The Cardinal Rule Of Military Strategy

The Cardinal Rule of Military Strategy, as I see it, is to expect the military forces of a nation to try to do what they have done very well before. In other words, when a nation has won a great military victory, it cannot help but try to repeat that victory in later combat.

Let's look at a few examples.

In 1940, the Nazis made a successful thrust with tanks through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg. The British and French had presumed that it was not possible to move a large force of tanks through a dense forest.

Four years later, the fortunes of the war had changed but the battle front was at the same place. Once more, the Nazis launched an attack with a large force of tanks through the Ardennes Forest. This time, it was Americans that were taken by surprise and the result was what is commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.

The failure to anticipate that the enemy might try a move which they had done so successfully a few years previously sheds a light on my Cardinal Rule of Military Strategy. If the Nazis had made such a successful attack using tanks through this forest before, why wouldn't they try it again?

On to another prominent example. The real turning point of the Second World War in Europe was the Battle of Stalingrad. The Soviet forces managed to sorround and trap the German Sixth Army and associated units in the city of Stalingrad. The final result was a great victory.

After the war, the alliance between the Soviets and the western Allies cooled into the Cold War. Stalin decided to cut off access to West Berlin, which was an enclave of West Germany within East German territory. The Communists forbade access by road to West Berlin and harrassed the Allied aircraft which were trying to supply the isolated city. The hope seems to have been that the Allies would just abandon the city to the Communists.

What could this be but an attempt to replicate the victory at Stalingrad a few years earlier, in which the Communists had managed to sorround the enemy?

In 1905, a newly modernized Japan won a great naval victory over Russian forces in the sea adjacent to Korea. What was the Pearl Harbor Attack forty years later but an attempt to repeat this victory?

In World War One, German forces had considerable success in the campaign against Russia, which ultimately underwent the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Why didn't Stalin anticipate that they would be sure to attempt a repeat, which came with the invasion of 1941?

The amphibious landing by the Allies at Inchon during the Korean War looks very much like an effort to replicate the series of amphibious landings on the coast of Italy during the Second World War a few years before. Korea consists of a peninsula which resembles that of Italy and the most obvious way to break a combat deadlock is such a landing behind enemy lines.

If the Vietnamese Communists had successfully overcome the French forward base at Dien Bien Phu, then why wouldn't they try a similar assault against the American forward base at Khe Sanh? Which they did during the Tet Offensive of 1968.

Movies can also play a role in the Cardinal Rule of Military Strategy. If a secret operation to rescue a hostage worked so well in the 1969 movie "Where Eagles Dare", why wouldn't a very similar operation work in real life to rescue the American hostages being held in Iran in 1980? Am I the only one to notice the very close parallels between this movie, especially the chase scene at the end of the movie, and "Operation Eagle Claw" to rescue the hostages?

The victory being emulated does not necessarily have to belong to the nation which is seeking to achieve it. A smashing or spectacular victory by one nation is likely to be copied by others in later combat. Let's look at a few examples of this.

The sorrounding of the American Embassy in Saigon, then the capital city of South Vietnam, in 1975 was a real debacle for the U.S. as it tried to evacuate as many people as possible by helicopter to ships off the coast as the world watched the fall of the country on television. Is it only a coincidence that four years later, Iranian mobs seeking to humiliate the United States would launch an attack on it's embassy?

In 1967, Israeli forces were heavily outnumbered as war neared. But an aggressive and well-coordinated blitz turned everything around in what became known as the Six-Day War. Four years later, India decided to intervene in the West Pakistani effort to subdue a rebellion in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The Pakistani response was very reminiscent of the sudden Israeli blitz, particularly the thrust which resulted in the Battle of Longewala.

I don't think that suicide terror tactics are originally Islamic at all. They are a copy of the kamikaze and banzai tactics of the Second World War.

Once again, we come to movies. We know that the 9/11 attack of 2001 had been in the planning stages for about five years. Two movies that were very popular in 1996 were "Independence Day" and "Pearl Harbor". Why do I have the feeling that this is no coincidence?

In summary, The Cardinal Rule Of Military Strategy is to anticipate that the enemy will try to repeat what they have done well in previous combat. They may also imitate a smashing victory in recent memory by another nation, or even a plot from a movie. I don't think that there is any rule of combat that can be considered as more important than this.

America's War Icons

Has anyone ever noticed a pattern in the wars that America has been involved in? An American victory seems to depend, as much as anything, on the presence of an "icon" that is suitable as a rallying point. I find this really amazing.

This icon pattern began with it's first war, The Revolutionary War, with the shootings of colonists at Lexington and Concord. They rallied around these shootings as they went to war for independence.

In the War of 1812, however, such an icon to rally around was missing and the war ended in a stalemate.

In the Mexican War, the rallying icon was "Remember the Alamo". This referred to the earlier massacre of Texans, and the heroism of the defenders, at that missionary complex by the Mexican Army in Texas' war of independence against Mexico.

In America's Civil War, it was Fort Sumter that served as the icon. This was a fort on an island just off Charleston, South Carolina. When South Carolina seceded from the Union, the garrison of Fort Sumter refused to lower it's Union flag and troops on the shore opened fire upon it, thus initiating the war.

In the Spanish-American War, it was "Remember the Maine". This was an American warship that had been sent into the harbor (harbour) of Havava to protect American interests during Cuba's uprising against Spanish rule. The ship mysteriously exploded, and the explosion was blamed on Spanish forces. Whether this was true or not, and there is considerable doubt to this day, it served as the icon as America went to war.

In the First World War, it looked as if America would not get involved. But an icon came along to change that. There were many Americans among the dead when the British passenger liner, the Lusitania, was torpedoed by a German submarine.

All we need to say about America's entry into the Second World War is "Remember Pearl Harbor".

The Korean War, like the War of 1812, lacked such an icon and so, like the War of 1812, did not end in a clear American victory. There was the ship, USS Pueblo, that was captured by the North Koreans, but that did not happen until much later.

The Vietnam War is another one that lacked such an icon as a rallying point and so did not end in a clear victory. There was an attack on the destroyer, USS Maddox, in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. But damage to the ship was slight, and it did not merit war icon status.

In the present series of wars, of course, the icon is "Remember 9/11". This attack on the U.S. played into the historical pattern of war icons with perfection. Nothing that Al Qaeda could have done would have provided the United States with a better war icon. This was a superior icon even to Pearl Harbor, since it targeted civilians.

I find that further discussion is merited in the case of Desert Storm in 1991. It was a clear victory, but "Remember Kuwait" was hardly the rallying point. It is true that this was an international effort, and less than half of the participating combat troops were American.

But there is a now-forgotten incident that I have long believed served the U.S. Government as the effective war icon for Desert Storm. In 1987, there were warships patrolling the Persian Gulf to ensure that oil tankers could get through, as the Iran-Iraq War was still being fought.

An Iraqi pilot seems to have mistook the USS Stark for an Iranian vessel. The pilot fired an anti-ship missile into the Stark, killing 37 U.S. sailors. Even though the incident appears to have been a mistake, I believed that this served the U.S. Government three years later as a war icon in expelling Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait.

Isn't it interesting that the War of 1812, the Korean War and, the Vietnam War are America's three wars that did not end in clear victory? Those are also the three that did not have a significant war icon, as did the ones that did end in victory.

The Definition Of Modern

What does it actually mean to be modern? This is one of those questions that you can ask twenty different people, and get twenty different answers. On this blog, I explained why I thought that the measurement of time was a vital factor in the development of civilization in the posting "The Beginning Of Civilization".

Let's see if we can accurately define "modern" today.

Language comes in two forms, spoken and written. My hypothesis is that as society progresses and accumulates more knowledge, more information will be expressed in the written, as opposed to the spoken, form of language. This concept is similar to "The Progression Of Knowledge" on the progress blog, in which I speculated that as society progresses, a higher proportion of data will be expressed in numbers instead of words.

I believe that the amount of verbal communication between humans always remains about the same. But as society progresses and we deal with much more information, the additional information tends to get expressed more in the written form of language.

Historically, the spoken word has been of greater overall importance than the written word. But progress and education eventually brings society to a point where the written language becomes more important, as a whole, than the spoken language. It is at that point, in terms of our times, that society has become "modern" in my definition.

Consider the Chinese language. It is written only one way but can be spoken in two major ways, Mandarin and Cantonese. The Chinese Government makes it clear that it favors (favours) Mandarin, but Cantonese is just too widespread to eliminate and there is no serious effort to do so. But at this point, there is no chance of China splitting apart along spoken language lines.

Now, consider the former Yugoslavia. It's major language was Serbo-Croatian. This language is just the opposite of Chinese. It is spoken in one way, but there are two different ways to write it. Croatians use the Latin alphabet, while Serbs use the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet.

Comparing China with it's one-time Cold War ally, the former Yugoslavia, China is in no danger whatsover of breaking apart over language differences. In fact, China is much more stable and united today than it was in times past. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia is history.

It is true that Yugoslavia was always a kind of artificial country patched together in the aftermath of World War One. But at least it had a common spoken language, and it held together for more than seventy years.

My hypothesis is that, as time went on and both China and Yugoslavia entered the modern era, the written word became more important, as a whole, than the spoken word. While this is certainly not the only factor in the unity of these two countries, it was a powerful factor in making Yugoslavia less united while China became more united.

