A couple of days ago I received an interesting email from a young (27 years old) woman friend of mine. She mentioned that one of her “projects” during the last year or so was to loosen the bonds of thinking about herself as a young woman, instead learning to think of herself as a human. Her description was, “Recently, I’ve been trying to broaden some of the pre-programmed biases I have about gender roles. Over the last year, I’ve begun slowly to non-identify with my gender. I notice if I just think of myself as “human,” then I have more space in my mind for what kinds of things I allow myself to do, think, how I express myself, etc. I think I’m just trying to not box myself in with labels generally. Just because I’m 27 doesn’t mean I’m “too old” or “too young” for doing certain things. I’m allowed to be a joyous, awe struck playful kid engaged in life when I want to be. I’m also allowed to have a butt-load of wisdom even though I am considered “young.” I don’t need to box myself in to fit a preconceived idea I or others have about what I “should” be doing and behaving. Its a process, of course to slowly question and then unplug from the matrix of my own labels and boxes. But it’s been a fun project.”

Reading her words caused me to stop and think about how I think of myself. Do I mostly identify as “a man?” How much do I adjust myself to align with what a 74 year old man should be like, act like and think like? The gender idea is a bit tricky – it is hard to not box myself in to the role. After all, I am a big, imposing male and have been that way since adolescence. I have a history of doing extremely physical “manly” work, full of strength and vitality. That is not so much what I do now that I am moving into the “golden years” – but it is still how I think of myself. I suppose this is visualizing myself in a masculine wrapper. However, I don’t really think of myself as male or female, I just think of myself as a person. It happens that I am big, strong, with a beard and deep voice – but those aren’t “me”, they are just descriptions of the package. However, as I think back to my 20s I think perhaps I was much more concerned with fitting “the model.” That said, even back at that age I was pretty consistently “marching to my own drummer” – that was something that my family promoted as a good thing. Being a bit eccentric was always acceptable to them (not so much to many of my school mates).

Well, I have now completed my 74th trip around the sun. I find this to be a rather amazing thing. When I was young I was certain that I would die at the age of 50. That might have actually happened if it hadn’t been that modern medicine was there to take care of my failed gall bladder. However, luck was with me and I have been able to enjoy a whole bunch of “bonus” years. Not only that, but I am still doing good – a little stiff and sore, my balance is no longer trustworthy, and my memory seems to do a lot of things on its own. Overall I think I can now be described as “spry” – that terms seems to be reserved for those of a more advanced year (“elderly”). I certainly don’t feel elderly, nor do I feel “spry” – in fact, I feel like I did at 30 (until I actually attempt to do what I am thinking I can do).

Time is really flying by these days. It used to go by pretty fast, but now that they numbers of years left are much less than the number of years before time has definitely compressed. They days don’t seem to go so much faster, or feel much shorter – but the months and the years are certainly compressed. Perhaps this is related to my wandering memory. I find that I am more often wondering just what is going to finally fell me, and when is that going to happen. Not so much worried about when it will happen (curious of course), but worrying about the bigger question of what will lead up to that moment. Will it be quick, or will it be drawn out and painful?

Anyway, here is another year on its way and I am feeling amazingly well. I feel fit (sort of), happy (most of the time), and looking forward to good things to come. Thank you for all of you that have wished me well.

Now that the weather has changed, and the CDC has issued what I consider to be extremely confusing and dangerous changes to the masking and social distancing requirements. It is clear that what was intended to be a rather narrow change has turned into something much larger. I don’t know if it is because of this change in “requirements” or just the time of year, but I have noticed an huge spike in the number of folks that I know who are traveling around the country (and around the world). It seems that almost everyone I talk to is heading off on trip, vacation or retreat – or having friends/family come for an extended visit. They are traveling by plane and automobile, but excited about getting to someplace else.

I assume that my friends are not unusual, I suspect this is happening across the country. It looks to me that we are entering a period of “churning”, traveling and mixing up the population of the country, all at a time when the pandemic is very much alive and well, and people are stopping paying attention to any of the safety protocols from the past year. What could possibly go wrong with a thing like this? It feels like a time of extreme danger to me, but clearly it feels like the danger has passed to most people. I sure hope they are correct.

