In the 1950s and 1960s, it was popular in America for idealistic youths to speak and think about absolute truth. This pursuit of truth varied in its nature in accordance with the interests of the individual. In response to the Biblical message that the universe is orderly, the search for truth blossomed over many centuries to give rise to our modern scientific and technical civilization. An ultimately successful attack upon that civilization must effectively undermine and root out our cultural preference for truth. The enemies of reason know this and are doing their best to act accordingly.

See, for example, "The Flight from Science and Reason'' by C. H. Sommers - the lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal for July, 10, 1995, p A12. This is a serious and growing problem.

In Access to Energy, we often seek to discredit those who misuse science. We present factual evidence that their claims are wrong. We think that we can convince others of the rightness of our statements because those statements are factual - they are true. Unfortunately, there is a major growth industry in America determined to teach our people that truth is not intrinsically meritorious or even does not exist.

This industry includes the educational establishment (2 million unionized teachers and a vast system of socialized education) which is even adopting "whole language,'' a system teaching that there is no exact meaning or truth in a written text - only subjective cues for the reader's imagination. It also includes elements of the child entertainment industry.

There is certainly nothing wrong with an anthropomorphic fictional account of talking trees and an idealistic Indian maiden created for the entertainment of children, even though we might not personally agree with part of the enviro message. There is, however, everything wrong with the wholesale alteration of factual history in order to buttress this message with an aura of historical accuracy.

Unable to buy even a hamburger without being immersed in the world of Disney's Pocahontas, we did a little additional reading - see, for example, Encyclopedia Americana of 1908 and references.

By Captain John Smith's personal account of his perils at the hands of Powhatan, "at the minute of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine.'' While some historians have claimed that Smith exaggerated, he was there and they were not. In any case, it is agreed that this 12-year-old Indian girl was a great and perhaps critical help to the survival of the colony at Jamestown.

Captain Smith was, however, a married man (his wife died at Jamestown) who was 27 years old when Pocahontas was 12. Poca-hontas married John Rolfe when she was 18, converted to Christianity, went to England at the age of 21 (where she was called Lady Rebecca after her baptismal name), and died at the age of 22.

Disney portrays a world of noble savages pitted against evil Euro-peans interested only in digging for gold. Gone are the deprivations of survival in the New World that killed half the colony. These Disney Europeans have plenty to eat as they rape the land and murder Indi-ans. Smith's fictional love affair with Pocahontas (portrayed as an episode that would probably have gotten them both killed by their actual peers of the time) causes him to reform, only to be shot by a European. She stays in North America to love nature as he returns to England. Their spirits are, however, united forever, presumably along with the talking tree. For more see "The Real Pocahontas'' by D. A. Price in The Wall Street Journal, June 13, 1995, p A18.

The Jamestown settlers, John Smith, and Pocahontas are not the most important part of American history, but they were tough, admirable people whose meritorious actions should be remembered as a part of our historical heritage. The truths about them are worth telling. Why replace these truths with politically correct lies?

The Cold War was a war against truth - lost by the monolithic tyrannies, in part because printing presses, radios, and finally computers destroyed their control over the flow of truth to captive people.

Along with Access to Energy, we inherited the printing press from Petr Beckmann's basement on which Zachary and Noah print the newsletter. Imagine Petr's joy as he set his own type and printed truths against the enemies of freedom. In the Czechoslovakia from which he escaped, a printing press meant imprisonment and death.

Freedom is not lost, of course, only by physical enslavement. People can be enslaved physically, economically, intellectually, or emotionally. They can be enslaved by governments or by participation in groups that place the individual in bondage to the group or its leadership - regardless of how wonderful may be the purposes of the group. They can even enslave themselves through ignorance of the truth or through belief that they personally always know the truth - a belief that closes their minds and leaves them slaves of their own errors.

The trend toward decentralization made possible by advances in electronics is a great aid to truth. People will always make errors, but, if there are many separate independent individuals and groups, it is unlikely that they will all be in error simultaneously. Somewhere truth will survive, eventually to triumph by its own strength.

The enemies of truth still prefer great, all-powerful monolithic governments where their control of people cannot be challenged. That control is largely exercised by manipulation of the "truth.'' Respect and veneration of truth is a value of great importance in the education of students. This value and reliable methods of thought for recognizing and determining truth are far more important than any specific body of factual information. This is one reason why mathematics is an excellent core curriculum for all students. It is very difficult (although not impossible, as our tax-financed schools have shown) to teach mathematics without teaching rigorous truth.

