Bring Up The Bodies

I’ve just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies”. I didn't find it easy reading, but then I hadn't found “Wolf Hall” easy reading either. Is this because I’m not clever enough to have found them easy reading, or is it because Hilary Mantel deliberately made “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” not easy reading, so that their readers thoughtfully savour them in small bites over many weeks instead of wolfing (sic) them down in a single day?

I’ve come across people so clever, they routinely read a book a day, so that over a year they read more than 300 books. I wish I could do this, for there are so many books I’d like to read, but never will because I won’t live long enough.

I wonder, though, whether those clever people who regularly read a book a day, could read all of “Wolf Hall” in a day, and the very next day read all of “Bring Up The Bodies”. If they could, how much would they comprehend? Perhaps, then, they might need as much as two days for each. As it was, I spent a whole month on “Bring Up The Bodies”.

Because it won last year’s Booker Prize, and so was written about and spoken about everywhere, I probably don’t need to tell you what "Bring Up The Bodies" is about, but I will. It’s about King Henry the Eighth, and all the trouble he had to go through to rid himself of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, because he wanted to marry Jane Seymour. 

If Anne had been a Miss Goody Two Shoes, it might have been even more trouble for Henry to get rid of her than it actually was, for, despite being a King, he needed good reason to get rid of her. Fortunately for Henry, Anne liked to flirt with the young men in the Royal court to such an extent that it gave observers reason to think she was sleeping with some, among them her brother.

In those days, if a Queen slept with a man not the King, it was borderline treason, and even more so if the man not the King was her brother. Also, it was said that Anne had told at least one of the men she allegedly slept with that she wished Henry was dead. For anyone, let alone a Queen, to say this was definitely treason, and punishable by death.

It was one thing to suspect Anne of sleeping with these young men, and another thing to prove it. However, standards of proof in Henry’s time weren’t quite what they are today. And, anyone could be made to confess anything if they were put on the rack, which they were in Henry’s time if they didn’t say what law enforcers wanted them to say. Indeed, the law enforcers of Henry’s time had a freedom of action that would make today’s law enforcers green with envy.

Hence Anne, and the young men she allegedly slept with, were always going to have their work cut out for them if they were to avoid an unpleasant fate.

One of the things reading “Bring Up The Bodies” may do for you is make you glad you didn’t live in the England of Henry the Eighth, even if you were Henry himself.

What Did the President Know?

“Roswell” is the name that’ll be forever associated with the UFO phenomenon, for it was near Roswell (New Mexico) in July 1947 when an Alien-operated flying saucer allegedly crashed, then was retrieved and taken away by the American military authorities. There was even talk of dead Aliens - assumedly the crew - being found near the crash site. Do you believe any of this?

Before I answer your question, may I say how glad I am you said “flying saucer”, rather than “UFO”? I need hardly remind you that “flying saucer” and “UFO” don’t always mean the same. While a “flying saucer” is a “UFO” until identified as a flying saucer, only some “UFOs” are “flying saucers”. Hence I can’t help but become irritated when people say “UFO” when really they mean “flying saucer”.

But, hasn’t “flying saucer” become a joke in the minds the masses? I mean, “flying saucer” doesn’t have the gravitas of “UFO”, does it?

If “UFO” does have more gravitas than “flying saucer”, it’s no longer much more. Hence “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” (UAP) is now the preferred term. Soon, though, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” will become as much a joke as “UFO” is becoming, and yet another term will have to be coined.

You see, the “UFO”, “flying saucer”, “UAF” phenomenon, is today’s Great Taboo. As with all taboos, the UFO taboo must therefore always be treated as a giggle. Hence the tiresome references to “little green men” whenever UFOs are written of in the Popular Press. I could go on about this if you want.

Later perhaps. Meanwhile could you answer what I originally asked? Did an Alien flying saucer crash at Roswell?

I believe at least one did. There may have been a second too. You doubtless know of the famous headline in the “Roswell Daily Record” of July 8th 1947, that said *“RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”*. The article said the saucer had been found by a rancher, who told the police, who told the military authorities. However, the next day, July 9th, the paper reported that what the rancher had found was not a crashed flying saucer, but merely the remains of a downed weather balloon.

While the RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field) probably did retrieve a crashed flying saucer at around this time, it wasn’t from from the ranch of the rancher in question, but from somewhere else nearby. The debris the rancher found had extremely odd characteristics and had likely been jettisoned from a damaged flying saucer flying overhead, that finally crashed thirty or so miles further on. This was the saucer the army retrieved. The story about the weather balloon was a ruse by the army, put out to deceive the public, for the usual obvious reasons.

You talk only about a retrieved flying saucer. But, according to the *Eisenhower Briefing Document*, the bodies of four Aliens were found two miles from the crash site.

The Eisenhower Briefing Document also says the rancher reported a crashed saucer, which he didn’t. He reported strange debris. And the Document says the saucer was recovered on July 7th, whereas it was likely recovered on July 4th.

While these two misstatements are not that important, it’s likely a document prepared for the President of America wouldn’t be as sloppy. These two misstatements, as minor as they are, only add fuel to the already existing suspicion that this Document is a hoax.

However, because the Eisenhower Briefing Document may be a hoax, doesn’t mean Alien bodies weren’t found. If the crashed saucer had had a sentient crew, it’s likely they were killed in the crash, and their bodies found amid the wreckage.

ETs, Germs, and Oxygen

What do you think about the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, that took place last week in Washington?

It revealed a lot of information that showed beyond all reasonable doubt that flying craft Not From Here have visited Earth, and continue to. Sensational news, you’d think. However, the Popular Press (otherwise known as the Mainstream Media) treated the hearings as a joke. But then, should you be surprised?

You talk of flying craft Not From Here. But, someone must fly them. Is it not likely, then, that the pilots would also be Not From Here?

You shouldn’t assume pilots fly these craft. They could be unmanned and remotely controlled from other planets. Think of the unmanned Mars Rover that is remotely controlled from Earth. If, though, pilots do fly these craft, why should they be biological entities? Why shouldn’t they be robots?

Think of our own robotic technology. Quite human-looking robots are already being produced, that can speak and act intelligently. Before too long, we’ll be producing robots that look so human, and will speak, think and act so much like a human, that if you meet one, you won’t know it’s a robot.

If you saw the film, “Blade Runner”, you’ll remember the Androids - completely human in appearance, speech and demeanor, only they are even more intelligent, better-looking and athletic than the average human. Because of these qualities, female Androids were much sought-after by human males.

At the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, evidence came forth that suggested Extraterrestrial beings were retrieved from crashed flying craft, like at Roswell. *This video* is fascinating. It shows an elderly former CIA man in obviously very bad health, talking about when, as part of his official CIA duties, he had seen ETs held captive at the famous and mysterious Area 51.

It’s indeed a fascinating interview. Assuming this man is telling the truth (and why shouldn’t he be?) it’s possible that what he saw were ET-built humanoid-looking robots that had piloted the crashed flying saucers from which they’d been retrieved.

Had they been sentient, they would have needed to breathe, and it seems unlikely they could breathe the earth’s atmosphere. The Human, after all, can’t breathe the moon’s or Mars’ atmosphere. So he must, when visiting the moon or Mars, bring oxygen.

Then there’s germs. How likely is it that sentient ETs would be immune to the Earth’s germs? Only if they had developed the appropriate vaccines, which, come to think of it, isn’t impossible if their medical science is far in advance of ours.

(To be continued.........)

Beatrice & Virgil

In Yan Martel's most recent novel, “Beatrice & Virgil”, Beatrice is a donkey, and Virgil a monkey. They are exhibits in a taxidermist's shop. Despite being dead, they talk, and indeed talk with each other about matters of great profundity.

The taxidermist himself, is a man of equally great profundity. When, for instance, he speaks of taxidermy, he makes you see it in a new way:

Is there a level of barbarism involved in taxidermy? I see none. Or only if one lives a life entirely sheltered from death in which one never looks into the back room of a butcher shop, or the operating room of a hospital, or the working room of a funeral parlour. Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born. To ignore death, then, is to ignore life. I no more mind the smell of an animal's carcass than I do the smell of a field; both are natural and each has its attaching particularity.

.........taxidermists do not create a demand. We merely preserve a result. I have never hunted in my life and have no interest in the pursuit. I would never harm an animal. They are my friends. When I work on an animal, I work in the knowledge that nothing I do can alter its life, which is past. What I am actually doing is extracting and refining memory from death. In that, I am no different from a historian, who parses through the material evidence of the past in an attempt to reconstruct it and then understand it. Every animal I have mounted has been an interpretation of the past. I am a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future. So you see, we are dealing here with matters so much weightier than what to do with a dusty stuffed duck inherited from an uncle......

While reading “Beatrice & Virgil”, I wondered why taxidermists stuff only animals. Why not humans too? Like, when your Loved Ones of the human species die – your old Mum or old Dad, or dear Wife - you could have a taxidermist stuff them. You would put them in a special room in your house, and you could talk to them whenever you feel like it. It would be like they'd never died.

Why has this never caught on?

What's Going On In The Namib Desert?

Stretching along the entire coastline of Namibia is a desert called the Namib Desert. As deserts go, the Namib is somewhat interesting, for not many deserts stretch along entire coastlines, and the terrain of the Namib is dotted with many thousands of patches of bare earth, shaped in circles, some over twenty meters in diameter.

If you *click here*, you can see examples of these “Fairy Circles”. Amazing, dontcha think?