We seem to be at a point in the covid pandemic that is very confusing, and frustrating for almost everyone. Apparently something like 40% of the people in the USA have been vaccinated (25% fully vaccinated). That is a great start, but clearly we are not anything like complete. Assuming it is uniform across the country, that means that something like 3 out of 4 people we see are still vaccinated (most people). For some reason, the public is reacting as if we are finished with this, even though many variants are turning up and there are global “hot spots” (such as India) that are still in the throws of an ongoing disaster.

The part that keeps me wondering has to do with the lack of information concerning how effective the vaccines are against catching the virus and then passing it along to others. It sounds like vaccinations are very effective at protecting the vaccinated person, but nothing has been said about protecting those that they come into contact that haven’t been vaccinated. My grandchildren fall into the latter category – I really don’t want to catch it, become a non-systematic carrier, and then pass it along to them. In fact, I am not happy with the idea of passing it along to any of those other 3/4 of the population that are still at high risk.

I see almost all of my friends reacting as if things are now “safe.” They have stopped wearing masks, stopped socially distancing, and generally given up on doing much of anything to protect others. They are slightly careful to socialize with those that have been vaccinated, as if that is safe. In my mind, it is probably protective for the individuals involved (assuming that the protection is close to 100% – which is FAR higher than our experience with things like the flu vaccinations we get every year). However, that protection doesn’t extend to the rest of the population. I don’t see how it is appropriate to act any different from what we have been doing (masking, distancing, sanitizing, limiting contact). It is all the same from the point of view of the overall population.

I am still convinced that the CDC isn’t giving advice concerning personal safety within the population, instead they are focused on the issue of avoiding overloading hospitals. Their advice seems to be based upon keeping the numbers below the capabilities of the hospitals – not on what happens to all of those that still get sick and die. While I too am concerned about the hospitals, I am also concerned about those individuals that do get sick and die. For some reason that consideration seems to have taken a back seat in the discussion.

I am fascinated by how important “normalcy” has become to people. I get the impression that the need to stop with the protections is reaching something close to panic. The need to socialize in ways that are extremely dangerous has become a desperation to many, even if they don’t particularly like those that they want to socialize with. It looks to me like people are saying, “I don’t care what the risks are, I don’t care who I kill, I NEED to take the mask off and I NEED to get close to strangers. If we all die, so be it – it is no longer tolerable to worry or try to protect others, even if they are my children and grandchildren.”

It seems to me that we are on a good track toward getting past the pandemic in a few months. I don’t understand the rush to “break free” at this point in time. We can save thousands of lives by cooling our heels a bit longer. I get that the economy is a concern, but I also see that it isn’t nearly as dire as we are told if we were to just admit the problem and solve it. Most people are still working, most people still have good incomes, most people aren’t in trouble. A small number are having a very difficult time and are hurting. Why can’t we get together so that those who are doing alright help out the others until we get past this? Sure it might be difficult, but that is life. Things happen and we need to do what we can to solve the problems.

In any case, it is certainly interesting to see how forceful people are getting in their desperation to get “back to normal.”

One of the things that intrigues me about “the other side” is the possibility of moving out of my body.

The first such experience happened sometime around the year 2000.  I was working as a safety consultant for a company that made large, very powerful lasers used in the semiconductor industry.  My job was to help them design enclosures, interlocks and controls that would allow them to use these lasers safely.  I would visit their facility in Santa Clara once a week or so to talk to their engineers, inspect the equipment or attend meetings.  Since it was just a part time job, I wasn’t issued a security badge, so I had to be escorted to enter the building past the lobby.

On one occasion I showed up at the scheduled time, but my escort was not ready to see me.  I was asked to wait in the lobby for a half hour or so until he could come and get me.  This was fine with me; I get paid the same sitting in a lobby as I do actually working.  The lobby was a fairly small room that opened directly off of their tree covered parking lot.  There was a security desk, but no guard.  Four or five chairs lined each side of the lobby.  There were a couple of certificates and other business related documents hanging on the walls, but nothing of interest.  I was the only one waiting that day.  It was a fairly stark and uninteresting place to sit and wait.

