Public debate about technology and lifespan usually emphasizes the high-tech procedures of crisis medicine and the relative merits of their use. Human interest stories about individual children saved at very great expense by the miracles of modern medicine keep the public convinced that all is well at the leading edge of health research.

Simultaneously, controversy rages about the delivery of life-prolonging technology at the other end of life. There is not enough money to deliver the current "miracles'' to everyone. The political purveyors of the politics of envy argue, therefore, that no one (except themselves) should be allowed to utilize this technology just because he can afford it or because he can afford old-age medical insurance. Hence, the current "plan'' that puts all older Americans under a government system that either rations medical care directly or else delegates this rationing to corporations.

Technology does have a major impact on lifespan, but this effect is largely unrelated to expensive medical techniques.

Half of the five-year-old children in Ancient Rome were dead before the age of 20. Their lifespan curve decays with a constant probability of death so high that few people achieve ages where physiological deterioration limits their lifespans.

The life-extending technology that these Romans lacked was primarily related to hygiene and simple procedures for the control of disease epidemics. All roads led to Rome, and the diseases of the ancient world traveled those roads. In the Roman colonies where there were fewer such roads and a lower population density, lives were longer. They were still short, however, compared with the USA today, where technology provides hygiene and other improvements in life.

Figure 1 shows that lifespan in the United States is now being limited primarily by time-dependent increased probability of death from physiological causes - aging. Still, the area in the figure above the USA line includes many younger people who are unnecessarily deprived of many years of life along with the older citizens who should be living productive, healthful lives to greater ages.

Providing for the energy needs of several billion people is definitely an adult activity. The cute toys of the enviros and other countercultur-ists make pretty four-color spreads in magazine articles, but they are dwarfed into insignificance by the real power consumption of human civilization. It is, however, a special tragedy of our time that their toys became politically correct and, coupled with the politics of fear, managed to retard sensible power development during the past generation. Even if these political problems were entirely solved now, it would require decades to correct the damage that has already been done -damage that has exacted a terrible price in human lives.

There is, nevertheless, gradual progress. Figure 2 is from the International Atomic Energy Agency Bulletin 37, No. 2, p 45 (1995) and gives the range of IAEA projections for nuclear power generation over the next 20 years. The narrow range of estimates during the initial years reflects the lead time necessary to construct nuclear power plants. The wide range of estimates thereafter reflects uncertainties in demand, finances, and public attitudes toward nuclear power.

Page 53 of the same IAEA Bulletin gives the world generation of nuclear power as of December 1994. There are 432 operating nuclear power plants and 48 under construction. The United States has 109 with one under construction. Percentages of electricity generated from nuclear power for countries having more than 1% are:

Lithuania	76.4 %	Ukraine	28.9 %
France	75.3 %	Czech Republic	28.2 %
Belgium	55.8 %	Japan	27.2 %
Sweden	51.1 %	United Kingdom	25.8 %
Slovak Republic	49.1 %	United States	22.0 %
Bulgaria	45.6 %	Canada	19.1 %
Hungary	43.7 %	Argentina	13.8 %
Slovania	38.0 %	Russia	11.4 %
Switzerland	36.8 %	South Africa	5.7 %
Republic of Korea	35.5 %	Netherlands	4.9 %
Spain	35.0 %	Mexico	3.5 %
China - Taiwan	33.5 %	China - Mainland	1.5 %
Finland	29.5 %	India	1.4 %
Germany	29.3 %

It all sounded great at the international conferences. Junketing at public expense while crying crocodile tears about the whole earth and simultaneously raising one's income from tax-financed grants seemed to be a double winner - and there was just enough hypothetical science to provide colorable camouflage for the whole exercise.

Then the political power brokers and their owners weighed in, especially those with grandiose dreams of world control, since any excuse for manipulation of people on a world scale looked good to them. Their shills in the press took up the cause and the grants grew even larger and came with the added perk of public notoriety.

Now, however, things are turning a little unpleasant. The power brokers, you see, meant business and have been passing laws based on the hypotheses in the research grant proposals - especially those about ozone holes and global warming. They do not seem to realize that such hypotheses are proffered primarily to keep tax money flowing to research and are often of little substance. After all, medical research grants have been able to promise pie in the sky without delivering. Why should the enviros be held to an accounting?

(We do not mean that atmospheric science is junk or that careful studies of ozone or even of the hypothesis about CFCs should not be done. It is the self-interested exaggerations and falsehoods [with no corrective effort by these "prize winners''] with which this cause has been surrounded that are junk. Moreover, the science of the matter certainly does not deserve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.) Other indicators of panic abound. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is quoted as four-square for the Chicken Little predictions on global warming and very widely so reported in the press - on the basis of a leaked draft labeled "DRAFT, FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY, DO NOT CITE/DISTRIBUTE.'' This draft deals solely with impacts and response options - all of the scientific data and evaluations are in another, still confidential document. (See R. C. Balling, The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 1995, p A14.)

The new fields are estimated to be more than 30,000 feet deep -below depths currently drilled for oil. K. K. Bissada from Texaco in Houston is quoted as skeptical that this refilling can keep up with current human use, but he thinks it possible that the upper reservoirs that currently serve as a source for oil could be refilled in 10 or 20 years -which is comparable to current emptying times.

It does seem odd that all of the earth's oil fields just happen to be within easy reach of 20th Century drilling techniques. That deeper fields might rise into the empty reservoirs which we create above them would be a fortuitous occurrence indeed.

Even if this turns out to be a rare occurrence, it has value. Think of the nightmares it will give Paul Ehrlich when news reaches Stanford.

The positive charge of mineral ions in soil moisture allows movement of soil water with low voltages and current. For example, a 1924 experiment with a miniature plow connected to a pulley and weights showed that a 4-volt battery could reduce the weight required to pull the plow through soil by a factor of more than ten-fold. Reversal of polarity increased the normal weight required by more than two-fold.

More recently, on a practical scale, it was demonstrated that pile drivers required one third as many blows to drive piles through soil with appropriately connected electrodes, and energy requirements for real plows on tractors were similarly reduced by up to 40%.

Water is attracted to the implement by the applied voltage. This water then lubricates the steel and facilitates its passage through soil. A similar phenomenon allows rock drills to penetrate rock at double the ordinary speed by application of 5 to 10 volts and less than 1 ampere.

Electrodes can also move water which contains fertilizer into tubes in the soil. Some experimenters are investigating the possibility that nitrate fertilizers might be concentrated near plant roots and then extracted from the field for reuse by means of electroosmosis attachments to drip irrigation systems.

The 35-year-old barber in Cave Junction recently remarked to me that he is now half way through college and expects to have a PhD before he retires. He then explained that, although he graduated only from high school, his high school work is now the equivalent of two years of college. As colleges deteriorate, his educational level automatically advances. The terrible truth is that this barber is right.

Universities exist to create, preserve, and transmit information. Private university tuition fees are now about $50 per lecture hour - often for lectures of questionable worth. The information revolution will demand quality - delivered remotely, quickly, and inexpensively.