally that means I am not a
fourth-century Christian," says Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Had Smith's revelations ended with his first beatific visions, he probably
would have passed into history unremarked, one of innumerable seekers who
believed they had found the divine. Yet something made people leave their
homes to follow him, to endure persecution and risk death. Some of the
answer is personal -- his charisma. "I don't think he ever entered a room
where he didn't feel dominant," says Bushman. But many of Smith's most
committed followers -- among them future prophets Young and Woodruff --
joined the church without ever having met him. "I think that these people
felt they had found the sacred in a way they'd never known it before," says
Bushman. "And they would go to the ends of the earth for that idea."

People still do, and given the church's emphasis on the daily needs and
concerns of its members, the reasons for its success become clearer. No
matter where Mormons live, they find themselves part of a network of mutual
concern; in Mormon theology everyone is a minister of a kind, everyone is
empowered in some way to do good to others, and to have good done unto them:
it is a 21st-century covenant of caring.

The church is organized into "wards" in which members deliver meals to new
mothers, help relocating families find housing, and pack and unpack during
moves. Mormons are also linked up with other believers for monthly visits in
which the members can offer each other a friendly ear in good times and bad,
providing a sense of connection amid the complexities of daily life. This
culture of taking care of one's own almost certainly has its roots in the
many decades of persecution the faithful endured on their long journey west
-- what was a curse then has, in the fullness of time, become a blessing.

Smith founded cities, built temples and ran for president. But his most
meaningful contribution was as "prophet, revelator and seer," as he called
himself -- and as the architect of a church that tends to nurture the bonds
between its members in a spirit of charity. Smith's vision -- optimistic,
vigorous, a source of continuing personal growth for all who accept its
blessings -- in many ways echoes the American Dream. Millions around the
world now see in their own lives what a young man found for himself in that
New York grove.

------------

IMPORTANT MORMON-RELATED LINKS:

Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints:
http://www.lds.org/

Church of Jesus Christ of the Reorganized Latter Day Saints:
http://www.rlds.org/

All About Mormons:
http://www.mormons.org/

PBS Documentary, "American Prophet", on Joseph Smith:
http://www.pbs.org/americanprophet/pbs-documentary.html

PBS: Brief Biography of Joseph Smith:
http://www.pbs.org/americanprophet/joseph-smith.html

PBS: Brief History of the Church:
http://www.pbs.org/americanprophet/lds.html

Investigating Mormonism:
(A point-by-point challenge of key Mormon tenants and historical claims):
http://www.exmormon.org/tract2.htm

Utah Lighthouse Ministry:
http://www.utlm.org/

Recovery from Mormonism:
http://www.exmormon.org/

Personal Accounts of Leaving Mormonism:
http://www.exmormon.org/stories.htm

Extensive Links to Other Mormon-Related Websites:
http://www.utlm.org/navotherwebsites.htm

LDS Internet Directory:
http://www.mormonlinks.com/

Ex-Mormon News Groups:
http://www.exmormon.org/newsgrp.htm

Mormon News Group:
alt.religion.mormon

-----------

PREVIOUS NHNE ARTICLES & SPECIAL REPORTS:

MORMON CHURCH EXCOMMUNICATES DNA AUTHOR (8/18/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9764

MORMONS CELEBRATE 200 YEARS OF JOSEPH SMITH (8/7/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9692

MORMON LEADER FACES EXCOMMUNICATION (12/11/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8515

SECT TOOK OUT LOANS AHEAD OF 'DOOMSDAY' (12/7/2004):
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DOUBLEDAY TO PUBLISH 100,000 COPIES OF BOOK OF MORMON (11/15/2004):
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UTAH: AN IDEAL GENETIC LABORATORY (8/1/2004):
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MORMONS POSTHUMOUSLY BAPTIZING JEWISH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS (4/12/2004):
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MORMON CHURCH DONATES HOAXED ARTIFACTS TO MUSEUM (11/10/2003):
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THE MORMON MASSACRE OF 1857 (5/24/2003):
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DIVINE REVELATION: ELIZABETH SMART THE FIRST OF SEVEN ADDITIONAL WIVES
(3/15/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/4750

MORMON LEADER, WITH 19/20 WIVES, 60 CHILDREN, DIES (9/15/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/3681

MORMONS TAKE MEDIA BEATING (2/17/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/2678

THE MORMON MOMENT (11/19/200):
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THE DARK SIDE OF MORMAN POLYGAMY (8/18/2000):
http://www.egroups.com/message/nhnenews/596

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We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
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A QUESTION FOR JOURNALISTS:
HOW DO WE COVER PENGUINS AND THE POLITICS OF DENIAL?
By Bill Moyers
Common Dreams
Friday, October 7, 2005

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1007-21.htm

KEYNOTE SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY OF ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISTS CONVENTION
Austin, Texas - October 1, 2005

Thank you for inviting me here today and for counting me as a colleague.

I don't fit neatly into the job description of an environmental journalist
although I have kept returning to the beat ever since my first documentary
on the subject some 30 years ago. That was a story about how the new
Republican governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, had set out to prove that the
economy and the environment could share the center lane on the highway to
the future.

Those were optimistic years for the emerging environmental movement. Rachel
Carson had rattled the cage with Silent Spring and on the first Earth Day in
1970 twenty million Americans rose from the grassroots to speak for the
planet. Even Richard Nixon couldn't say no to so powerful a subpoena by
public opinion, and he put his signature to some far-reaching measures for
environmental protection.

I shared that optimism and believed journalism would help to fulfill it. I
thought that when people saw a good example they would imitate it, that if
Americans knew the facts and the possibilities they would act on them. After
all, half a century ago, I had walked every day as a student across the
campus of my alma mater, the University of Texas and could look up at the
main tower and read the words: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall
set you free." I believed we were really on the way toward the third
American Revolution. The first had won our independence as a nation. The
second had finally opened the promise of civil rights to all Americans. Now
the third American Revolution was to be the Green Revolution for a healthy,
safe, and sustainable future.

Sometimes in a moment of reverie I imagine that it happened. I imagine that
we had brought forth a new paradigm for nurturing and protecting our global
life support system; that we had faced up to the greatest ecological
challenge in human history and conquered it with clean renewable energy,
efficient transportation and agriculture, and the non-toxic production and
protection of our forests, oceans, grasslands and wetlands. I imagine us
leading the world on a new path of sustainability.

Alas, it was only a reverie. The reality is otherwise. Rather than leading
the world in finding solutions to the global environmental crises, the
United States is a recalcitrant naysayer and backslider. Our government and
corporate elites have turned against America's environmental visionaries -
from Teddy Roosevelt to John Muir, from Rachel Carson to David Brower, from
Gaylord Nelson to Laurence Rockefeller. They have set out to eviscerate just
about every significant gain of the past generation, and while they are at
it they have managed to blame the environmental movement itself for the
failure of the Green Revolution. If environmentalism isn't dead, they say,
it should be. And they will gladly lead the cortege to the grave.

Yes, I know: the environmental community has stumbled on many fronts. All of
us in this room have heard and reported the charges: that the rhetoric is
alarmist and the ideology polarizing; that command-and-control regulation
produces bureaucratic bungles, slows economic growth, and delays
technological advances that save lives; that what began as a grassroots
movement has now become an entrenched green bureaucracy precariously hanging
on in occupied Washington while passionate citizens across the country are
starved for financial resources. There is some truth in these charges; all
movements flounder and must periodically regroup.

Before we consider the case closed, however, let me urge you to take a hard
look at the backlash. I didn't reckon on the backlash. If the Green
Revolution is a bloody pulp today, it is not just because the environmental
movement mugged itself. It is because the corporate, political, and
religious right ganged up on it in the back alleys of power. Big companies
fund a relentless assault on green values and policies. Political ideologues
launch countless campaigns to strip from government all its functions except
those that reward their rich benefactors. And homegrown ayatollahs are more
set on savaging gay people than saving the green earth.

I especially failed to reckon with how ruthless the reactionaries would be.
What they did to Rachel Carson when Silent Spring appeared in 1962 has been
honed to a sharp edge aimed at the jugular of anyone who challenges them.

I felt the knife's edge some years ago when I took up the subject of
pesticides and food for a Frontline documentary on PBS. My producer, Marty
Koughan, learned that the industry was plotting behind the scenes to dilute
the findings of a National Academy of Science study on the effect of
pesticide residues in children. When the companies found out we were on the
story, they came after us. Before the documentary aired television reviewers
and the editorial pages of newspapers were flooded with disinformation. A
whispering campaign took hold. One Washington Post columnist took a dig at
the broadcast without having seen it and later confessed to me that he had
gotten a bum tip about the content from a top lobbyist for the chemical
industry and printed it without asking me for a response.

Some public television managers were so unnerved by the propaganda blitz
against a yet-to-be aired documentary that they actually protested to PBS
with a letter prepared by the chemical industry.

Here's what most perplexed us: eight days before the broadcast, the American
Cancer Society, an organization that in no way figured in our story, sent to
its three-thousand local chapters a "critique" of the unfinished documentary
claiming, wrongly, that it exaggerated the dangers of pesticides in food. We
were puzzled. Why was the American Cancer Society taking the unusual step of
criticizing a documentary that it had not yet seen, that had not yet aired,
and that did not claim what the Society said was in it? An enterprising
reporter named Sheila Kaplan later looked into these questions for Legal
Times. She found that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had
several chemical companies as clients, also did pro bono work for the
American Cancer Society. The firm was able to cash in on some of the
goodwill from their "charitable" work to persuade the communications staff
at the Society to distribute erroneous talking points about the documentary
before it aired - talking points supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter
Novelli. Legal Times headlined the story, "Porter Novelli Plays All Sides,"
a familiar Washington game.

This was just round one. The producer Sherry Jones and I spent more than a
year working on another PBS documentary called "Trade Secrets." This was a
two-hour investigative special based on records from the industry's own
archives. Those internal documents revealed that for over 40 years big
chemical companies had deliberately withheld from workers and consumers
damaging information about toxic chemicals in their products. They confirmed
not only that a shameless and amoral industry knowingly deceived the public.
They also confirmed that we were living under a regulatory system designed
by the chemical industry itself - one that put profits ahead of safety.

Once again the industry pounced. We found ourselves the target of another
public relations firm - this one noted for using private detectives and
former CIA, FBI and drug enforcement officers to conduct investigations for
big business. One of its founders acknowledged that corporations "sometimes"
resort to unconventional resources, including "using deceit." We were the
target of a classic smear campaign and PBS felt the pressure. Still, the
documentary ran, created a big impact across the country, and a year later
received an Emmy from our peers for outstanding investigative journalism.

But this crowd never gives up. President Bush has turned the agencies
charged with environmental protection over to people who don't believe in
it. To run the Interior Department he chose a long-time defender of
polluters who has opposed laws to safeguard wildlife, habitat, and public
lands. To run the Forest Service he chose a timber industry lobbyist. To
oversee our public lands he named a mining industry lobbyist who believes
public lands are unconstitutional. To run the Superfund he chose a woman who
made a living advising corporate polluters how to evade the Superfund. And
in the White House office of environmental policy the President placed a
lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute whose mission was to make
sure the government's scientific reports on global warming didn't contradict
the party line and the interest of oil companies. Everywhere you look, the
foxes own the chicken coop.

My colleagues and I reported these stories again and again on my weekly PBS
series, to the consternation of the President's minions at the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting. The CPB Chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, turned the
administration's discomfort at embarrassing disclosures into a crusade to
discredit our journalism. Tomlinson left the chairmanship this week but the
Rightwing coup at public broadcasting is complete. He remains on the board
under a new chair who is a former real estate director and Republican fund
raiser. She recently told a Senate hearing that the CPB should have the
authority to penalize public broadcasting journalists if they step out of
line. Sitting beside her and Tomlinson on the board is another Bush
appointee - also a partisan Republican activist - who was a charter member
and chair of Newt Gingrich's notorious political action committee, GOPAC.
Reporting to them is the White House's handpicked candidate to be President
and chief executive officer of the CPB - a former co-chair of the Republican
National Committee whose husband became PR director of the Chemical
Manufacturers Association after he had helped the pesticide industry smear
Rachel Carson for her classic work on the environment, Silent Spring. Mark
my words: if this gang has anything to say about it, there will be no
challenging journalism to come from public television while they are around;
no investigative reporting on the environment; no reporting at all on
conflicts of interest between government and big business; no naming of
names.

So if the environmental movement is pronounced dead, it won't be from
self-inflicted wounds. We don't blame slavery on the slaves, the Trail of
Tears on the Cherokees, or the Srebrenica massacre on the bodies in the
grave. No, the lethal threat to the environmental movement comes from the
predatory power of money and the pathological enmity of rightwing ideology.

Theodore Roosevelt warned a century ago of the subversive influence of money
in politics. He said the central fact in his time was that big business had
become so dominant it would chew up democracy and spit it out. The power of
corporations, he said, had to be balanced with the interest of the general
public. That warning was echoed by his cousin Franklin, who said a
"government by organized money is as much to be feared as a government by
organized mob." Both Roosevelts rose to that challenge in their day. But a
hundred years later mighty corporations are once again the undisputed
overlords of government. Follow the money and you are inside the inner
sanctum of the Business Roundtable, the National Association of
Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute. Here is the super board
of directors for Bush, Incorporated. They own the Administration lock,
stock, and barrel, and their grip on our government's environmental policies
is leading to calamitous consequences. Once the leader in cutting edge
environmental policies and technologies and awareness, America is now
eclipsed. As the scientific evidence grows, pointing to a crisis, our
country has become an impediment to action, not a leader. Earlier this year
the White House even conducted an extraordinary secret campaign to scupper
the British government's attempt to tackle global warming - and then to
undermine the UN's effort to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. George W.
Bush is the Herbert Hoover of the environment. His failure to lead on global
warming means that even if we were dramatically to decrease greenhouse gases
overnight we have already condemned ourselves and generations to come to a
warming planet.

You no doubt saw those reports a few days ago that the Artic has suffered
another record loss of sea ice. This summer, satellites monitoring the
region found that ice reached its lowest monthly point on record - the
fourth year in a row it has fallen below the monthly downward trend. The
anticipated effects are well known: as the Artic region absorbs more heat
from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further, the relentless cycle of
melting and heating will shrink the massive land glaciers of Greenland and
dramatically raise sea levels. Scientists were quoted saying that with this
new acceleration of melt the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical
threshold beyond which the climate cannot recover.

Nonetheless, last year a Gallup poll found that nearly half of Americans
worry "only a little" or "not at all" about global warming or "the
greenhouse effect." In July of this year, ABC News reported that 66% of the
people in a new survey said they don't think global warming will affect
their lives.

If you've seen the film "March of the Penguins," you know it is a delight to
the eye and a tug at the heart. The camera follows the flocks as they trek
back and forth over the ice to their breeding ground. You see them huddle
together to protect their eggs in temperatures that average 70 degrees below
zero Fahrenheit. So powerful and beautiful a film can only increase one's
awe of our small neighbors far to the north.

In the New York Times recently, Jonathan Miller reported that conservatives
are invoking "March of the Penguins" as an inspiration for their various
causes. Some praise the penguins for their monogamy. Opponents of abortion
say it verifies "the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it." A
Christian magazine claims it makes "a strong case for intelligent design."
On the website "lionsofgod.com" you can find instructions to take a
notebook, flashlight and pen to the movie "to write down what God speaks to
you" as you watch the film.

Fair enough. It would not be the first time human beings felt connected to a
transcendental power through nature. But what you will not find in the film
is any reference to global warming. Why is it relevant? Because to
reproduce, the penguins must go to the thickest part of the ice where they
can safely stand without fear it will break beneath their weight. Global
warming obviously weakens the ice. If it becomes too thin, the penguins will
lose the support necessary for reproduction. Yet the film is silent on this
threat to these little creatures that conservatives are adopting as their
mascots in the culture wars. The film's director explained that he wanted to
reach as many people as possible and since "Much of public opinion appears
insensitive to the dangers of global warming," he didn't want to go there.

Again, fair enough. I can't fault him for the aspiration to tell the story
for its own sake, in the most simple and profound way. I can't fault him for
wanting to avoid disturbing the comfort of viewers. I often wish that I were
a filmmaker instead of a journalist and didn't have to give people a
headache by reporting the news they'd rather not hear.

But what we don't know can kill us.