We must never forget that past civilizations which went horribly wrong - such as the later years of Rome, the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages, or the Nazis of Germany - were made up of people just like us. They came under the control of lies - lies that have a fundamental appeal to certain negative aspects of human nature.

We are not different or superior because we now have the fruits of science and technology. If we lose our respect for truth - whether in history, in economics, in politics, or in science - then we will probably succumb to the baser aspects of our nature. One need look no farther than a history or environmental studies course at the local socialized school to see how precarious our position has become.

 

As data storage and transmission advance, our access to knowledge is rapidly increasing. Most people are thinking of these new capabilities as access to "information,'' which they define as very recent data with special time value. Some even think that, if they can maintain an advantage in information access time, this advantage can be substituted for productive work. Unfortunately for them, rapid technological change is giving everyone fast access to information and undermining their advantage. Productive work is better security.

In addition to access to "information,'' the new technology is bringing better access to knowledge, the accumulated wisdom of several thousand years of recorded human history and inquiry.

One CD-ROM can now hold image files of about 25 books or text files of about 500 books. Image files are better because they preserve the typesetter's art, figures, and the format preferred by the author. Text file methods for accurately preserving these images are, however, improving. New CD-ROMs with five times greater capacity are expected soon, and those with fifty times greater capacity are probably not far way. These will make possible 25,000 books on a CD-ROM -if the CD-ROM itself is not obsolete by then. We are approaching a time when a copy of the Library of Congress or the National Library of Medicine could be sold in a box at your local discount store.

It will be a major undertaking to scan all of the pages in these libraries, but scanners are improving. Even with current scanners, this could certainly be done. Image files can be preserved, while current optical character recognition programs can link these images to full-text search with 95% or better reliability. There are, however, two ways in which we risk losing some of this knowledge while gaining the rest.

First, recorded knowledge can be lost when recording methods change. This process once took hundreds or even thousands of years as languages changed and sometimes were lost. Now, the process has speeded up. Carl Boehme, professor of electrical engineering here at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, recently resurrected and repaired an old DEC PDP-11 computer system in order to recover some essential computer programs and other knowledge that had been recorded on DEC Tape 15 years earlier. Had he not been able to perform electronic archaeology, this knowledge might have been lost.

We cannot read many of the writings of Julius Caesar because all copies were lost. Copies require work. Our rapidly changing recording methods require that copies be made more and more frequently. This effort may not be made for knowledge of little current interest.

Second, the effort of copying may not be made when legal impediments stand in the way. Copyright law is currently creating a memory hole for knowledge published during the past 50 to 75 years. Opinions vary on how old a document must be before its copyright expires -and, regardless of which opinion one adopts, time and resources are required to enforce that opinion. Imagine the problem of scanning and distributing a library including several hundred thousand books that may still have enforceable copyrights.

For our home-school curriculum, we want to recommend some very excellent science texts and other materials that have been published in recent decades. These are, however, out of print but still in copyright. Where permission can be obtained, we scan them, but often permission will not be given. For our small project, we are using substitutes. For large projects, however, such as the computerization and dissemination of great libraries, recent materials will just be passed over - and many may eventually be lost forever.

If bureaucratic costs and legal stumbling blocks can be removed, large projects for the computerization of human knowledge can sweep everything into modern storage media and keep updating these media. Sure, it is not all worth keeping, but there is no human or machine capable of deciding what should be thrown away. We are arriving at a wonderful time in which we can stop losing knowledge and can disseminate that knowledge throughout our civilization.

 

We are forever hearing that American dependence upon hydrocarbon combustion and nuclear power must give way to "renewable energy sources'' in the "New Age.'' Now, global elitists are even peddling this nonsense to emerging underdeveloped nations - who like the notion even less because their futures depend upon inexpensive, abundant energy. The Asian response is summarized in "China: Ready for more nuclear power'' by S. Rippon, Nuclear News, 38, No. 8, pp 32-33 (1995) and "Energy-Hungry, Asia Embraces Nuclear Power'' by P. Shenon, The New York Times, April 23, 1995, p 4E.