It is true that cell phones (mobiles) have really swept the world. But these phones are used mostly for local communications. When phones are used to talk long distance, it is almost always to talk to persons that we already know.

Computer technology, including email, texting and, web sites has given a massive boost to the importance of the written word. This comes on top of greatly increased education and literacy levels across the world. We have entered the modern era with written language having exceeded spoken language in overall importance.

This is what it means to be modern.

Ancient Egypt And Hinduism

The present situation in Egypt reminded me to post something that I had thought of a long time ago. One of my favorite (favourite) topics is archeology (archaelogy), particularly that of the Middle East. The reason that I have never written much about it here is simply that this system of blogs is about new discoveries, new insights, or at least new ways of looking at things. Since I have never been to the Middle East, I am not really in a position to discover anything new concerning this topic.

Those who may have read my now long out of print book "The Bible And The Nineties" may remember that I briefly described the many close parallels between the religion of ancient Egypt and modern Hinduism. Let's look more at this today.

I consider Egypt to be the greatest of ancient civilizations. This is due not only to the artifacts and monuments left by the ancient Egyptians, but to the sheer longevity of the civilization. Assyria, Babylon and Persia all reached a peak that was as great as that of Egypt. But none of these lasted very long as a great power.

In later days, ancient Greece appeared suddenly as a brilliant light on the world, but then faded just as quickly. Even as widespread as Rome was, it lasted only a few centuries as a great power.

Egypt, in contrast, was a truly great kingdom for maybe two thousand years. A major part of the reason was certainly it's somewhat protected location and the reliability of the Nile River. I described my vision of how ancient Egypt has influenced the modern world in the posting "The Center Of The World" on http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ .

My belief is that Hinduism must be a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt. The similarities, allowing for change over time, are just too close and numerous. Hinduism is a very old religion that arose in India at the time that Egypt was a thriving civilization. Unlike every other major religion, Hinduism cannot be traced to any one founder or event.

The people in Egypt in the days of the pharoahs did not seem to believe in the personal reincarnation that is so central to Hinduism. But in the clear skies of Egypt, they took note of the "death" of celestial bodies in the western sky every evening and their "rebirth" in the eastern sky. The Egyptians considered the constellations in the vicinity of the north star to be "immortal" because they never set below the horizon.

Egypt's world-famous pyramids, over a hundred of them, are always located west of the Nile River, except for one. Pyramids are tombs and west is where the sun and stars set ( or die ) every evening. It seemed natural to the early Egyptians for west to represent death.

Just as in Hinduism, astrology had great importance to the ancient Egyptians. Consider the Sphinx, for example, a huge stone carving of the head of a woman on the body of a lion. The woman represents the constellation Virgo as the beginning of the zodiac and the lion represents Leo as it's end. Both religions consist of numerous deities, the Egyptian Ra, the sun god, has a role similar to the Hindu Vishnu

The most important physical feature of Egypt is the Nile River. Without it, all of Egypt would be a barren desert. The Nile carried fertile soil upstream and deposited it on it's banks and it's Mediterranean delta. The ancient Egyptians clearly recognized the importance of the Nile and worshipped the river itself as a god.

To Hindus, it is the Ganges which is a holy river in a very similar way. Pilgrimage to Benares, which is situated on the river, and bathing in the Ganges is a sacred Hindu ritual. In Hinduism, the Ganges is a goddess just as the Nile was a god to the ancient Egyptians. You can read in detail about the many similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and Hinduism by doing a Google search for "Ancient Egypt Hinduism".

The many close similarities are there and the timeframe is right, the next question is how the religion got from Egypt to India. For one thing, there were trade routes all over the Middle East and Near East in ancient times.

In the early 1970s, there was a project and then a movie made about it called "The Ra Expedition". This was the construction of a boat from papyrus reeds, following the plan of such a boat from ancient Egypt. The boat was sailed and, on the second attempt, it made it across the Atlantic Ocean. This proved that the ancient Egyptians could definitely have accomplished such a feat, and they did indeed have a fleet of ships in the Red Sea about 2,000 BC.

If such a boat had sailed from Egypt southward on the Red Sea, the ocean currents could have carried it from there straight to the west coast of India. My claim is that the evidence presented here makes it a better than even probability that modern Hinduism is a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt, whether it was brought to India by land or by sea.

The False Package

Why is it that, in many countries, rightward politics is associated with belief in God while the left is perceived as more secular? This is by no means a fixed rule, but it is generally accepted that those on the political right are somewhat more likely to say that they believe in God than those on the left.

By the way, the popular designation of "left" and "right" are entirely arbitrary. It started when members of Britain's Parliament would sit to either the right or the left of the aisle according to political views. The designation could easily be reversed. It is similar in concept to the designation in physics as "negative" or "positive", with reference to electric charge.

This relationship between religion and politics may have begun with the atheistic and extreme leftward economic theory of Karl Marx.

The truth is that the Bible does not endorse any political or economic system. Those on the right can point to Jesus' seemingly harsh Parable of the Talents, where all that the worthless servant had was taken away from him by the master and given to the servant that already had the most. In another seemingly rightward passage, "Those who will not work will neither eat".

But those on the left can point to Jesus' overturning the tables of the money changers at the Temple, as well as his reference to the rich young man that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (which would indeed be quite difficult) than for a rich man to go to Heaven. There is also the statement in the Acts of the Apostles that all of the early apostles owned all of their belongings in common, with no private ownership. The left could also go back to the Old Testament, to the criticism by the prophet Amos of the rich taking advantage of the poor.

I consider this linking of the political right to religion, and the political left to secularism to be a false package, and I would like very much to work toward undoing it. In my case, Christianity is the most important thing to me but I am a Democrat/liberal/mild socialist. My economic ideal is that both the capitalism and communism, at each end of the spectrum, have valid points but also serious flaws. The best thing to do is to chart a middle course that gets the best of both and the worst of neither. I see economics not as a slope with one side above the other, but as a peak with the high point in the center.

Politics and religion should be completely separate. Being a Christian should have nothing to do with how one believes the economics of society should be ordered. Politics should come from which system one believes will bring the greatest overall fairness and good.

The linking of politics and religion seems nonsensical to me. Religion is far above politics. One should not support a political party simply because of common religious belief with it's members.
The most important issue of politics is economics. Religion has no influence on whether one would prefer to drive a red or a blue car, so why should it influence one's choice of politics?

The Property Order

Has anyone ever pondered the apparent mystery of why, in the U.S., there has been such movement of population over the past half century from the northeast to the southwest? At first observation, it would seem that the opposite should be the case. The northeastern U.S. has abundant water and rainfall, fertile soil and, no earthquakes or large-scale fires while the southwest is the opposite. The northeast is also positioned closer to international destinations in terms of historic travel and trade. Yet, the population has shifted dramatically to the southwest.

Today, I would like to present my conclusion on this question and it has nothing to do with the sun. When people settle in a new area, one of the most important things that they seek out is a water supply and the first houses and buildings in the new settlement are inevitably built near the water. The easiest and least expensive homes to construct are those of wood frame. It is usually only when the settlement grows into a city and lumber becomes scarce and more expensive that developers begin building homes primarily out of brick.

In cities across the U.S. except in the southwest, it is easy to see this pattern today. Houses in the center of the city will be built primarily of wood. Outside that, there will be a ring of houses constructed mostly of brick. Finally, there will be the ring of postwar suburbs outside. This pattern does not always apply to the older and more densely populated areas in which wooden structures from two hundred years ago have not survived and building was more likely to be done with stone, rather than scarce wood, from the beginning.

A basic fact of real estate is that waterfront property is worth more than property that is not near or on water. The problem that we run into with a growing city is that the waterfront property would be greatly increasing in value as the city grows except that it is occupied by the older homes that were among the first built in the settlement when it was new. These homes near the water are, by this point, much less valuable than the homes that are being built further out, near the edge of the growing city.

This, then is the great mismatch of what I will call the property order. The best homes are built on land that is less than the best, in terms of location, while what would be the best land is occupied by some of the least expensive homes. This mismatch in the property order lowers the overall value of all the property in the city, which would be at it's peak when the value of homes matches the value of their land without the home. What we basically have is the economic order of the Twenty-First Century stuck with much of the property order of the Nineteenth Century.

The only way around this is to knock vast numbers of older homes down. The original wood frame homes were probably not built with the idea of lasting more than a century and there is only so much that refurbishing can do. Knocking down and building anew is the only way to maximize the property order efficiency.

The best example of this is the massive renovation of Paris in the Nineteenth Century. It encountered much resistance. But without it, Paris certainly would not be the city that it is today. See "Baron Hausmann" or "Hausmann's Renovation Of Paris" on http://www.wikipedia.com/

Now back to the mass movement of population to America's southwest over the past fifty years or so. Even with the mass production of air conditioners, the area is dry and dusty and hot. The American Southwest may have sunshine and it certainly has a beauty all it's own. But neither of these is the reason that it has boomed.

It is because the southwest was unencumbered by the property order prevalent in the rest of the country and so it gave us the opportunity to start the property order over again. The same is true to some extent of Florida because before the advent of air conditioning, it was too hot and humid to be as populated as it is now.