Our oldest son is addicted to alcohol and drugs. I'm not spilling any family
secrets here; my wife Judith and I produced a PBS series based on our
family's experience and called it "Close to Home" because we wanted to
remind people that addiction hijacks the brain irrespective of race, creed,
color or street address. He's doing well, thank you - he's been in recovery
for ten years now and has become one of the country's leading public
advocates for treatment. But we almost lost him more than once because he
was in denial and so were we. For a decade prior to his crash he would not
admit to himself what was happening, and he was able to hide it from us; he
was, after all, a rising star in journalism, married, a home-owner and a
God-fearing churchgoer. Naturally we believed the best about him: A drug
addict, slowly poisoning himself to death? Not our son! The day before he
crashed I was concerned about his behavior and asked him to lunch. "Are you
in trouble?" I asked? "Are you using?" He looked me squarely in the eyes and
said, "No, Dad, not at all. Just a few problems at home." "Whew," I said,
placing my hand on his. "I'm really glad to hear that." And I switched the
subject. The next day he was gone. We searched for days before his mother
and a friend tracked him down and coaxed him from a crack house to the
hospital.

They say denial is not a river in Egypt. It is, however, the governing
philosophy in Washington. The President's contempt for science - for
evidence that mounts everyday - is mind boggling. Here is a man who was
quick to launch a 'preventative war' against Iraq on faulty intelligence and
premature judgment but who refuses to take preventive action against a truly
global menace about which the scientific evidence is overwhelming.

Unfortunately, the people in his core constituency who could most
effectively call on this President to lead are largely silent. I mean the
Christian conservatives who gave President Bush 15 million votes in 2000 and
maybe 20 million in 2004. Without their support, the transnational
corporations who now control Washington would fail to have the votes needed
to eviscerate our environmental protections.

Some of these Christian conservatives are implacable. They have given their
proxies to the televangelists, pastors, and preachers who have signed on
with the Republican Party to turn their faith into a political religion, a
weapon of partisan conflict.

But millions of these people believe they are here on earth to serve a
higher moral power, not a partisan agenda. They overwhelmingly respond to
natural disasters like last year's tsunami or the AIDS crisis in Africa by
opening their hearts and wallets wide. Alas, although many of them may
believe Christians have a moral obligation to protect God's creation, most
remain uninformed about the true scope of the environmental crisis and the
role of the Republican Party in it. As a result, they typically vote their
consciences on social issues rather than environmental ones.

Listen to this anguished moral missive from Joel Gillespie, a conservative
Christian who recently wrote to On Earth magazine: "I'll admit that when I
pushed the button for President Bush, I did so with some sadness, given his
dismal environmental record. But many of us who love the natural worldŠfeel
we face an almost impossible either-or-predicament. Voting for
pro-environmental candidates usually means voting for a package of other
policies that we will never swallow. We're forced to choose unborn babies or
endangered species, traditional marriage or habitat protection, cleaning up
the smut that comes across the airwaves or the smut that fouls our air. And
the fact that we are forced to make such choices has harmed the natural
environment and the special places we love and cherish."

Many evangelical Christians face Gillespie's dilemma. They need to be
challenged to look more closely at their moral choices - to consider whether
it is possible to be pro-life while also being anti-earth. If you believe
uncompromisingly in the right of every baby to be born safely into this
world, can you at the same time abandon the future of that child, allowing
its health and safety to be compromised by a President who gives big
corporations license to poison our bodies and destroy our climate?

In his grandstanding during the Schiavo right-to-die case last spring,
President Bush said, "It is wise to always err on the side of life," and he
pleaded for a "culture of life." But by ignoring the wise counsel of
thousands of environmental scientists, the President is not erring on the
side of life. He is playing dice with our children's future - dice that we
have likely loaded against our own species, and perhaps against all life on
earth.

There is a market here for journalists who are hungry for new readers. The
conservative Christian audience is some fifty million readers strong. But to
reach them, we have to understand something of their belief systems.

Reverend Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, for example,
tells us that "creation-care is starting to resonate not just with
evangelical progressives but with conservatives who are at the center of the
evangelical spectrum." Last year, in a document entitled For the Health of
the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility, the National
Association of Evangelicals declared that our Bible "implies the principle
of sustainability: our uses of the earth must be designed to conserve and
renew the earth rather than to deplete or destroy it." In what might have
come from the Sierra Club itself, the declaration urged "government to
encourage fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, encourage sustainable use of
natural resources, and provide for the proper care of wildlife and their
natural habitats." Ball and a few evangelical leaders have also pushed for a
climate change plank to their program, standing up to demagogues like James
Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson who are in the service of the
corporate-funded radical wing of the Republican Party.

But we can't expect to engage this vast conservative Christian audience with
our standard style of reporting. Environmental journalism has always spoken
in the language of environmental science. But fundamentalists and
Pentecostals typically speak and think in a different language. Theirs is a
poetic and metaphorical language: a speech that is anchored in the truth of
the Bible as they read it. Their moral actions are guided not by the newest
IPCC report but by the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Here's an important statistic to ponder: 45 percent of Americans hold a
creational view of the world, discounting Darwin's theory of evolution. I
don't think it is a coincidence then that in a nation where nearly half our
people believe in creationism, much of the populace also doubts the
certainty of climate change science. Contrast that to other industrial
nations where climate change science is overwhelmingly accepted as truth; in
Britain, for example, where 8l% of the populace wants the government to
implement the Kyoto Treat. What's going on here? Simply that millions of
American Christians accept the literal story of Genesis, and they either
dismiss or distrust a lot of science - not only evolution, but paleontology,
archeology, geology, genetics, even biology and botany. To those Christians
who believe that our history began with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
and that it will end soon on the plains of Armageddon, environmental science
with its urgent warnings of planetary peril must look at the best
irrelevant. At worst the environmental woes we report may be stoically
viewed as the inevitable playing out of the end of time as presented in the
book of Revelation. For Christian dominionists who believe the Lord will
provide for all human needs and never leave us short of oil or other
resources, no matter how we overpopulate the earth, our reporting may be
viewed as a direct attack on biblical teachings that urge humans "to be
fruitful and multiply." It's even possible that among many Christian
conservatives, our environmental reporting - if they see it at all - could
seem arrogant in its assumptions, mechanistic, cold and godless in its world
view. That's a tough indictment, but one that must be faced if we want to
understand how these people get their news.

So if I were a free-lance journalist looking to offer a major piece on
global warming to these people, how would I go about it? I wouldn't give up
fact-based analysis, of course - the ethical obligation of journalists is to
ground what we report in evidence. But I would tell some of my stories with
an ear for spiritual language, the language of parable, for that is the
language of faith.

Let's say I wanted to write a piece about the millions of species that might
be put on the road to extinction by global warming. Reporting that story to
a scientific audience, I would talk science: tell how a species decimated by
climate change could reach a point of no return when its gene pool becomes
too depleted to maintain its evolutionary adaptability. That genetic
impoverishment can eventually lead to extinction.

But how to reach fundamentalist Christians who doubt evolution? How would I
get them to hear me? I might interview a scientist who is also a person of
faith and ask how he or she might frame the subject in a way to catch the
attention of other believers. I might interview a minister who would couch
the work of today's climate and biodiversity scientists in a biblical
metaphor: the story of Noah and the flood, for example. The parallels of
this parable are wonderful to behold. Both scientists and Noah possess
knowledge of a potentially impending global catastrophe. They try to spread
the word, to warn the world, but are laughed at, ridiculed. You can almost
hear some philistine telling old Noah he is nothing but a "gloom and doom"
environmentalist," spreading his tale of abrupt climate change, of a great
flood that will drown the world, of the impending extinction of humanity and
animals, if no one acts.

But no one does act, and Noah continues hearing the word of God: "You are to
bring into the Ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep
them alive with you." Noah does as God commands. He agrees to save not only
his own family but to take on the daunting task of rescuing all the
biodiversity of the earth. He builds the Ark and is ridiculed as mad. He
gathers two of every species, the climate does change, the deluge comes as
predicted. Everyone not safely aboard drowns. But Noah and the complete
complement of Earth's animals live on. You've seen depictions of them
disembarking the Ark beneath a rainbow, two by two, the giraffes and hippos,
horses and zebras. Noah, then, can be seen as the first great
preservationist, preventing the first great extinction. He did exactly what
wildlife biologists and climatologists are trying to do today: to act on
their moral convictions to conserve diversity, to protect God's creation in
the face of a flood of consumerism and indifference by a materialistic
world.

Some of you are probably uncomfortable with my parable. You may be ready to
scoff or laugh. And now you know exactly how a fundamentalist Christian who
believes devoutly in creationism feels when we journalists write about the
genetics born of Darwin. If we don't understand how they see the world, if
we can't empathize with each person's need to grasp a human problem in
language of his or her worldview, then we will likely fail to reach many
Christian conservatives who have a sense of morality and justice as strong
as our own. And we will have done little to head off the sixth great
extinction.

That's not all we should be doing, of course. We are journalists first, and
trying to reach one important audience doesn't mean we abandon other
audiences or our challenge to get as close as possible to the verifiable
truth. Let's go back for a moment to America's first Gilded Age just over a
hundred years ago. That was a time like now. Gross materialism and blatant
political corruption engulfed the country. Big business bought the
government right out from under the people. Outraged at the abuse of power
the publisher of McClure's Magazine cried out to his fellow journalists:
"CapitalistsŠpoliticiansŠ.all breaking the law, or letting it be broken?
There is no one left [to uphold it]: none but all of us."

Then something remarkable happened. The Gilded Age became the golden age of
muckraking journalism.

Lincoln Steffans plunged into the shame of the cities - into a putrid urban
cauldron of bribery, intimidation, and fraud, including voting roles padded
with the names of dead dogs and dead people - and his reporting sparked an
era of electoral reform.

Nellie Bly infiltrated a mental hospital, pretending to be insane, and wrote
of the horrors she found there, arousing the public conscience.

John Spargo disappeared into the black bowels of coal mines and came back to
crusade against child labor. For he had found there little children "alone
in a dark mine passage hour after hour, with no human soul near; to see no
living creature exceptŠa rat or two seeking to share one's meal; to stand in
water or mud that covers the ankles, chilled to the marrowŠto work for
fourteen hoursŠfor sixty cents; to reach the surface when all is wrapped in
the mantle of night, and to fall to the earth exhausted and have to be
carried away to the nearest 'shack' to be revived before it is possible to
walk to the farther shack called 'home.'"

Upton Sinclair waded through hell and with "tears and anguish" wrote what he
found on that arm of the Chicago River known as "Bubbly Creek" on the
southern boundary of the [stock] yards [where]: "all the drainage of the
square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great
open sewerŠand the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and
chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange
transformationsŠbubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and
burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and
filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lavaŠthe packers
used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would
catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come
and put it out."

The Gilded Age has returned with a vengeance. Washington again is a
spectacle of corruption. The promise of America has been subverted to crony
capitalism, sleazy lobbyists, and an arrogance of power matched only by an
arrogance of the present that acts as if there is no tomorrow. But there is
a tomorrow. I see the future every time I work at my desk. There, beside my
computer, are photographs of Henry, Thomas, Nancy, Jassie, and SaraJane - my
grandchildren, ages 13 down. They have no vote and they have no voice. They
have no party. They have no lobbyists in Washington. They have only you and
me - our pens and our keyboards and our microphones - to seek and to speak
and to publish what we can of how power works, how the world wags and who
wags it. The powers-that-be would have us merely cover the news; our
challenge is to uncover the news that they would keep hidden.

A lot is riding on what we do. You may be the last group of journalists who
make the effort to try to inform the rest of us about the most complex of
issues involving the survival of life on earth.

Last year, my final year on NOW with Bill Moyers, we produced a documentary
called "Endangered Species," about a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., known
as Anacostia, just a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It is one of the most
violent and dangerous neighborhoods in the city, one of those places that
give Washington the horrendous distinction of the highest murder rate of any
major city in the country. It's horrendous in other ways too. The Anacostia
River that gives the neighborhood its name is one of the most polluted in
America; more than a billion gallons of raw sewage end up in it every year.

We went there to report on the Earth Conservation Corps, a project started
by one Bob Nixon to recruit neighborhood kids to help clean up the river and
community. For their efforts, they earn minimum wage, get health insurance,
and are offered a $5000 scholarship if they go back to school.

The area where they work is practically a war zone. Since the project began
an average of one corps member has been murdered almost every year. One was
beaten to death. One was raped and killed. Another died when he was caught
in the middle of a shooting while riding his bike. Three were shot execution
style.

One of the most charismatic of the kids who joined the Corps was named
Diamond Teague. He worked so hard the others jokingly called him "Choir
Boy." His work became his passion; he loved it. It gave purpose and meaning
to his life to try and clean up his neighborhood and river. But one morning
while he was sitting on his front porch someone walked up and shot him in
the head.

It's that kind of place, not far from where the swells of Congress are
hosted and toasted by lobbyists for America's most powerful and privileged
interests.

After his death Diamond Teague got the only press of his short life - 43
words in the Washington Post:

"A teenager was found fatally shot about 2:05 Thursday in the 2200 block of
Prout Place SW, police said. Diamond D. Teague, 19, who lived on the block,
was pronounced dead."

That's all. That was Diamond Teague's obit. Not a word about his work for
the Earth's Conservation Corps. Not a word.

It was left to his friends to tell the world about Diamond Teague. One of
them explained to us that they wanted people to know that just because a
black man gets killed in the Southeast corner of the nation's capitol, "he's
not just a drug dealer or gang bangerŠand not just discount him as nobody
when he deserves for people to know him and to know his life."

They made a video - you can see part of it in our documentary. They turned
out for his funeral in uniform. They wept and prayed for their fallen
friend. And then they went back to work, on a dusty patch of land squeezed
between two factories that they envisioned as a park. "We see the bigger
picture," one of Diamond's friends told us. "All great things have to start
in roughness. We're just at the beginning of something that's gonna be
beautiful."

They've said they would call it the Diamond Teague Memorial Park, in honor
of their friend who was trying to save an endangered river and neighborhood
but couldn't save himself.

On that fleck of land, where anything beautiful must be born in roughness,
they see "the bigger picture."

Just blocks away, at opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House
and the Capitol, the blind lead the blind, on one more march of folly.

Who is left to open the eyes of the country - to tell Americans what is
happening? "There is no one left; none but all of us."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
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Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
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This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Current Members: 1741

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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

CHINA CRISIS: THREAT TO THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
SPECTACULAR GROWTH NOW BIGGEST THREAT TO ENVIRONMENT
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent
October 19, 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article320565.ece

Western politicians queue up to sing its praises. Economists regard it with
awe and delight. Other countries are desperate to imitate it. Yet there is
another side to China's exploding, double-digit-growth miracle economy -- it
is turning into one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever
faced.

An ominous sign of the danger is given in a groundbreaking report from
Greenpeace, published today, which maintains that China is now by far the
world's biggest driver of rainforest destruction. The report documents the
vast deforestation driven by the soaring demands of China's enormous timber
trade -- the world's largest -- as the country's headlong economic
development sucks in ever-more amounts of the earth's natural resources.

Citing figures from the International Tropical Timber Organisation, the
Greenpeace study says that nearly five out of every 10 tropical hardwood
logs shipped from the world's threatened rainforests are now heading for
China -- more than to any other destination.

Yet deforestation is only one of the threats to the planet posed by an
economy of 1.3 billion people that has now overtaken the United States as
the world's leading consumer of four out of the five basic food, energy and
industrial commodities -- grain, meat, oil, coal and steel. China now lags
behind the US only in consumption of oil -- and it is rapidly catching up.

Because of their increasing reliance on coal-fired power stations to provide
their energy, the Chinese are firmly on course to overtake the Americans as
the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and thus become the
biggest contributors to global warming and the destabilisation of the
climate. If they remain uncontrolled, the growth of China's carbon dioxide
emissions over the next 20 years will dwarf any cuts in CO2 that the rest of
the world can make.

Even that, however, is not the ultimate threat from an economy which is
growing at a rate the world has never seen before. According to Lester Brown
of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC, the leading American
environmental analyst, China's scarcely imaginable growth in the coming
years means that the world's population will simply run up against the
limits of the planet's natural resources sooner than anyone imagines.

If growth continues at 8 per cent a year, Mr Brown said, by 2031 China's
population, likely to be 1.45 billion on current UN predictions, will have
an income per person equivalent to that of the US today. He said: "China's
grain consumption will then be two-thirds of the current grain consumption
for the entire world. If it consumes oil at the same rate as the US today,
the Chinese will be consuming 99 million barrels a day -- and the whole
world is currently producing 84 million barrels a day, and will probably not
produce much more.

"If it consumes paper at the same rate we do, it will consume twice as much
paper as the world is now producing. There go the world's forests. If the
Chinese then have three cars for every four people -- as the US does today
-- they would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars, compared to the current
world fleet of 800 million. They would have to pave over an area equivalent
to the area they have planted with rice today, just to drive and park them."