If we cannot build nuclear power plants in the United States, we can at least build them elsewhere - right? Wrong. "No Sale: U.S. Companies Lose Business to Export Controls,'' in Nuclear Energy Insight, May 1995, pp 3-4, published by Nuclear Energy Institute, 1776 I

Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006-3708, is about the wonderful nuclear power plants being built in Asia by French industry, since competition from American industry is inhibited by our government.

Why are all these people so shortsighted? Why are they not joining the people of California and building windmills instead? (California has 90% of U.S. wind generation installed capacity.) "Energy Choices in a Competitive Era - The Role of Renewable and Traditional Energy Resources in America's Electric Generation Mix,'' April 1995, Center for Energy and Economic Development, 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 370, Alexandria, VA 22314, answers this.

U.S. electrical usage has doubled in the past 25 years. Currently only 2% of that electricity is from "renewable'' sources. (They do not count breeder reactors - and, anyway, we are not allowed to have any.) Of that 2%, 70% is actually from combustion of biomass and waste. The CEED study (ask for the full report - not just the executive summary) estimates that, under free market competition, this 2% would drop to 1% by the year 2010. They further estimate that it could be raised to 4% by 2010 with about $50 billion in tax-financed subsidies and to 11% by 2010 with about $200 billion in subsidies. Moreover, these increases would primarily replace natural gas, which is so plentiful that it is almost limitless in supply and which has a lower environmental impact than the "renewable'' sources.

Figures 1 and 2 are from the CEED report. Figure 1 shows total US renewable capacity as compared to that of individual nuclear and coal- fired plants. Figure 2 gives the cost of hydrocarbon fuels, which is steadily decreasing. Air pollution emissions from coal plants have fallen by 50-fold since 1970, so the competition is between coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. "Renewables'' are not even in the game.

We admit that we would like to see a ten-fold drop in photovoltaic cell costs, because this could decentralize home electricity supply and enhance individual freedom. This is not available now, however, and, if it were, it could still not supply the needs of American industry.

 

In 1960, James Bonner included in his introductory biology lectures at Caltech a section about the width of the distribution functions of mental ability in men and women. Men, he said, have wider distribution functions than women. There are more men of unusually high ability and more of unusually low ability. It was hypothesized that this might be caused by factors on the X chromosome which affect intelligence. With two X chromosomes, an averaging of the two could occur in women and not in men. This would lead to lower variation.

Since then, this has become a politically incorrect research subject. It has not, however, been completely buried. This year, the College Board SAT math exam was made easier in order to reduce "gender bias,'' the tendency for boys to have higher math scores than girls (see Access to Energy 21-7, p 1). Now, with perestroika spreading even to affirmative action, this subject, too, is climbing out of its hiding places "Sex Differences in Mental Test Scores, Variability, and Numbers of High-Scoring Individuals'' by Larry V. Hedges and Amy Nowell in Science 269, pp 41-45 (1995), combines six studies of over 200,000 individuals. They find that "although average sex differences have been generally small and stable over time, the test scores of males consistently have larger variance. Except in tests of reading comprehension, perceptual speed, and associative memory, males typically outnumber females substantially among high-scoring individuals.'' This effect is especially pronounced in math. One study of 73,425 individual math scores found male/female ratios of 1.3 for the top 10%, 1.5 for the top 5%, 2.1 for the top 3%, and 7.0 for the top 1%. This would be enough to cause the observed differences in average SAT scores because low-scoring individuals do not take the test.

Since these distribution functions are mostly overlapping, this result says nothing at all about the abilities of each individual or of small groups of individuals. (For example, women can be found as the top people in specialized research fields - including those requiring extraordinary math skills.) It also says nothing about education through age 18, since there is no need to be in these top percentages to learn basic skills and facts. It suggests, however, that politically correct efforts to eliminate differences in the averages of large numbers of individuals (such as the SAT change) are misguided.

In order to be intellectually free, each individual must have the ability to think and have sufficient knowledge about the world around him as a basis for thought. In this age of science and technology, these mental tools for productive thought should be obtained early and reinforced throughout life. Hundreds of thousands of American families have now decided that their children's educations are too important to be left to socialism - they are home schooling.