No-one knows exactly how these circles are made, although some Men of Science think they know. One such Man of Science recently discovered that the soil underneath the circles is somewhat damp, and that lots of termites live in it. When it rains (which isn't often) the rain that falls on the circles seeps through the bare soil, for there's no vegetation to absorb the water.

It's this somewhat damp soil that attracts the termites, thinks the above-mentioned Man of Science. He, this Man of Science, says the termites created the bare soil by eating the roots of the vegetation, thereby destroying it. Hence the termites created the conditions for the soil underneath to retain the moisture, making it nice for the termites.

No sooner did this Man of Science proclaim it as the solution of the Fairy Circle mystery, other Men of Science attacked this explanation, saying just because lots of termites live beneath the Fairy Circles, doesn't necessarily mean they caused them.

Other Men of Science have yet other explanations for the Fairy Circles, all equally tortuous. However, none tackle the question: Why are the soil patches round, or at least almost round?

How about that extra-terrestrial flying craft caused the circles? Consider that the soil within the Crop Circles which manifest in England every year, and the soil on which many UFOs have landed, often shows traces of having been subjected to intense laser-like heat.

If, then, extra-terrestrial craft - which have, most of them, been observed to be round - land in the Namib Desert, and emanate laser-like heat on to the soil on which they land, this would kill off the vegetation. Given the desert's aridity, making it so difficult for vegetation to grow, it would be a long, long time before new vegetation replaced the old. Hence the patches of bare earth are round.

Because Namibia, and particularly the Namib Desert, has so few people, it would be perfect for thousands of visiting Extra-Terrestrials to use as a vast landing area with no-one noticing.

They're crafty, those ETs.

Libre Enfin

Combien de fois tous les jours rient les Français? C'était le sujet *de cet article* dans "Le Point".

Selon des recherches réalisée par Aquafresh (les gars dentifrice), la fréquence de rire c'est diminue avec l'âge. Je vais supposer que cette dynamique s'applique également aux Américains.

Qu'est-ce que ça signifie? Que les jeunes sont plus heureux que les personnes âgées? Ou que les personnes âgées se sentent plus libres d'être eux-mêmes? Pour répondre à cette question, pense à l'époque où vous étiez jeune.

Votre mère et votre père auraient voulu que vous avez beaucoup d'amis et d'être populaire. Donc vous avez dû sourire (qui fait partie du rire) tout le temps, même si vous sentiez triste. Vous ne devriez pas blâmer votre mère et votre père. Ils étaient conscients que la culture contemporaine c'est la culture de la personnalité, plutôt que de caractère. C'est la culture du bonimenteur et du vendeur. C'est la culture de l'extraverti, plutôt que de l'introverti.

Plus on sourit, plus on vend. Que on vend dentifrice, ou soi-même, cela n'a pas d'importance.

Quand on est vieux, on n'a pas à s'inquiéter de tout cela. On est libre enfin.

Who, Whom?

You'll remember, I'm sure, that my last few postings have dwelt on the origins of the Human. Absent evidence he's lived for several million years in a technologically advanced society, you can safely say he couldn't have evolved from the Ape. There's, in fact, no evidence he did. The assertion he did is mere speculation masquerading as fact.

However, should the alleged missing link between the Human and the Ape ever be found, you, who say the Human didn't evolve from the Ape, will have to eat porridge for your supper. 

As of now, the notion that today's Human is a genetic mixture of Extra-Terrestrial and Ape, best explains him. Even a Martian visiting Earth, and seeing the Human, then seeing the Ape and the other animals, would suspect right away that the Human isn't quite native to Earth.

Because our Men of Science, and the ancient Babylonian creation myths both say the Human first appeared 200,000 years ago, it's likely he did. However, while our Men of Science say he descended from the Ape, the Babylonian myths have been interpreted as saying he's the result of the Annunaki - a people from the planet Nibiru – genetically mixing their own genes with those of the Ape.

The important thing here is that, Annunaki or no Annunaki, the Extra-Terrestrial/Ape genetic mixing thesis best explains the Human.

***

What did the Annunaki do after they created the Human? The Babylonian myths are silent on this.  Did the Annunaki stay awhile? Or did they immediately go back to Nibiru and just forget their Human creation?

Whatever they did, it appears Beings from Out There are currently visiting Earth often. Aside from mysterious disk-shaped flying craft seen by so many, there are Alien Abductions involving Missing Time, and funny-looking little men extracting sperm samples from their Human captives.

A Human captive, waking up in his bed after being returned, and remembering only vaguely what happened, must feel like a wild animal waking up in its lair after being shot by a tranquiliser dart, and seeing a metal tag on its leg, and wondering how it got there.

The question must therefore be asked: Is the Human nothing more than the unknowing inmate of a huge worldwide laboratory for men from Out There to do research on? The taking of sperm samples from Human captives bespeaks that inter-species genetic manipulation out of which the Human was created, continues. But, to what end?

Laughing

I've been reading up on Crop Circles. 

I've learned they've been around (sic) a long time - since 1674. But it was only forty years ago that they began appearing Big Time. And, during this last forty years their designs have become more and more sophisticated.

Ninety percent of Crop Circles manifest in England. Most are within forty miles of Stonehenge. Some are made by the Human; others aren't. When the Human makes a Crop Circle he does it with rollers and planks of wood that crush flat the hay, barley or whatever. When a non-Human makes a Crop Circle he does it by applying short bursts of intense heat to the hay, barley or whatever, causing them to bend at right angles an inch above the ground.

The heat that the non-Human applies to the hay, barley or whatever is so intense, it causes molecular changes in the plants. The earth within the Crop Circle is molecularly changed too, no doubt because when you apply a short burst of intense heat to a plant, you can't help but do the same to the soil around it.

Another difference between the Human-made Crop Circle and the non-Human-made one is that the Human-made one is less sophisticated and less geometrically precise than the non-Human-made one, and is otherwise sloppier. 

The non-Human-made Crop Circle, no matter how intricate its design or geometry, is made extremely quickly. Humans who have seen them made, say they form in under twenty seconds. Sometimes as they form, brightly coloured balls of light flit around the field. In other cases a shaft of light comes down and swirls the plants into the Crop Circle's geometric shape.

The Human-made Crop Circle is made much more slowly than the twenty seconds needed for the non-Human-made one, because it takes time to lug around the planks and rollers.

Is not the non-Human-made Crop Circle intriguing? Could the non-Human who makes it, make it from a planet far, far away? Think of the Rover currently on Mars, that is sending back through fifty million miles of space, those amazingly clear pictures of the Martian terrain. All the while the Mars Rover is trundling around, gathering up soil samples for Men of Science here on Earth to analyse. The thing here, is that by means of electronic pulses from Earth, our Men of Science are controlling the Mars Rover, telling it in effect what to do.

What if a Martian, out walking his dog of an evening after supper, should happen across the Mars Rover trundling about with no driver. Would it even occur to him that men fifty million miles away on another planet were controlling it. Even should this notion occur to him, would he not be loathe to share it with his family and friends for fear of them laughing at him?

Apes By Any Other Name

There's this Man of Science who's saying it'll soon be possible to bring back the Neanderthal by cloning him. The Neanderthal genome has now been sequenced. It just remains to chop it into 10,000 chunks, synthesise the pieces, then plant them in a human woman, who, a few months later, will bear a little Neanderthal. All quite simple really. Since the woman will likely be well-paid, there'll be no lack of volunteers for the job of surrogate mother.

There is in Russia an Ape-like being, called an “Alma”, that is quite Neanderthal-like to look at. It is thought by many that the Alma is in fact a Neanderthal, the descendant of Neanderthals that, in order to get away from the Human who was trying to kill them all, left the plains and lightly wooded areas of the world, and found refuge in the vast forests of Russia.

In mid-nineteenth century Russia an Alma female, named “Zana”, was captured, and remained a captive until her death a few decades later. During this time she gave birth to eight children by human fathers. Four children lived to be adults and had children of their own.

If Zana was indeed a Neanderthal, her story supports the notion of some of our Men of Science, that the early human Human and Neanderthal were able to interbreed, and did.

If the supposedly extinct Neanderthal did escape into the forests to get away from the Human,  the other supposedly extinct Apes – the alleged forefathers of the Human – may have done the same. But instead of escaping into the forests of Russia, they escaped into forests of the Himalayas - where they are called Yeti - and into the forests of North America, where they are called Sasquatch.

If the Yeti and Sasquatch do exist (evidence to support the fact of Sasquatch is impressive), this suggests the Human didn't descend from the Ape. Is it, then, any wonder that our Men of Science are so hostile to the Yeti and Sasquatch?

Inter-Galactic Federation of Sovereign Planets

I spoke *last time* of the first Human. Making him wasn't plain sailing, for gene manipulation was as time-consuming and as filled with trials and errors then, 250,000 years ago, as it is today. Because the Annunaki wanted gold, it's likely the first Human was made in southern Africa where the gold was, and is still.

That the first Human came out of southern Africa 250,000 years ago is, ironically, consistent with the Official Story about the appearance of the first Human.

Today's Human uses only ten 10 per-cent of his brain. This bespeaks the Annunaki deliberately restricted the Human's ability to use all his brain, because digging gold doesn't need brains so much as brawn. However, the Ape failed as a digger despite it having more brawn than the Human. The Ape just didn't have enough brain for digging. The Human obviously did.