Since it appeared that I would have a little time, I decided to meditate while waiting.  I sat in one of the chairs, closed my eyes, and sat following my breath.  After a few minutes, I felt myself separate from my body.  It was like my attention slipped right out and hovered near the ceiling.  I opened my eyes and found that I was near the ceiling, looking around the room, and looking at my body sitting in the chair.  It was a very peaceful experience, I had no desire to change anything, I just remained in this separated position until all of a sudden the door opened and my escort came in to get me.  This created a crisis of sorts because I could see him going over to greet me, but I wasn’t there.  I managed to force my “real” body to open its eyes and acknowledge the person, but couldn’t really talk or anything because I was in the wrong place.  With a very large effort, I managed to force myself back into my body in time to be able to stand up and say hello – but could barely do anything else. 

When he talked to me it was like it was from an immense distance, I was trying to communicate to him across some sort of barrier. We were not in the same place at all.  Luckily, he didn’t demand much communication at that time.  He gave me a temporary badge and led me off to a meeting room.  By the time we got to the meeting room I was solidly back in my body so could carry on normal communication.  I remained in a very “spacey” state for the rest of the day, but was able to talk and act more or less normal if I concentrated hard enough.

The second time I had an out of body experience I was lying in bed, getting ready to fall asleep – but was having a difficult time doing that.  One of my normal tricks when this happens is to lay on my back and let my attention move to all parts of my body.  I start with my face, near my eyes, and feel myself.  Then I move slowly down my face, to my neck, arms, chest, legs, feet, then back up to my buttocks, back, neck, head and back to my face.  By the time I do that I am very relaxed and can feel my entire body as one unit, it helps me to be aware of all of myself.  I finished the trip around my body and just lay there relaxed, when I felt myself separate from myself.  I just sort of floated up out of my body and hovered about a foot over myself.  It was quite comfortable and felt good.  I was not really amazed or anything like that, it seemed like a natural thing to do.  After awhile I decided to turn over onto my side and go to sleep.  When I rolled, I was surprised to find that I rolled under my hovering self, but it stayed in place.  For some reason I had expected that it would move with me, but it didn’t.  I could switch my attention between the two me’s, changing my point of view at will.  I finally decided to just go to sleep, leaving the second floating above me.  When I woke up, I was back together again as if nothing had happened.

Both of these experiences were very quiet and subtle.  There was nothing really dramatic or earth shattering about them.  The most unusual aspects of them were that they seemed to be so “normal.”  It was like this is a normal state of affairs, something that happens all of the time, but for some reason on these two occasions I happened to pay attention.  I think I may have had more of these experiences, but I just don’t recall them because I didn’t notice them.  They felt like the normal, and correct, way to be. 

It is pretty hard not to comment on what just happened with the George Floyd case. Amazing! A police officer was held responsible for something.

I feel pretty divided by all of the thoughts that come flooding into my mind about this. Obviously, we want (and need) police to help protect our safety. It is also obvious that to do that they need sufficient “tools” to do so. Once that point has been agreed upon, then a whole lot of difficult issues pop to the surface concerning the nature of those “tools” and their appropriate use. Most of us want benevolent, but strong, police that we can trust and respect. There are a many officers that want the same, and believe that describes them – they truly feel that they are providing “public safety.” As a safety engineer, I certainly align with this point of view. Unfortunately, it appears that the profession also attracts individuals that are more aligned with “public control.”

It appears to me that the selection criteria for police officers might be defective by failing to filter out those that like the aggression/control aspects of the job more than the trust and safety parts. Many (perhaps most) of us have all experienced officers that can best be described as aggressive “bullies.” We have also encountered officers that are truly helpful, friendly, while being “professional.” I don’t think you can train the bully out of bullies. I also don’ think you can scare them out of bullying by showing that they might be held guilty – they are much “stronger” than that. We need to prevent them from entering the system. Waiting for them to do something so egregious as to be convicted of a serious crime before they are “weeded out” clearly doesn’t work because it allows many lessor events to continue unabated. Unfortunately, expecting the local police chiefs to do the sorting is very problematical because they (the chiefs) are prone to being bullies themselves – thus not only allowing, but encouraging, overly aggressive behavior and tactics.