Mr Brown, who has been tracking and documenting the world's major
environmental trends for 30 years, went on: "The point of these conclusions
is simply to demonstrate that the western economic model is not going to
work for China. All they're doing is what we've already done, so you can't
criticise them for that. But what you can say is, it's not going to work.
And if it doesn't work for China, by 2031 it won't work for India, which by
then will have an even larger population, nor for the other three billion
people in the developing countries.

"And in some way it will not work for the industrialised countries either,
because in the incredibly integrated global economy, we all depend on the
same oil and the same grain.

"The bottom line of this analysis is that we're going to have to develop a
new economic model. Instead of a fossil-fuel based, automobile-centred,
throw-away economy we will have to have a renewable-energy based,
diversified transport system, and comprehensive reuse and recycle economies.
"If we want civilisation to survive, we will have to have that. Otherwise
civilisation will collapse."

The Greenpeace report is one of the first major indictments of the
catastrophic environmental effects the great Chinese industrial behemoth is
starting to have on the rest of the world.

The ecological damage that China's breakneck industrialisation is having on
the country itself has been widely recognised. In an interview earlier this
year, China's deputy environment minister, Pan Yue, said five of the 10 most
polluted cities worldwide are in China; acid rain is falling on one-third of
the country; half of the water in its seven largest rivers is "completely
useless"; a quarter of China's citizens lack access to clean drinking water;
one-third of the urban population is breathing polluted air; and less than a
fifth of the rubbish in cities is treated and processed in an
environmentally sustainable way. But China's malign environmental
"footprint" on other countries has been less widely reported.

John Sauven, forest campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: "Western
politicians, who think only in terms of gross domestic product, have seen
China as some sort of economic wonderland. Tony Blair went to China with
British businessmen in September and said how he wanted a slice of the cake.
But the growth figures mask an environmental catastrophe. The Chinese are
ripping the heart out of the world's irreplaceable rainforests to make cheap
products like plywood for Western consumer markets."

The Greenpeace report details how, with incredible speed, China has become
the world's largest plywood producer and exporter. Its export market has
grown from less than one million cubic metres per annum in 1998 to nearly 11
million cubic metres in 2004.

China banned logging in large areas of its own natural forest in 1998 after
catastrophic floods, themselves a direct result of deforestation, killed
thousands of people. "This ban, coupled with massive growth in Chinese
timber processing capacity and a liberalisation of trade barriers, led China
to look overseas in its hunger for timber," says the Greenpeace report.

In one area of China investigated by the group, there were no fewer than
9,000 plywood mills taking in vast numbers of ancient hardwood trees from
rainforests in countries such as Papua New Guinea, which are used merely to
make plywood panels. Greenpeace contends that many of these trees, if not
the majority, have been illegally logged.

The report, entitled Partners in Crime, does not blame only China -- it
accuses timber barons in rainforest countries of corruption in illegally
supplying the wood, and builders' merchants and DIY outlets in Britain of
culpable negligence in supplying plywood without establishing its origin.
Chinese hardwood plywood imports to the UK have gone from 1 per cent of the
total in 2001 to 30 per cent this year.

Greenpeace wants the EU, and failing that, Britain alone, to outlaw the
import of timber which has not clearly been legally logged. At the moment
there are no restrictions on illegally logged timber coming into Britain.

............

THE NUMBERS

Consumption

China -- growing at nearly 10% a year -- already consumes more grain, meat,
coal and steel than the United States

Wealth

China's population will grow from 1.3 billion to 1.45 billion in 26 years --
when per capita income will be equal to that of the US today

Oil

On current trends, China will by 2031 be consuming 99 million barrels of oil
per day. Total world production today is only 84 million bpd

Forestry

China is already the biggest driver of rainforest destruction, says
Greenpeace. Half of all rainforest logs head for China

Global warming

By 2025, China will overtake the US as the top emitter of the greenhouse
gases causing global warming

Cars

By 2031, China would have 1.1 billion cars if it matches current US trends
-- bigger than the current world fleet of 800 million

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
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Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
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------------

Monday, October 31, 2005
Current Members: 1745

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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Here's some information that all of us should know about. If any of you have
read and practiced the suggestions offered in Marnia Robinson's book, "Peace
Between the Sheets: Healing with Sexual Relationships", I would like to hear
from you -- and, with your permission, share your experiences with the rest
of the list. While tantric practices have been around for thousands of
years, this is the first time I have encountered them in such a clear,
relationship-empowering, potentially life-changing manner.

Thanks to Kali Wendorf for making me aware of this important work.

--- David Sunfellow

------------

REUNITING
HEALING WITH SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
INTRODUCTION
By Marnia Robinson
May 12, 2005

http://www.reuniting.info/introduction

Ever wonder why intimate relationships are so fragile?

Ever wish someone would just hand you a reliable set of instructions for
relationship harmony?

Ever feel like a malevolent force was undermining your love life despite
your desperate efforts?

The problem lies in your biological blueprint. As a human, you are designed
to mate with passionate fireworks...and then separate and begin the mating
dance anew. For example, in her book Anatomy of Love, anthropologist Helen
Fisher found the same dreary pattern in 58 cultures. Divorce, or its
equivalent, peaks in year four (except in Islamic cultures where divorce is
easy...there the peak occurs within a year). Why? Evolutionary biologists
would say it's because of all the fun (and babies) that our ancestors had.
Evolution favored reckless procreation and changing partners (genetic
variety) because these traits passed on the most genes. (This is the same
biological phenomenon that the porn industry uses to exploit people.)

Staying married is no guarantee that you have successfully defied your
biological programming. This same separation often creeps into once-happy
unions in the form of out-of-sync libidos, addiction, infidelity, irrational
hostility, and growing incompatibility. Ohio State University research
doctor Kiecolt-Glaser selected only the happiest, most well-adjusted four
percent of 2200 newlywed couples for an experiment measuring stress hormones
in marriage. She found that "declines in marital satisfaction" were standard
within the first two years of marriage-even among her carefully-chosen
couples who had everything going for them and had lived together or dated
for several years. By the end of her study
<http://pni.psychiatry.ohio-state.edu/jkg/marital.html> 20 percent of these
"highly healthy, blissful couples" were already divorced. Is it surprising
that the US Census Bureau <http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p70-80.pdf>
predicts that nearly one of every two marriages now occurring will end that
way?

What has changed? Very little. Leo Tolstoy wrote graphically about the
phenomenon of mysterious disharmony between marriage partners more than a
century ago.

Humanity's Conundrum

At the same time, numerous studies reveal that couples in long-term,
reasonably-harmonious relationships experience greater psychological
wellbeing, lower rates of illness, swifter recovery, and increased
longevity. So how does biology so often pull our strings at the expense of
our precious intimate relationships? It manipulates our brain chemistry.
Passionate encounters over-stimulate the pleasure/reward center in the
primitive brain, triggering temporary "hangovers." These recurring lows push
couples apart at a subconscious level. For details see Science:

http://www.reuniting.info/science

.....

"A person's approach to sexuality is a sign of his level of evolution.
Unevolved persons practice ordinary sexual intercourse. Placing all emphasis
upon the sexual organs, they neglect the body's other organs and systems.
Whatever physical energy is accumulated is summarily discharged, and the
subtle energies are similarly dissipated and disordered. It is a great
backward leap." -- Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching circa 300 BC

.....

What are we to do? Learn to overcome the neurochemical separation mechanism
outlined above. Since the time of ancient Chinese Taoist master Lao Tzu, the
same wisdom about how to manage our sexual energy better has bubbled up
periodically in different cultures and at different times. For example, the
Gnostic Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Alice B. Stockham, MD Karezza
[1896] all taught that ordinary intercourse, with its emphasis on passion,
causes separation and estrangement between partners and chaos in society.
For details see Wisdom:

http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom

These traditions recommend making love without conventional orgasm, and
insist that the result is improved health, greater harmony between partners,
increased moral strength, and even a decrease in cravings and impulsive
behavior. In our experience, gained over a decade, these sages are right. We
believe that the reason they are right is that this gentler,
non-goal-oriented lovemaking balances our neurochemistry, keeping us off of
biology's roller coaster of intense attraction followed by aversion or
separating behavior. Like past explorers, we've experienced health
improvements, deepening emotional bonding, lighthearted harmony, and healing
of addictions and depression. For others' experiences see Testimonials
<http://www.reuniting.info/testimonials>.

Ready to give serious consideration to a proven approach that promotes
harmony and discourages carelessly-conceived progeny? Start by staying
informed about relevant neuroscience discoveries and related wisdom of the
past. Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter, Reuniting. Join our phpBB
forum.

Or try the ideas for yourself. "Peace Between the Sheets: Healing with
Sexual Relationships" contains a simple step-by-step program of Ecstatic
Exchanges for couples who want to outwit biology to strengthen the harmony
in their relationships.

PEACE BETWEEN THE SHEETS: HEALING WITH SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
By Marnia Robinson
$15.95, paperback, 296 pp., 6 x 9
http://www.reuniting.info/peace_between_the_sheets

------------

GENERAL RESOURCES:

THE "REUNITING" NEWSLETTER
http://www.reuniting.info/resources/newsletter

DISCUSSION FORUM:
http://www.reuniting.info/forum/

RELATED READING:
http://www.reuniting.info/resources/books_on_controlled_intercourse

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
http://www.reuniting.info/resources/questions_and_answers

EXCERPT:

HOW CAN ONE LEARN THE PRACTICE OF CONTROLLED INTERCOURSE?

Here is an overview of the approach we used. The goal is learn to use to
heal by gently leaving the natural, addictive cycle of orgasm behind. This
is simple...but it is a lot like playing "Chutes and Ladders," i. e.,
progress is rarely linear. Most people experience some back and forth
between lovemaking without orgasm and lovemaking with orgasm. Unfortunately,
the more "chutes" you encounter (in the form of conventional orgasms), the
more frustrated you will become with the whole concept. This occurs because
each orgasm causes you to lose (temporarily) all the advantages you have
gained, and you need another two weeks to get beyond the addictive cycle.
Therefore, the best way to outsmart your biological programming, is to
proceed extremely slowly and consciously for the first three weeks...with no
cheating and lots of affectionate, physical contact with your each other.
This is the best way to move beyond the addictive cycle of sex.

To make this process easier, the second half of Peace contains a program of
"Ecstatic Exchanges" to help lovers move safely through this delicate
transition period. It consists of nightly activities that encourage an
affectionate exchange of loving attention, without resorting to traditional
foreplay. For example, you may exchange foot massages one night, or dance
together another night. The Exchanges can be so enjoyable that you don't
notice you are going through a withdrawal from an addiction you may have had
since puberty. Couples often report, "we've discovered that everything is an
Exchange!" Indeed, any exchange of affection without the hungry,
addiction-produced feelings of conventional intercourse can make your
partner glow in your perception. Maintaining that mutual magnetism is the
key to sustained harmony. See The Ecstatic Exchanges: Why They Work:

http://www.reuniting.info/science/ecstatic_exchanges_and_neurochemistry

During the Exchanges you sleep together every night. For the first two
weeks, you avoid intercourse (and keep your underwear on). During the third
week you gently add intercourse back in...but on a schedule. You continue to
exchange energy in other ways, too, so intercourse does not become your
entire focus. Scheduling intercourse is critical, because it helps maintain
your equilibrium (neurochemical balance). In contrast, both spontaneity and
wondering if you will have intercourse on a particular night can send your
dopamine cravings soaring, making it very difficult to maintain control. If
you know with certainty when you will be making love, you can stay calmer.

You may find it helpful to watch these videos (see next segment for links).
The first two, especially, will help you understand clearly why you want to
make the change to controlled intercourse. "The Middle Path" video offers
lots of tips from those working with the ideas. Plan to stay with the new
approach for several months, so you really commit to it, and are not simply
rushing to "get somewhere." This commitment will also give you time to watch
what happens if you slip back into old habits.

COMPLETE LIST OF QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
http://www.reuniting.info/resources/questions_and_answers

------------

"BIOLOGY HAS DESIGNS ON YOUR LOVE LIFE" VIDEO SERIES

PART I, "THE MANDATE TO SEPARATE"
Introduction.

Windows Media Player (50 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/TheMandatetoSeparate.wmv

Real Player Version (43 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/TheMandatetoSeparate.rmvb

Related Article:
http://tinyurl.com/c5y3s

...

PART II, "YOUR BRAIN ON SEX"
Science behind the urge to separate.

Windows Media Player (52 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/YourBrainOnSex.wmv

Real Player Version (44 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/YourBrainOnSex.rmvb

Related Article:
http://www.reuniting.info/science/sex_in_the_brain

...

PART III, "SEXOLOGISTS OF THE PAST"
Others who taught this way of making love: Lao Tzu, Jesus, and A.B.
Stockham, MD.

Windows Media Player (52 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/SexologistsOfThePast.wmv

Real Player Version (44 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/SexologistsOfThePast.rmvb

Related Article:
http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/sexologists_lao_tzu_jesus_stockham

...

PART IV, "THE MIDDLE PATH"
Frequently asked questions, with Gary and Marnia

Windows Media Player (53 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/TheMiddlePath.wmv

Real Player Version (45 MB file):
http://www.reuniting.info/TheMiddlePath.rmvb

------------

SEXOLOGISTS OF THE PAST
by Marnia Robinson
July 14, 2005

http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/sexologists_lao_tzu_jesus_stockham

When we move on to a new partner, or add lover on the side, we increase the
genetic variety of our children and improve our genes¹ chances of sailing
into the future. As individuals and families, however, we suffer. Spiritual
teachers of the past describe this painful phenomenon separating couples,
and hint at a way around it: making love differently, without the emphasis
on orgasm. In this article we¹re going to look at three such sexologists of
the past: Lao Tzu, Jesus, and Alice Bunker Stockham, MD.

.......

LAO TZU

Lao Tzu was a Chinese Taoist master who lived approximately 2300 years ago.
Many know him as the author of the Tao Te Ching, but he also wrote another,
lesser-known book, the Hua Hu Ching. Part of it is about sex.

Lao Tzu believed that a person¹s approach to sexuality is a sign of this
level of evolution. According to him, unevolved persons practice ordinary
sexual intercourse. They place all of their attention on the sexual organs,
and whatever energy is accumulated is summarily discharged. Lao Tzu taught
that the result of following biology¹s command is that our subtle energies
become "dissipated and disordered." Orgasm is, in his words, "a great
backward leap."

Lao Tzu¹s language about disturbances in the subtle energies is about as
close to the concept of neurochemical shifts as a person could get over two
thousand years ago. Those who are familiar with esoteric sexual advice know
that most of it focuses on loss of semen as the issue. Yet Lao Tzu
understood that there was something less obvious affecting us -- and nowhere
does he say the problem is limited to men.

Unfortunately by the time I read his book I had already found out the hard
way that orgasm causes a hangover for women, too. The hangover can show up
as pronounced mood swings and irritability -- days after an encounter. Above
all it creates a sense of "lack," in both men and women. It feels like our
needs are not being met, or like our relationship is a burden.

Projection of this subtle sense of lack, or uneasiness, is what separates
lovers. And the way around it -- as Lao Tzu stated -- is to avoid triggering
it. He advises us to go beyond our "obsession with seeds and eggs," and make
love differently. He says that, "Where ordinary intercourse is effortful,
angelic cultivation is calm, relaxed, quiet and natural."

"The result of this practice is improved health, harmonized emotions, the
cessation of desires and impulses, and, at the highest level, the
transcendent integration of the entire energy body."

My husband and I have experienced most of these improvements for ourselves
(unfortunately, no transcendence just yetŠ). We find it very exciting that
recent findings about the brain reveal how this ancient approach to
lovemaking could indeed yield these benefits.

Notice that Lao Tzu specifically mentions that this way of making love heals
cravings. In fact, it does, and it¹s one of the reasons that you can stay
with this approachŠbecause it also decreases the cravings of sexual
frustration. Another unexpected benefit is that your willpower increases in
all areas of your lifeŠso if you have an addiction, you may find it fades
away.

The most pleasant surprise is that you stay attracted to each other --
perhaps because you never finish making love. And that flirtiness translates
into harmony. Bumps in the road don¹t seem so bumpy. You laugh more. And
forgive more easily.

So much for Lao Tzu; over 2000 years ago he saw sex as a way to mutually
transform each other, and enter the realm of bliss and wholeness.

Article on Lao Tzu:
http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/lao_tzu_tai_chi_of_sexual_transcendance

.......

JESUS

Lao Tzu isn¹t the only source that recommends making love without
conventional orgasm. The same advice about controlled indulgence, or
lust-free intercourse, appears in Tibetan Buddhist lore and the discourses
of various Tantra teachers. Hints of this practice also show up in the
scrolls of the earliest Christians -- the Gnostic Gospels.