The October Syndrome

What do the following stock market crashes all have in common: 1907, 1929, 1987 and now, 2008? The answer is that they all occurred in the month of October. Stock trading continues throughout the year so the odds are one in 1,728 that this is a coincidence.

The people in the finance industry are human beings. The center of U.S. finance is New York City. October in New York is when summer is gone and there is a chill in the air.

This affects the moods of the stock traders and other financial people and if there is some instability in the economy to begin with, the crash tends to come in October. What better way is there to explain this? If the center of finance and stock trading were moved to a warmer location, these crashes may not have happened.

The Reaction Syndrome

There are a number of basic, underlying problems in the world. One of the most basic is that of population. The problem is not that people are using gasoline (petrol), the problem is that there are too many people using petrol (gasoline). The trouble is not that people require food and produce garbage, the trouble is that there are too many people in the world that require food and produce garbage. Another of the basic, underlying problems in the world is that rich people have few children while poor people often have many children. This concentrates wealth and spreads poverty.

Today, I would like to describe another underlying flaw that keeps the world from being the best place that it could be. I have named it the "Reaction Syndrome". Every new system for ordering society that human beings come up with is a reaction against something that came before. We either repeat history or react against it. The trouble is that when we react against a system that came before, we almost invariably go too far in the opposite direction for best results.

This causes so much of the wastefulness and bad things that did not have to happen that has plagued human history. When we have a system that brings about bad things, we react against the system but in doing so we go too far in the other direction and so get more bad things. Life is a lot like a ridge in which the top of the ridge is the best that things can be. This Reaction Syndrome causes us to zig zag from one side of the ridge to the other instead of progressing in a straight line.

One of the reasons for this zig-zag progress instead of the straight line which would be much better is that when it comes to the system of organization in the society we live in, our thinking is colored (coloured) by our emotions. The feelings of some against the present system and the vested interests of others in favor (favour) of the present system prevent us from seeing the center line that represents the ridge, the high line, of life. This causes the progress of history to be an inefficient and calamitous zig-zag.

American laissez-faire Capitalism was a reaction against European class strictures and heriditary status. But it went too far in creating a few very rich and too many poor. This brought about Communism, which was designed to help the working class proletariot but went too far and destroyed incentive while forstering too much corruption. This caused America to swing too far right during the administration of George W. Bush after the fall of large-scale Communism. This has now brought about a swing back to the left with Barack Obama and the implementation of full-scale socialism in America. We just cannot seem to move forward in a straight line because of this Reaction Syndrome.

The only way to find the ridge of best efficiency is to react in both directions. Our emotions and the Reaction Syndrome prevent us from seeing the ridge clearly so the best we can do is to go through a double reaction. I define a mature ideology as one that has gone through at least two such reactions, one in each direction. New social orders tend toward the more extreme but as the order matures, it invariably finds it's way toward the center because that is where the ridge of best efficiency is to be found.

The ratings of the best countries in the world to live by the UN leave no doubt that a mild version of socialism is the best system. That is because centrist socialism has already gone through a double reaction, one on each side, against both Capitalism and Communism. Politcs and economics is a complex realm where the best course of action has shown to be to listen to the valid points of both Capitalism and Communism and to craft a system that gives the best of both rather than choosing one system or the other.

Twenty-First Century Thinking

In my book "The Commoner Syndrome", I wrote about how the progress of so many individuals, as well as the world as a whole, is being held back by the fact that the world has changed so fast due to technology for our thinking to keep up. To sum it up, we are largely a bunch of commoners that find ourselves thrown into the future like some science fiction movie. This is the root of so much of the trouble in the world today.

The jobs that we do and the technology that we use today is a part of it. But it is not the major part. People in general are doing well adapting to the new world of using computers, the internet and so on. However, there is an outer sphere as well as an inner sphere to the new world that we have created and thus must adapt to.

The new technology that we use today is the inner sphere. The changed world as a whole, and our ways of thinking about it, is the outer sphere. We, as a whole, are doing a much better job at adapting to the inner sphere, actually using the new technology, than the outer sphere, new ways of thinking about the world that the new technology has created.

The most obvious change in the world that we now find ourselves in is that it is greatly increased in both scope and complexity. It is not your region or nation that counts any more, it is the world that counts. Whether anyone likes it or not, we have created a world in which there is no such thing as a foreigner. We could say that in our world of today, the only foreigners are those who still do not realize that there is no more any such thing as a foreigner. A foreigner today is not one from a different place but one whose thinking still stuck in a different time. The terrorism so far in the new century is obviously the growing pains of this new world.

No one is more out of place today than one who still sees the world as a simplistic black and white place as if it is still the Nineteenth Century. It is great to be able to break things down into simple formulas when dealing with the world of science, the physical world. But that does not work with the world of people. It is like looking at a black and white photograph of a million rainbows.

While the people of the world are becoming somewhat more alike, they are and will remain very diverse and different from one another. My position is that we should adapt to that and do all we can to learn about our fellow human beings. Each of us will live more and more in a world of people who are not like us. No one is more out of place in this world than someone with an old-fashioned set of pigeon holes in their thinking in which everyone they meet can be placed neatly in one of the pigeon holes.

So much of the trouble in the world today is because we have a tendency to lump people together that we do not understand and who share some superficial similarities or are from the same general part of the world. On 9/11 (or 11/9), America was attacked by a relatively small group of criminals. Since then, by lumping people together that had no involvement in it, we have come well on the way to creating a global war. We are in a new world in which 25 or so people can get together and launch a major attack aginst a nation without the involvement of any foreign government. The simple black and white days of Pearl Harbor are no more.

People in other countries are the same way, a cartoonist can draw some ignorant cartoon and many protesters act as if the entire continent where he lives bears responsibility. Maybe we have created a world that is more complex than we are able to handle, it is so easy and simple to just lump people all together like we did in the past instead of trying to understand the details and complexity of the situation.

One thing about the new world that the U.S. government does not seem to understand is that when a nation attempts to set itself up as an example for the world to follow, instant global news allows that world to see what is happening inside the U.S., including the details of every school shooting and innocent victim caught in the crossfire during a shoot-out between rival drug dealers.

Living in this new world means keeping up with the world. As a native of Europe, I am mystified by those with a snapshot view of the world from well into the past. The only Europe that I know is the European Union and am surprised to encounter people who seem to think that there is still a state of war between Britain and Germany or between Britain and France or between France and Germany. These countries are no more at war than are the north and the south in the U.S.

Most of us are tied down by artificial bonds that are relics of the simpler world of the past. We are shattering many of these bonds, particularly with regard to aging. It used to be that teenage athletes did not continue training into their thirties, forties and, fifties. At one time, no one could imagine college students in their forties. Beauty queens used to all be in their teens or twenties. We have broken all of these barriers in recent years but still have a long way to go in our thinking to bring the world anywhere near maximum efficiency.

We are now in a world that is not only full of information but where almost all of it is instantly accessible. People may have had hard lives back in the "old days" but the fact is that life in the old days also had the advantage of simplicity. The average person did not have to know that much to get by in life.

We have made the world of today into a vast blur of information that travels at light speed. If we choose to ignore that, we will fall behind other countries, plain and simple. Our technology has created a global village full of data but that means that is we choose to continue watching nonsense on television while people in other countries are ever learning, we will fall behind. Our mindless entertainment is the ghost of the days when much knowledge was not necessary for the average person.

This new and more complicated world requires much more of each person than the world of the past did. Back then, a person would learn and grow only until they were finished with school. Now, to be an effective people, each of us must continue learning and growing all of our lives. The thing that is missing in so many places that are not doing well economically is a sense of improvement. In contrast, in places that are booming economically, you will find a dynamic sense of improvement.

What about your own sense of improvement? Suppose you learn that you will be seeing a person that you have not seen in six years. You think of giving the person your email address but then you remember that the person did not use computers when you last saw them. But that was six years ago, what if the person had learned and is now a computer user. Or what if the person was out of shape? How do you know that they are still out of shape? Maybe they have improved. Central to the commoner thinking of the past is the idea that "things are the way they always are".

The Smaller Country Advantage

Have you ever noticed that in national rankings of quality of life, citizens of smaller countries usually seem to be a shade better off than those of larger countries? It does not seem to matter which method is used to rate the quality of life in different countries, either the "Human Development Index" or the "Human Poverty Index", both of which are described on http://www.wikipedia.com/ With other factors being relatively equal, smaller countries tend to emerge a little bit ahead.

We could conclude that this is because in a smaller country, in terms of population, it is easier to see the best course of action. Larger countries have traditionally been considered as having advantages of military strength and more possibility of a diverse economy. But today it seems that with operating a larger country, the additional complexity means more chance of becoming "lost in ideology" instead of clearly seeing the wisest course of action.

The leadership of a big country is thus more likely to either overshoot or undershoot the ridge representing the best course of action. I described this resulting zig-zag through history in another posting on this blog, "The Reaction Syndrome", but it seems to apply especially to bigger countries. Big countries have traditionally set the pace ideologically but it seems clear by the above rankings of the quality of life in different countries that a smaller country is less complex and thus likely to be run slightly more efficiently.

Social Engineering

The general consensus is that the so-called "social engineering" of the Twentieth Century, such as the creation of the "new Communist man" is a failure. Or is it? Let's take another look.