I don’t have a great solution to this problem. However, perhaps identifying the problem is a necessary first step. Perhaps it is not “adequate training”, perhaps it is not “appropriate protocols”, perhaps it is not public oversight or accountability – perhaps it is something amiss in the selection criteria for those willing to take on a very difficult, challenging, and potentially dangerous job. The conflicting requirements of “strong and brave” and “compassionate and helpful” might be pretty rare – but necessary. I wonder how, or if, we can change the makeup of the police departments in ways that better support the needs of the community without the nasty parts that so often boil to the surface. My personal encounters with police officers has been overall good (with only an occasional excessive pushiness that seemed uncalled for at the time) – but then I am a middle class, white, large, passive male. It appears that not everyone has similar generally positive experiences as I have had. I suspect there are “bubbles” of situations that enhance the “bully” attitude.

The April 2021 issue of Scientific American has a very interesting article discussing the possibility of achieving a sustainable energy system – including the role of natural gas in the future. Michael Webber, the author of the article, begins with the observation that while natural gas is often touted as being the bridge fuel to a zero-carbon future, but if it is a “bridge” it is not part of the long term game plan. His contention is that if we build that bridge, it will be extremely difficult to get off of it. It represents a type of status quo, continuing using existing technologies that continue to burn vast amounts of fossil hydrocarbons, continually adding green house gases in the form of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere. Webber explores opportunities that provide not only a viable bridge, but long term solutions.

Webber’s main focus is on ways to achieve a non-polluting, hydrogen based energy future. He discusses several interesting approaches to obtaining the hydrogen. One source of hydrogen is from anaerobic digesters that use microbes to create methane from organic matter such as crop waste, manure, landfills, and the like. (The reason that carbon dioxide created by burning methane from these sources is that the carbon for plant growth comes from the atmosphere, and just ends up back the atmosphere when it is burned – there is no net increase in the amount of carbon dioxide. It is actually better than not using it because the methane is created in any case when organics breakdown in landfills and such, increasing the amount of methane in the atmosphere, which might be worse than carbon dioxide. What the author fails to point out is that “big industry” often takes these kinds of solutions to the extreme, clear-cutting vast forests that are ground up and fed into industrial digesters. The point is to do this using materials that would normally be waste, creating fuel and organic compost used to enhance agricultural activities. To be effective, it should NOT including cutting down forests for fuel, or planting large crops such as is currently being done with corn to produce ethanol as a fuel additive.

Gas produced by bioreactors can be used in a number of ways including producing electricity for local use or put onto the grid, injecting directly into natural gas pipelines as a substitute for natural gas, or liquefied and shipped to the user by truck or train. While this source of methane is limited, it is currently available and being done globally.

Sources of hydrogen include creating it by electrolysis of water by using electricity produced by sustainable sources such as wind, hydroelectric and solar. It can also be obtained by steam re-forming of methane. Large deposits of hydrogen have been found and can be extracted using wells much like methane. Unfortunately, the existing natural gas distribution pipelines are not suitable for transporting pure hydrogen. There are problems with corrosion, leakage, and energy required to move it through pipelines because of its low density. A solution to this problem is mixing it with methane to reduce, but not eliminate, the amount of carbon in the fuel. It is even possible to pipe methane to the user and reforming it at that location by extracting the carbon from the gas, resulting in hydrogen and carbon powder. (The powder has economic value and can be sold.)

Another interesting possibility for making hydrogen suitable for pipelines is to turn it into ammonia (NH3) by combining it with nitrogen from the atmosphere for transportation and back to hydrogen at the end of the pipeline. Another advantage of using ammonia is that it is liquid at near-ambient conditions and can therefore replace traditional liquid fuels for ships and aircraft.

All of this is very interesting and encouraging because it describes what could truly be a bridge to a hydrogen economy that can eliminate the increase in carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere (with the added benefit of eliminating the other pollutants associated with burning fossil fuels). The author’s point is that we shouldn’t be thinking of methane as a bridge, but instead move toward a hydrogen and sustainably produced electricity based fuel system.