About 60 years ago some ancient texts turned up in a cave in Upper Egypt at
Nag Hammadi. The mother of the Egyptian man who found them put some of them
to good use, starting cooking fires. But the rest found their way to
scholars, who translated them. Based on their content, scholars lumped them
together with the few similar fragments that had survived the centuries.
Collectively they¹re known as The Gnostic Gospels. They describe Christ¹s
mission far differently from the more familiar gospels. Yet they are
distinctly Christian.

Religious scholar, Dennis MacDonald believes that these fragments reveal
that soon after the time of Jesus, before the Gospels that we know were even
written, there was a pervasive oral tradition to the effect that Jesus had
taught that "You enter the Kingdom of Heaven when male and female become
one."

Evidence supporting this tradition turned up by way of Syria (The Gospel of
Thomas), Greece (2 Clement), and Egypt (The Gospel of the Egyptians). These
fragments are strikingly similar, yet not so similar as to be derived from
one another -- hence MacDonald's conclusion that they all came from the same
widespread oral tradition.

He says that by the time Saint Paul wrote (the letters to the) Galatians, in
the New Testament, in about 55 CE, he was attempting to rebut the
authenticity of that earlier tradition by forcibly recasting it in terms
Paul was comfortable with. At that time Paul represented a small offshoot of
Christianity. The other -- now forgotten -- tradition about joining male and
female was far more widely known.

Paul wrote that Jesus didn¹t really mean "male and female." He really meant
everyone -- that everyone: Jews, Greeks, males and females would all be
united under one Christian umbrella. However, the umbrella concept didn¹t
show up in any of those fragments from Greece, Egypt, or Syria about male
and female becoming one, so it was clearly Paul¹s invention -- or the
invention of later editors.

Paul came to a bad end, but a few centuries later Paul¹s followers converted
Roman emperor Constantine and began to dominate Christianity. The first
thing they did was to stamp out anyone who believed Jesus had taught the
union of male and female and destroy their sacred writings. The Nag Hammadi
cache of texts is therefore extremely important.

Let¹s look at the teachings Paul helped to bury. The Gnostic Gospels
maintain that God is both male and female, and created man in God's image,
that is, immortal, androgynous (whole), and not in a physical body. They say
that Adam and Eve, who were originally profoundly, energetically connected,
gave in to temptation and engaged inŠphysical reproduction [with
fertilization-driven sex]. That led to a "separation" between them that
started our collective tumble into mortality.

As you will find explained elsewhere on this site, fertilization-driven sex
does indeed lead to emotional separation between the sexes, thanks to the
reward mechanism deep in the primitive part of the brain. That part of the
brain could equally well be labeled the "temptation" mechanism, since its
biological job is to drive us to behave impulsively regardless of the
consequences. In effect, it rewards us for giving into temptation -- whether
it¹s hot sex, or just a super size of fries that we don¹t need, but which
would have served our distant ancestors.

The Gnostic Gospels say that Jesus came to reverse this deterioration
between the sexes, and show us how to re-establish true union. Such union is
a way of experiencing our primordial androgyny -- and bringing us into
alignment with the wholeness of the Divine. Jesus accomplished this, by
correcting Adam¹s error, and so returned to Christhood, in the Sacrament of
the Bridal Chamber. (You may remember that a version of this rite was
portrayed in The DaVinci Code.)

The Gnostic gospel known as the Exegesis on the Soul describes this
Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber:

"Those who are to have intercourse with one another will be satisfied with
the intercourse. And as if it were a burden, they leave behind them the
annoyance of physical desire and they do not separate from each other. They
become a single lifeŠ.For they were originally joined to one another when
they were with God. This marriage brings them back together again."

Another of these Gospels, the Gospel of Philip, explains that there were 3
sacraments, the holy baptism, the holier atonement, and the "holy of the
holies," the Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber, in which participants "put on
the light" or "chrism" and return to oneness with each other and with God.
Procreation was not the goal.

You may be wondering how a celibate like Jesus could have managed this
Sacrament of the Bridal Chamber. The Gospel of Philip also says that Jesus
had a consort named Mary, "He kissed her often upon the mouth." Mary
Magdalen was not the "prostitute" Mary, as the Church long portrayed her.
Incidentally, some now suggest that the sacred union between Jesus and Mary
was immortalized in DaVinci¹s painting of "The Last Supper" -- which, on
close inspection -- seems to show Jesus sitting next to a woman.

So much for ³Jesus as sexologist;² the key point is that he may well have
taught a lust-free intercourse that heals the separation impulse between
intimate partners -- for a higher end than procreation (quite a contrast
from the mainstream Christian dogma).

Articles on Nag Hammadi texts:
http://www.reuniting.info/taxonomy/term/41

........

ALICE BUNKER STOCKHAM, MD

Alice Bunker Stockham was a Quaker, born in 1833. She was one of the
earliest women medical doctors graduated in the United States. While not as
famous as Jesus, or even Lao Tzu, she was the author of a highly-regarded,
forward-thinking book on women¹s reproductive health called Tokology. It was
translated into numerous European languages, including Russian. Tolstoy was
a fan of hers, and wrote the forward for the Russian edition.

Years later, in a subsequent book, Karezza, Dr. Stockham advised making love
without "crisis or emission" -- for either partner. She describes the health
benefits from this practice in her quaint 19th-century language:

"Men who are borne down with sorrow because their wives are nervous, feeble
and irritable, have it in their power, through Karezza, to restore the
radiant hue of health to the faces of their loved ones, strength and
elasticity to their steps, and harmonious action to every part of their
bodies."

There¹s a scientific basis for her claims, because irritability and a sense
of depletion can follow from the neurochemical roller coaster of
conventional sex <http://www.reuniting.info/science/sex_in_the_brain>.
Oxytocin naturally soothes those symptoms. Stockham, who was married to
another doctor and had two children, believed that the sexual urge -- far
from being tainted -- emanates from spirit. She advised that when we feel
the urge we have only to listen to our "intuition or Higher Self in the
silence of the soul" in order to discover how to use this energy. When we
seek spiritual companionship, sexual expression leads to the peace of
increased internal strength and power. She wrote:

"These powers are given through the act of copulation when it is the
outgrowth of the expressions of love, and is at the same time completely
under the control of the will. [By contrast, she says that,] the ordinary
hasty spasmodic method of cohabitation is deleterious both physically and
spiritually, and is frequently a cause of estrangement and separation."

With Karezza, she says,

"satiety is never known, and the married are never less than lovers; each
day reveals new delightsŠ.The common daily sarcasms of married people are at
an end, the unseemly quarrels have no beginnings and the divorce courts are
cheated of their records."

This describes our experience. There¹s a magnetism that stays alive between
partners practicing this -- and once you make the shift, that exhausting
work on your relationship lessens. Her book reproduces letters written by
people who used controlled intercourse. All are well worth reading. Here are
excerpts from one of them:

"I am a young man, 24 years of age, enjoying the most vigorous health. Š The
ideas contained in this discovery were so different from all my preconceived
ideas of what constituted marital happiness, that I was inclined to reject
them as utterly impracticable and absurd. Š With some misgivings, Š I
determined to [try this approach in my] marriage [It was clear that he was
looking for birth control], and it has been completely successful. I have
had a continuous honeymoon for four years. I have never been conscious of
any irksome restraint or asceticism in my sexual experience; and my
self-control and strength, mental and physical, have greatly increased since
my marriage. Š"

Dr. Stockham didn¹t just see patients and write books. She also traveled to
India where she visited India¹s West Coast and stayed with members of the
matrilineal Nayar culture, known as India¹s "free women." Although she never
mentions Tantra in her book, it is likely that this tradition influenced her
thinking. To be sure, her views differ from much Tantric lore, because she
recognized that both men and women benefit from avoiding orgasm. In some
schools, only the man concerned himself with enlightenment. His partner was
immaterial, except as a means to raise his energy higher. It was fine if she
orgasmed; the experience was not shared between equal partners.

Stockham¹s Karezza is also quite different from most commercial Tantra as it
is taught in the West today. Neo-tantra, as it is sometimes called, is
generally billed as a way to fewer (perhaps), but better, orgasms. At its
roots, though, authentic Tantra is not about self-indulgence, or bigger
orgasms. It is about self-discipline and the careful cultivation of sexual
energy for a higher, spiritual end. Fuller discussion of Stockham's Karezza

.......

CONCLUSION

So there you have them, three sexologists of the past -- each patiently
explaining that there are unsuspected benefits from controlled intercourse.
All emphasize the power of this practice to:

- ease cravings,

- strengthen us from within,

- raise our spiritual perception, and

- increase harmony between partners, that is, to pre-empt the separation
trigger -- buried like a fishhook -- in conventional, fertilization-driven
sex.

All of these benefits may be related to balanced dopamine levels and
increased oxytocin levels.

In short, if we want to sustain the greatest benefits of union -- and
explore those we haven¹t tapped yet -- wisdom of the past suggests that the
bedroom may hold the key.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

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ADULTS PROWLING THE WEB TO MEET CHILDREN FOUND DATELINE CAMERAS INSTEAD
By Chris Hansen
Dateline NBC
November 3, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9878187/#051103a

Late last August three hidden camera engineers, 2 regular cameramen, a
soundman, 2 volunteers from a vigilante group that exposes computer
predators, a producer, an associate producer, a security provider and I
moved into a big home in an affluent suburb of Washington, DC. The mission:
to explore the sometimes dark world of Internet chat rooms and to expose
predators who seek to seduce children.

We all knew going in that the scope of the problem is immense. At any given
time 50,000 predators are on the Internet prowling for children and the
National Center For Missing and Exploited Children tells us that one in five
children online have been solicited for sex.

Still, I wasn't prepared for what I was about to see. The next five days
would leave my crew and me physically and mentally exhausted.

Even before I arrived on the scene, Mitch and Eric Waggonberg and their team
had installed eleven hidden cameras and essentially built a control room on
the second floor of the house. The cameras could be panned and zoomed from
the second floor. One room over, the volunteers from the vigilante group
called Perverted Justice were in regional chat rooms of Yahoo and AOL,
posing as 12, 13 or 14 year old kids. They posted profiles with pictures of
boys and girls who were unmistakably underage. And huddled in with them, a
computer researcher was standing by to dig into the backgrounds of men who
came to our house to meet a child for sex.

I arrived at our house on a Wednesday morning about 9 a.m. By noon we were
expecting our first visitor. He was 54 and called himself "Redbd" on line.
He thought he was talking to a 13-year-old boy named Conrad. Redbd
acknowledged Conrad's age saying he was "sooo soo young." He asked "Conrad"
about his sexuality and his sexual experience. Then he sent "Conrad"
pictures of himself so explicit we can't show you. And then he was walking
up the driveway to our home. He was confident, comfortable. He even parked
right in the driveway. I was standing in the next room, watching on a
monitor as he walked into the kitchen. The decoy said: "Hey, spilled Diet
Coke on my shirt, I have to go change." The man offered to help.

As a correspondent in these kinds of situations, you're always a bit
anxious. Redbd didn't look violent, but you never know how someone in his
position is going to react, especially because Redbd was a prominent man who
had a lot to lose by being exposed. Redbd was a rabbi at an organization
that works with young people. At first he was calm, even though he clearly
knew he was in a lot of trouble. Then he became agitated and wanted to know
who I was. I suddenly felt a bit on the defensive. When I told him who I
was, the camera crew came out of the next room and he started after me. Our
security provider intervened and ultimately the rabbi left. Later, in a
series of phone calls to us, the rabbi claimed he had done nothing wrong.

All of this happened on the first day of our investigation. He was the first
of 19 men who would walk in our house. I knew then, it was going to be a
long week.

One after another, a parade of predators showed up at our house. Each
confrontation was unique. Sometimes on these undercover investigations you
feel almost exhilarated when you catch someone in the act. This time though,
it was just plain pathetic and frightening to see first hand how many men
would do something like this.

Besides the rabbi, there was a doctor, a special education teacher, an army
man, a defense contractor, a medical studentŠ the list goes on. Not one of
these men, if you saw him on the street would stand out in a crowd. Some
were defiant, claiming they'd done nothing wrong. Many said this was the
first time they'd ever done anything like this and they weren't really going
to go through with it. Some broke down and admitted an addiction to the
Internet.

Perhaps the most memorable moment though was when a guy actually walked into
our home naked. That's right: Naked. I knew, based upon his chat with the
decoy that this might be a possibility. I never really thought the man would
do it. But, on the second evening of our investigation, there he was walking
into our kitchen wearing nothing, carrying a 12-pack of beer looking to hook
up with a 14-year-old boy. I was standing in the next room looking at the
monitor, shaking my head in disbelief. He's sitting on a stool naked and now
I have to go confront him and do an interview with him. That was a TV first
for me.

Fortunately, there was a towel nearby that I could give him to cover up.

What does your daddy do for a living? My kids and virtually anyone else I
told about my interview with naked-guy thought this was hystericalŠ that is
until I told them what this same guy did the next day. It highlights the
danger and the prevalence of men online trying to solicit children. Within
12 hours of the encounter at the kitchen counter, the very same man was in a
chat room talking to a decoy posing as a 13-year old boy. There's sex talk
and he sets up a meeting at a fast food restaurant.

But, instead of meeting a 13-year-old, he meets me with a camera crew.
Again, I confront the man.

He tells me he needs to get help and is seeing a psychiatrist.

Let's hope that he does.

-------------

DANGERS CHILDREN FACE ONLINE
DATELINE HIDDEN CAMERA INVESTIGATION TURNS SPOTLIGHT ON INTERNET PREDATORS
By Chris Hansen
Dateline NBC
November 11, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6083442/

Instant messaging on the computer has become the phone for kids today.
Children spend hours chatting online with their friends, and sometimes with
strangers. A recent study found that one in five children online is
approached by a sexual predator, a predator who may try to set up a
face-to-face meeting. In a Dateline hidden camera investigation,
correspondent Chris Hansen catches some of these men in the act. Also,
scroll to the bottom of the page for the software mentioned in the story and
more resources.

.............

To follow the trail of an Internet predator prowling for children, from
seduction in a chat room to a face-to-face meeting, Dateline rented a house,
wired it with hidden cameras, and enlisted the help of an online vigilante
group called "Perverted Justice." Volunteers from the group posed as teens
in chat rooms, saying they were home alone and interested in sex. Within
hours there were men literally lining up at our door.

The men who turned up in our investigation included a New York City
firefighter and a man with a history of mental illness and a criminal
record. And they all had something in common: the same excuse. Just about
every man who came to our house said it was the first time he had done
something like this and most claimed they really had no intention of having
sex with a minor. Here's an excerpt of what we found:

Steve, 35, thinks he's got a hot date with a 14-year-old girl. Instead he'll
be meeting Dateline NBC correspondent Chris Hansen. At first he seems to
think I am a police officer. I haven¹t told him yet that I'm a television
reporter and at this point he has no idea he's being videotaped.

Steve: "I knew."

Hansen: "You knew what?"

Steve: "Exactly what's going on."

Hansen: "Take your hands out of your pocketsŠ You don't have to put them
up."

Steve: "Okay, no problem, I know what's going on I'm not stupid."

It seems clear Steve thinks he's been caught in a police sting. He says he
was just coming over to check it out.

Hansen: "So you were suspicious from the beginning?"

Steve: "Of course I am, I'm always suspicious."

Hansen: "Always? Do you do this a lot?"

Steve: "No this is the first time I've actually, did show up to see what was
going on."

Hansen: "And you expect me to believe that."

Steve: "Yes, yes I do."

In two-and-a-half days, 18 men show up at our house after making a date on
the Internet to commit statutory rape.

When 34-year-old Eddie arrives, he tries something none of the others did.
Before he'll come into the kitchen he comes up with a scheme to insulate
himself from possible criminal charges and he tries to get our decoy to play
along.

Eddie: "Okay listen just say something for me."

Girl: "What do you want me to say?"

Eddie: "Just say Rachel you're 19 years old right?"

Girl: "I'm not though you know I'm not."

Eddie: "I don't know that."

Girl: "I told you I was 14. You saw it and you typed back to me, what are
you talking about?"

Eddie: "No, no, noŠ Not as far as I know. As far as I know you're 19 years
old right?"

Girl: "But I butŠ"

Eddie: "Rachel can you read between the lines?"

When Hansen walk in, Eddie admits he was trying not to incriminate himself.

Eddie: "My intentions are not anything so I just want to protect myself
that's all."

Hansen: "But she told you on the Internet that she was 14."

Eddie: "Œ19¹ she wrote on the Internet."