The national values of the U.S. and western European countries are roughly similar. There are differences but they are relatively minor in comparison with the value systems as a whole. So then why do the people vote so differently? The average Democrat in the U.S is often well to the right, in political terms, of a "conservative" in Europe. Why is this so when the national values are similar; freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.

I have a simple answer that involves unintentional social engineering. The general street patterns of the cities is what is so different. The way my hypothesis works is that the buildings comprising city blocks represents business. The streets with commuters and pedestrians moving on them represents the people.

Consider a city like Paris. The basic plan of the city is streets connecting one traffic circle to another, usually with a monument in the traffic circle. This means that the city blocks of Paris are all kinds of odd triangular shapes. We could thus say that Paris is a city based on streets, rather than buildings. The street plan is laid out and the buildings have to fit in with the streets.

The typical American city with it's grid pattern is just the opposite. Rectangular grid blocks are the most efficient shape for the buildings but the least efficient shape for commuters and pedestrians. In the grid, it is easier to build and maintain a building of a given floor size but it comes at the expense of making travellers along the streets go further to get to their destinations.

Paris, in contrast, is just the opposite of the grid pattern. Travellers along the streets can get where they are going by covering less distance, on the average, but buildings must squeeze into less spatially efficient triangular city blocks. My hypothesis is that something that is so primal as the general street patterns in a nation's city's must have an effect on the way people think things should operate, even though we tend to give it little thought unless travelling.

A city with a street pattern like Paris gives people the impression society should be set up so that the needs of the people come first and business should build around this. The grid pattern used in America, in contrast, conditions us to think that business comes first and the people must work around this. Thus, people in France are leftward in their views of how society should function and people in America are rightward.

Some countries are in between the two. In political terms, Britain is to the right of countries like France and Germany but to the left of America. Sure enough, London has a street pattern that is neither like Paris nor the American grid pattern. It's street pattern is vaguely what we could term "concentric", one circle inside the other going outward from a center.

This favors (favours) neither business over people, like the grid pattern, nor people at the expense of business, like Paris, but is between the two. You will find that on a large scale, this hypothesis will virtually inevitably predict how people in a given country will vote. Canada is somewhat to the left of the U.S. and you will notice that while Toronto is very much a grid-patterned city, Montreal is somewhat more European in it's layout.

The Sputnik Vector

There seems to me to have been a change of direction in America's attitude toward learning in the past fifty years that I would like to term "The Sputnik Vector". This explains much about the U.S. and the world today. In 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik was launched as the first satellite to orbit the earth. America's reaction to it created the Sputnik Vector.

According to news reports, the American rocket community and those of other western countries did not really consider Sputnik as a big deal. It was an aluminum sphere about the size of a basketball with a radio transmitter emitting beeps as it orbitted the earth. Newsweek reported that the U.S. had actually weighed down a test rocket with sand prior to Sputnik so that it would not go into orbit. But the media and the public perceived that Sputnik represented a falling behind in technical capability.

The result was a new emphasis in American learning on science and technology. The most obvious was the Apollo missions to the moon and the robot spacecraft missions to explore the planets. I actually see the most important result of space exploration not as the moon landings but as the Hubble Space Telescope. Back on earth, the media in the sixties manifested the Sputnik Vector with popular television shows like Lost in Space and Star Trek.

The Sputnik Vector ultimately returned to earth in the form of the internet. It became more about technology than science. The Sputnik Vector continued to produce terrestrial fruit with personal computers, windows, global positioning systems, cell phones (just like on Star Trek) and satellite and cable TV.

But the Sputnik Vector did not come without a price. It came at the expense of history, geography and foreign languages in education. We had redistributed the learning pie in the direction of technology without increasing the pie. So, some things had to become comparitively more neglected.

The Vietnam War was very much afftected by the Sputnik Vector. There was more emphasis on high-tech warfare than there was on understanding the people we were fighting with and against. The public reaction to the Communist Tet Offensive in early 1968 mirrored the reaction to Sputnik. The Offensive was not really a military success but the public perceived it as a testament to the ineffectuality of the war effort.

The Sputnik Vector is why today we can spy on other countries with space age gadgetry without really understanding the people we are spying on. It is why the CIA can listen into the conversations of potential enemies but have no one to translate them. It is why we have satellites that can watch anyone in the world but those watching do not know a Sunni from a Shiite Moslem.

I was caught up in the Sputnik Vector myself. I landed in the U.S. as an eight year old in the autumn of 1968. The space program was close to putting a man on the moon and I could not get enough of reading about space. The result is today the blog you are reading and my other scientific writing. But yet, I also consider it vital to understand the world and I have always felt uncomfortable with the idea of shutting out the outside world.

The Sputnik Vector created one America at the expense of another. In a way, the 9/11 attack was a clash between the two. If the Sputnik Vector had never come about and the non-Sputnik America had happened, we would have fewer technical capabilities than we do today and you may not be reading this blog now. But we would understand the world better and 9/11 may not have happened.

The Map Of The World

I wondered what we could tell about human nature simply by looking at a map of the world. The first and most obvious is that humans prefer warm climates to cold climates. The geographical size of countries is much smaller nearer the equator than near the poles. The obvious conclusion is that real estate is more valuable in warmer areas, not because there is less real estate but because this is where humans want to be.

If we have specialty maps of the world such as for distribution of resources and wealth, a glaringly illogical fact emerges. The poorest people in the world tend to live in those countries that are very blessed with abundant natural resources. In contrast, most of the world's wealthiest countries are those with comparitively little in the way of natural resources such as Europe and Japan.

The inescapable conclusion is that wealth breeds corruption. In nations rich in resources, an elite few manage to set up the system to get the wealth for themselves. The result is that the average person in such a country is poorer than if the country had no natural resources. In resource-poor nations, in contrast, there is no resources to be corrupt with. Thus, corruption is limited and citizens are better off than those in nations with abundant resources.

Another obvious illogical world fact is that the poorer people are, the more children they have while the richer people are, the fewer children they tend to have. This results in extremes of poverty and wealth and clearly shows that human thinking tends to be self-centered and short-term at the expense of big picture and long-term. People in poor countries are not thinking about world problems, they are thinking about having enough children to survive to adulthood and take care of them in their old age.

I notice by looking at a map of the world that there are only six nations, out of about two hundred, that are named after individuals. America, after Italian map-maker Amerigo Vespucci; Colombia, after another Italian, explorer Christopher Columbus. Bolivia, after South American liberator Simon Bolivar; Israel, after Jacob renamed Israel; Saudi Arabia, after Ibn Saud and; the Phillippines, after Spain's King Phillip. Only Ibn Saud and King Phillip actually led their namesake countries in anything like modern history.

What this tells me is that our history books are very top-heavy. We tend to focus on a few individuals in each time and place in history at the expense of everyone else. An example is Ferdinand Magellan, most people know that he led the first expedition around the world that resulted in the Phillippines being so-named. But who can name even one other person who was on the journey?

This makes these few individuals seem more important and all-powerful than they probably were. Even if they were, their hold on their position was certainly much more tenuous than our history books seem to portray. If this were not so and our history books were more realistic, more great individuals of the past would have managed to leave their names on a country.

Some really exceptional individuals have gotten cities named after them. Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Kitchener in Ontario, Washington D.C. (District of Columbia, after Columbus) However, these are rarely capital cities and such names are very prone to change. Lenin had his namesake city but now it has reverted to one of his predecessors, St. Petersburg. Likewise Stalingrad has been renamed Volgograd, after the Volga River. There used to be a city in the eastern part of Germany called Karl-Marx-Stadt, but no longer.

This makes it clear that out view of history is somewhat over-simplistic in that it tends to be top-heavy, that is focusing on a few prominent individuals at the expense of those in lesser roles and who were either never as powerful as we perceive or their hold on that power was tenuous and limited. Many of those who left their names on the geography actually had no temporal power at all.

Yet it is also obvious by a map of the world that there are many people whose goal is to be in power. Consider the many Spanish-speaking countries of the western hemisphere. These are people who were of the same ethnicity and religion and who spoke the same language. There could have been one country but a multitude of countries from Mexico to Argentina was the result.

This points to the fact that there are many who would like to be in power and the forming of a multitude of countries was the result. The same can be said of the Arab countries from Saudi Arabia to Morrocco. They are united by ethnicity, language and, particularly by Sunni Islam. But formation of one country is almost unimaginable.

The Impulse Zone

The local supermarket exists to provide food and other daily products for the community that it serves. Thus, we could say that the market has a harmonious relationship with the sorrounding community.

But when a shopper enters the supermarket, an adversarial relationship forms on a deeper level. The goal of most shoppers is to obtain the sought for items from the supermarket for as little money as possible. The goal of the owners and managers of the supermarket are just the opposite, they wants the shopper to leave behind as much money as possible on the shopping trip.

I am really impressed with the planning and strategy that have obviously gone into the design of supermarkets to acheive their goals in this underlying tug-of-war with the shoppers. I notice that almost always, a cafe where customers can get freshly cooked food to eat there will be near the entrance to the supermarket, if the store has a cafe or take-out.

I believe that this is not so much to draw shoppers away from their shopping to eat there, but for the scent of delicious cooked food that it provides. It is well-known that shoppers spend more, on average, if they shop when hungry. The in-store cafe near the entrance to the store is to stimulate hunger by the scent and sight of cooked food.