While this is an interesting approach to a better future, it follows the typical path of assuming a constant (or growing) demand for energy, and the presence of a vast commercial infrastructure that sells energy to the customer. I believe we need to focus much more on reducing our energy demands as a major step toward achieving an “green” energy footprint. The opportunities to conserve in ways that don’t result in reduced utility are astounding. For curiosity, last night I counted the number of LED “indicator lights” glowing in my house. They are on all sorts of devices, from smoke alarms and toothbrushes to televisions and refrigerators. I found 46 of them glowing like a spread out Christmas tree. If each of those little lights uses 1/2 watt of power, the approximately 125 million homes in the USA require the total output of four very large coal burning power plants just to keep those little lights glowing. We could shut down four coal burning power plants just by not including indicator lights in all of these devices. As I have discussed in the past, we can reduce the amount of energy required to condition the air in homes to about 1/3 of the current amounts by various means of “fixing” problems, at an initial cost that is less than the cost of not fixing them (this means “free” to me). Implementing these “free” fixes would cut the country’s energy budget by 5%. Doubling the mileage of cars and trucks would reduce the use of energy by another 15%. Switching to other low efficiency devices in homes can further reduce the demand by 5%. I believe that making energy efficiency a priority can easily reduce the country’s energy use by 50% or more, getting the demand small enough for a zero-carbon approach to be feasible without resorting to solutions such as nuclear power plants. For example, once homes are made more efficient, then making them “net zero” consumers is highly affordable using solar electricity. Combining this with on-site hydrogen production and storage can achieve not just “net zero” energy use, but “off grid” conditions that do not depend upon using the grid at any time except as a means of making a small income by selling excess power to the grid.

I would like to see a big study that researches how much we can reduce the energy demain using techniques that have costs less than the equivalent of 5 years (or some appropriate time period) of energy or at least pays back in less than the product lifetime. These relatively short payback investments result in a lower ownership/use cost for the consumer. Perhaps the government will need to provide some type of zero interest loan to absorb the upfront costs. These loans would be in a “revolving” fund that gets payed by as a fraction of the energy costs that would have been incurred without the improvements.

I think the focus should be on reducing our energy footprint so that we only replace what needs to be replaced. Just because we current use 93 quadrillion BTUs (QUADs) of power does not mean that we will always use that amount. Perhaps we actually only need 30 QUADs to power a more efficient economy. If so, that makes the problem of switching to “green” sources of power much easier considering that we already produce about 11 QUADs, with an addition 8 QUADs of nuclear (that could be the true “bridge” power source that will become smaller as the power plants age and become uneconomic to operate). While coming up with 10 QUADs of new sources of non-carbon fuels will be a challenge, it is not nearly as large as the requirement for 70 QUADs currently envisioned.

Like many times in the past, I started searching for him with an email message. I normally don’t get a response from him using this approach; I usually end up driving the three hours to his place in the hopes of finding him at home. However, my emails don’t bounce so I assume he is still somewhere in the vicinity. Since he has a tendency to roam the world, the odds of finding him at home are not great. This time the email bounced back, meaning that something had changed. On a whim I tried Googling his name, and up popped his obituary!  Something had indeed changed with his passing in October of last year.  I was surprised at the strength of my reaction to this news – I was stunned, and filled with tears.  I am still going through the roller coaster of feeling fine one minute, and choked up with tears and grief the next.  I guess this is a sign of deep connection and love with the deceased – it is too bad that our bodies are so great at informing us of this after the opportunity to stay connected has passed.  I was aware that I really like the guy, and think of him often even when separated by months (or years) – but I wasn’t prepared for the depth of my reaction to his loss.

Rocke was one of those one-in-a-lifetime kind of guys.  His world was always a “big” world with few apparent bounds – everything had an outsized aspect to it.  Perhaps the most amazing, and at times annoying, thing about him was his photographic memory about the big and tiny, details of everything around him.  Because of this, discussions might include recitations of pages of quotes from philosophers such as Kant, to detailed specifications (including part numbers) of the inner workings on some specific vintage fighter plane engine that took his fancy for some reason or another, to lengthy discussions of the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics – or any other of a myriad of possibilities.  It was always far beyond anything I knew about, and in far more detail than I had any desire to know – but he demanded my attention because it was all obviously somehow critically important to the functioning of the world.  I always found him to be endlessly fascinating, but only possible to withstand in small chunks at a time. 