Hansen: "Oh really?"

Eddie: "Yeah."

Hansen: "On the Internet?"

Eddie: "Yes."

Hansen: "You want to stick to that story?"

Eddie: "I just -- that's what I thought she wrote."

Hansen: "Well do you want to see the transcripts."

Eddie: "I'm sure you have it."

None of the men had any idea our hidden cameras were going to expose them
before a national audience. When we told them, most headed for the door,
like Steve, the married man with children. But some wanted a chance to try
to explain themselves. When Hansen confronts Eddie, he's ready with a story.
He says he's a TV producer doing research.

Hansen: "Where are you a television producer?"

Eddie: "I work independently right now."

Hansen: "Yeah, you know it's ironic because I work in television, too, with
Dateline NBC."

At first this "television producer" seems a bit camera shy, but then decides
to open up.

Eddie: "I haven't done anything wrong at allŠ if you go into the
transcriptsŠ time and time again."

Hansen: I've read all the transcripts. It sounds like you're looking to have
a sexual experience with this girl Rachel who you were talking to on the
Internet. I don't know what other conclusion you can draw."

Eddie: "You can search me for a condom I don't have one on me. I wouldn't
have sex without one."

Eddie, who it appears has worked as a TV producer, even commends us for a
job well done.

Eddie: "I'm very interested in your story I think it's a great thing you're
doing. I think it's something that you should certainly do more and more of
and bag people left and right."

............

The book mentioned in our story was:

SAFETY MONITOR:
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR KIDS ONLINE
By Detective Mike Sullivan

The three types of software mentioned in our piece were:

Watch Right
Cyber Sentinel
Spector Pro

I-Safe, a non-profit organization that teaches childen in school how to be
safe online:
http://www.I-Safe.com

A govenment-funded CyberTipline from the National Center for Missing &
Exploited Children, staffed 24/7 to receive reports of child exploitation
online:
http://www.cybertipline.com
1-800-843-5678

Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth
http://tinyurl.com/bxag4

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QUOTE:

"Nobody could tell exactly when it began and nobody could predict when it
would end. At the outset, they didn't even call it a depression. At worst it
was a recession, a brief slump, a correction in the market, a glitch in the
rising curve of prosperity. Only when the full import of those heartbreaking
years sank in did it become the Great Depression." ­ "The Great Depression"
by Pierre Berton

------------

ASPO-USA CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 10-11, 2005
BEHAVING AS IF A MAJOR CRISIS LOOMS
By Michael C. Ruppert
From The Wilderness
November 17, 2005

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/111705_center_stage_P.shtml

DENVER - Sometimes you have to watch what people do more than what they say.
After more than four years and a dozen Peak Oil conferences in four
countries, it is much less of a story for FTW (From The Wilderness) to
report on "whose numbers say what" than it is to see what kind of attitudes,
foci and consensuses are emerging as we approach the winter. Therein lies
the real story of what happened in Denver and why the first conference of
the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA was a watershed moment. That
moment happened in large part because of the brilliant organizational
efforts of ASPO-USA, their chosen list of speakers, Beth Conover of the
Denver Mayor's Office, Randy Udall, and the brilliant, thoughtful and
diplomatic leadership of ASPO co-founder Steve Andrews. It also happened
because we were ready for it to happen.

Sure, a very few of the speakers were "politically-correct, balanced"
presenters who offered really dumb solutions like growing crops for fuel and
using plant waste to make gasoline instead of composting or mulching it to
restore our depleted and ever-disappearing topsoil. At the ASPO-USA
conference, these were tolerated costs rather than main courses, and with
each successive conference both their numbers and credibility are
decreasing.

What's important now is not the exact date when Peak might occur or an exact
knowledge of how many barrels are left where. Even debate about the now
increasingly disreputable reports provided by Daniel Yergin's Cambridge
Energy Research is moot and losing steam. What's growing in people's
consciousness is the awareness of all of the truly bizarre assumptions
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/18assumptions.pdf> that such rosy
predictions are based upon.

It may not want to, but the Peak Oil movement is destined to become the
premier forum for the now-essential debate on the holistic future of
mankind. Every part of human civilization will rightly be on that table
sooner or later, and under a microscope. The sooner the movement accepts
that daunting mandate, the sooner will we all see more edible and nutritious
produce from its table. With Denver, that process has clearly begun.

Former Colorado governor Dick Lamm's piercing observation helped me to
understand one of my deepest frustrations. Denver was no exception to my
long-held observation that any "expert" who presents at one of these
conferences is useless if he/she presents within only one discipline,
whether it be economics, geology, engineering or business. These are the
only disciplines I have seen represented at any such conference and they are
the now-useless calling cards of the passing paradigm. Peak Oil is perhaps
the only event that touches every dimension of human endeavor and it must be
addressed that way ­ multi-dimensionally.

A geologist who gives us answers only as a geologist, an economist who
thinks only in terms of money, a financial/market analyst who can only do
charts and then asks us to believe that he has answered the problem misses
the mark. It is not enough to have several people from different disciplines
speak solely within their own areas. No, the task of integrating all the
challenges is daunting enough for the layman. We respond to leaders who
publicly reveal their own anguished process of seeing the world whole so
that we might also see it whole. This is a conceptual view that is as alien
to most Americans as is thinking in a foreign language.

Linear thinking within a single discipline has been both the province and
the luxury of the industrial era where exorbitant amounts of cheap energy
could be used to conveniently eliminate, ignore, and/or suppress all the
other human equations that have refused to yield neat answers from the last
application of Industrial Age thought. Only when we integrate all aspects of
life with the world around us do we produce a product that is nutritious (or
even digestible) for the almost seven billion souls now inhabiting this
planet. This, I think, is what Randy Udall was getting at. Otherwise the
fragmentation that grows daily in the world is mirrored and reinforced
within each of us as an individual. No wonder real progress seems so
problematic. A conceptual shift is occurring, and none too soon.

Fact: Infinite growth is not possible.

Fact: The term "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron.

Fact: The current monetary system demands infinite growth because it is
based upon borrowing and compound interest. Therefore the monetary system
needs to be addressed first. When Catherine Austin Fitts is asked to attend
a Peak Oil conference and begin teaching how capital gains can be completely
divorced from increased consumption; when Peak Oilists start demanding a
disengagement from major banks and financial markets as part of an
integrated solution; then other real solutions will be liberated. Until you
change the way money works, you change nothing.

Fact: Peak Oil conferences will start to become more useful when somebody
has the guts to ask something like, "What if global warming creates bigger
hurricanes next year and they destroy more of our energy infrastructure?";
or "How can this guy propose using inedible crop waste for fuel instead of
returning it to badly depleted topsoil which is yielding less and less food
each year?"; or "Gee what are the African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos in
the inner cities, what are India, China and every other country, going to
say when we tell them, "Sorry, your shot at the great consumer paradise is
gone? We've used everything up, including your share. How do we plan for
that?"

The blessing of what happened in Denver was that some experts have begun
leaving their disciplines because they recognize the inadequacy of
single-discipline solutions. Matt Simmons talked of faith. "It's time that
we leave the term 'I believe' ‹ with respect to reserve numbers ‹ in
church." Simmons also repeated, with new urgency, the near universal demand
for data reform so that real contingency planning might begin. Keynote
speaker Representative Roscoe Bartlett (a scientist) talked of
sustainability, monetary reform, ending growth, demand reduction, and
awareness that global theories have little value when dropped like a wet
blanket onto local problems. "I'm a conservative Republican, but I try not
to be an idiot."

Aside from a huge standing ovation for Bartlett, the biggest ovation of the
two-day event was given to Professor Albert Bartlett (no relation), a
physicist, who is widely regarded as the Godfather of the sustainability
movement. He is a man who has crossed many disciplines and in so doing,
acknowledged and embraced his own (and our) humanity.

[Now ­ and only now ­ can I go back into the discipline of journalism and
within that discipline report on some of the events that occurred at this
conference with confidence that when you have finished this story you will
have a picture of what actually happened there.]

For those interested in accurate and complete records of the entire
proceedings I encourage you to visit the following web sites:

ASPO-USA:
http://www.aspo-usa.com/

THE OIL DRUM:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/11/10/233544/36

THE POST CARBON INSTITUTE:
http://www.postcarbon.org/

For additional analysis I recommend stories by Tom Whipple of the Falls
Church News Press <http://www.fcnp.com/> who has emerged as one of the most
cogent analysts of Peak Oil on the world scene. Whipple, FTW has recently
learned, is a retired CIA analyst who likely spent many years looking at
energy issues.

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (and Gas) ­ USA broke new ground
on many fronts last week in a two-day conference featuring energy experts,
academics, political figures and financial analysts. A large number of
private citizens from all over the country (including many FTW subscribers),
actively involved in local awareness groups attended. Exceeding
expectations, an estimated 500 people (counting a large press contingent)
filled Denver's Sherman Events Center in the shadow of the state capital.
Included among event sponsors was the City of Denver itself, one of several
US cities taking serious (if under-publicized) steps to prepare for coming
energy shortages. In contrast to prior European conferences and a number of
US events attended by this writer, ASPO-USA showed that Peak Oil has
recently begun moving onto center stage with respect to open acknowledgment
of the problem, local public policy agendas, and business response. Key
participants included Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R) MD, investment banker
Matthew Simmons, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and oil industry analyst
Henry Groppe.

Perhaps most importantly, ASPO-USA unearthed a rapidly evolving if not
universally shared consensus on five points: The actual peak of global oil
production is now occurring or has just occurred; any attempts to mitigate
or offset rapidly increasing decline rates through additional drilling or
crash development programs for renewables will have little impact; demand
reduction and conservation alternatives are of critical importance; and
depletion of existing fields may run at between 5-8% per annum which would
equate to a net loss of between 19 and 29 million barrels per day (Mbpd) in
a few short years. Chris Skrebowski of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre in
Britain dropped a bombshell by revealing that oil services giant
Schlumberger has now projected 8% annual decline rates. These actual
business investment projections belie Saudi Arabia's recent claims that they
expect to (soon) discover another 250 billion barrels of oil or their other
claims that after having produced enormous quantities of oil for five
decades, their reserves are still as large as they were 50 years ago.
Schlumberger sells Saudi Aramco most of their hardware.

Matt Simmons also used the 8% decline figure and added, "That means we would
have to add 6.4 Mbpd per year to stay flat."

As real life is making a mockery of the rosy projections offered by many, or
the long-debunked, fantasy-dwelling advocates of infinite "abiotic oil",
Matt Simmons, author of the best-selling Twilight in the Desert stepped up
his rhetoric by demanding that oil companies, market analysts and government
agencies start producing some "digital oil fields" to deliver some of the
"conceptual reserves" that are being thrown out as fact by increasingly
desperate media pundits and ever-less-credible government agencies.

The first day of the conference saw a number of presentations on previously
hoped-for remedies indicating that efforts to increase supply are
essentially futile or even counterproductive in the near-term and that the
only way to achieve balance with the least economic and social disruption is
to address demand. On the conference's second day Roscoe Bartlett showed his
evolution as he pointed out that drilling the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve now would amount to only a drop in the bucket and encourage
increased short-term consumption, thereby making the inevitable crash more
painful.

As one observer noted, "They're trying to stretch the two ends to meet and
they just can't do it." Further presentations only underscored this truth.
Canadian tar sands received much attention and the outcome was summed up by
one observation: "It took them 38 years and billions in investment to get to
1 Mbpd in production. It's going to take them quite a while to get to 3
million barrels but so what? The US alone is using more than 21 million a
day and that doesn't factor in global decline or increased demand. Besides,
tar sands oil needs a different kind of refinery than we have down here
anyway."

Even some members of the camp previously espousing the idea that technology
would somehow produce more oil are now saying that technology's only real
role is to increase the efficiency of energy usage. I find it hard to
believe that increased efficiency, achieved through engineering and
manufacturing of new products, is going to magically replace the
high-density energy that's being lost to depletion. It will only partially
offset what's being wasted.

MATT SIMMONS AND PAST-DUE HURRICANE BILLS

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, author of the hot-selling and
controversial Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the
World Economy, offered FTW some telling insights into why the price of oil
continues to fall in spite of widespread unrepaired damage from Hurricanes
Rita and Katrina. Of particular concern was a lack of reports on damage done
to pipelines from rig to shore in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Short term markets are driven by sentiment. And when you go from there
being 50,000 oil contracts long and 10,000 short the price might be slightly
lower. But if oil prices are going up, the analysts say that it's
speculation instead of supply. On the other hand, if prices are coming down,
it's because of milder weather, [and] reduced demand in the off-driving
season, and a five-minute trend becomes projected as the future." Simmons
acknowledged that imports of refined gasoline, soon-to-end subsidies from
IEA countries, and a healthy drain on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
weren't even being considered in the markets as they should be.

When I asked Simmons how badly we were setting ourselves up for a major
crisis this winter he didn't hesitate. "Terribly! Because we needed to keep
prices high to send out some signals that we needed to watch how we use
energy. These signals are only encouraging people to use more."

Then I asked the single most important question I had brought to the
conference. "We know about the hurricane damage to refineries, to the
terminals, and that we have lost 108 rigs in the Gulf. But what about the
pipelines from rig to shore? If those are down, nothing else matters."

As usual, Simmons showed no hesitation. "You know why you haven't heard
anything? Because they don't have any idea. It's hard to make a report when
you don't know anything. Unfortunately, there are some reports that say that
the pipelines aren't leaking. But so what? They're not on. Nobody's turned
them on because they don't know how extensive the damage is and they don't
know whether they're going to start pumping oil and gas directly into the
water."

If Simmons is correct then that means that all US oil and natural gas
production from the Gulf (except for the small portion transported by
tanker) is still shut in and whether rigs are standing and refineries are
working, as touted in the press, is irrelevant if there's no way to get the
product ashore.

Upon hearing what Simmons had told me, a retired production manager from the
Gulf who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "He's right but I can tell
you that the pipeline damage is catastrophic and it's going to take years to
fix."

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Everybody agreed that US and Canadian natural gas production was in serious
decline and that natural gas might pose a more lethal problem this winter
than heating oil shortages.

Henry Groppe of Groppe, Long & Little, regarded by many as dean of energy
analysts, pulled few punches. "Attention must be shifted to the consumption
side," he observed, before announcing that "total crude oil production may
have peaked this year". He drew widespread laughter by noting "We have run
out of $2 oil, and $5 oil, and $10 oil, even $40 oil. We may soon be running
low on $60 oil but we'll never run out of oil altogether." To his credit, he
warned that options must be improved for low income workers and that inner
city environments must be enhanced to start encouraging people to move
closer to where they work.

Roger Bezdek, co-author of the now-legendary SAIC "Hirsch Report" on
mitigation strategies commissioned by the Department of Energy, delivered a
chilling summary of that document. PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS,
MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT (February, 2005) was not a report on whether
oil would peak but on the consequences of delay in preparing for the peak.
He left no doubt that the world had chosen the worst possible course by
doing nothing until the crisis was at hand. He observed that "previous price
spike recessions may pale in comparison with what is coming."

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a former exploration geologist, revealed
that his city has been on something of a crash program in preparation for
energy shortages for some time. He stated that, "over the next 10-20 years
Peak Oil will play an increasing role in how we formulate government policy.
Oil is Denver's single-largest budget item and we are looking at the ways it
affects our operations. This year our fuel tab increased by $1.9 billion
dollars."

Strong conservation measures have been imposed in Denver and zoning
regulations are being changed to permit more high-density development close
to rail lines. The city's fleet has been reduced by 7%. All Denver school
busses and diesel-powered vehicles are running on biodiesel produced by
Colorado's Blue Sun Corporation. Almost all of the city's street lights have
been replaced with ultra-low energy LED lights. The list goes on.

During the question and answer session I asked Hickenlooper if cities were
networking regarding Peak Oil. He answered with a resounding yes and listed
Denver, Portland and Chicago as three of many cities on a crash program to
share information through the US Conference of Mayors and the National
League of Cities. This confirmed my suspicions that the vacuum created by an
impotent federal government is being filled, but below the radar screens of
corporate-owned news reports (FTW will be devoting a lot of energy to
finding out what's going on around the country). After Hickenlooper
finished, Randy Udall observed, "The federal government's not going to do
anything. They're out for a long lunch."

Professor Charles Hall delivered a much-needed and succinct lesson on EROEI
(Energy Return on Energy Invested) to help those new to the subject of
sustainability. The EROEI on the first oil wells was over 100. So how can
ethanol enthusiasts claim victory when they can prove a positive EROEI of
.1? Corn is a food, not an energy source.