The early Human, able to use only 10 per-cent of his brain, may well have been a obedient digger, as the Annunaki designed him to be. But the Human isn't this way now. He's become too big for his boots and can now destroy Earth with his atomic bombs. Although a technological genius, he remains an emotional primitive. He's now out of balance. This is most dangerous.

Some years ago a retired copy editor at a major newspaper wrote a book about his being abducted by Aliens and taken off in their spaceship for three days. The Aliens told him their civilisation belonged to the Inter-Galactic Federation of Sovereign Planets (IGFSP) – an umbrella organisation representing the many thousands of planetary civilisations, sort of like our United Nations.

Ever since the Human landed on the moon the IGFSP had been closely monitoring Earth. It was concerned that the Human, with his atomic bombs and volatile emotions, boded ill for the other planetary civilisations should he continue planetary exploration. The IGFSP finally concluded the Human was too dangerous to be allowed onto any other planet, including the moon, which he was forbidden to make further landings on. The IGFSP communicated this to the relevant Earthly governments.

Whatever you think of all this, do you not find it singular that the Human hasn't returned to the moon in forty years?

In The Beginning

The brain of the Human bespeaks he must have lived in a technologically advanced society for several million years, for reasons *explained here*. However, according to the Official Truth, the Human, after abandoning his peripatetic hunting ways 10,000 years ago, began to settle down and farm. You see the problem, no?

It's possible there used to be evidence the Human lived for several million years in a technologically advanced society. But this evidence was largely washed away by an apocalyptic world-wide flood that happened 12,000 or so years ago, leaving only the ruins of ancient structures, like the Great Pyramid of Giza, that are so remarkable the Human of today couldn't build them.

Several million years of living in a technologically advanced society is but one explanation for why the Human brain is so advanced from the Ape brain. There's another intriguing explanation: today's Human is the product of genetic manipulation by extra-terrestrials.

Interpretations of Babylonian creation myths suggest exactly this. The Annunaki, a people from a planet called Nibiru, landed in Mesopotamia about 300,000 years ago. They needed gold, and were looking for a planet that had it. When the Annunaki learned Earth had gold they were for the most part happy. They were less happy, though, that the gold was deep underground and would have to be dug out.

The thing was, the Annunaki didn't like the prospect of the hard work that digging out gold would entail. However when they saw the Ape they thought it would be perfect as a digger. Unfortunately  the Ape didn't prove suitable in practice. What to do? Why, create, through manipulating the genes of themselves and the Ape, a hybrid Annunaki/Ape species suitable for digging.

Because gene manipulating inherently involves much trial and error, it took a long time for the Annunaki to perfect a suitable digger, who, if you didn't already guess, became the first Human.

More next time........

Everywhere You Look

I ended *my last posting* by asking if the disappearance of the Human would necessarily be a Bad Thing. Therefore I implied it just could be a Good Thing. Perhaps, though, it depends on who you are. 

If you're a wild animal – a lion or wildebeest or jaguar or somesuch - and the Human were to disappear, it would be Good Thing. If you're a domestic dog or domestic cat, it would definitely be a Bad Thing. If you're a cow or bull or horse or pig or whatever, who knows? And if you're a Human, well, it depends.

If the Human doesn't disappear soon by means of an apocalyptic flood or of an apocalyptic nuclear war, what sort of life does he face? You see, if English-speaking North America is anything to go by, the Human is steadily becoming redundant, for the Robot is now doing more and more of the work the Human was paid to do.

As each year passes the numbers of Humans gainfully working as a percentage of the numbers of all Humans, drop. This shouldn't surprise you, since all employers now boast that, thanks to automation, they are now “doing more with less”. Nonetheless, the workless rate the Rulers give out is usually a steady eight percent or so.

At first sight this doesn't look too bad. But the real rate is around fifteen percent – not that much below the Great Depression rate of twenty-five percent. Even so, this won't bother you if you belong to the Contented Class, for, thanks to food stamps and their like, the workless Human is now Invisible. Unlike his forefather in the Great Depression he no longer needs to stand in a soup line for those of the Contented Class to see as they drive past.

So big are the strides of technology, automation, in the form of the Robot, will soon be everywhere you look. In next to no time there'll hardly be a job the Robot won't be doing better and cheaper than the Human who now does it. Instead of just fifteen percent of Humans being workless, eighty percent will be. What then?

If you are one of this eighty percent, being drowned in an apocalyptic flood, or being nuked by an atomic bomb, may not sound so bad.

Closer to Madness

I spoke in the *posting before last*, about how likely it is that an apocalyptic world-wide flood will wipe out the civilisations of the Human. Although it's 12,000 years since this last happened, the next apocalyptic world-wide flood could happen any time. So you shouldn't get too complacent.

Something else you shouldn't get too complacent about is the prospect of the Human destroying himself and everything around him through dropping on other Humans all the nuclear bombs stored  in bunkers throughout the world. No doubt you think these bombs are so terrible, only madmen would drop them. But, have you stopped to consider there are lots of madmen about. You may even know some. You yourself could be a madman, only you don't know it.

Whatever the truth, you likely think you know who the madmen are - the unwashed shabby men on buses who rock back and forth in their seats and talk to themselves; the bearded fever-eyed men on downtown street corners who wave bibles and shout that the End is Nigh. So you don't stop to think that the tweed-jacketed avuncular professor at your daughter's university might be a madman, or that the always-smiling ruler of your land might be a madman.

In the newspapers you read on the bus on the way to work, have you never seen articles by learned academics on the merits of the pre-emptive nuclear surgical strike, or read speeches by revered national leaders who advocate the same? Do you never stop to remember that seventy years ago, two nuclear bombs actually were dropped on Humans, and that, since then, world-wide nuclear wars have been only narrowly averted?

Deep down you know the question isn't if an apocalyptic Human-ending nuclear war will ever happen, but when - that is, if an apocalyptic Human-ending world-wide flood doesn't happen first. Whatever the means, the Human is soon to be History.

When this happens, will it necessarily be a Bad Thing? Ca depend.......

A Man of Parts

Last night I finished “A Man of Parts”. Now, this morning, I'm feeling quite bereft, for, having had HG Wells as a vicarious companion over the last three weeks, how could I not be?

Over his long life HG Wells wrote over 100 books and had over 100 lovers. A considerable achievement, for, if you are of the sort who can write 100 books over your lifetime, you won't normally be of the sort who can also have 100 lovers over your lifetime. And vice versa.

HG Wells's 100 or so books were of all genres – science fiction, romances, history, politics, religion, speculation, you name it. He predicted the atomic bomb decades before it happened, and predicted an encyclopedia much like Wikipedia decades before Wikipedia happened. There was nothing HG Wells wasn't interested in, and nothing he couldn't write and talk interestingly about. The only later equivalent I can think of is Isaac Asimov.

HG Wells having had 100 - and probably more, many more – lovers, is all the more remarkable when you consider he was only five foot five, was fattish, and had a high chirping voice. But then, Wells - born more than 140 years ago - may simply have lived in a time when young women went for men who looked and sounded like Wells, and were otherwise of his ilk.

Wells can count himself lucky he lived when he did. Today he would likely have lived womanless, since your young woman of today goes only for a man who has a washboard stomach, who is much, much taller than five foot five, has a thrilling gravelly voice, and spends as much time working out as Wells did reading and writing.

Amazingly, it was young women who pursued Wells, rather than he pursuing them. Two of the most notable were Amber Reeves and Rebecca West, each of whom bore a child by Wells. Equally amazingly, Wells's second wife, Jane - to whom he was married for nearly three decades until her death – knew about his many lovers, even entertaining them as guests in her home.

Were wives today as wise to the ways of men, and as tolerant of them as was Jane, many lawyers would have to find other work. 

I found “A Man of Parts” a wonderful read. Now, as I said earlier, I'm feeling quite bereft. I shall have to begin on the next novel in my list. Here it is, Hilary Mantel's “An Experiment in Love”. Ta ta now.........

Dire Straits

Well, December 21st 2012 has just passed, and nothing untoward happened. You're feeling happy about this, I'll bet. You're thinking the ubiquitous forecasts of a worldwide apocalypse on that day, were always bilge, and you're ashamed you ever gave them even a soupçon of credence.

Actually, a worldwide apocalypse could happen at any time. I'll remind you the earth does a full turn on its axis each 24 hours, while also doing a complete circle around the sun every 12 months. And, because the earth wobbles like a top while spinning on its axis, the north and south poles rotate (precession), and do a complete rotation each 25,920 years.

While all this is going on, the earth is being subjected to the varying gravitational pulls from the moon, and the other planets in its neighbourhood. Because the weight of the ice-shields and oceans and whatnot on the earth's outer crust is maldistributed, it wouldn't take too much to cause the earth's orbit to change, or the earth to tip, resulting in changes of position of the north and south poles. And not to speak of massive shifts in position of the earth's outer crusts. So, if a Greenlander, you could find yourself at the equator. If an African, you could find yourself at one of the poles.

You'll readily see that any of this would cause world-wide climate-changes to happen Big Time. If a Greenlander, and Greenland becomes scorching hot, you'll have to get used to slapping on lots of sun-tan oil all the time, and to just wearing a flowered shirt and shorts and sandals. If an African, and Africa is inundated with ice and snow, you'll have to get used to wearing winter woollies, and even snow boots and a fur cap.

Because places presently covered with ice and snow and whatnot might now have scorching hot weather, the ice and snow and whatnot will melt into the seas, causing their levels to rise Big Time. This'll bring about world-wide flooding on a scale you won't even have dreamed of.