The stories about him are probably endless – each person he encountered undoubtedly has many such stories that can’t be told in the right way because no matter how you approach them they all sound like wild exaggerations, and flights into one sort of fantasy or another – no person can live like that.  In fact, that was always one of my amazements – somehow he managed to get to 81 years as the artist of his own life, painting the most outrageous experiences of life lived his way.  I didn’t think it was “safe” to live like he did. And all the time he was full to overflowing with love, compassion and understanding of others.  He just did things for others, no question, no hesitancy – just “do it”.  Little things like driving down from Sparks on day to bring me a little stone that he felt was full of “power” that I needed to help me through my life.  Or bigger things, like putting on free “feeds” for the local down-and-out folks where he would cook for 300 people in his little kitchen in the bowels of what appeared to be an abandoned gold rush era hotel – at a time when he was obviously destitute himself.  Money didn’t appear to hang around him very long, there were always much more important things that needed doing. The stories could go on forever, but never really capture the essence of the man – my friend and a reminder that I have choices about how I want to life my life.   He will be missed – even though I seldom talked to him.  I knew that an amazing experience was in the offering whenever I felt the need to partake. 

This weekend I got to remembering the marble games we used to have during recess when I was in grade school. Spring was the “marble season” – perhaps that is what brought it back to my memory. As I think about it the feeling is kind of “Leave it to Beaver” moment in the ’50’s before the world became paranoid during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We played three different, but similar games. One was playing in a circle scratched in the dirt, another was in the shape of a fish, and the third as a game of “catch me if you can’ chasing game. I much preferred the one played in the circle. The game went something like this: (1) players dropped a number of their marbles into the ring, (2) someone started shooting from outside the ring, trying to knock a marble out, (3) if you knocked a marble out but stayed in the ring, you could shoot again, (4) if your “shooter” went out of the ring, or if you didn’t eject another marble, it was the end of your turn. Then it went to the next person. I don’t recall how the order of shooters was selected. My recollection says that if you missed and ended up in the ring, then your “shooter” was fair game for the next people. This was a serious situation because prized “shooters” were almost magic, losing one was not a good thing so you had to try to avoid being stranded at the end of your term.

I wasn’t a very good player, but consistent. I often won a couple of extra marbles, but wasn’t good enough to run the ring and knock all of them out. That was an advantage to me because people would play with me, usually someone else would pick up a few extra marbles too. The “good” players had a harder time getting a game – who wants to play someone that takes ALL of the marbles every time.

As the weeks from spring to summer progressed each year my marble bag would get full, to the point that I made a much larger bag than normal to hold my small but consistent winnings. As summer approached, things began to get more difficult because I often had most of the marbles, other players didn’t have enough to join a game. That is when we would switch to “chase” because that only took one marble to join a game.

When we were finally in the last week before summer, I did something that seems odd in retrospect. I would go to the middle of the paved part of the playground and dump all of the marbles out of my bad onto the pavement. They scattered in all directions, being chased down by whoever happened to be there – restoring almost everyone’s stash of marbles. I ended up with none (except for my magic shooters and enough to start playing during the following spring. Next year it would happen all over again. The thing about marbles is that they were expensive (for us kids) and relatively difficult to come by – being mostly passed down from kid to kid, or maybe parents buying a little bag if needed. My guess is that there was pretty much a constant number of marbles in play, we didn’t just “print” more when we ran out.

This reminded me a little of some of the stories about the Native American potlatch idea. Potlatches were “give away” ceremonies held for many reasons such as celebrating a birth, a victory, or some other good event. However, it is my understanding that they were also used as a means for “redistributing” wealth when as a course of events one person would accumulate too much while others didn’t have enough (kind of like my marble conundrum). There seems to be a natural tendency in trading situations for some people to acquire more while other get less. This tendency accelerates over time because the “rich” people have more, and better, resources and therefore have an edge in the game. The rules of the game of trade where that everyone had to try their best, but just naturally there were differences and the wealth would become too unbalanced. Periodically this would become unbalanced enough that it was time for a give-away (potlatch) to even out the wealth within the tribe. If this wasn’t done, then the game broke and could no longer be played (just like with my marble game). Resetting the wealth allowed a game that was obviously flawed because of the tendency of wealth to accumulate wealth to continue functioning thousands of years (or in my case, until the next spring).