One of the biggest attractions was a film shown on the first night of the
conference produced by Pat Murphy and Megan Quinn who had traveled
extensively to Cuba to study how the Cubans had survived their near-total
loss of energy after the fall of the Soviet Union. (FTW has reported on this
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120103_korea_2.html>). This film
was a real crowd pleaser for the many FTW subscribers and local activists
who are taking matters into their own hands by preparing their local
communities. One person who viewed the film told me, "You know what Castro
did? He dropped all the 'isms', capitalism, communism, socialism. He just
got out of the way, turned the money system on its head and put everything
in the hands of people where they lived and it worked." For many of the
private attendees, this film alone was worth the cost of the trip.

Julian Darley of The Post Carbon Institute and author of High Noon for
Natural Gas delivered a chilling assessment of North America's natural gas
situation. As reported on the excellent website The Oil Drum
<http://www.theoildrum.com/>:

"Julian Darley, author of High Noon for Natural Gas and founder of the
Post-Carbon Institute warned us that he was going to say some unpopular
things, and he did. He said them very articulately though: Big energy is the
problem - it is destroying the planet. Climate change is coming faster and
sooner than even the worst case scenarios. Growth is not sustainable -
sustainable development is an oxymoron. Natural gas is going down fast and
there is not much time to make big changes. We are agreed that communism is
a bad system - it collapsed and good riddance. However, what if capitalism,
the other great system of materialism, what if that is a bad system with no
future too? He believes we need to move to relocalization and implement the
depletion protocol - reduce economic activity inline with energy depletion."

On Saturday, before flying back (one of the last times ever) to Los Angeles
I attended an organizational breakout session where ASPO-USA was trying to
figure out what to do next. As various options were being discussed I
thought to myself, "Better not spend too much time on incorporation,
structure and funding. I can guarantee that maybe 200 individual Americans
are already on their way home with ideas they will start to implement
without waiting for an organization to help them. The best thing ASPO-USA
can do is raise money and facilitate and network with what the people are
already doing. For all of America's great faults, for all of its excess
baggage, and in spite of the criminality that now pervades the federal
government ‹ ingenuity and individual action are still the truest and most
valuable traits of this culture. They are not dead. They've just been paying
credit card bills instead of figuring out how to live on a deeply troubled
planet.

Fortunately, that all seems to be changing now.

...........

RELATED QUOTES:

"This is a paradigm shift. The culture of growth is being replaced by the
culture of sustainabilityŠ Peter Drucker pointed out that about every 500
years human civilization has to completely rethink itself. 500 years ago
civilization embarked on the industrial era. That era is coming to an end."
­ Dick Lamm, former three-term Colorado Governor.

...

"Our taboo in the US has been about energy and depletion. We¹re not supposed
to talk about it. The Sioux had an energy ethic. Bison were their source of
energy and they sought a balance with their supplyŠ In the US we could soon
have headlines reading, ŒPower Outage at Mall ­ 30 Stranded on Escalator¹Š
Peak Oil is an intelligence test. If you pass you survive. If you fail you
starve." ­ Randy Udall

...

"With the onset of winter our suppliers, whether British oil companies or
Saudi wellheads, or Nigerian platforms, or Venezuelan tankers, will find it
next to impossible to meet global demand. The ticking clock's alarm is set
to ring with the first cold snaps and the collective click of thermostats
that will soon remind us all of our mortality. In the meantime, as I
predicted almost three months ago, a Bush presidency hobbled by scandal will
conveniently provide cover for the real problem: Peak Oil and Natural Gas."
-- Mike Ruppert, October 27, 2005

...

"In my humble opinion, we should now have reached 'Peak Oil'. So, it is high
time to close this critical chapter in the history of the international oil
industry and bid the mighty 'Peak' farewell.

"At present, global oil output fluctuates around 82 mb/d as some
institutions try vainly to push 2005 statistics towards 83 and 84 mb/d (as
they always do). But they will be obliged to backtrack as 'actual' oil
supplies fail to follow their 'paper' ones.

"So that, in the 'Peak Oil' aftermath, we are about to enter what I call
'Transition One' [T1] --- a rather bizarre phase akin to a vague
'no-man's-land' between still adequate oil supplies and the clear
realization that demand has definitely left supply behind. I see the tragic
'2004 Tsunami' and the heart-breaking '2005 Katrina and Rita' as the
precursor signs to 'T1'. This fresh phase might come to burst on the global
stage during the coming winter 2005-2006 --- maybe taking large swaths of
the public by surprise."

­ Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, Senior Advisor to the National Iranian Oil Company,
(reportedly under house arrest in Iran and forbidden to leave the country).

------------

PEAK OIL RELATED LINKS:

ASPO
The official site of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas.
http://www.peakoil.net/

ASPO-USA:
http://www.aspo-usa.com/

THE OIL DRUM:
http://www.theoildrum.com/

THE POST CARBON INSTITUTE:
http://www.postcarbon.org/

ENERGY BULLETIN
Clearing house for news regarding the peak in global energy supply.
http://www.energybulletin.net/

POWERSWITCH
Dedicated to raising awareness & discussion of the impending & permanent
decline of cheap oil & gas supply.
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/

ODAC
Oil Depletion Analysis Centre working to raise awareness and promote better
understanding of the world's oil-depletion problem.
http://www.odac-info.org/

GLOBAL PUBLIC MEDIA
Public service broadcasting for a post carbon world.
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/

POST CARBON INSTITUTE
Learning to live in a low energy world.
http://www.postcarbon.org/

PEAKOIL.COM
US site and forum to educate and promote awareness of global hydrocarbon
depletion.
http://www.peakoil.com/

FEASTA
The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability
http://www.feasta.org/

VITAL TRIVIA
Chris Vernon's Peak Oil Blog
http://www.vitaltrivia.co.uk/

CULTURE CHANGE
http://www.culturechange.org/

LIFE AFTER THE OIL CRASH
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/

THE ENERGY BLOG
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/

THE OIL DRUM
http://www.theoildrum.com/

PEAK OIL PRIMERS: WHAT IS PEAK OIL?
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://www.answers.com/peak+oil

------------

PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:

WORLD'S 2ND BIGGEST FIELD STARTS TO RUN OUT OF OIL (11/13/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10331

THE NATURAL GAS CLIFF (11/10/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10314

HOW SOON WILL WORLD'S OIL SUPPLIES PEAK? (11/10/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10312

SAUDI OIL FORECASTS ARE DOUBTED (10/28/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10223

PERSPECTIVE: KATRINA, NEW ORLEANS, & PEAK OIL (9/6/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9910

PETROCOLLAPSE CONFERENCE OCT. 5, 2005 NYC (8/30/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9834

OPEC REVEAL GLOBAL LIGHT SWEET CRUDE PEAKED (8/26/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9815

PO: THE END IS NIGH (8/24/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9800

TOWN OF WILLITS TACKLES PEAK OIL (8/23/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9794

OIL EXPERT PREDICTS APOCALYPSE, BUT FEW ARE LISTENING (8/22/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9787

SAUDIS WARN OF SHORTFALLS AS OIL HITS $61 (7/7/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9524

PERSPECTIVE: END-TIME FOR USA UPON OIL COLLAPSE (6/27/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9454

SIMULATED OIL MELTDOWN SHOWS U.S. ECONOMY'S VULNERABILITY (6/25/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9444

EXXONMOBIL EXPECTS PEAK OIL IN 5 YEARS (5/27/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9244

THE END OF OIL IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK (4/21/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9056

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT OIL (4/5/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8987

DVD: 'THE END OF SUBURBIA' (12/5/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8449

JOE FIRMAGE ON "PEAK OIL", "THE SINGULARITY" & KEN WILBER (11/2/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8199

OIL & GAS RUNNING OUT MUCH FASTER THAN EXPECTED (10/6/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6054

WORLD OIL SUPPLY COMFORTABLY EXCEEDS DEMAND (6/18/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5550

NEW BOOK: WHEN THE OIL RUNS OUT, HORRIFIC PROBLEMS WILL FOLLOW (5/14/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/5304

OIL MORE PLENTIFUL THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT (4/27/2002):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/3067

AGE OF OIL ABOUT TO END (6/24/2000):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/427

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Monday, November 21, 2005
Current Members: 1747

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

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ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

THE BIG THAW
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent
November 20, 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article328217.ece

Greenland's glaciers have begun to race towards the ocean, leading
scientists to predict that the vast island's ice cap is approaching
irreversible meltdown, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Research to be published in a few days' time shows how glaciers that have
been stable for centuries have started to shrink dramatically as
temperatures in the Arctic have soared with global warming. On top of this,
record amounts of the ice cap's surface turned to water this summer.

The two developments -- the most alarming manifestations of climate change
to date -- suggest that the ice cap is melting far more rapidly than
scientists had thought, with immense consequences for civilisation and the
planet. Its complete disappearance would raise the levels of the world's
seas by 20 feet, spelling inundation for London and other coastal cities
around the globe, along with much of low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.

More immediately, the vast amount of fresh water discharged into the ocean
as the ice melts threatens to shut down the Gulf Stream, which protects
Britain and the rest of northern Europe from a freezing climate like that of
Labrador.

The revelations, which follow the announcement that the melting of sea ice
in the Arctic also reached record levels this summer, come as the world's
governments are about to embark on new negotiations about how to combat
global warming.

This week they will meet in Montreal for the first formal talks on whether
there should be a new international treaty on cutting the pollution that
causes climate change after the Kyoto protocol expires in seven years' time.
Writing in The Independent yesterday, Tony Blair called the meeting
"crucial", adding that it "must start to shape an inclusive global
solution". But little progress is expected, largely because of continued
obstruction from President George Bush.

The new evidence from Greenland, to be published in the journal Geophysical
Research Letters, shows a sudden decline in the giant Helheim glacier, a
river of ice that grinds down from the inland ice cap to the sea through a
narrow rift in the mountain range on the island's east coast.

Professor Slawek Tulaczyk, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, told the IoS that the glacier had
dropped 100 feet this summer.

Over the past four years, the research adds, the front of the glacier --
which has remained in the same place since records began -- has retreated
four and a half miles. As it has retreated and thinned, the effects have
spread inland "very fast indeed", says Professor Tulaczyk. As the centre of
the Greenland ice cap is only 150 miles away, the researchers fear that it,
too, will soon be affected.

The research echoes disturbing studies on the opposite side of Greenland:
the giant Jakobshavn glacier -- at four miles wide and 1,000 feet thick the
biggest on the landmass -- is now moving towards the sea at a rate of 113
feet a year; the normal annual speed of a glacier is just one foot.

The studies have found that water from melted ice on the surface is
percolating down through holes on the glacier until it forms a layer between
it and the rock below, slightly lifting it and moving it toward the sea as
if on a conveyor belt. This one glacier alone is reckoned now to be
responsible for 3 per cent of the annual rise of sea levels worldwide.

"We may be very close to the threshold where the Greenland ice cap will melt
irreversibly," says Tavi Murray, professor of glaciology at the University
of Wales. Professor Tulaczyk adds: "The observations that we are seeing now
point in that direction."

Until now, scientists believed the ice cap would take 1,000 years to melt
entirely, but Ian Howat, who is working with Professor Tulaczyk, says the
new developments could "easily" cut this time "in half".

There is also a more immediate danger as the melting ice threatens to
disrupt the Gulf Stream, responsible for Britain's mild climate. The
current, which brings us as much heat in winter as we get from the sun, is
driven by very salty water sinking off Greenland. This drives a deep current
of cold ocean southwards, in turn forcing the warm water north.

Research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts has
shown, that even before the glaciers started accelerating, the water in the
North Atlantic was getting fresher in what it describes as "the largest and
most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern
instruments".

Even before these discoveries, scientists had shortened to evens the odds on
the Gulf Stream failing this century. When it failed before, 12,700 years
ago, Britain was covered in permafrost for 1,300 years.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Friday, December 9, 2005
Current Members: 1746

Current NHNE News List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

NHNE News List RSS News Feed:
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/rss

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NEIL BUSH MEETS THE MESSIAH
By John Gorenfeld
AlterNet
December 5, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/29054/

"Those who stray from the heavenly way," the owner of the flagship
Republican newspaper the Washington Times admonished an audience in Taipei
on Friday, "will be punished."

This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile
underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row:
Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns
the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200
billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream. As he describes it, the tunnel would be
both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a
unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented
as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would
crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.

The name Peace King Tunnel would allude to the title of authority to which
Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. congressmen paid respect on Capitol
Hill in last year's controversial "Crown of Peace" coronation ritual
<http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131> (see below for more links to
this event).

Moon's lobbying campaign is "ambitious and diffuse," as the D.C. Newspaper
The Hill reported last year, and the sheer range of guests revealed just how
many Pacific Rim political leaders the Times owner has won over, including
Filipino and Taiwanese politicians. And the head of the Arizona GOP attended
a recent stop in San Francisco. But perhaps the most surprising VIP to tag
along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush's youngest and most wayward son, who
made both the Philippines and Taiwan legs of the journey, according to
reports in newspapers from those countries and statements from Moon's Family
Federation.

While Neil Bush and Moon's church couldn't be reached for comment on the
tunnel or his speaking fees, a brochure from Moon's Family Federation
underscores that the project is "God's fervent desire," dwarfing such past
wonders as the Chunnel and heralding a "new era of automobile travel."

Moon, reviled in the 1980s as the leader of a group that separated young
recruits from their families, says he is the Messiah. His far-flung business
empire includes the UPI wire service, Washington, D.C. television studios, a
gun factory, and enormous swaths of real estate, and he donates millions to
conservative politics. In 1989, U.S. News & World Report linked his group to
the Heritage Foundation and other conservative organizations. "Because
almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to
[Moon's] church," wrote reporter John Judis, "conservatives ... fear
repercussions if they expose the church's role."

The billionaire Moon has never been one to pander to the Sierra Club, having
subsidized the anti-environmental "wise use" movement. Likewise, his group
anticipates an anti-tunnel backlash by those who "demand the preservation of
the polar region's ecosystem and the protection of polar bears and seals,"
and proposes an aggressive media strategy: "[P]ublic opinion polls must be
carried out all over the world and it is absolutely essential that a public
relations campaign to educate environmental groups, concerned organizations
and residents near the proposed construction sites be carried out as well."
(Moon has said in the past that Caucasians are descended from polar bears.)

In addition to the Taipei report, the Bush brother also surfaced in an
article last week from the Manila Times, which placed him at a similar
dinner in Manila attended by Washington Times president Dong Moon Joo and
respected Filipino House Speaker Jose de Venecia. (It's unclear if Bush
attended an intermediate stop in the Solomon Islands.) According to the
Manila Times piece, Venecia proposed Moon's idea for a trans-religious
council to President Bush in a 2003 meeting; President Bush was said to have
called it "a brilliant idea."

The Taiwan paper similarly revealed high-powered support for Moon,
describing Republic of China Vice President Annette Lu as listening "rapt"
to his speech.

In the United States, Moon's end-of-democracy vision has been honored on the
floor of Congress. According to the Congressional Record, on June 19, 2003,
Democrat Danny K. Davis joined Republican Curt Weldon in recognizing Moon's
"effort to create an international council of religious leaders ... this
body will provide a direct link between international leaders and the
various religious peoples in their constituencies," Davis said. "We are
grateful to ... the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon] for promoting the
vision of world peace, and we commend their work."

Davis later took part in Moon's March 23, 2004 Capitol Hill ceremony in
which he was brought a gold crown and royal robe to coronate him Peace King.
The sponsor of the event was the Virginia Republican Senator John Warner,
who later told the Washington Post he'd been "deceived" into hosting the
event, a charge that organizers rejected, saying the ritual was taken out of
context.

While Moon's proposal has been deliberated by politicians around the world
as a mere religious council, church promotional materials make clear that
it's intended to forge "God's fatherland," and not just idle talk. A video
from his group stresses that the U.N. will give way to a "Peace United
Nations," as Moon terms it, with fantastical reverberations.

"Like a candle that burns down, sacrificing itself to give light to the
world, the light of wisdom and hope will shine from the headquarters of
world governance -- the "Peace United Nations" -- into all realms of life,"
a narrator says in a Family Federation video (available here via BitTorrent
<http://tinyurl.com/48w8g>). "This light will radiate beyond the high
barrier separating nations and will illuminate the road to peace, the path
to the fulfillment of humanity's hopes -- and dreams ..."

Moon has frequently gone on the record against Western-style democracy and
individualism, calling them results of the fall of Adam. "There are three
guiding principles for the world to choose from: democracy, Communism and
Godism," he said in a 1987 sermon
<http://www.unification.net/1987/870125.html>. "It is clear that democracy
as the United States knows and practices it cannot be the model for the
world."