You'll have to abandon your home lickety-split if flood-waters approach, and you'll need to find another permanent home far, far away. Should the flood-waters catch up with you while you're fleeing, you'll be in even more dire straits if your father didn't  give you swimming lessons when you were small.

Even should you flee successfully, and find a new refuge far, far away with a vastly different climate, you'll have to find new work, which, if you were an oil-man with your own air-conditioned corner office in a skyscraper, will be less pleasant.

Although I've digressed a bit from the premises of Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's *“Nightfall”*, the next posting may show I didn't digress too much.

Way Down Below the Ocean, Where I Wanna Be She May Be

It was Plato, the Great Plato, who first spoke about about Atlantis - a land, the size of today's eastern Turkey and Libya combined, that housed a mighty civilisation, but which sank and disappeared from the consequences of an earthquake 11,500 years ago. Plato didn't say exactly where Atlantis was, other than that it lay in front of the Pillars of Hercules, which, in case you don't know, flanked the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar from the Atlantic Ocean.

But, how far in front of the Pillars of Hercules? Because Plato didn't say, no-one knows. So, throughout the 2,500 years since Plato breathed his last, eager men have speculated about where below the vast Atlantic Ocean the submerged Atlantis now lies. They have also searched for it, and still do, but so far to no avail.

Who were the Atlantans? Were they the ones who built the Great Pyramid and the other huge ancient structures throughout the world, about which men have always scratched their heads in wonderment? Was Atlantis the home of a worldwide maritime civilisation, so enlightened and so technologically wondrous, it was an Eden from whose demise mankind has never recovered?

Could Antarctica – about which I spoke *last time* – be the lost Atlantis? It's big enough, since it's almost twice the size of Australia, and it wasn't always at the South Pole with a one-mile-deep ice-sheet sitting atop it. No, it was once further north and had, as a result, a temperate climate, and forests and animals.

It is, then, beneath the one-mile-deep sheet of ice which covers Antarctica, that the answer to the riddle of Atlantis may lie.

Water, Always Water

There are stories of catastrophic floods in myths everywhere. So, did they (the floods) really happen? Very likely, given the several Ice Ages that feature in the earth's history. What I mean to say is that when there's lots of ice, as there is in any old Ice Age, and it all melts when the Ice Age ends, there's always lots of water left that has no-where to go but into the seas, whose levels consequently rise, and you get floods that, if they're big enough, wash away whole civilisations.

You can, then, safely assume the great floods, that myths all over the world tell of, really happened. And, because the ice sheets of just the last Ice Age covered all of North America, northern Europe and northern Asia, they would, when they melted, have caused catastrophic floods, that likely washed away whole civilisations.

As I said *last time*, there's still an Ice Age, but it's at the North Pole and South Pole (Antarctica). Given the one-mile-deep sheet of ice that covers Antarctica, which is almost twice the size of Australia, you don't have to think too hard to understand how big the floods would be if all this ice melted. And it would all melt, and quickly, were Antarctica to woosh a few thousand miles north.

The prospect of Antarctica wooshing north isn't far-fetched, since it may well have wooshed into where it now is, from north within the last few thousand years. Think of the ancient world-maps I told you of last time, that show Antarctica. Since our modern civilisation didn't know Antarctica existed until 200 years ago, these maps must have been made when Antarctica was last ice-free.

According to the experts, Antarctica was last ice-free several million years ago. Are you, then, to believe that these old maps, thought to be only a few thousand years sold, are actually a few million years old? Perhaps, though, the civilisation that made these old maps, already had the technology to map Antarctica despite the ice, just as our modern civilisation has done.

The answer, whatever it is, doesn't take away the likelihood that several thousand years ago - when the Human was supposed only to have begun farming - there was already a civilisation with the technology and know-how to map the entire earth and build the Great Pyramid of Giza.

I'm still not finished..........

Wooshing

If you've read all of what *I've said so far* about Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's “Nightfall”, and what it may indicate about the history of the Human, you'll now know that the Great Pyramid of Giza, and also ancient maps showing Antarctica, bespeak a technologically advanced civilisation that vanished from earth more than 12,000 years ago.

I'll today talk a little of the last Ice Age, when ice sheets covered North America, northern Europe and Asia. This Ice Age began 60,000 years ago, and was for all intents and purposes over about 11,500 years ago. There is, by the way, an Ice Age still, but it's at the North Pole and South Pole (Antarctica).

No-one knows exactly why the Ice Ages (there have been several) happened. Experts think changes in the earth's orbit or tilt, the most likely cause. But, how about massive and sudden shifts in the earth's crust? so that if you had lived thousands of years ago in a place with weather as nice as yours now is, you one day experienced yourself, and everything around you, wooshing to a different place. Soon you were amid mounds of ice and snow, that covered your house and garden too, as well as everywhere else as far as you could see.

Once you got over the immediate shock, you would have had an inkling that everything had inexplicably shifted to a polar region. You would have been somewhat comforted when you saw that your wife and children and your little friends had all shifted with you. But still.

A huge and quite sudden shifting of a continental land mass most likely explains Antarctica appearing in maps many thousands of years old, despite that our modern civilisation didn't even know about Antarctica until 200 years ago, because it was hidden by the one-mile-deep ice sheet on top of it.

These old maps can only have been made when Antarctica was still ice-free – hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of years ago. But, what if Antarctica was once where it was nice and warm and had no ice? Then it shifted thousands of miles south. Because it would have taken hundreds of years for the ice to pile up to its current the one-mile thickness, it was before this when the ancient mappers mapped Antarctica.

Since your teachers in school would have told you nothing of this, you are likely now in a state of disorientation, and in need of time to recover. Hence it'll have to be next time when I talk more.  

Ice and Maps

As I said *last time*, the Great Pyramid of Giza, that may have been built as long as 12,500 years ago, is an edifice bespeaking builders of such engineering genius, they could only have been from a technologically advanced civilisation, whose technology was at least the equal of ours today, because it's doubtful the Great Pyramid could be built today.

Why, then, is this civilisation not known about? Is it because it was destroyed as apocalyptically as was the planet-wide civilisation in Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's “Nightfall”?

There are world maps thousands of years old that show Antarctica, despite Antarctica not being known about until 200 years ago. Your teachers in school no doubt told you Antarctica is covered by ice two miles thick, so this was why it wasn't known about until 200 years ago. And your teachers were right. They wouldn't, though, have told you about the ancient maps showing Antarctica.

These ancient maps showing Antarctica must have been made before it was covered with all that ice, else how could the mappers have known Antarctica was there? Since it's thought by many that Antarctica didn't become covered with ice until about 12,000 years ago, these ancient maps must have been made more than 12,000 years ago. And because these maps show the contours of the world's continents amazingly accurately, the mappers must have been of a technologically advanced civilisation. Was it the same one that built the Great Pyramid of Giza?

More to come...........

Crawling From the Ruins

Apropos Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's “Nightfall”, I *spoke last time* about how odd it is that the Human has vastly more brainpower than the Ape – a surprise, given the Human and the Ape became separate species 200,000 years ago or less. And, while you may think 200,000 years an awfully long time, evolutionists think it piffling. 

Since no other animal species has more brainpower than the Ape, the brain-power of the Human is an anomaly. Because evolutionary change is so slow, the Human, in order to evolve his  anomalously powerful brain, would have to have lived in a technologically advanced civilisation for many millions of years.

That the Human only 10,000 years ago began living in a civilisation with a technology sufficient only to carry out farming, and has only been around as a Human for 200,000 years or less, simply isn't believable because it was too fast. More believable is the Vatican's assertion that when the Human first evolved 200,000 years ago, God stepped in and gave him a soul and the all-powerful brain so he could think, feel and and act as a Human. But your Men of Science will have none of this.

Your Men of Science will also have none of the assertion that we of today are the descendants of those who crawled from the ruins of a world-wide technologically advanced civilisation that, many thousands of years ago, collapsed as apocalyptically as did the planet-wide civilisation in “Nightfall”.

Is there proof this happened? Well, not conclusive proof necessarily, but clues are everywhere. One such is the Great Pyramid of Giza. Your teachers in school doubtless told you that 4,500 years ago the Egyptians built it so the Pharaoh, Khufu, might rest in it for eternity.  However, the Great Pyramid is so huge and embodies such engineering genius, it's doubtful anyone could build it today. It seems, then, doubtful the Egyptians of 4,500 years ago could build it either.

Actually, there's good reason to think the Great Pyramid was built, not 4,500 years ago, but 12,500 years ago. And it's clear the builders had an advanced knowledge of the movements of the planets, and also knew things like the exact size of the earth's circumference and the length of its radius. So it's clear the builders were of a technologically advanced society. 

Who were they? And what became of their society? Stay tuned.........

Of Apes and Men

You'll know *from last time* that, in discussing Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's “Nightfall”, I began speaking of how your teachers at school likely told you how the Human on this planet (earth) came to be.

Only in the last 10,000 years did the Human, by taking up farming, begin to separate himself definitively from the Ape because the Ape didn't have the brainpower to farm. And it's only in the last 100 years that the Human was able to come up with electricity, the Ford motor car, the 747 jet aeroplane, the laptop computer, the atomic bomb, the cell-phone, and the digital TV. But this required brainpower far greater than the Human needed to survive only 10,000 years ago.

So the question is: when did the Human develop this extraordinary brainpower? Did he already have it 200,000 years ago when he first appeared, and was living as primitively as the Ape? If the Human did already have this extraordinary brainpower, how did it evolve? You see, when your teachers in school told you about evolution, they would have told you that evolution in any species is only in response to external changes that threaten the survival of that species.