Figure 3, from "One Parent's Experience with Home Schooling'' by Barry Brooks in National Minority Politics, 7 , No. 6, June 1995, available from 5757 Westheimer Road, Suite 3-296, Houston, TX 77057-9764, shows an economic profile of these families. This article is also illustrative of the growing awareness among black Americans that true freedom from intellectual slavery is better obtained through home education than through tax-financed, socialized schools.

One impediment to the home-school movement has been the perceived need for a parent in the home with sufficient time to be a teacher. This is particularly a problem among lower income Americans who are currently less likely to have such a parent. Our personal experience in the Robinson household, however, has been that a home school works very well when the children are self-taught with good books, lesson plans, and study environment, and with very little parental involvement. For two years, we have been working to produce materials on CD-ROM that would enable other families to do more easily what the children here have done and to improve our own school.

Version 1.0 of this effort is now finished and is comprised of sets of six CD-ROMs. The six CD-ROMs contain image files of over 50,000 pages from books of history, economics, and general literature that we recommend. If the family does not have a particular book, included software allows them to print one that is identical to the original. Also included are a few special reading and vocabulary examinations, a detailed description of our curriculum, and recommendations of other books to buy. These materials are for children of ages 5 to 18.

This is Version 1.0 and is quite useful. (It requires Microsoft Windows, a 386 or higher, and 4 MB of memory.) This curriculum needs, however, another 100,000 pages of books and a great many more examinations. Therefore, we are selling the 6 CD-ROMs for $95 per set postage paid. Profits will be used to expand the curriculum. Families who cannot afford $95 can buy the set at a lower price. Version 1.0 was made possible by donations, by earnings from Access to Energy, and by the volunteer help of many friends. We will start shipping these sets in mid August. Orders should be sent to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, P.O. Box 1279, Cave Junction, OR 97523.

Pages 1-4 of the July 1995 Health Physics Society Newsletter available from HPS, 1313 Dolley Madison Boulevard, Suite 402, McLean, VA 22101 answer, by means of a March 1995 Minnesota Department of Health Study, the 1994 Ernest Sternglass claim that breast cancer mortality is higher near Minnesota nuclear power plants. As expected from numerous other studies and from the lack of any known physical phenomenon that could cause this alleged increase, no increase in breast cancer (or in several other cancers also studied) was found.

Sternglass manufactured his increase by selecting some, but not all, of the counties near the plants. This selection was for those that had an upward fluctuation of breast cancer incidence during the period immediately before his press conference. They were fluctuating up from a lower than usual incidence - back to the historical average incidence. Fluctuations of averages of small numbers of individuals are larger than for large numbers, so Sternglass had a historical range of between 20 and 34 deaths per 100,000 to work with while he dishonestly created his nonexistent "correlation.'' By contrast, "Prevalence of Lens Changes in Ukranian Children Residing Around Chernobyl'' by R. Day, M. B. Gorin, and A. W. El-ler in Health Physics 68, pp 632-642 reports an increase from 1.1% (control population) to 3.6% in detectable eye lens abnormalities for children living in the most heavily contaminated zone near the Cher-nobyl power plants. This is not cancer - but it is honest science.

The mirrors in the solar power field near Barstow, California, are not working as well as they might, operators say, because the atmosphere still contains smoke from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines four years ago. It happens, also, that 20% of the mirrors are broken. None of this is, however, stopping Southern California Edison from paying five times the market price (15 cents/KwH vs. 3 cents/KwH) for electricity from this field and passing the extra $800 million annual cost along in higher bills to its customers.

The Public Policy Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, according to The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 1995, pp A1 & A8 article by J.

Bailey, entitled "Carter-Era Law Keeps Price of Electricity Up In Spite of a Surplus,'' requires that $37 billion be paid by U. S. electricity consumers through the year 2000 - above ordinary market prices. This act subsidizes "alternative'' energy.

In the nearby California "wind farms,'' turbine blades have chewed up 78 golden eagles during the past two years. (Meanwhile in Florida, concern for the lives of two woodpeckers stopped a launch of the space shuttle.) At least, most of the windmills are still spinning. The manure-burning power plant in El Centro, California has completely stopped. It is plugged with manure that refuses to burn.

While propaganda from national and international enviro leaders is the usual focus of attention and debate, it is also interesting to watch their foot soldiers in action. In response to a local newspaper article favorably reporting the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting that we are cosponsoring here August 4-6, the following advertisement is being posted around town by local enviros:

" DOCTORS OF DEATH IN THE ILLINOIS VALLEY?