Also near the entrance to the store will be the produce section. It would seem to make sense to locate produce next to the frozen aisle because most produce remains fresh for longer if kept cool. The reason it is not done that way is strategy.

The sight of green vegetables has a relaxing and refreshing effect on people. Somewhat like taking a break from the stress of the city by a walk in the park. I notice that even though we know that people do not eat enough vegetables, the stores usually take great pains to make an abundance of crisp green leaves very visible to shoppers passing through the produce section near the beginning of the store.

If the store sells flowers or house plants, those will nearly always be located near to the entrance to the store for the same reason. The whole idea of this is to get shoppers to relax and let their guards down a little, without realizing it, before moving on to the rest of the supermarket.

Now that the store has done what it can to get shoppers softened up and ready to spend, we come to the most important zone in the store's strategic plan, the impulse zone. I have noticed that as soon as shoppers are "prepped" by the produce section and in-store cafe, they move into a zone that is stacked with those products, mostly food, that customers are most likely to buy impulsively. It is important to have the impulse zone not too far from the beginning of the store so that shoppers have not yet begun to worry about how much money they are spending.

In this zone, shoppers are sorrounded by appealing products that are not too expensive and are quick and easy to prepare and eat. This is also the zone in which people are most likely to buy things that they do not really need, which is what the store's owners want them to do. This could be referred to as the store's "inner impulse zone" or "impulse zone A".

As we move beyond this zone in a large supermarket, we move into another impulse zone stacked with products that are a little less impulsive than the first part of the impulse zone. This is where canned foods are likely to be located. There is still some impulse factor in the purchase of these goods, but they are more difficult to open, prepare and, eat than those, mostly boxed, products in the inner impulse zone. I notice that goods located in the outer impulse zone usually require some kind of cooking or baking before eating, while those in the inner impulse zone usually do not.

There are usually some "special impulse displays" located around the impulse zone area. These will be counters with products such as imported cheeses. Comparison shoppers would usually not buy such products because local mass-produced cheese is so much less expensive. The store tries to use visual appeal and location to get shoppers to buy. It also helps if such displays are located close to the scent of the in-store cafe and, of course, must be located not too far from the entrance to the store so customers encounter the display before they become concerned about how much money they are spending.

Next comes what I will call the "central zone". This is a non-strategic section that contains specialty products that are usually not bought impulsively such as beauty products and vitamins. If the store has a pharmacy, it will usually be in the central zone that is not part of the store's impulse strategy. Specialty books and magazines are usually located in this zone. School supplies may also be found here.

After the central zone comes what I will call the "utility zone". By this point in the store, shoppers may have begun to worry about how much money they are spending. This zone contains non-food products that are rarely bought on impulse such as detergents, garbage bags, pet supplies, paper towels and, automotive products. Toys may also be found here, although I am certain that stores evaluate the proportion of their shoppers who bring children shopping and if it is high enough, will place toys closer to the impulse zone.

The rest of the store consists of what I have termed "staple zones". These zones sell food staples such as meats, fish, bread and, dairy products. One reason that staple zones are kept separate from the rest of the store is that impulse is much less a factor here. Staples are products that people are going to buy anyway. Shoppers do not buy milk and eggs impulsively but will buy a certain amount of them regardless.

But always notice that exceptional products, such as expensive imported cheeses, are kept far away from the dairy aisle in the impulse zone. So is bottled, ready-to-drink milk. In my local store, I once noticed that small bottles of milk, located in a cooler near the impulse zone, cost more than the two liter cartons in the dairy aisle.

There is one important exception to staple zones that I notice. It is products such as salt, sugar, coffee and, tea. These are usually mixed into the impulse zone. At first, this may seem unusual because these are staples and probably not too impulse-oriented. But then it becomes clear that these compact staple products, which are bought by almost all shoppers, serve to draw people into the impulse zone without taking up too much valuable shelf space. If those staples are on a shopper's list, it means that shopper cannot avoid passing through the impulse zone.

The frozen aisle is not actually a staple zone since it contains a wide variety of products. The reason that it is almost always located in the non-strategic second half of the store is that the storage and preparation requirements of frozen foods make impulse-buying much less of a factor.

Supermarket planners must know that there is a very big difference between the first and second halves of a store. In the first, shoppers feel more refreshed and have not yet developed concern about how much money they are spending. In the second half, some may have grown tired and many have begun to worry about how much they are spending. I cannot recall ever being in a supermarket that is not built around this principle.

Now we come to the checkouts. We find ourselves suddenly back in the impulse zone. In fact the checkout aisles, the final part of the shopping trip, is the most intensive impulse zone in the store.

Store planners must consider a checkout aisle like a vise, a final chance to squeeze as much money as possible out of the shopper. Notice that general interest magazines and tabloids are rarely located in the book and magazine section, they are almost always there to pique your interest during the few minutes in the checkout aisle. On the other side of you is a wall of candy. Don't those Reese's Peanut Butter Cups bring back delicious childhood memories? How can you not buy some?

Finally, we notice that the newspaper rack is almost invariably located away from the main part of the store. This is self-explantory, newspapers help to draw people to the store but do not provide much profit margin and would be a distraction from the impulse zone.

The Center Of The World

In many ways the center of the world is the Plain of Giza near Cairo in Egypt. In the early Nineteenth Century, Napoleon first brought the pyramids into the modern consciousness. The world was fascinated and the influence of those ancient monuments can be seen today all over the globe.

The pyramid is a significant shape and the Aztecs developed pyramids independently of the Egyptians. The pyramids were artificial mountains and set human beings further on the course of taking on and taming nature. The building of the pyramids contributed greatly to the development of geometry, engineering and astronomy because they were lined up by the star Sirius.

Is it only coincidence that Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe is in the same mold as the massive stone pyramids that have stood for thousands of years? How about that the Eiffel Tower resembles an industrial-era pyramid built in 1889 with wrought iron instead of stone? Big Ben also gives the impression of having some pyramid and obelisk influence in it.

Has anyone noticed the resemblence between New York City and Giza? Here, we have the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and, the Woolworth Building built by capitalist pharaohs who wanted to leave their monuments to generations far in the future. The positioning of those buildings relative to the Statue of Liberty strongly resembles the positioning of the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and, Menkaure relative to the Sphinx. How about the resemblence betweent the presidential busts on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and the pharaohs in stone at Abu Simbel?

The influence of the pyramids goes further than just obvious structural design. These pyramids, from far across time, put the nature of time into the consciousness of the world and helped lead to Einstein's Theories of Relativity, I believe. The obelisks that were painstakingly constructed helped put the idea into the world for skyscrapers.

The pyramids gave the world a much stronger sense of history. Those pharoahs had built a great ancient kingdom and left their mark across time. They were the ultimate kings for having done so. The next thing we know, the Nazis are talking of building a "Thousand Year Reich". The ancient Egyptians left an abundance of artwork showing daily life then and Hitler had a lot of films made of meetings and rallies no doubt for future generations to watch.

Historical Sidelines

I find that history books tend to give the main sweep of events but often neglect the numerous "side stories" that do not fit into the main sweep. Today, let's have a look at some of these historical sidelines that should not be forgotten.

The modern sciences of cosmology and cosmogony, the underlying structure and origin of the universe, revolve around the so-called "Big Bang". This is the cataclysmic explosion of matter and energy that virtually all scientists in these fields accept as marking the beginning of the universe. It is easy to forget that the Big Bang Theory did not originate in scientific circles at all but is a Christian idea. A Belgian priest named Georges Lemaitre suggested that the universe must have begun with such a cataclysm based on what is stated in the Bible about God's creation of the universe and it proved to be correct.

In celebrating the recent 40th anniversary of the first landing of men on the moon, there is one really impressive feat that seems to get left out. It happened not on the first moon landing, Apollo 11, but on the next one, Apollo 12, in November 1969. In 1967, an unmanned spacecraft, Surveyor, landed on the moon at provide photo images of the surface. In an outstanding feat of navigation, Apollo 12 landed near Surveyor so that the astronauts could remove it's camera and bring it back to earth. The total surface area of the moon is about four times the size of countries like the U.S. or Canada or, China so let's not forget this.

Cotton is not native to North America and coffee is not native to South America. All of the cotton ever grown in North America originated in some seeds brought from London and all of the coffee grown in South America is from a plant taken there from the Netherlands.

An incredible but overlooked fact is that the vast majority of the stars in the sky that can be seen with the naked eye have Arabic names. This does not include the brightest stars such as Antares, Arcturus, Vega, Sirius, etc. because these stars were named in ancient times. It also does not include the stars that can only be seen with a telescope. The reason is that after the end of the Roman Empire but before the renaissance, it was the Middle East that made most of the advances in science. "Algebra" is also derived from an Arabic word.

We tend to forget how our alphabet was derived from earlier hieroglyphics. Have you ever noticed how an "A" resembles the head and horns of a bull upside-down? An "H" resembles a door or a two-story house. "J" looks like a fishing hook. "M" or "W" seems to be derived from the waves on water. "R" looks like a person's profile. "S" might be from a bow and "V" an inverted symbol for a hill or mountain. "T" resembes a pillar or column holding up a roof.