Hence the brainpower of your average Ape of today is no greater than the brainpower of your average Ape of 200,000 years ago because evolving more brainpower wasn't necessary for the Ape to survive as an Ape. For all you know, there's the occasional very clever Ape that could, under the right conditions, compose music on the order of Ludwig van's Glorious Ninth, or easily learn trigonometry (a random mutation). But that very clever Ape is no more likely spread his genes than any one of the overwhelming majority of ordinary run-of-the-mill Apes, that can do no more than swing from trees and eat bananas.

If the female Ape is anything like the female Human, she's infinitely more attracted to the male Ape that only swings from trees and eats bananas, than to the male Ape that can compose music like Ludwig van's Glorious Ninth, or who likes trigonometry. Hence the very clever male Ape won't likely spread his genes. The future Ape, then, will continue to be as....well..... Ape-like, as he has always been.

I'll continue this next time.......

From Hunter To Farmer

I spoke *last time* about Isaac Asimov's and Robert Silverberg's “Nightfall”. It's about a planet whose civilisation is catastrophically destroyed every few thousand years. Each time this happens, the surviving denizens must crawl out from the rubble and start again.

Where did Asimov get this idea from - the idea that a planet-wide civilisation every now and again catastrophically destroys itself, or becomes catastrophically destroyed through influences beyond its control. Was he (Asimov) thinking of our earthly human civilisation?

***

Your teachers, when you were in school, no doubt told you about how humans came to be, about how today's humans (of which you are one) descended from apes. Your teachers would also have told you that today's human hasn't been around that long – 200,000 years at most, but possibly as little as 100,000 years. Before that, there was just the ancestor of the human, the ape.

Your teachers would also have told you that the early humans lived in Africa, in a manner not much different from actual apes ie. apes not lucky enough to have evolved into humans. The early humans, who spent most of each day just hunting down other animals to eat, began getting bored, and developed itchy feet. So they trekked off to all corners of the earth.

They may, though, in their new domains of Europe and Asia and whatnot, have continued just to hunt and to be as bored as they were in Africa, for it wasn't until 10,000 years ago that they began farming, which, when you think about it, is even more boring than hunting. Anyway, one thing led to another, and today, a mere 10,000 years after the first human farmers, you have cell-phones, digital TVs and whatnot. Suspiciously quick, don't you think?

I, as did the early humans, am, too, becoming bored. I'll have to continue this next time.........

When Night Falls

With the nights becoming longer as the winter solstice nears, I've been thinking of a science fiction novel I read some twenty years ago, “Nightfall”, by Robert Silverberg, who had based it on a short story of the same name by Isaac Asimov.

The story is set on a planet that is bathed always in sunlight because it has two or three (I don't remember how many exactly) suns, positioned in such a way that there's no corner of this planet that's ever dark, despite that it revolves on its axis, like earth.

Therefore the peoples of this planet (the name of which I also don't remember) know not what night is. The very idea of night, with its black sky and twinkling stars, is something this planet's denizens can't even imagine, except the most clever ones, like some of its scientists.

The denizens (except the clever ones, like some of the scientists) are unaware that every few thousand years the positions of the suns become aligned in such a way that half the planet as it revolves becomes dark (Nightfall) for a few hours.

The scientists have calculated that the end of the last several thousand years of uninterrupted sunlight is nigh. Nightfall is suddenly to descend on the planet's peoples. How will they react? A pertinent question, because there are stories, credible stories, that when the previous Nightfall descended those many thousand years ago, the people panicked. They went on a rampage - burning libraries, demolishing buildings, that sort of thing. All the recorded knowledge and structure of their society was destroyed. The civilisation collapsed.

Is this about again to happen? I won't say more, in case you decide to read “Nightfall”.

My summary is no doubt extremely imperfect because, as I said earlier, it's twenty or so years since I read “Nightfall”, and my power of recall isn't what it once upon a time was. However, what I sketched out above will do for what I'll talk of in my next posting.

What Comes Around.......

“A Man of Parts”, David Lodge's novel about the life of HG Wells, that I 've begun reading, begins in 1944, when HG Wells was terminally ill and living alone in wartime London, intrepidly ignoring the bombs and V1 rockets.

He does, though, get visits from the likes of Anthony, his son with Rebecca West, and from Rebecca herself, who, despite her long ago divorce from HG, still loves him in a way. In the extract below, Rebecca is travelling home from visiting HG. Among what they had talked about was Anthony's wish to divorce his wife, Kitty, because he'd met Someone Else who he liked better:

Travelling from Marylebone to High Wycombe in a stuffy first-class railway compartment, in the company of three elderly businessmen with bowler hats, peeping at her from time to time over their evening newspapers, Rebecca is overwhelmed by dread. The sense of a curse working itself out in delinquent fathers over several generations.

Her father had deserted his family when she was eight, going off to South Africa on some vague business venture and disappearing without trace, leaving his wife to bring up Rebecca and her two sisters on barely adequate means. Then she herself had to bring up Anthony on her own – admittedly with more generous financial support from his father, but HG kept his distance and his freedom – and now Anthony is planning to leave Kitty to bring up his children on her own. And what was the reward for the mothers whose lives were pinched and frustrated by the responsibility thrust upon them? They became the object of their children's displaced resentment, that was their reward.

She never gave up hope that her beloved Daddy would somehow return to the family with an honourable explanation for his absence, like the father in The Railway Children (how she had wept over the ending of that book!), until she was thirteen, when they heard that he had died. Later she learned from her mother that he had been an incorrigible philanderer, seducing their own housemaids and resorting to prostitutes.

She recognises in retrospect that she was a difficult disruptive child and adolescent, always quarrelling with her sisters and criticising her mother; Anthony was the same when he was growing up – hero-worshipping his absent father and blaming her for all the miserable experiences of his schooldays. She can so easily imagine little Caroline and Edmund [Anthony's and Kitty's children] in years to come repeating the same mistake, adoring Anthony and inflicting the same undeserved punishment on Kitty, as she struggles to bring them up, run the farm and, if she is lucky, find a little time for her art.

The feminism Rebecca campaigned for all her adult life has liberated women sexually – the bolder spirits among them anyway – but it has not redressed this fundamental imbalance in the relations between men and women: the female instinct to nurture their offspring and the male instinct to spend their seed promiscuously.

HG is simply a more intelligent and more successful version of her father. Even Henry [Rebecca's current husband] has disappointed her in this respect. Unfailingly kind and protective, admiring and supportive of her work (gamely escorting her around Yugoslavia in dirty trains and flea-infested hotels when she was researching Black Lamb and Grey Falcon), possessing impeccable manners, and enough money to allow her to live in some style, he is in every respect the perfect spouse, except that he is prone to infatuations with pretty young women, and he hasn't made love to her since 1937.

Lying beside him in bed one night she cried out in the dark: 'Why don't you make love to me any more?' But he was asleep, or pretended to be, and said nothing. She has had other lovers herself, of course, since then, though none at present. She reflects despondently that her sexual life may have come to an end.

Living as we do in today's enlightened times, we can read Rebecca's musings only in aghast, as we reflect on the fact that the lot of Rebecca was once upon a time the lot of so many other women too.

Being Boring

This morning, while continuing to read Ian McEwan's “Sweet Tooth, I came across a passage that......like........spoke to me.

Serena is visiting her mother and father over Christmas, as also is her sister, Lucy, with her (Lucy's) boyfriend, Luke. One evening after supper Serena joins Lucy and Luke for a stroll outside.

.....I wanted to tell Lucy about him [Tom]. I would have loved a sisterly session. We occasionally managed one, but set between us now was Luke's giant form and he was doing that inexcusable thing that men who liked cannabis tended to do, which was to go on about it – some famous stuff from a village in Thailand, the terrifying near-bust one night, the view across a certain holy lake at sunset under the influence, a hilarious misunderstanding in a bus station and other stultifying anecdotes. What was wrong with our generation? Our parents had the war to be boring about. We had this.

After a while we girls fell completely silent while Luke, in elated urgent terms, plunged deeper into the misapprehension that he was interesting, that we were enthralled. And almost immediately I had a contrary insight. I saw it clearly. Of course. Lucy and Luke were waiting for me to leave so they could be alone. That's what I would have wanted, if it had been Tom and me. Luke was deliberately and systematically boring me to drive me away. It was insensitive of me not to have noticed. Poor fellow, he was having to overreach himself and it was not a good performance, hopelessly overdone. No one in real life could be as boring as this. But in his round-about way he was only trying to be kind......

Was, though, Luke being deliberately boring, or was he just naturally boring? I, for what it's worth, have always found the Anecdote, regardless of what it's about, to be stultifyingly boring. And it's almost always a man who is the teller of the Anecdote. Why is this, I always stop to wonder. 

Songs of San Francisco

The other day I received an e-mail from a friend in which was a hyperlink to an on-line video he'd just made about his recent visit to San Francisco. It turned out to be a nice enough video that showed a montage of what one should see when in San Francisco.

The video had as musical background the *immortal 1960's song* about San Francisco by Scott McKenzie. How perfect, I thought. However, the video being more than 12 minutes, and Scott McKenzie's song being only 3 minutes, the song was of necessity repeated four and more times on the video. 

As much as I love this Scott McKenzie song, I found hearing it over and over a little trying at the end. Since there are many other songs about San Francisco, why couldn't my friend have added some of these others to the video. It would have been the better for this.