"FACT OR FICTION? O.I.S.M. Research uses high voltage power, biological suits, viruses, animal tests, chemical storage, and ......... what else? Is the Illinois Valley a base for secret government funding of biological warfare? Why white suits with hoods? What are in the big tanks? ( sic) Why 20,000 watts of power?

"ARE WE THE LAB RATS? What protection do we have from accidental pollution to air and water caused by testing & research by O.I.S.M? Who funds nonprofit biochemistry research? Have any of these people done anything to give us a safer world to live in?'' (This last sentence points with an arrow to a list of DDP meeting speakers.) We admit to a 20,000 watt line - the power rating for a normal household line. We wish we could afford the machinery to use more.

• The Wall Street Journal, May 10, 1995, p 1 reports that "Tax collections are likely to climb 5.7% this year, the Tax Foundation estimates. In a report to be issued soon, the Washington-based research group says federal, state, and local governments will collect an average of $21,760 in taxes for every household in the nation.
  
  Imagine the effects of shutting down all except the essentials of the national defense and court systems, freeing America of bureaucratic regulators, and ending the theft of at least $15,000 in average annual per family purchasing power from the American people. Then we would really see the enormous productive power of free enterprise.
  
  
• Dr. C. Fountain writes "that Green groups in the US are threatening legal action over a move by the US government to remove 3 species of kangaroos, the red, eastern gray, and western gray, from the endangered species list. "Roos on the danger list, say US greens'' by P. Wilson and S. Hornsburgh in The Australian of 3/10/95 quotes an Australian National Conservation Agency spokesman - "I don't know what they're talking about. It sounds like someone's got their wires crossed. Their population is four times what it was when Captain Cook landed. [The kangaroo] would have to be one of the most common mammals in the world - there's literally millions of them.''
  
  
• "EcoKids: New Automatons on the Block'' by Jo Kwong in The Freeman, March 1995, pp 155-159 chronicles the new use that enviros have found for children - brainwashing them in the socialized schools into fearful, unthinking opponents of technology. This article is hilarious until one realizes that American children actually believe this propaganda. Meanwhile "Lessons in Hypocrisy'' by D. P. Doyle in The Wall Street Journal, June 13, p A18, gives the percentages of public school teachers sending their children to private schools in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco as 44.6%, 36.3%, and 36.7% respectively.

• But is it True? A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues by Aaron Wildavsky, Harvard University Press (1995). Professor Wildavsky makes a final effort (published after his death) to protect us from the nonscience in our political environment.
  
  
• Environmental Gore: A Constructive Response to Earth In the Balance edited by J. Baden and published by the Pacific Research Institute. Also read the review of this book by J. Morris, Nature 375 pp 115-116 (1995). Bookstores in the U. S. National Parks have been featuring Algore's handbook of fictional horrors - if only they would put this new book on the shelves beside it.
  
  
• "T-Cells and C-Notes'' by Tom Bethell, The American Spectator, April 1995, pp 16 & 18. This summarizes the vast, inbred tax-financed HIV and AIDS industry that feeds upon human suffering.
  
  
• "Peer-Review Panel Rejects EPA's Dioxin Reassessment,'' EPA Watch 4, No. 10, pp 1-2, May 1995, available from EPA Watch, 14140-L Parke Long Court, Chantilly, VA 22021. See also, "Cleaning Up EPA's Dioxin Mess'' by K. E. Kelly, The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 1995, editorial page. EPA is using a no-threshold dioxin model. A panel of scientists formed by the Environmental Protection Agency's own Science Advisory Board rejected this model and EPA's further efforts to demonize the current U. S. environmental levels of dioxin - most of which do not originate from human activity.
  
  
• Currency Debasement: Its Effect On the World Economy by the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education, 211 East 43rd Street, New York, NY 10017-4707. They point out that currency debasement decreases the time span over which investors are willing to take risks. This is especially damaging to scientific research.
  
  
• "Thomas Jefferson's Sophisticated, Radical Vision of Liberty'' by Jim Powell in The Freeman 45, pp 467-471 (1995) available from The Foundation for Economic Education, 30 South Broadway, Irv-ington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. These thoughts should be reread often.