At one point in the United States we attempted something similar through a steeply escalating tax structure. In the 50’s the top tax rate was as high as 90%, effectively limiting the accumulation of resources (wealth) by a few – thus fueling a very vigorous and thriving economy. Roads were built, public schools worked, colleges were almost free, the health care system was rapidly growing and finding amazing cures. We were attempting to follow Henry Ford’s business model that he had to pay his workers enough so that they could buy his cars because he needed to sell cars. He was wise enough to understand that he had to create a market for his products if he was going to succeed.

It seems to me that we have somehow lost track of the idea that taxes build things that industry requires in order to be healthy, and that industry requires a consumer base that can afford their products. They need a healthy and educated workforce. An easy way to accomplish that is to pay for the education, pay for a health care system and pay for many other services that are vital to the efficient and competitive functioning of the economy – including their businesses. All of those kinds of “socialist” things aren’t the wealthy paying for other people, it is the wealthy paying for the services that they require in order to do business. It is using the economic benefits of taxes to pay for things that are required by industry but which industry has no means of providing on their own.

The March 13, 2021 issue of Science News has an interesting article concerning the effectiveness of masks at preventing exposures to air borne microbes (including the covid-19 virus). One set of numbers when using medical masks was particularly enlightening to me. They performed a number of tests with two manikins (surrogates for people) spaced six feet apart. If the receiver alone wears a mask, it reduces the amount of inhaled droplets by 7.5%. If the source alone wears a mask, it reduces the receivers exposure by 41.3%. If both wear a mask, the reduction is 84.3%. Clearly, the most important player to reducing exposure is the source person (as we are being constantly told), but the real benefits come when both people wear masks.

If the masks are worn “properly” (knotting the ear loops close to the mask and tucking in the ends to eliminate side gaps), the single mask worn by the receiver reduced expose by 64.5% compared to when neither wears a mask. If both do this, then the reduction is 95.9%. Wearing double masks helps even more. When just the receiver wore a double mask, the protection increased to 83%. When both wore double masks, the protection increased to 96.4%.

While these numbers are interesting, and impressive, they still leave me scratching my head because I don’t know how to align the reductions in particles to reduction in risk. Obviously, if neither parties are infected the masks don’t do anything about reducing risks in that specific event. No infection means no risk, and it is as low as it can go. But what if the source is actually infected? What happens to the risk in that case? For example, if it takes 300 particles to cause infection (an ‘official’ estimate), and the source spews out 100,000 particles a minute (5 million in a sneeze), does reducing the exposure by 96.4% really help much? 300 particles is 0.3% of the initial 100,000 particles per minute. That means that the receiver still receives over 10 times as many particles as required to become infected each minute. Once again, it appears that the reduction in risk of infection is close to zero.

It sounds like wearing a mask is not necessarily “protective”, the only real protection is to avoid being in the vicinity of infected people. There are reports of what sound like valid investigations that found little evidence that mask wearing is particularly effective. Perhaps masks and distancing are helpful for necessary short term excursions into potentially infected areas (such as grocery stores and the like), but the real answer is to avoid infected people. I, for one, am willing to believe that masks worn by a source can prevent large globs of stuff from flying out of their mouth into my face, and that has GOT to be an improvement. I therefore do as we were told a year ago, I wear my mask to help protect others and sure wish they would do the same to help protect me.

By the way, while researching this piece I came upon a discussion about the back of the nose being the ideal “incubator” for the virus. Breathing viruses in through the mouth isn’t nearly as dangerous as breathing them into through the nose. Hence, all of those “nose breathers” that don’t put the mask over their noses are doing very little good for themselves. Perhaps it cuts down on the number of droplets being expelled when they talk or sneeze. I also found that the best science still points to vaccinated people being just as susceptible to infection, and just as contagious, as they were before being vaccinated. The only real difference is that they are protected from serious illness, and the creation of many more non-systematic people who think they are now “safe”. They may be safe in some sense, but those around them are not. Testing can help show that a person wasn’t infected when the took the test, but says nothing about what happened subsequently. Actually, since there is a delay of up to three days before tests show a positive response, the tests really only show that the person wasn’t infected three days before taking the test. A friend of mine that recently went to New Zealand said that prior to the flight all passengers tested negative, but by the time the landed in New Zealand, 6 tested positive. Those six were infected sometime between three days prior to their test and when they boarded the airplane. All were asymptomatic when they landed.