Hence I e-mailed my friend and suggested the following songs for his consideration should he ever wish to amend his video:

*I Left My Heart in San Francisco* – Tony Bennett

*San Franciscan Nights* – Eric Burdon and the Animals

*Let's Go to San Francisco* - The Flower Pot Men

*Streets of San Francisco* – Sanford Clark

*'Frisco Blues* – John Lee Hooker

*San Francisco* – Jeanette MacDonald

While you listen, do you not feel it would be Heaven not only to visit San Francisco, but to live there too? Hence native San Franciscans might feel they do in fact live in Heaven, and so skip out to work each morning with smiles on their faces and music in their hearts. When next I'm there I'll check this out.

I got an e-mail back from my friend who thanked me for the songs. I sensed, though, that he felt I was casting aspersions on his video, on which he'd obviously spent much time. So, while it doesn't seem likely he'll be heeding my advice any time soon, I do live in hope that someday he will.

Maths or Literature?

I've begun reading Ian McEwan's “Sweet Tooth”. I'm finding it a veritable page-turner, no doubt because the prose is so elegant, and the tone so ironic and witty, reflecting a luminous intelligence that Ian McEwan obviously possesses.

Set in the Britain of circa 1972, “Sweet Tooth” is written from the first-person viewpoint of Serena Frome, a twenty-something woman, who, after graduating from the University with a Maths degree, has joined MI5 as a very junior functionary.

Despite that Serena's degree was in Maths, her big love has always been reading novels, that she gobbles up at a rate of four or five a week. It might be thought, then, that Serena would have studied English literature at the University. However, her Mother had insisted she study Maths because it would be more useful afterwards.

While Serena would have loved to major in English literature, she didn't subsequently regret not doing so because she saw that having to study novels to pass exams might have destroyed her love of literature. For what it's worth, I understand absolutely why she thought this. Novels shouldn't be cerebrally analysed, but savoured and experienced and enjoyed. Well, it's what I think.

Seeds and Hogs and Tractors and Water-Tanks and Chemicals

I finished reading Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres" last night. It had just too much farming in it for my taste. It seemed to go on and on and on and on about farming, so that I eventually found myself wincing each time the words "farm" and "farming" came up.

"A Thousand Acres" does have its juicy bits, though, but they are overshadowed by all the interminable passages about seeds and hogs and tractors and water-tanks and chemicals.

But, while I was reading, I reflected often that we who are city-slickers take so much for granted. Like, the water that gushes out our kitchen and bathroom taps. Where does it really come from? And, where would any of us be without the Farmer?

If, then, you're a Farmer, or a lover of Shakespeare, particularly his "King Lear" (on which this novel is loosely based), you'll likely love "A Thousand Acres". Since I'm neither, I shouldn't be surprised that I found "A Thousand Acres" not quite my cup of tea.

Thoughts On "On Chesil Beach"

I recently read Ian McEwan's “On Chesil Beach” and enjoyed it hugely. Since I can't imagine anyone reading it not enjoying it hugely, I do hugely recommend it.

Set in 1962, “On Chesil Beach” tells of two young people, Edward and Florence, on their honeymoon night. If this isn't enough make you rush off to your nearest bookshop to buy it, the following thoughts I penned about it, should:

Although it's 1962, Edward tells Florence she carries on as if it's 1862. The irony is that if Edward and Florence had been born 100 years earlier, and had married in 1862, their marriage would almost certainly have survived.

While Florence, with her visceral abhorrence of sex, would have been considered in 1962 (not to speak of today) to have something wrong with her, she would have been thought normal in 1862. Then, a woman liking sex was thought a strumpet, a nymphomaniac, and worse.

The normal respectable woman of 1862 - inculcated from girlhood with the belief that marriage and everything that went with it was a patriotic duty - heroically lay back, closed her eyes and thought of England in order to make bearable those brief moments during which her husband exercised his conjugal rights.

Despite being repelled by sex, Florence was progressive enough in her views to suggest to Edward that they have an open marriage. Edward, by rejecting this idea out-of-hand, showed how old-fashioned he was.

However, people being what they are, open marriages seldom work. So, Florence's and Edward's marriage was doomed from the start. Better, then, to end it on the wedding night, rather than much later.

What was the genesis of Florence's dread of sex? Was it to do with her father? Think of the out-of-town journeys he used to take her on when she was a child - just the two of them – when they stayed at the grandest hotels.

When Florence, lying on the honeymoon bed, hears the sound of of Edward undressing, she suddenly remembers when she was twelve years old, and lying on a bunk, listening to her father undressing, and trying to blot the image out by closing her eyes and thinking of tunes she liked. Did anything else happen?

For me, the sadness of “On Chesil Beach” is not so much the collapse of the marriage after only a few hours, but that Edward and Florence couldn't have remained dear and lifelong friends. Had they been born twenty or thirty years later, they may have. 1962 was, however, a foreign country; they did things differently there.

What Would Chekhov Have Said About the Euro

On a blog I often look at, there was recently a discussion among the commenters about Anton Chekhov. *One commenter* wrote: ”......Chekhov said nothing directly about the euro crisis, but here’s what you do: Read Chekhov’s stories, his letters, his plays, and extrapolate from his life how we should handle the euro crisis..... “.

Thinking it might be nice for me to contribute something, I posted the following comment:

While indeed Chekhov said nothing directly about the Euro crisis because, one assumes, he was long dead before the current Euro crisis arose, there can be little doubt that had he lived today, he would have had much to say about this crisis.

Why do I say this? Well, Chekhov attended for a time a school for Greek boys in his native Russia, and he died in Germany. Hence Greece and Germany - the two countries central to the current euro crisis - would have loomed large in Chekhov's mind. He therefore would have been internationalist in his thinking and pan-European in his sensibilities, and so would have wished for a harmonious and integrated Europe whose peoples look upon themselves as Europeans rather than as Germans and Spaniards and whatnot.

Being an omnivorous and eclectic reader, Chekhov would have known that the Euro - being the first ever supra-national currency - was an experiment, and was therefore likely to fail, as most experiments do. So he would have urged that the euro be scrapped, and that the member countries go back to the currencies they had before.

Being extremely intelligent, Chekhov would have been a realist, and would have known that, because of Europe's widely differing languages and cultures and historical animosities, it will be well-nigh impossible for the member states to give up enough of their sovereign powers to form a politically federal Europe – essential for a successful common currency.

Motherhood

I'll start off today by mentioning the coming election in the land of Amerigo, situated in a parallel world called Osianna, that I've often been finding myself in of late. As I've said *previously*, this is an election for president of Amerigo. The two presidential candidates, the incumbent Bernhardt Ohama who wants to be re-elected, and his challenger Vitt Roomey who would like to be elected, are neck and neck in Amerigo's opinion polls.

While Amerigons know Bernhardt Ohama because he's been president for the last few years, they don't know much about Vitt Roomey. While he (Roomey) seems a nice man, Amerigons are seeing  a strangeness about him. He seems robotic, so much so that more and more Amerigons are asking each other: Is Vitt Roomey an actual robot? After calls for Roomey to produce his birth certificate, so to prove he's human (the Amerigon equivalent of human, that is), he did furnish one. However, many Amerigons think this certificate a fake.

Being from our own world, you may find it odd that an important public personage could be thought an actual robot. However, in Amerigo, robot technology is far in advance of ours. There, they have robots so human-like, you can't tell who's a robot and who's a human. The only hint that an apparent human may be a robot, is if the apparent human is extraordinarily handsome if a man (Roomey is extraordinarily handsome, by the way), or extraordinarily beautiful if a woman. Manufacturers who produce human-like robots, see no point in producing ugly ones, for many human Amerigons, instead of having human spouses, have robot spouses.

In Amerigo, the advantages of having a robot spouse are many - among them that you can control a robot in a way you can't control a human, and that it's generally more pleasant to make conjugal love with a handsome or beautiful robot than with a plain or ugly human. While robots can't produce babies, babies in Amerigo can easily be produced in laboratories. Hence, women in Amerigo with robot spouses, and who wish to experience the joy of motherhood, can simply be inseminated with human sperm in a laboratory. Not only that, she can also choose whether her baby will be a boy or girl, for laboratories in Amerigo can separate the X and Y chromosomes in zygotes in sperm before insemination.

The atavistic yearnings of so many Amerigon women to be mothers, whose babies will grow up to be human adults, is the only reason that so many humans still exist in Amerigo. Robot technology has meant that most jobs there can be done more cheaply and more efficiently by robots, whether human-like or non-human-like. Thus steadily growing numbers of Amerigons not only can't find work, but will never find work because robots are far more intelligent and adaptable than humans. And those humans in Amerigo who do find work, are more likely to be women, because most of those jobs in Amerigo that humans still do, are of the sort that women innately do better than men. 

So, human men in Amerigo are becoming more and more superfluous, which is why most women there now choose to have girl babies, not boys.

Could this state of affairs in Amerigo, which may also be the state of affairs in all of Osianna for all I know, be the future of our own world?

A Butterfly in a Jungle

I've just returned from another short visit to the *land of Amerigo*, situated in a parallel world called Osianna that I'm inexplicably finding myself often in. I can report that the forthcoming election featuring President Bernhardt Ohama and his challenger, Vitt Roomey, is expected by Amerigons to be extremely close. In Amerigo, experts conduct opinion polls just as we do in our world, and these polls confirm that the election could go either way.