"Individualism," he also said at the speech -- entitled "I Will Follow With
Gratitude And Obedience" -- "is what God hates most and what Satan likes
best."

Neil isn't the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father,
President George H.W. Bush, traveled to Buenos Aires with the Reverend in
one of several such fundraising expeditions. "The 41st president, who told
Argentine president Carlos Menem that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires for
the money, had actually known the Korean reasonably well for decades,"
writes former top GOP strategist Kevin Phillips in his book "American
Dynasty." "Their relationship went back to the overlap between Bush's
one-year tenure as CIA director (1976) and the arrival in Washington of
Moon, whose Unification Church was widely reported to be a front group for
the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency." Moon and his aides have
called such claims bogus, saying his accusers were controlled by "Satan" to
distract from his campaign to destroy communism.

Reverend Moon is the latest in a line of unusual partners for Neil Bush in
recent years, including the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and
fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who has been promoting the younger
Bush's educational software company, Ignite!, according to the Washington
Post.

A messy divorce case in 2003 exposed his dalliances with prostitutes in
Asia. Moon's group didn't return e-mails asking how this bore upon Neil
Bush's contributions to last week's events, whose central theme was "Ideal
Families."

..........

John Gorenfeld is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He has a blog focused
on Rev. Moon and his church: I Approve This Messiah:

http://iapprovethismessiah.com/

------------

OTHER NHNE SPECIAL REPORTS & ARTICLES ABOUT SUN MYUNG MOON:

NHNE PUBLICATIONS:

SUN MYUNG MOON ON THE MOVE AGAIN IN AMERICA (12/5/2001):
http://www.nhne.com/misc/sunmyungmoon.html

MORE ABOUT REVEREND MOON
Smorgasbord 4
Friday, December 5, 1997
http://www.nhne.com/smorgasbord/smorgasbord0004.html

MOONIES SEEK EDEN IN BRAZILIAN SWAMP
Smorgasbord 12
Tuesday, October 26, 1999
http://www.nhne.com/smorgasbord/smorgasbord0012.html

FALSE PROPHETS & "SCUM BAG GURUS"
By David Sunfellow
Tuesday, July 27, 1999
http://www.nhne.com/misc/food0002.html

............

NHNE NEWS LIST STORIES:

SUN MYUNG MOON IN NEPAL (11/21/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10397

EXILED SUN MYUNG MOON RETURNS TO ENGLAND (11/4/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/10269

REV. MOON 'FUNNELS' $250,000 FOR BUSH INAUGURAL BASH (1/18/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8729

SUN MYUNG MOON: THROW DOWN YOUR CROSS (12/29/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8620

MOON CROWNS HIMSELF MESSIAH IN U.S. SENATE OFFICE BUILDING (6/28/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7478

A REVIVIFIED SUN MYUNG MOON (3/11/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/4689

CONTROVERSIAL RELIGIOUS GROUPS TO TEST BUSH INITIATIVE (2/19/2001):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/1173

MILLION MOON MARCH (10/8/2000)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/713

MOON IN CHINA (9/13/2000)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/674

FRANCE AIMS AT BANNING 'DANGEROUS' SECTS (6/23/2000)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/422

MOON'S UNIFICATION CHURCH ACQUIRES UPI (5/17/2000)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/288

MOON'S SON'S DEATH RULED A SUICIDE (2/17/2000)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/124

RECRUITS SOUGHT FOR MOON'S NEXT MASS WEDDING (12/26/1999)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/42

SUSPICION FOLLOWS REV. MOON TO SOUTH AMERICA (12/1/1999) :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/4

...........

RELATED LINKS:

SUN MYUNG MOON POLITICAL FRONT ORGANIZATIONS:
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/m/moonies/political_front
.htm

ALL ABOUT SUN MYUNG MOON:
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/m/moonies/

THE UNIFICATION CHURCH:
http://unification.org/

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

NHNE MISSION STATEMENT, CREDITS & CONTACT INFORMATION

The mission of NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) is to answer humankind's oldest,
most perplexing questions: Who are we? Where are we from? What is the origin
and purpose of life? Instead of relying on ancient or contemporary wisdom,
or the knowledge of isolated experts, we are building a global network of
seekers from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, lay people and
professionals alike, that can pool talents, experience, and resources to
unravel life's great mysteries.

We also believe that our planet is passing through a time of profound change
and are seeking to create a global community of like-minded people that can
safely pass through whatever changes may come our way and help give birth to
a new way of life on our planet.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339

eMail: nhne@...
NHNE Website: http://www.nhne.com/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhne-subscribe@egroups.com>

Review Current NHNE Mailing List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhne/messages/

Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html

This information has already been sent to NHNE's News List, so some of you
will receive it twice.

"News,
Inspiration,
& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

Monday, December 26, 2005
Current Members: 1745

Current NHNE News List Posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages/

NHNE News List RSS News Feed:
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/rss

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

FRISBEE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PREACHER
By Dennis Harvey
Variety / Religion Blog
October 30, 2005

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13006

The "Jesus People" movement that peaked in the early '70s, bringing
Christianity to the counterculture and vice versa, has been largely
forgotten. In the ensuing decades, American churches have increasingly been
affiliated with social/political conservatism. That it wasn't always so is
vividly illustrated by "Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher"
<http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/> David Di Sabatino's straightforward,
engrossing documentary about a well-buried chapter in recent evangelical
history. Tale of Lonnie Frisbee's extraordinary (if brief) pulpit career is
a fascinating one that could intrigue diverse niche auds -- Christian, gay,
'60s nostalgics -- if carefully marketed in limited release.

Raised amid somewhat bizarre commingled-family circumstances, the
high-energy Frisbee had a classic '60s Southern California Youth --
experimenting with drugs, even appearing as a regular dancer on the TV music
show "Shebang"--until 1967. Then 17, he had a vision of God in the desert,
telling him of "the unique role" he was meant to play in spreading the Word.

Soon, Frisbee briefly joined a mission in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury
district. He moved to a Christian commune and married Connie Bremer.

Then he crossed paths with Chuck Smith, a pastor who'd just relocated his
fledgling operation in Costa Mesa, Calif. Invited to minister there, the
long-haired, bearded, groovy-talking Frisbee fast became a huge draw,
bringing unprecedented numbers of "dirty hippies" (as Smith first viewed
them) and the merely curious to hear his sermons. The Calvary Chapel
congregation grew from 200 to 2,000 within six months. It, and Frisbee, were
featured in national media coverage of the flower-powered new "Jesus
Movement."

Though concurrent Oscar-winning 1972 documentary "Marjoe" (seen in excerpts)
encouraged cynics by exposing one charismatic young preacher's fraudulence,
myriad observers still swear Frisbee was the real thing, truly anointed by
God. Not only was he patently uninterested in exploiting his status
financially or otherwise, he was also credited with phenomenal happenings,
including healing powers.

Ordained in 1971, Frisbee was kept so busy by Smith, who disapproved of
these more flamboyant Pentecostal excesses, that Frisbee's marriage
suffered. Trying to salvage their relationship, he and his wife left
Calvary, an action Smith viewed as a betrayal.After unsuccessfully trying
secular life, Frisbee wound up preaching at Vineyard Church, founded by
fellow Calvary escapee John Wimber. Again, his brief tenure there played
perhaps the deciding role in a still-extant ministry's rapid initial growth
spurt. And again, there was an unpleasant falling-out.

Up to this point, Di Sabatino avoids even hinting at a major story element
that was as surprising to Frisbee's colleagues then as it is to viewers now:
Frisbee had secretly had occasional gay liaisons, on and off, for many
years. This was kept so secret, in fact, that some close fellow church
members still remain incredulous.

Discovery of one longer-term affair was responsible for Wimber tossing him
out, just as Smith, Frisbee's father and his stepfather had earlier. This
led to Frisbee's being written out of all official church histories --
Smith's autobiographical tome doesn't even mention him.

Frisbee was understandably bitter toward the end of his life, feeling, as
his ex-wife Connie puts it, "People constantly wanted to use him for his
anointing and throw him away as a human being."

Frisbee died of AIDS in 1993, at age 44. As a last insult, his funeral
service saw Smith and others taking the podium to lament how the gifted
Frisbee had fallen short of his potential.

This remarkable story is told in a fast-paced, workmanlike mix of
contemporary interviews and archival material, including footage from such
documentaries of the period as "The Son Worshippers." Soundtrack music
flashes back to "psychedelic Christianity," including one song's memorable
lyric: "No more LSD for me/I met the man from Galilee."

Pic's viewpoint, while low-key, appears to be Christian in a progressive,
inclusive way.

Narrator Michael Hoctor sounds like an old-school TV announcer, lending the
film a slightly stiff tenor. Tech aspects are smooth.

Camera (color, DV), Di Sabatino; editor, Ron Zauneker; music, Larry Norman;
sound, Zauneker. Reviewed at Mill Valley Film Festival, Oct. 16, 2005.
Running time: 95 MIN.

------------

FRISBEE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PREACHER
By Peter T. Chattaway
Christian Week / Canadian Christianity

http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?film/frisbee

http://www.christianweek.org/opinions/artsreview/vol19/1901.html

It had to happen sometime: a ChristianWeek columnist has finally directed a
film. And what an inspiring, unsettling, thought-provoking film it is.

David Di Sabatino, who once wrote the 'Gadfly' column in these pages, was
still putting the finishing touches on Frisbee: The Life and Death of a
Hippie Preacher as this issue went to press.

After screening rough cuts of the film at various evangelical churches and
colleges, his documentary, about a controversial figure who helped start the
Calvary Chapel and Vineyard movements, is due to premiere at the Newport
Beach Film Festival in late April.

The film was inspired by the research Di Sabatino did for a proposed book on
the Jesus Movement, that moment in the tumultuous late '60s and early '70s
when counter-cultural youth and evangelical faith came together in an
explosive mix of dispensationalist theology, social experimentation, and
evangelistic rock'n'roll.

At the heart of it all, the film suggests, was a figure who received a lot
of attention at the time but has largely been forgotten in the years since.

Lonnie Frisbee was still just a teen when, he claimed, God appeared to him
in a vision and told him he would bring many people to Christ.

One day while hitchhiking in 1968, he was picked up by a man who happened to
be dating the daughter of Chuck Smith, and Chuck, in turn, was looking for a
way to make the gospel relevant to hippies. Chuck's wife said Lonnie would
help bring thousands of people to the faith. And so it was: together they
baptized hippies all over the California coast.

By all accounts, and judging by the archival footage Di Sabatino has
retrieved, Lonnie was a charismatic preacher -- and in every sense of the
word. While writers like Hank Hanegraaff have dismissed Lonnie as a mere
"hypnotist", some of the film's interviewees swear they saw him perform
miraculous healings, such as giving sight to the blind.

Di Sabatino, who quit his job as editor of Worship Leader magazine to focus
on filmmaking, goes so far as to say that Lonnie Frisbee was like an Old
Testament prophet -- and in the opening credits, he even calls his film "a
Bible story".

Bible stories can be pretty complicated, though, and eventually, for reasons
too complex to get into here, Lonnie and Chuck Smith had a falling out.
However, within a few years, Lonnie had hooked up with another
soon-to-be-famous evangelical leader -- John Wimber -- and he left his
imprint on the "signs and wonders" movement, too.

So why was Lonnie written out of the history books? Largely, the film
suggests, because Lonnie -- whose long hair, shaggy beard, and piercing gaze
invited comparisons to Jesus but also bring Rasputin to mind -- struggled
with sin. Specifically, sexual sin. Even more specifically, he struggled
with homosexuality, and he died of AIDS in 1993.

Di Sabatino is emphatic that Lonnie not be turned into a poster boy for gay
Christians -- but he insists on facing this aspect of Lonnie's life
honestly, the same way the Bible describes the adultery and murder committed
by King David, or the sins committed by Samson.

Some people have accused the film of having a pro-gay agenda -- partly
because it includes interviews with the Metropolitan Community Church's
Bishop Troy Perry and evangelical-author-turned-gay-activist Mel White --
but that is not how the film comes across, to me.

If anything, those who believe homosexuality is the result of a
dysfunctional upbringing will find their beliefs confirmed when the film
reveals that Lonnie's father abandoned the family early on, and that a
babysitter may have molested him when he was only eight years old.

What the film does do is challenge the way the church has tended to treat
homosexuality as if it were an unforgivable sin. Di Sabatino, speaking to
ChristianWeek from his home in Lake Forest, California, says Lonnie was
discouraged from being honest about his struggles -- and thus perhaps from
dealing with them -- by the stigma attached to them.

"His early testimony at Calvary Chapel was that he had come out of the
homosexual lifestyle, but he felt like a leper because a lot of people
turned away from him after that, so he took it out of his testimony -- and I
think that's an indictment of the church," he says.

Beyond those sorts of issues, the film offers a compelling portrait of an
idealistic, revolutionary time when rebelling against "the man" fit
hand-in-glove with following in the footsteps of Christ.

The film's soundtrack captures the feel of the era very well, with songs by
Larry Norman, Love Song and others -- it is especially uncanny how many of
Larry's songs can be matched to specific episodes in Lonnie's life -- and
Jesus Music veterans like Chuck Girard are on hand to provide their own
perspective on Lonnie's ministry.

While the film is a little rough around the edges on a technical level, it's
an eye-opening look into a part of church history that could all too easily
go ignored.

Read the full transcript of Peter T. Chattaway's interview with director
David Di Sabatino at his blog, here:

http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/frisbee-interview-its-up.html

------------

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID DI SABATINO
By Peter T. Chattaway
April 22, 2005

http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/frisbee-interview-its-up.html

Miracles and visions, signs and wonders, scandal and sin. If any of the
stories about Lonnie Frisbee are true, he must have been one of the more
dynamic and controversial figures to stride upon the evangelical scene in
modern times.

Frisbee was still just a teen when he met Chuck Smith, an evangelical
preacher who was looking for a way to reach young people in the late '60s.
Together they turned Calvary Chapel into a thriving epicentre of the Jesus
Movement -- that tumultuous moment when counter-cultural youth and
Bible-believing baby-boomers came together in a heady mix of
dispensationalist theology, social experimentation and evangelistic rock 'n'
roll.

Some years later, Frisbee met John Wimber and played a key role in the
origins of the Vineyard movement. But his name has largely been written out
of the history books. Why? Because he struggled with sin. Specifically,
sexual sin. And even more specifically, he struggled with homosexuality, and
he died of AIDS in 1993.

David Di Sabatino was researching a book on the Jesus Movement when he came
across Frisbee's story and decided to restore him to his rightful place in
evangelical history by producing a warts-and-all documentary on the subject.
Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher -- rough cuts of which have
already been shown at several evangelical churches and schools -- premieres
at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 24.

Di Sabatino, who quit his job as editor of Worship Leader magazine to focus
on filmmaking, spoke to Christianity Today Movies about his film.

...........

Let's start at the very beginning. The opening credits call this "A Bible
story by David Di Sabatino." How would you justify calling this a "Bible
story"?

Lonnie's life is very much like the characters that you would read about in
the Bible; it's not a Bible story per se in that it comes straight from the
Bible, but in another sense, a sideways sense, it does. You look at Lonnie's
life and you parse it, and you see the foolish things confounding the wise,
you see the eccentricities and the whacked-out character of Ezekiel, you see
the frailties of Samson in his life, you see the prophetic, miraculous kind
of stories that swirl around him like they did around Elijah and Elisha --
so in a lot of ways, I stand behind that. Here's a guy who was flawed, and
yet God used him. I don't expect people to take it literally. I expect
people to say, "Yeah, that's just like something I could have read in the
Bible." I could have nuanced it or softened it and said "a modern day
parable" or something like that, but I figure people are smart enough to
understand what I'm trying to say. Who said the canon of Scripture was
closed anyway?

How did you come across the Lonnie Frisbee story?

I came out of the Pentecostal movement, so I grew up with all these
larger-than-life figures thrown about in front of my eyes, and when I
started doing research on revivals and the Jesus Movement, I heard about
Lonnie and just was fascinated by him. And I was drawn in initially by the
stories, the larger-than-life stories, but as I went to flesh him out, I
found a real human being with a lot of problems, and in order to
contextualize it, I had to deal with all of it -- which was extremely
difficult, because some of the things he was dealing with, I really had no
understanding of. So I had to rely on going to other people and ask, you
know, "What does it mean to be raped as an eight-year-old child? What does
that do to you?" So it stretched me in that sense. I don't know much about
psychology, but I feel that I have some grasp now, of at least what he went
through.

Are you still planning a project on the larger Jesus Movement?

Yeah, I am.

Were you surprised by these flaws that you saw in Lonnie?