The west African nation of Liberia was founded by a group of former slaves in the U.S. that had been given their freedom and sailed back to Africa many generations after their ancestors had been taken as slaves. They named their new capital city "Monrovia" after the U.S. president that gave them freedom. I am surprised that this amazing story does not get more attention.

Sweden was once an imperial power and a long-forgotten fact is that the U.S. state of Delaware had it's beginnings as a Swedish colony.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a short-lived union between Egypt and Syria. The two became one nation known as the United Arab Republic, or the U.A.R. Egypt is still sometimes referred to by that name. There were high hopes that the new united nation would be the focal point of a vast Pan-Arab nation. But the Iraqi King Qassim favored (favoured) an alliance with the U.S.S.R. Also, many Syrians were concerned that theirs, the smaller of the two nations would be dominated by Egypt and there were wealthy Syrians that felt threatened by Egyptian leader, Gamel Nasser's socialist ideas. A faction of the Syrian Army rose up and declared indpendence from the U.A.R.

An unforgettable episode is the radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in 1938. It was a story about an invasion of earth by Martians. The trouble is that millions of people in eastern New York State and New Jersey took it seriously and thought it was an actual live news broadcast of such an invasion in progress.

In the Niagara Falls area, Grand Island was offered by Franklin Roosevelt as a homeland, instead of Israel, following the Second World War and nearby Navy Island was proposed as the site of the United Nations Headquarters. Neither was to be.

A Lebanese tradition is immigration to Latin America. Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu is of Lebanese descent and is, at the time of this writing, the richest man in the world. This is an immigration trend of which little is written.

In the Eighteenth Century, Russia sought immigrants from Europe to establish farms on it's vast landscape. Most European countries had colonies to which people could move if they wished. But from the small German-speaking duchies and principalities across central Europe, which were not yet a united nation, hundreds of thousands answered the call. The result was the settlement of so-called "Volga Germans" deep inside Russia around the Volga River. The settlers ultimately numbered nearly two million. They operated very prosperous farms and life revolved around Christianity. Of course, trouble was on the horizon with the advent of atheistic Communism and the world wars. Today, little remains of the Volga Germans in that area.

It was the Italian airship "Italia" that was the first aircraft to fly over the north pole. In 1928, it succeeded in reaching the pole. Difficult weather conditions prevented landing but flags and a cross presented by the pope were dropped there. The airship never made it back to base due to extreme weather conditions and crashed on an ice floe. The crash caused part of the cabin to break free and ten men were thrown onto the ice, one of which was killed. These were rescued but the airship, suddenly free of a significant amount of weight, thrust back up into the sky with six of the crew still aboard. The airship disappeared into the clouds and has never been found or heard from again.

It is worth remembering why the city of Trelew on the coast of Argentina has a Welsh name. In the Nineteenth Century, it was founded as a remote outpost for Welsh settlers far away from civilization. The settlement became quite prosperous and attracted more settlers from Wales and everything was done in the Welsh language. Times changed when refrigeration was invented. Argentine beef could be shipped to Europe on refrigerated ships, where it brought premium prices. Soon, much of Argentina became one vast ranch of cattle. Immigrants poured in, mostly from southern Europe, to become ranchers and gueros, the Argentine version of cowboys, and the once-remote Welsh outpost of Trelew suddenly found itself in the middle of civilization.

China once had it's own version of Christopher Columbus. In the Fifteenth Century, over a hundred years before the voyage of Columbus, Zheng He is believed to have made seven voyages with fleets of large ships all around the Indian Ocean. There is a controversial opinion that he reached North America but certainly brought all manner of African animals back to China.

To read some general observations of the world go to http://www.markmeekobs.blogspot.com/

The Child Of The Sixties

We know that presidents have children and that the child might grow up to be president himself someday. What would the world be like if decades could have children and the child might grow up to be the current decade someday?

Actually, the world might look just like it does right now. The 00 decade could scarcely be more of a perfect example of a child of the Sixties decade that has grown up to be the present decade. The family resemblence is very clear.

We are stuck in an unpopular war that is the front of a global struggle. The stage is exactly the same, only the actors are different.

Back then, we were fascinated with outer space and the possibility of exploring and colonizing it. Now, we are focused on cyberspace.

Then, pollution was a major issue. Now, it is global warming.

Then, the country was concerned about protecting itself from Communist spies. Now, it is concerned with protecting itself from terrorists.

The defining moment that really began the Sixties was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The defining moment for today was 9/11.

Then, Cuba was a major concern because hostile missiles might be based there. Now, it is a major concern because the prison at Guantanamo might erode the principles we claim to stand for beyond repair.

Then, the big domestic issue was civil rights. Now, it is immigration.

Then, the rallying point for young people was Woodstock. Now it is Myspace.com.

The Beginning Of Civilization

It is generally believed that human civilization began with the development of the ability to write, to record information. To get to this phase with permanent settlements, in contrast to the earlier nomadic hunting and gathering of food, two vital steps are acknowledged to have been necessary: the growing of crops and the control of fire.

At some point, nomadic pre-historic people noticed that if they dropped the part of food plants that we today call seeds and then happened to pass by the spot later, duplicates of the plant would be growing. This was the beginning of agriculture and is recognized as the most important of the two vital steps in the beginnings of civilization by making permanent settlements possible by eliminating the necessity of wandering in search of food.

The other of these two vital early steps was the control of fire. This made the cooking of food possible and also provided heat and light. Maintaining a fire at a settlement kept wild animals away and, in time, people would discover that it made the smelting of metals from ores possible.

However, I would like to add a third vital step in the beginning of civilization to the first two. It is the measurement of time. Without this step, civilization would have been impossible, regardless of the other two.

First of all, any kind of sustained agriculture would be impossible without an understanding of the seasons. Fortunately, we have a ready-made seasonal timepiece, the moon, with it's predictable phases. The moon orbits the earth, while going through it's series of phases, in twenty-nine days. I am certain that we are greatly underestimating the importance of this to the beginning of human civilization. Early agriculture, which was the very basis of civilization, was completely dependent on the convenient measure of time provided by the moon.

When the Industrial Revolution came along, I do not believe that it's centerpiece was the steam engine, as is generally believed. My hypothesis is that it relied upon the development of reliable and accurate clocks. Indeed, the workings of a steam engine bears a similarity to that of pendulum-based clocks, which came first.

In agriculture, the most important measure of time is the calendar. It is the cycle of the seasons that is important to the farmer. The time of day is unimportant, whether the farmer plows or plants in the morning or in the evening makes no difference whatsoever.

But when the Industrial Revolution comes and people are working in factories rather than on farms, it is the clock, rather than the calendar, which is most important. If a factory laborer (labourer) must report to work at 4 PM to replace the worker on the previous shift, it is the exact time of day that counts, the season is unimportant. Regardless of progress in other areas, the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without accurate clocks and the development of such clocks brought about the mechanical skills to build the steam engines and other features of the revolution.

Global navigation also relied upon the development of accurate clocks that were not dependent upon the movement of a pendulum. It is easy to measure the latitude of one's location by use of the North Star or the equivalent point in the southern hemisphere. But measurement of longitude is more difficult and was solved by carrying an accurate clock on a ship set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and comparing it to locally measured solar time. Pendulum-based clocks are not reliable on ships at sea because the rolling and pitching of the ship in rough waters interfered with the operation of the pendulum.

The progress that human beings can make depends upon our mastery of the smallest essential time frame involved. This goes for both technology and scientific discovery. Time is the fundamental dimension and it is the most important quantity of which we take measurements. Humans have mastered nuclear reactions and can build computer CPUs only because we have mastered the required time frames. We have not mastered the electron orbitals around an atomic nucleus and still consider them as governed by uncertainty simply because we cannot yet handle the time frame involved.

North America Settlement

When settlement of North America began several hundred years ago, transportation was primitive and essentially limited to horses and sailing ships. Have you ever wondered what North America might be like today if modern transportation technology, such as cars and jumbo jets, had been developed before the settlement of North America? Here is my speculation.

Boston and Philadelphia would be larger cities than New York or Montreal. New York City was built for water. It is located where the Hudson River, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean intersect. While it is an ideal place for ships to load and unload cargo and immigrants and has abundant fresh water available, it's geography is the antithesis of cars.

The city is sliced to pieces by those waterways and also by the East River. Cars are forced to rely on bridges and tunnels to navigate the city. Not only that, the waters strictly limit the city's growth potential. In my scenario, New York City would be an important seaport for cargo but would be nowhere near America's largest city.

Montreal was also in a logical place for a settlement several hundred years ago. Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River but at the place he found a large island in the river, he was blocked from going further by the Lachine Rapids. The island naturally became a settlement and in fact was already an Indian settlement known as Hochelaga. The city's economic engine in the Twentieth Century has been the oil refineries to the east of Montreal where tankers can off-load crude oil.

But once again, we have a city that was made for water but not for cars. Not only is the city sliced up by the two branches of the river, forcing cars onto bridges, but the large modern city had to be built around Mount Royal in the middle of the island.

In my scenario, neither Washington nor Ottawa would be national capitals. Both were built as capitals because at the time, they were centrally located in their respective countries. Since then, both countries have expended dramatically westward and the capital cities are now far to the east of each country's center of population. Advanced transportation would enable the continent to be settled much more quickly and settlements to be much further apart. It is likely that today, Dallas and Winnepeg would be the national capitals.