I said in my last posting that each candidate has very different ideas on where he would take Amerigons. These differences reflect an ever deepening split within Amerigon society. Unless addressed soon, the causes of this split may result in the two sides becoming so antagonistic, outright civil war could happen. Since Amerigo is militarily and economically by far the most powerful land in Osianna, a civil war in Amerigo would seriously affect all of Osianna. Hence all Osiannans living outside Amerigo are following this election as closely as are Amerigons.

But, who knows, a civil war in Amerigo, though it would happen in a parallel world, could affect us in our world. Amerigo's armed forces have bombs and related explosives of such frightening destructive power, they could destroy all Osianna, rendering it to smoking ashes, and leaving all its peoples dead.

Is there a point at which momentous events like this in a parallel world like Osianna couldn't help but spill over into our world? Think only that mysterious forces which I have control over, are sending me back and forth between our world and Amerigo. My very presence there, although in fleeting visits, affects any Amerigon I interact with, if only in a miniscule way.

For instance I might say something to an Amerigon, which could give him cause him to think differently. This would affect his subsequent actions, which in turn would affect his surroundings and the people in his life. Think of the analogy of a butterfly lapping its wings in a jungle, that causes a tornado somewhere far away. Know what I'm saying?

Amerigons I speak with wouldn't even suspect I'm from our world because I look just like most of them. When in Amerigo I'm grey-coloured (the colour of the diminishing majority of Amerigons). Otherwise I look the same as I do in our world.

Although the way I talk is a bit different from how Amerigons talk, they would doubtless think I'm merely from somewhere else in Osianna. I don't know this for sure, though, for no Amerigon I've spoken with has inquired where I'm from. This is at first sight odd, but it could just be that Amerigons simply aren't interested in matters outside their own bailiwick.

I do wonder why my skin when I'm in Amerigo is grey, not green. Perhaps I'll one day find out if my visits there continue - something I can't assume, since I've no control over my crossings between here and there.

Amerigo 'Tis Of Thee

Did I say *last time* that the land in the parallel world I'm more and more finding myself in, is called Amerigo? If I didn't, I do apologise, for, yes, it's called Amerigo, as Amerigons (the people of Amerigo) write and say it in Amerigon, the language of Amerigons, a language so like English I can read and understand it.

While I can't yet speak Amerigon, Amerigons can understand the English I speak to them in. Some do remark, though, that I sound sort of funny. But then, Amerigons sound sort of funny to me. And I just know they would sound sort of funny to you too were you to hear them.

Amerigo is a vast land with many hundreds of millions of people. Economically and militarily it is the most powerful land in this entire parallel world, which Amerigons refer to as Osianna.

Despite living in the most powerful and rich land in all of Osianna, Amerigons are today not generally a happy people. A steadily growing number are becoming poor, while those few who are rich are becoming richer still.

It wasn't always like this. A mere three or four decades ago most Amerigons belonged to their middle-class, with all its benefits and comforts. However, some Amerigons (most of them the minority *”Greens”*), were poor, and some (most of them the majority ”Greys”), were rich. However, rich Amerigons then were much less rich compared to middle-class Amerigons and poor Amerigons, than they are today.

The gap between rich and non-rich Amerigons is increasing and shows no signs of abating, which is mostly why non-rich Amerigons are unhappy. The well-paying jobs, that there were so many of in the days when most Amerigons were happy, are fast disappearing, as even are the non-well-paying jobs. Hence if an Amerigon does have a job, it's likely an ill-paying one with longer and longer hours, and a job he can lose anytime.

Something else that's making Amerigons unhappy is that lots of green people who live in other lands throughout Osianna, are coming to Amerigo to live. As bad as things now are in Amerigo, they are much worse in these other lands. So many Greens are now coming to Amerigo, they'll soon outnumber the Greys, who don't like this one bit. They consider, for one thing, that these swarms of Greens are taking away the jobs that Greys want. If only they (the Greens) could be shipped back to where they came from, sigh the Greys, all would be like it once was in Amerigo, when everyone spoke Amerigon, when everyone had a good job, when everyone was happy.

This forms some of the backdrop to an election due to happen soon in Amerigo, when Amerigons will choose their next president. Will they re-choose the current president, Bernhardt Ohama, or will they opt for the challenger, Vitt Roomey? Each has very different ideas on where he would take Amerigons.

Because what happens in Amerigo affects all of Osianna, due to Amerigo's far flung power, all of Osianna's peoples are following the twists and turns of this election campaign, which, in its vituperation and disdain for the truth, resembles election campaigns here in our own world.

So caught up am I in this election campaign, I eagerly await each return to the parallel world of Osianna and the land of Amerigo. Since I've no control on my movements back and forth, I never know if any visit to Osianna will be my last. As of now, I'm going there almost daily and nightly. I can only hope this'll continue......well.......at least until the election.

Whether or not I'm granted another visit, I do have more to add to what I've talked of today. I'll do so in the next posting.

Shades of Grey

*Last time*, I spoke of the notion of parallel worlds intersecting with ours. String Theory postulates eleven parallel worlds. Therefore living Beings may live in them. In fact they just could be with you in your sitting room right now, watching you watch your television, or watching you doing whatever else you do in your sitting room.

Maybe, though, they aren't watching you because, despite that they're with you, they are as unable to see you as you are unable to see them. Perhaps when you die you, the real you, will go to one of these parallel worlds where you'll meet your departed Loved Ones who live there now too. Some parallel worlds may be little different to the world you live in. So, when you die you won't notice much difference.

My interest in parallel worlds has been whetted because I have reason to think I'm now regularly going back and forth between our world and another parallel world which is quite like ours. I find myself there usually when I'm asleep in “our” world, but sometimes when I'm not.

In this other world I live in a little house, quite like mine in “our” world. The people there look very human. They walk upright on two legs and wear clothes, and all of that. They speak a language so like English I can easily understand them. The main difference, as far as I can see, between them and “us” is their skin colour. Most are grey - or, rather, most of those in the area my little house is in, are. The others, the minority, are green. But, whatever the colour, the shades range from light to dark.

I, myself, in this other world, am grey, an amorphous grey, neither light nor dark.

The town my little house is in could be a town anywhere in North America. The people there drive cars and go to work everyday, and have televisions and cell phones and all.

Amazingly, whenever I'm there it's like I've always lived there. For instance I have an inherent knowledge of this other world's history and geography and cultures. Either some part of me has actually always lived there, or someone there has programmed into my brain all my inherent knowledge about this other world, so to make me think I've always lived there. However, whenever there, I'm vaguely aware I'm a visitor from “our” world. I'm not, however, bothered by this.

Having read so far, you may be thinking this other world is merely the product of a dream or hallucination, or, more charitably, is an adumbration of incurable madness. Whatever the truth, this other world is as real to me as is “our” world - the world in which I'm writing this.

I'll speak more in a future posting............

I Saw A Face

In my previous posting (August 11, 2012) I'd said I'd never experienced a higher state of awareness. I should have said I'd never experienced an unaided higher state of awareness, for I did once swallow a little something that made me very aware that things aren't how they appear.

Sitting on my couch, I observed the solid mass of my coffee table, but when I looked closely at the grains in its wood I saw they were wriggling like snakes. I went into the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. I saw a face that kept changing and changing into different faces......

I felt this confirmed what scientists assert, that everything is just vibrating energy, that “matter” is merely an illusion. I had often thought about the fact that dogs can hear noises that humans can't, because the noises that humans can't hear are at vibrational frequencies outside the capacity of the human ear to hear, but are within the capacity of the doggie ear to hear. So, just because you can't hear certain sounds, doesn't mean they aren't happening.

Think of the pictures you see on your television. They are the result of electrical waves coming from thousands of miles away. However, you can't see these electrical waves until they manifest as the pictures on your television. Turn your television off, and you can no longer see the pictures.

Did the electrical waves just go away? I think not. They are still flitting around in your sitting-room where your television is, only you are now as unaware of them as the sounds your doggie can hear but you can't.

Although “matter” is merely an illusion, it doesn't feel this way if you're standing on a ladder while painting your house, and you fall and hit the ground and break your arm. It broke because the atoms of your body vibrate at the same frequency as the atoms of the ground that your body fell upon.

If the atoms your body is made of, vibrate at a frequency different from the atoms the ground is made of, your body would fall through the ground instead of hitting it. Your arm would consequently not have broken.

***

Having figured all this out a long time ago, I was gratified recently to learn of “String Theory” - written about by a Dr Brian Greene in a book called “The Elegant Universe”. String Theory postulates, among other things, that there are eleven parallel universes. So, you may live, not in a universe, but in a multiverse.

String Theory is too complex for an untutored, two-fisted, hard-drinking fellow like me, to understand fully. However, as far as I can make out, it says the basic essence of everything is strings that vibrate. Strings vibrating at a certain frequency will manifest as sentient beings (like you) and Matter (like a table).

If you were able to change the vibrational frequency of your strings, you would simply vanish from sight of the people you're with. All that would remain to remind the people you're with that they weren't hallucinating would be the clothes you had on. These would fall in a heap on the floor because the strings they're made of wouldn't have changed their vibrational frequency.

You, yourself, would now suddenly appear in a parallel universe comprising sentient beings and Matter whose strings vibrate at the frequency your own strings now vibrate at. However, you would be naked, and women in this parallel world who see you would scream in fright. So you would quickly have to get new clothes.