At first, of course. We grew up with the holiness impulse in conservative
evangelicalism that says once you are saved, you're striving for perfection.
So yeah, I didn't know what to do with it, because my matrix was so
black-and-white, and as I've gone along, my life experiences have filled in,
and I realize there is a lot more grey than there ever was black and white.
So again, I go back to Lonnie being raped as an eight-year-old. What does
that do to somebody? It fragments your identity, and now I can't say that
I'm surprised at all.

Lonnie could cause a lot of problems. What's that U2 song, "I have spoke
with tongues of angels, I have held hands with the devil" -- so you're both
of these things, you're angel and devil -- and that's all of us, really.
We're capable of great, great things. We're also capable of great
devastation. Paul is wrestling with this throughout his writing. But there's
another side to that, too. It's funny, because a lot of people wonder why
it's the Pentecostal people who are always into the fleshly problems, but it
would seem that this paradigm attracts this kind of thing, and I have a
bunch of theories on this, but nothing tangible.

It does seem that a lot of the pro-gay evangelicals tend to have a
Pentecostal or charismatic background.

It's surprising. We used to talk about this when we were young, because we
noticed it. I don't know what it is -- is it because the Spirit is feminine,
and there is a feminization when you're closer to the Holy Spirit than some
of these more doctrinaire churches? I don't know. Lonnie would talk about
how, as the Spirit would come upon him, all of his faculties were absolutely
kind of enlivened and animated, including his flesh, so that when the Spirit
would -- not depart from him, but stop being upon him for that moment -- his
flesh was still wild, and it needed an outlet. He'd talk about these revival
meetings as a place where the flesh is whipped up and stuff would happen
after these revival meetings were over. And I think that's true. People
would ask, how can you go from the presence of the Lord and do these things?
Well, there's something going on in your body, and if you have not had that
kind of intense experience of God where you feel enraptured by the Spirit, I
don't think you can really wrap your head around it unless you've
experienced that sort of thing. That gets mystical, and a lot of people say
what the heck are you on about, but . . .

You could say it works in reverse, too. Someone in the film makes the point
that all the experimentation with drugs back then opened people up to the
supernatural, and thus to God. And some people might ask whether Lonnie was
really moved by the Spirit, or whether he was just on another trip.

A lot of people can't get their heads around that, because the way we just
look at drugs is so anti-whatever; but you have to remember, too, the
context of back then. LSD wasn't illegal. It was illegal in, like, the
beginning of '68, but before that, it was a horse serum, and they used it
like a truth drug. It's like ecstasy in its first infancy stages -- you
could take it and the government wasn't involved -- and I think it was the
lubricant for a lot of spiritual experiences. And if you were really
searching, that search ended up with some sort of faith. So when these
missionaries came up to the Haight-Ashbury district, they didn't have to
offer up an apologetic for God -- that was a really open time, and drugs
were just part of the story. Lonnie was searching. He went through a lot of
stuff before he got to God, and a lot of people will look at that and say it
was false, and they will say God can't bring people through a lot of that
mess, but he did with Lonnie.

What about the miracles? Do you think they were genuine?

It's a "Bible story." Yeah, sure, why not? I don't have a problem with them.
Stories are what they are. Not that I'm trying to prove anything to anybody,
that this is true or false or whatever, but there are people there that
didn't really like Lonnie, and 20 years later, their 15-minute encounter
with him is the formative shaping moment of their life.

I have a ton of other miracle stories that I didn't put in there. One of the
reasons I didn't is that it's too overwhelming to a non-Christian, to
somebody who doesn't have a matrix for any of this. I didn't want this to
sound like I had an agenda, that I was propping him up as some sort of faith
healer. But I'm telling you, the people I spoke to saw things that didn't
make sense to them. Chuck Smith Jr. is something of a Thomas, he'll tell you
this, he'll be the first to say "Yeah, right" about a lot of the stuff that
happens in Orange County, but he was there and he says Lonnie was real and
genuine and almost impossible to explain because it was too weird. None of
them could explain Lonnie. This guy is so far outside of the matrix of
anything we understand rationally. Systematic theology does not apply to
Lonnie Frisbee. That's pretty much how you will get the story if you talk to
people down here. But I'm open to people saying, "Yeah, right. I don't
believe a word of it." There are other things about his life that are
interesting. This story is multifaceted.

In Russian Orthodoxy, they'll tell you about the "holy fool," and that's
where you'll find Lonnie. These holy fools would do things that would so
provoke you to say there is no way that God could work through this person,
and yet you had to realize that the only way that these things that were
happening through him were actually happening was that it was God. In other
words, the vessel was so frail, and so rife with contradictions, that the
fruit that would emerge from their life and ministry could only point to the
graciousness of God working through such a fragile vessel.

What about Hank Hanegraaff and others who have dismissed Lonnie as a
"hypnotist"?

Guys that were there still don't know what to make of it. And because they
have a black-and-white matrix, some of them go towards the black and say,
"This is nefarious." And that's for other people to judge. I find that
foolish because, just looking at the story from a macro view, the negative
stuff Lonnie did is far outweighed by the positive stuff that grew up. I
mean, that prophecy that was given by Kay Smith [wife of Chuck Smith, Sr.],
that the Lord was going to bless the whole coast of California -- the
coincidence of Lonnie being in the centre of these two major movements
[Calvary Chapel and Vineyard] should suggest that there's more good that has
come out of Lonnie's life than there is that is bad.

People in the film talk about how difficult Lonnie could be, and hearing so
much Larry Norman music in the film, one is reminded of his reputation for
being difficult, too. Is this characteristic, somehow, of the people
involved in the early Jesus Movement?

Not all of them. Larry Norman and John Fischer used to have this
conversation. Larry was always enamoured of John because he was able to stay
in the institution and work within the churches, and John was always
enamoured of Larry because he got to stay on the outside. Personally, I
identify with the guys on the outside looking in like Larry Norman. I also
identify with Lonnie. Larry Norman's music perfectly echoes Lonnie's life;
he's singing Lonnie's life, really, because they were very similar. But
there are lots of folks who emerged from that time that stayed within. So I
don't think it was endemic to all the Jesus People, because you look at
Debbie Rettino Kerner or Paul Clark or some of the other folks -- they're
still within the church, doing what they do. It depends on what your thing
was. I like the counter-cultural personalities. I find them way more
interesting than the institutional people, 'cause they're a heck of a lot
more honest. Yeah, Larry's difficult, but in his lucid moments, I'll take
him any day over some of the other people. He speaks with clarity. So did
Lonnie. There were no games.

Lonnie's ex-wife seems to have been interviewed extensively, and at multiple
times -- but considering the role that his homosexuality plays in his story,
it is striking that we don't see any firsthand interviews. Do you have that
material?

This was a tough thing. I brought to light some things that not a lot of
people knew. I've been in rooms with his family where I've had to tell them
that he defined himself as gay, way back. Nobody knew that. There's a lot of
hubris in that, to come to people who loved him and prayed for him, and to
stand there and say, "You didn't really know this, but..." And there's been
some tense moments behind the scenes. Now I love these people, and they let
me into a deep, emotionally charged place in their lives, and one of the
things I wanted was for them to give the thumbs up to this story, but there
were times when we battled. I would go over to his friends' house and play
this thing and they would reel, because I had things from Mel [White, an
evangelical author turned gay activist] or Troy [Perry, a bishop with the
pro-gay Metropolitan Community Church], and they would say, "How could you
do this?" But by the time we screened it at Set Free Church, earlier this
year in February, I think things had calmed down. I think I had properly
parsed what I needed to do with his homosexuality, and they appreciated what
I was trying to do. There were things of course that they were uncomfortable
with, but that's the nature of the beast. That's what's going to happen. I
tried to make everybody happy, but that's not realistic.

Too, everybody has a certain view of Lonnie that is limited. They saw him in
the context of their friendship, and that's not a narrow thing, but that's
all they know of him. And to have somebody like me come and take not only
what they said, but what other people say too -- that changes things. So,
there have been some that say to me, "That's not the Lonnie I know." The
fact of the matter is they have a certain identifiable memory of Lonnie, but
that is going to be different from somebody else's. In a family, different
siblings have different relationships with the father or mother. If they
interview you and your brother or sister, you're going to give different
impressions of your parents. So somebody who never saw any inkling of Lonnie
acting out as a homosexual is going to flip out when the movie gets into the
fact that Lonnie had these tendencies that he acted on once in a while.

The hardest thing has been with some of the women who had a really close
relationship with him, not in a physical sense but in a brother-or-sister
sense. Lonnie admitted a lot of things to them, but I think he stopped short
of telling them a lot of his sexual dysfunction because he didn't want to
hurt them, or because he didn't want to be hurt. His early testimony at
Calvary Chapel was that he had come out of the homosexual lifestyle, but he
felt like a leper because a lot of people turned away from him after that,
so he took it out of his testimony -- and I think that's an indictment of
the church.

What sort of audience have you made this film for? The narration often seems
like it was put there to explain things to people who are not familiar with
the Christian world.

Speaking in tongues -- it's religious craziness, but the viewer understands
that people do this, and you learn it as you go. The people in the movie use
expressions like "the Spirit came down on me," because that's just how they
speak. And I wrestled with this -- how am I going to explain this to
non-Christians, this is such a churchy story. The narration was written so
that it could allow people from a non-Christian framework to step into the
story at points where they might not otherwise if I was presenting this like
an insider. The managing editor of the OC Weekly, who wrote a cover story
article on the documentary -- he's not a Christian, but he flipped over the
story. He's the reason we're in the Newport Beach Film Festival. So, I think
I've been somewhat successful in allowing different points of entry.

And in answer to your question, I wanted to reach all interested audiences,
Christian and non-Christian alike. But I wanted to make sure that I would
bridge that gap. Larry Norman's music was picked on purpose because it's the
best of the best. I tried to be all things to all kinds of camps. Whether it
succeeds or fails, I don't know, but at this point, it's looking pretty
good.

I also put the footage from Marjoe [an Oscar-winning 1972 documentary about
a Pentecostal preacher exposing his own ministry as a sham] in there for
people who believe that religion is nothing more than a fraud. There are
charlatans out there, and Marjoe was one of them, a self-admitted one, but I
wanted to say to skeptics, "I hear what you're saying. I know. I
understand." I want to make sure that it gets across that I think religion
can be a circus, but that I don't think Lonnie was about that. He wasn't
about the money, at least.

What do you mean, "at least"?

I think any time you get into those ministries, the motivation is never
pure. There's an admixture of wanting to help people, and stuff that is all
about you and your ego. But there is no way that you could say Lonnie was
doing this for the money. He had plenty of opportunity to cash in on this,
but he never did. Other people got rich off of Lonnie, but he never did --
he never had a penny to his name.

At the risk of sounding cynical -- or optimistic -- do you think your own
documentary might help you to get rich off of Lonnie?

[ laughs ] I can't answer that. Other people would have to answer that, and
I think they would come to my defense. I've been doing it for too long. I've
been researching Lonnie for 12 years, so that theory doesn't make any sense.
We started this before Michael Moore had put documentaries on the top of the
ladder, so I can say without equivocation that the impulse to do this was
out of my historical research, out of my passion to right what I thought was
a wrong.

But if you don't think that I want to make money off of this -- I want to
make a ton of money, because I like doing this stuff, and I want to keep on
doing this! This is fun. So I'm glad that Michael Moore has put
documentaries on top like that. And it's shocking to me how quickly this
buzz has happened. Some of the conversations that I've had have been quite
amazing.

Would you consider sending this film to gay and lesbian film festivals?

Absolutely. And I've already applied for some of them. That's where I want
this played. I have made no bones about this. My primary goal was not to
make a documentary for Christians. I would like them to see this, but that's
not my primary goal. I want to go to the people that Lonnie went to, and
that would be the disenfranchised.

I have made this documentary in the spirit of Lonnie -- edgy, on the cusp,
on the periphery, truthful, and with an eye towards those who were on the
margin of society. And the premise of the movie is, "If God can use this
guy, then you're all invited." And the ironic thing is that the face of God
on earth, the Church, is turning people away because they're not up to
snuff. And I think we need to revisit that.

What if people accuse the film of being pro-gay?

That's okay. I'm pro-people. I'm not pro-gay. I went to those guys [White
and Perry] out of the honesty of my heart. Who better to talk about being
part of the evangelical community and being ostracized? And I went to people
who were gay and came back and said I'm not gay any more, but I thought, I
want to go to Troy and to Mel and see what they have to say. And I shared my
convictions with them. But I like them, and they were honest.

Honestly, how many times a day do we look at something and say, "I don't
agree with this?" Why can't we do that with a film? This does not glorify
that lifestyle. Nor am I in a position to make some sort of theological
statement about it. I make theological statements, but that's not one of
them. I like Brian McLaren's statement in Time magazine when he was asked
what his views were on homosexuality, and he said, "There's no way that I
can answer that without offending somebody."

I would go even further. I thought one of the great scenes of Bowling for
Columbine was when Michael Moore asked Marilyn Manson, "What would you say
to the kids of Columbine?" And Marilyn said, "I would say nothing, I would
just listen." And I think we need to listen to the gay community, to listen
to their heart. And I'm not sure I would know what to say even if I wanted
to answer or to make some theological point.

And one more point. Lonnie is not the poster child for gay Christianity.
That would be a horrific thing to do to his memory. Voltaire said history is
playing a pack of dirty tricks on the dead -- turning Lonnie into a "gay
preacher" would be a horrible thing to do to him. But neither is he this
kind of Damascus-Road, I-once-was-gay-and-turned-away-from-this-lifestyle
guy. He struggled. I've been accused of being gay.

Just because you made the film?

Because I went to Mel and Troy. I've had people ask me, "What's your agenda
here? Are you gay?" My standard line is, "I don't dress well enough," which
is a slur on its own, but oh well.

How difficult was it to get people to talk about him?

His friends would talk. The people who were there would talk. The
institutional people were a little more difficult, the people who were
involved in those circles. The Calvary Chapel people were a little more
closed-lipped than the Vineyard people, but the Vineyard movement has become
a lot more decentralized since John [Wimber] died. Getting Chuck Smith Jr.
to speak was a kind of coup. He's just such an honest guy, and I wish I
could run the whole interview. He's just great, he's an honest man. And I
really, really appreciate that about him. Now, we've had words about it --
because it's his dad, and it's been tough, because we're trying to get it
right -- and there have been conversations, and there's been heat, but
that's to be expected. They've had reservations about it.

Both the Calvary Chapel people and the Vineyard people have come back to me
to point to books where Lonnie's been mentioned, but I'm careful to say in
the movie that his influence has not been properly contextualized. I don't
think putting his name in one of the lines in a book means anything. There
was a concerted effort not to talk about Lonnie. I think John Wimber went
through a lot of sexual scandal in his church that freaked him out, in the
early parts, and to a large extent, he went through this kind of
scorched-earth theory with regard to Lonnie and another guy named Blaine
Cook -- tapes were erased and so on.

Now, to his credit, Wimber went on to found Desert Stream ministry, which is
one of the great ministries to gay and lesbian people in the last 20 years.
I think the failure, with regard to what happened to Lonnie and Blaine,
spawned this reaction which culminated in the Vineyard being at the
forefront of ministry to gays and lesbians, to people that were struggling
with sexual addiction. So when I parse Lonnie's story and say, "Okay, they
failed in certain respects," that doesn't mean that they didn't then turn
around and keep making these mistakes.

But that's another story. I'm interested in Lonnie's story, and they did
contribute to his spiraling out of control, because they did treat him with
contempt and they did spurn him. How much blame should his mentors shoulder
when they said to Lonnie, "You're not welcome here, you're not one of us"? I
don't want to let Lonnie off the hook, but what does that kind of treatment
do to a person who's already hurt? My intention is not to smear these guys,
but I think in this instance, they did some things that were worthy of a rap
on the knuckles.

What was your motivation in telling this story?

When I was at Queen's [University] in grad school, I remember telling this
story to people, and their mouths just dropped, and they said this was a
great story -- even people who didn't care about the evangelical world, who
looked at it as a circus, just resonated with the story. And I remember Mark
Noll coming to Queen's that year and talking about the fact that, up until
that point -- and I think Scandal [of the Evangelical Mind] was just
released the previous year -- he said his best-selling book up until that
point had sold about 700 copies, and I thought, "If he can sell only 700
books, then what am I going to do?" We have to learn how to tell stories in
a different way, and get out beyond our comfortable circles, and that's
really where this was born, and looking at people who have done that. U2
have been able to go out into the marketplace and bring stories, bring
artistic endeavours, to a different level, and not necessarily with an eye
on the Christian community.

So you expect over 700 people to see this film?

They already have. And I'm expecting to show it to a heck of a lot more.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

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