Los Angeles is the logical place for a seaport. Unfortunately, the prevailing wind is from the west and there are mountains to the east of the city. The result was Los Angeles' legendary smog from car exhaust. Not to mention that it is on an earthquake fault line as is San Francisco. Since we have air conditioning and civil engineers can build canals that can route water hundreds of miles into the desert, Phoenix and Las Vegas will be much bigger cities than Los Angeles or San Fransisco. Room to expand would be a vital consideration in city location.

The map of Mexico, in my scenario, would look pretty much as it does today. With one great exception. Mexico City, now the largest city in the world, is built in a location that was just not intended for a big city. It is on a kind of bowl sorrounded by mountains and is on an old lake bed into which the city and it's tall buildings is gradually sinking. The mountains, of course, trap smoke and auto exhaust in the same way as the mountains to the east of Los Angeles. The city is built where is is because it is the former site of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.

U.S. Ethnic Distribution

While working at jobs taking calls from across the U.S., the name and address of the caller would appear on my computer screen. As many thousands of calls were taken, certain definite patterns in the ethnic distribution of the country, going by the names, became apparent.

ARRANGEMENT OF IMMIGRANT GROUPS

I realized how the major European ethnic groups in the U.S. had arranged themselves in much the same way as their homelands were in Europe. The Italian-American heartland is the northeastern U.S. On a map, this part of the country forms a peninsula just as Italy does on a map of Europe. New York City, with it's considerable population of Italian descent, occupies about the same position on this "peninsula" as does Rome on a map of Italy.

As the population of Germany increased in the Nineteenth Century, space became more scarce on the Luneberg Heath, the plain across the northern part of the country. Many of those who wished to farm headed for the open spaces of the U.S. midwest. To the north of Germany is the Scandinavian countries and, just as in Europe, immigrants from those countries positioned themselves to the north of the Germans, particularly in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

In Europe, to the east of Germany lies Poland. Bringing this pattern to North America, Polish settlers positioned themselves to the east of the Germans. In fact, I noticed what we could call a "Mirror Poland" in the U.S. Warsaw, Poland's capital city, is toward the eastern part of the country. If, in America, Chicago represents the new Warsaw, cities like Cleveland and the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga can be considered as new versions of Polish cities to the west of Warsaw.

But in America, Chicago is to the west of the Polish community while in Poland, Warsaw is to the east, making this part of the U.S. a mirror version of Poland. However, I noticed a new wave of Polish immigrants to the U.S. since the end of the Iron Curtain and these are focused on New York City instead of Chicago.

In Europe, Portugal is a small country on the edge of the continent against the ocean. Fitting this arrangement pattern, Portuguese immigrants to America have chosen Rhode Island as the New Portugal and could not have picked a state that came closer to mirroring Portugal's position in Europe.

This way of immigrants arranging themselves in ways that continue the arrangement in Europe does seem to be limited to Europeans. On a map, Texas resembles geographically the Indian subcontinent. I was hoping to notice a concentration of immigrants from India in Texas to further illustrate this pattern that I had noticed but did not find any.

This immigrant arrangement pattern also does not include those whose homelands are not far away from America. Cubans simply cross over to Florida and Mexicans occupy what we could call the "Natural Mexico", which includes the lands of the U.S. southwest which were once a part of Mexico.

DISPERSION OF IMMIGRANT GROUPS

A number of patterns in the dispersion of immigrant groups also became apparent to me. Irish-Americans have dispersed throughout the country from their traditional heartland of Massachusetts much more than Polish and Italian immigrants have. I could detect only a faint concentration of Irish names around Boston. It is true that Irish immigrants arrived before those from Italy and Poland but I believe a major factor was that those from Ireland arrived speaking English.

It is easy to see which ethnic group was the first immigrant settlers. There is no sign of any concentration of Anglo or Scotch names anywhere in the U.S. They seem to be the background among which other groups settled. Another easy way to tell which group settled a place first is the names of the places. In eastern New York State, the place names are often Dutch but the resident's names are far more likely to be Italian (Roosevelt means "Rose Field" and Tappan Zee means "Inland Sea" in Dutch).

It is obvious that the heartland of African-Americans is the southern states. In the rest of the country, black people are very heavily concentrated in cities. The only place I noticed a significant number of black business owners in small towns was in the south. This clearly indicates that the black dispersion from the south to the rest of the country was relatively recent.

German-Americans seemed to me to be the most rural but black Americans are by far the most urban. If German-Americans can be said to have a city, it is Milwaukee or maybe Omaha. More recent immigrant groups tend to choose a hub city. The concentration of Arab names around Detroit is really striking and Fresno continues to serve as the hub for Armenians in America.

THE HUB CITIES FOR IMMIGRANTS

America's two great hubs for immigrants are, of course, New York and Los Angeles. The important factor to consider is whether the immigrant group arrived primarily by ship or by plane, thus indicating the time frame of arrival.

In the past, immigrants arrived by ship. Thus by simple geography, Europeans arrived in New York and the far fewer Asians in Los Angeles. This can easily be seen in previous immigrant patterns but now has changed due to airplanes. Europeans seemed to me to be as likely to land in Los Angeles as Asians were to start out in New York.

One recent immigrant group that does not seem to start out in the primary immigrant hubs as much as the other groups is those from India. The reason is obvious, there is no Indiatowns like there are Chinatowns simply because Indian immigrants tend to speak English.

America is full of both French and Spanish names. Yet, I notice no concentration of these names at all around the traditional hub cities. French names are concentrated in the northern New England states and Spanish names in the southwest, in Florida and, in New York City.

This tells me that there was little direct immigration from France to America and the ancestors of most Americans with French names were French-Canadians first. Since we know the Spanish names around New York belong mostly to Puerto Ricans, it is also clear that there was little direct immigration from Spain to the U.S. and that these immigrants came from other countries in the western hemisphere.

These patterns in immigration do not show up as well in Canada because it's population is so concentrated against the southern border instead of being spread throughout the country or in Britain because it has only been a major immigrant destination for the past forty or fifty years and two thirds of it's immigrants are concentrated in the London area.

The Twin Cities Phenomenon

I would like to point out how it can be seen the way the U.S. was settled simply by looking at a map. America has three prominent sets of twin cities; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Dallas-Fort Worth and, San Fransisco-Oakland. I will define a twin city as two major metropolitan areas that are geographically distinct yet close enough to share an airport. A growing city absorbs sorrounding communities but twin cities are similar enough in scope that neither can absorb the other.

A city is usually defined as the focal point of a hinterland encompassing the non-farming operations of an agricultural watershed. Using this definition, a twin city seems to make no sense. If a city is the focal point of an agricultural hinterland, then why would there be a twin city?

The answer depends on the context in which the land is settled. A city begins because there is something desirable about the location, such as resources or central location. If the settlement of the land was planned, there should be no such thing as twin cities.

But if it was settled by free-ranging pioneers, then two groups could decide independently to settle in a desirable area and grow into twin cities. This is why America's three sets of genuine twin cities are all in the western part of the country. Cities in the east were started by colonists more-or-less under orders from a government while cities in the west were mostly started as settlements by small groups of pioneers.

English Occupational Names

I find it really interesting how daily life in England centuries ago is reflected in so many surnames in English-speaking countries today. These are the so-called "occupational names" that refer to the occupation of the bearer of the name or his descendants. The fact that a person has one of these names does not today mean that he or she has any English blood or any connection to England.

From the preparation of food come surnames like Miller, Baker, Cook and, Brewer. The construction of homes and other buildings gives us common names such as Carpenter, Mason, Sawyer, Plumber and, Thatcher. Those who procured or dealt in building materials might be tagged with names like Wood, Stone or, Clay.

The making of cloth and clothing gave us names which include Spinner, Weaver, Tanner, Taylor (the occupation now spelled "tailor") and, Shoemaker. The dying of cloth is probably the origin of the colour (color) names, the most common of which are Green, White, Black and, Brown.

General craftsmanship brought into being names such as Smith, Wright, Carver, Cooper and, Hooper. Smith is a general industrial term for someone who works with something such as blacksmith or goldsmith. A wright is a builder of something such as boatwright. A cooper is a maker of those ubiquitous wooden barrels of years past and I believe that a hooper made the metal rings that held such barrels together.

There are names requiring no explanation such as Hunter, Archer, Planter, Fisher, Shepherd, Gardner and, Butler. The name Shepherd is today spelled in several different ways. Those involved in building or operating the vehicles of the day might be named Carter, Cartwright or, Wheeler. Those otherwise involved in transportation could be named Walker or Porter. Makers of music or musical instruments could be called Singer, Bugler, Bell or, Stringer. One who makes announcements or announces news may be named Crier.

Then there is the names associated with royalty, nobility or, status: King, Queen, Lord, Duke, Knight and, Freeman. People with these names would have worked for the national or local royalty or nobility in some way. There are several common surnames associated with religion like Church, Bishop and, Abbot. There are surnames like Barber, Minter and, Cutler. A minter is one who makes money (literally) and a cutler is one who makes knives. Finally, we have the terrain or location surnames including: Marsh, Field or Fields, Street, Rivers, Wells, Woods, Hill and, Park or Parker.