I hope you now readily see that String Theory and the multiverse hypothesis it suggests, easily explain paranormal phenomena like ghosts and extra-terrestrial aliens and UFOs that so many people have experienced. Paranormal phenomena, normally existing in a parallel universe, have somehow managed to alter the vibrational frequencies of their strings to what they are in our universe. When these frequencies change back to what they normally are, the ghosts, Aliens, UFOs and what have you, simply vanish from your sight.

Here's something else for you to think about. Some part of you (your soul perhaps?) when you die may continue to live in one of these parallel universes. Isn't that exciting?

Many men of science of the more enlightened kind (who therefore wouldn't include Richard Dawkins) take String Theory seriously, and believe it will one day be proved mathematically.

On that happy day, you will regard the “paranormal” as merely the “normal”.

Flying Through The Heavens

A blog I sometimes visit had an entry about expanding states of awareness. The expanded states of awareness (consciousness), including out-of-body experiences, that so many people have had, and the paranormal phenomena of ghosts and UFOs and Alien abductions, do no less than make one wonder how exactly things work in the quotidian world one takes for granted.

I would so like to have had at least one experience of an expanded state of awareness, or have had at least one sighting of a ghost or UFO, or at least once have been abducted by Extra-Terrestrial Aliens. Unfortunately, I was born with the most prosaic mind and sensibilities. Hence the exciting experiences and states of awareness I've just spoken of, are what I've only read about, or have only heard talked of.

I have, though, had experiences where I seemed to be outside myself and observing myself. But these were in unpleasant or tense situations. It was as if I could only get through them by taking a little trip outside my body, making it only my body that had to suffer the unpleasant or tense situation. The real “I”, hovering just outside, was merely a looker-on.

No doubt I had merely imagined myself outside my body. It's what anyone can do, and I recommend you do this when next you're in a bad situation. Your imagination can make you temporarily free.

Although wedded to the quotidian world without being able to find temporary relief from it through paranormal experiences, I do sometimes have vivid dreams at night, that stay with me a long, long time after.

One such vivid dream I had.......I dunno......about fifteen years ago or so. I was in a huge spaceship, an Alien spaceship, that had just taken off. I looked down on earth through a large window and saw it getting smaller and smaller. I knew I would never return. I would spend the rest of my life in air-conditioned comfort, flying through the heavens, gazing out at the starry immensity for evermore. I was very happy about this for I could now just let go and not worry about anything ever again.

Then I woke up. When I realised it was only a dream I was most disappointed.

In the years since, I've thought often of this dream. What did it mean? Maybe this is how it'll be when I breathe my last. My soul, the real "I", will break free of the body in which it has been a prisoner for many decades. I'll fly off into the heavens as did the spaceship in my dream. I'll just let go, and will feel a wonderful relief that I need not worry about anything ever again. I'll be totally free.

Perhaps, then, imprisonment is what earthly life is all about. Life means being in jail, the jail of the body. You wish not to leave this jail, however unpleasant it is, for fear of what lies outside it. Better the jail you know than the freedom outside you don't know.

The Genius and Love

The last time I wrote about Theodore Dreiser's “The Genius” (July 4th), Eugene Witla was romantically involved with two young women, Angela Blue and Ruby Kenny, at the same time. Because, unlike with Ruby, Angela didn't yield herself to Eugene, he found this particularly titillating. As a result, Angela slowly gained the ascendancy over Ruby for Eugene's affections.

Angela was hoping Eugene would offer her his hand in marriage, for her situation was getting to be desperate. She was five years older than Eugene, nearing thirty – the age when she would be in danger of becoming forever an Old Maid.

While Eugene liked romance, he wasn't big on marriage. Angela, realising that if she was to hold on to Eugene she would have to yield herself to him, accordingly did. Then she said to him in so many words that if she couldn't be married, so to be left on the shelf as an Old Maid, she would drown herself in a lake.

Being not totally devoid of conscience, Eugene promised to marry Angela. First, though, he planned to move to New York City where there were more opportunities for him as an artist. Once established there, he would send for Angela and they would marry.

However, in New York City, Eugene met young women, like Miriam Finch and Christine Channing, who, through their sophistication and erudition, made Angela seem to him a country bumpkin.

Nonetheless, and with a heavy heart, Eugene eventually did send for Angela, and they were married. Then they moved to Paris for a short while.

Angela was the very model of a selfless wife. She took care of all the household duties, thereby freeing Eugene to devote all his time to his painting.

.....Only at night when there were no alien sights and sounds to engage his attention, when not even his art could come between them, and she could draw him into her arms and submerge his restless spirit in the tides of her love did she feel his equal – really worthy of him.

These transports which came with the darkness or with the mellow light of the little oil lamp that hung in chains from the ceiling near their wide bed, or in the faint freshness of dawn with the birds cheeping from the one tree of the little garden below – were to her at once utterly generous and profoundly selfish. She had eagerly absorbed Eugene's philosophy of self-indulgent joy where it concerned themselves – all the more readily as it coincided with her own vague ideas and her own hot impulses.

Angela had come to marriage through years of self-denial, years of bitter longing for the marriage that perhaps would never be, and out of these years she had come to the marriage bed with a cumulative and intense passion.

Without any knowledge either of the ethics or physiology of sex, except as pertained to her state as a virgin, she was vastly ignorant of marriage itself; the hearsay of girls, the unequivocal confessions of newly-married women, and the advice of her elder sister had left her almost as ignorant as before, and now she explored its mysteries with abandon, convinced that the unrestrained gratification of passion was normal and excellent........

Beginning with their life in the studio in Washington Square, and continuing with even greater fervour now in Paris, there was what might be described as a prolonged riot of indulgence between them, bearing no relation to any necessity in their natures, and certainly none to the demands which Eugene's intellectual and artistic tasks laid upon him. She was to Eugene astonishing and delightful; and yet perhaps not so much delightful as astonishing.......”

Could “Fifty Shades of Grey” do better?

Can we even wonder why “The Genius”, shortly after being published, was Banned, and could only be re-published several years afterwards?

Ten Favourite Songs

The writer of a blog I sometimes visit had read a book by a psychologist that said the stuff you have in your house, and the stuff you have in your garbage bin, and the clothes you wear, and the songs you like, say everything about you.

So she (the blogger) made a list of the ten songs she likes best, and invited her readers to list their ten best songs in the “comments” section. I accordingly did this.

While I found it extremely difficult to decide on the ten songs I like best, I decided to list the ten songs that are among my favourites: Here they are, and in no particular order:

- *Windmills of Your Mind* – Dusty Springfield

- *It Was A Very Good Year* – Frank Sinatra

- *Morning Has Broken* – Cat Stevens

- *Solitaire* – Neil Sedaka

- *Long, Long Time* – Linda Ronstadt

- *Cat's In The Cradle* – Harry Chapin

- *Scarboro Fair* – Simon and Garfunkel

- *Old Man* – Neil Young

- *Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues* – Danny O'Keefe

- *Night Fever* – Bee Gees

Since, according the psychologist, the songs we like say a lot about us, what does my liking these songs say about me? I don't know. Or maybe I do, but would rather not talk about it. But I notice that most came out in the 1970s, which is odd, since I'm of the generation that thought the songs of the 1960s were the be all and end all of all that was good in popular music.

While three songs in my list (It Was a Very Good Year, Windmills of Your Mind, and Scarboro Fair) did come out in the 'sixties, only one (Scarboro Fair) was a stereotypical 'sixties song.

Because I consider that the songs of the 'seventies were better than those of the 'sixties, this is no doubt why no Beatles songs made it into my list. Not that the Beatles didn't come out with good songs and deep songs, for they did come out with many. Somehow, though, none of the Beatles' songs spoke to me as did the songs in my list, which speak to me now as much as they did then, those forty-or-so years ago.

Were I to make another list of ten other songs I like, I might well put some Beatles' songs in there, as well as some Kinks songs, and maybe some Elvis songs too.

In my list, one song (Night Fever) seems not quite to fit, for it is of the disco genre, and therefore frivolous compared to the others. But I had a weakness for the disco songs. They were a welcome break from the heaviness of the 'sixties and early 'seventies. Besides, I always particularly liked the Bee Gees.

More on Education

Here's another comment I left on the blog posting on a blog I read often, that I wrote of last time (July 11, 2012):

Based on the comments so far, the quality of taxpayer-funded education, once excellent, would seem to have gone downhill, continues to go downhill, and will go yet further in this unhappy direction unless Something Is Done.

While it might be nice to have taxpayer-funded education that’s once again excellent, the question I ask is: excellent for what?

I suggest (and most humbly so) that there’s no longer a need for excellent taxpayer-funded education because there are no longer the jobs for excellently-educated young people to go to. Consider how it was in the 1950s and 1960s in America. There were jobs galore then, that needed educated brains, most of which had to be American-educated.

Today, on the other hand, most jobs needing educated brains have been moved overseas. Those still remaining in America can be done by brains imported already-educated.

This state of affairs isn’t because those who run corporate America - the ones who have moved these jobs overseas - are any more wicked now than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s just that the technology has changed. While the American-educated brain was once the best means for corporate America’s profits, the foreign-educated brain is now the best means.

As for corporate America, the point has been made by certain knowledgeable people, that most of the big corporations are no longer really “American”. Rather, they’re global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things in wherever in the world it’s most profitable.

Hence corporate America no longer has any loyalty to America. It just needs lower taxes, fewer regulations, and less public spending, which would include less spending on education.

Since what corporate America (or corporate anywhere, for that matter) wants, it usually gets, taxpayer-funded education will likely continue in its present unhappy direction.