Notice that names such as Farmer, Miner and, Sailor are quite rare. This is self-explanatory. These occupations included so many people that if they were given to everyone in that particular line of work, the name would be so widespread as to be near-meaningless. The purpose of a name is, after all, to distinguish one from another. I get the impression that there was a lot of multitasking centuries ago and the name Smith is so common because it indicated a general craftsman or jack-of-all-trades.

These were all working-class names and would not be found in the upper classes. I find it significant that the religious names like Bishop and Abbot are those that would apply to Catholicism. There are few names that would have originated from the advent of the Protestant version of Christianity or with the printing industry, both of which became very important factors in the England of the 16th Century. I take this to mean that these occupation names had already become well-established a considerable amount of time before then.

Obama And Gorbachev

This was written in the spring of 2010.

Have you ever followed the revolution in American politics being led by Barack Obama and felt as if you have seen this before? Or at least something very similar to it? It is now twenty-five years since the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and I would like to describe the Obama Revolution by making comparisons with Gorbachev.

Both set out to reform an unworkable and anachronistic political system, but which had the vested interests of powerful people keeping it in place. Both realized that deep changes were absolutely necessary, both internally and in relations with the outside world.

Both Obama and Gorbachev encountered concentrated resistance to their efforts. Gorbachev was almost overthrown in a 1991 coup. Obama faced a Republican campaign insisting that he had not really been born in America and a furious reaction to passage of his health care bill.

(Note-By the way, Hawaii became a U.S. state in 1959 and Barack Obama was born there two years later in 1961. But I notice that while the Republican idol Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona, he was born there before Arizona became a U.S. state so that technically he was not born in America. He was born in what later became America.)

Gorbachev tried to save Communism from corruption and cronyism within, reforms known to the world as Perestroika, or restructuring. In regard to the outside world, he skillfully put the ball in the U.S. court with the policy of Glasnost, or openness.

America's style of Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century may have been what was called for at that time. Most of the continent was waiting to be developed and people were needed to get out there and start industries and all kinds of other business ventures. Anyone who was put out of a job could just head out to the frontier and start over. There was plenty of land waiting for anyone who wanted to develop it.

One thing that I have long thought that America's Republicans simply do not grasp is that there is no frontier any more. The frontier was declared closed in 1890. All land is now either owned by someone or otherwise accounted for. Someone who finds themselves out of work cannot just head out to the frontier.

This is when America should have started a comprehensive program of social benefits like most of the other western countries. Instead, workers were scraping by on very little money while a few people got very rich. When assembly line manufacturing was perfected, a vast number of goods from radios to cars rolled out of factories.

The trouble was that workers in the factories were not being paid enough money to be able to afford the goods that they were producing. Those goods began piling up in warehouses and factories began cutting back on production, meaning that the average person had even less money. It spiraled into the devastating crash of 1929.

But when the new millennium came along, that old free-wheeling Capitalism came back. Under the administration of George W. Bush, the rich became the super rich. Millionaires became billionaires. The financial industry ran wild with lax regulations.

But the average person was stretched so thin that collection agencies became one of the top growth industries in the country. Finally, millions of Americans were unable to pay their mortages and since mortgages were customarily bundled into securities, the whole system was on the verge of collapse.

America was spending about twice as much money per person on health care as other western countries, yet life expectancy in America was several years below those countries. It stayed this way until Obama came along because of the vested interests of health insurers, who were making a lot of money.

Meanwhile, America was loathed by so much of the outside world. Obama has gone a long way toward a remedy for this, although drawing Republican ire for bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and the Emperor of Japan. This mirrors Gorbachev's Glastnost policy.

It seems that the U.S. took the fall of the Berlin Wall as victory in the Cold War. But in doing so, and considering Capitalism as superior, it lurched too far to the right. The final result was the economic crash of 2008. Now, in one of those twists of history, America finds itself undergoing the same type of reforms that Gorbachev headed and which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

One thing Obama has going for him that Gorbachev didn't is that he does not have to worry about being taken from the left like Gorbachev was taken from the right. I described in my autobiography the resemblence between the fates of Gorbachev and Martin Luther. Luther always considered himself a Catholic and merely wanted to reform the church. But once he had breached the wall of papal authority, he was followed by men who had no intention of reconciling with the church and who founded completely separate churches.

Likewise, Gorbachev considered himself as a Communist and only sought to reform the system. But once he had checked the power of the old guard, he was supplanted by Boris Yeltsin who publicly destroyed his Communist Party Membership Card. The great success of Gorbachev is that he brought an unworkable but self-perpetuating system to a peaceful end.

Obama, however, is already about as far left as is practical in the U.S. and at this point it appears highly unlikely that he will share a similar fate, pushed aside by the revolution that he began.

Message Parties

Britain's recent election brought a lot of attention to the third party in the country, the Liberal Democrats. A number of western countries have a prominent third party. A third party is simply a political party which is third in rating after two mainstream parties.

Third parties are usually, but not always, to the left of the mainstream parties. Another well-known third party is Canada's New Democratic Party, the NDP. America also has it's third party, led by consumer activist Ralph Nader, but it is a far more distant third than the ones in Britain and Canada.

Around election time, political commentators often describe third parties as having been "consigned to the political wilderness" or some such terms. It is true that neither the Liberal Democrats or the NDP have ever had a prime minister, and that there is a good chance that they never will. But this posting is to point out how I think third parties are misunderstood and how so many commentators seem to miss the vital role that they play in a democracy.

Remember that a third party is not the same thing as a single-issue party, like the Bloc Quebecois or the British National Party or other right-wing parties in various European countries who seek to drastically limit immigration into those countries.

Mainstream parties try to prevent voters from flocking to the third party, and they usually succeed. But the story goes deeper than that.

A leftward third party raises issues about fairness and the quality of life, which the mainstream parties must address if they want to keep most of the voters away from that party. But in doing so, they themselves must take up part of the agenda of the third party. Mainstream parties usually succeed in marginalizing the third party, but only by addressing the issues which it raises.

The result is that the third party acheives their purpose, not by actually "winning", but by pulling the entire system in their direction. Notice that in countries with a significant leftward third party, such as Britain and Canada, the Conservatives are considerably less conservative than the Republicans in America, which lacks a strong third party.

We could refer to such parties as "message parties" because, while not actually winning the election, they force the other parties to carry out their agenda.

European Debt Crisis

With all the news reports about the debt crisis of Greece, I have yet to see an article about what an amazing example this is of how the patterns of history tend to repeat themselves. So, I will tell you how I see it.

First, let's have a look at Act One. In the 1920s, there were two consecutive Republican presidential terms in the U.S. It was a time of freewheeling, unregulated capitalism. In an era of great confidence after victory in the First World War, the rich got very rich. Factories, making use of the newly perfected assembly line process, turned out all kinds of manufactured goods from cars to radios.

But the owners of most of those factories, trying to minimize expenses and to maximize profits, paid their workers as little as they could get away with. The result is that too few people had the money to buy many of these marvelous new products coming from the factories.

So many manufactured goods began piling up in warehouses. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money to buy the products from those factories, and it spiralled into the devastating economic crash of 1929.

One country was particularly devastated by the crash. Germany produced a lot of high-quality goods in it's factories, for which demand suddenly collapsed. The 1930s were a terrible time until a new political party came along. The Nazis promised a grand and glorious future to the stricken nation. They soon solved the economic woes by drastically expanding the military forces to absorb unemployment and directing idle industrial capacity to the production of war equipment. The showcase of the proud new era was the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Now for Act Two. After the end of the Cold War, it seemed that Capitalism was certainly the best economic system. The air of confidence was similar to that at the end of the First World War. The new millennium began with two consecutive Republican presidential terms in the U.S., just like in the 1920s. Once again the rich became very rich, while most of the rest struggled. Although productivity had increased very significantly since 1980, the average person was worse off, in real terms, because the slice of the money taken by the very wealthy had greatly increased.

Once again, there was trouble. This time around, the trouble was centered on mortgages. In the 1920s, not enough people were earning the money to buy the factory-made goods that were being produced at a rapid rate, and in the new millennium too many people became unable to pay their mortgages.

In the mortgage industry, a broker would sign up a home buyer with a mortgage from a lender, which would then usually sell the mortgage to be bundled into securities or to one of the corporations started by the government to increase home ownership. Things went merrily along because if the home buyer was not really able to afford the mortage, especially when it reset to a higher interest rate, by the time he defaulted the mortgage would be somebody else's problem.

An Olympic Games is a part of Act Two, just as it was in Act One. In other news from the first decade of the new millennium, Greece put on a fantastic show for the 2004 Olympic Games. But although Greece was the birthplace of the Olympics, it was by far the smallest country ever to host the games. The cost was certainly a great burden for a nation of 11 million people. Just as a comparison, look at how long it took for Montreal's Olympic Stadium, from the 1976 games, to be completely paid for.

Everything was going along fine for Greece in paying down the debt, which was mainly from the Olympics. But then came the Crash of 2008, centered on America's mortgage industry as well as other institutions. The economy of Greece, with it's sun and world-famous scenery, was heavily dependent on tourism. When people lose their jobs or have a sudden decrease in income, they tend not to travel. This is the root of the current debt crisis.

Notice how two other countries which are often named as having potential trouble similar to that of Greece on the horizon, Spain and Portugal, are also sunny countries which depend on tourism.

Isn't this an amazing example of history repeating itself?