After I finished graduate school at the University of California at San Diego and was given a faculty position there, I spent much extracurricular time with my graduate students and the other graduate students, since we were of the same age. Some of this time was whiled away at a beer and hamburger joint in La Jolla known as El Sombrero. Unfortunately, El Sombrero succumbed to real estate development and no longer exists, but I shall never forget one evening there.

As several of us sat at a back table, the El Sombrero door was suddenly filled by a tough-looking character whose black skin matched perfectly his leather jacket and also the dark imaginings of events that might follow too close an encounter with his disposition. The first rule of survival in such situations being no eye contact, I immediately became unusually attentive to the discussion underway at our table.

To my astonishment, however, the new arrival sauntered over to our table and sat down. He knew the graduate students. It turned out that he was also one of my fellow faculty members - assigned to the "third college,'' a new division of the university for minority students that still had no name because of an ongoing squabble over which third-world revolutionary to name it after (Lumumba - Zapata being the most recent discard).

What followed was a discourse on "third-world'' and black-power politics in which I took no part - being unprepared academically, politically, or even psychologically for the prejudices of my esteemed colleague. (Actually, I just wanted to stay out of a fight.) Eventually, however, the subject turned to teaching. I was at the time teaching freshman chemistry to a class of 300 students and found myself pointing out that I made no effort whatever to tailor the goals of my course to separate standards for minority students or any other group regardless of their preparation or ability. In my opinion, they all needed to to know the same material in order to be prepared for the same post-academic world or - at the very least - to know that they did not know the material, so that they could plan accordingly.

The black professor's response was immediate. "You are right!'' he said. "Your course is tough. I know, I'm tutoring two students in your class. But you are exactly right. Our worst enemies are these white liberals who teach watered-down courses to our people and turn them into permanent second-class citizens.'' More than 25 years have passed since that conversation, and times have changed. American schools and universities (with some, increasingly rare exceptions) have become less selective. Now, they are turning all of the students into second-class citizens.

A recent cartoon depicts a cocktail party conversation as follows. A: "You teach in the public schools? What subject?'' B: "Creative Mathematics!'' "When a student adds two and two and gets seven, I ask him why he came to that conclusion. If he tells me he chose the answer because it raises his level of self-esteem - I give him an A+.'' Without the humor, read "Poll Shows Schools Are Our #1 Worry'' in The Phyllis Schlafly Report 30, No. 3 available from P. O. Box 618, Alton, IL 62002, which quotes a Washington Post poll indicating that the top worry of Americans is the low and declining quality... study in pre-college schools have been dumbed down about three years below those of a generation ago. Solid academic subjects now occupy about one-fourth of the school day.

After completing work at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine on our 22 CD-ROM home-school curriculum for ages 6 to 18, we decided to start work on a college curriculum. Remarkably, however, we discovered that students from here are being classed as "transfer students'' at the university because they are entering with about two years of advanced placement. Apparently, we are already a two-year junior college - because our students are being taught a reasonable and traditional pre-college curriculum. This is no longer ordinarily done. The first two years at universities are now devoted to material the students should have learned in high school and, worse, much material that human beings should never be required to learn. Moreover, by college age, it is too late for many people to learn basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, so remedial instruction fails.

In part, this drift into sub-mediocrity has been the result of popular demand. Students and parents wanted high grades and easy courses, so unprincipled teachers and professors gave them what they wanted. The "white liberals'' disliked by my black colleague became ever-so-popular on campuses across the country as they posed as friends of minority students. This worked so well that they extended their popularity by plying their wares to all of the students.

More important has been the modern liberal campaign to turn all American schools into tools for social and political engineering. This transformation has been so complete that the majority of school time is now devoted to politically correct indoctrination rather than basic academic learning. Even courses labeled "mathematics'' have been ruined by infusions of non-academic nonsense. (See Access to Energy 24, 5, p 4, January 1997, "MTV Math Doesn't Add Up.'') Moreover, pegged as their programs are to "grade'' levels, tax-financed schools are setting the academic standard for most alternatives such as private schools and home schools. Parents think of their children as being in particular "grades,'' and the market responds with materials at those grade levels as defined by public schools. In our home school curriculum, we have omitted grade levels entirely because today they norm students to a very low academic standard.

This problem has more to do with American energy supplies for the 21st century than does current technology or any future technology that may be provided by those who manage to become productive engineers and scientists regardless of these educational disadvantages. We cannot expect an optimum use of energy technology by a society populated with technologically illiterate citizens who have been given a vote on virtually every aspect of human affairs. This is especially true since many of those citizens have been fooled into thinking that they are not illiterate (for their "self-esteem'') and are being fed tailor-made opinions by antitechnology public media.

First-class technology and second-class citizens are incompatible because antitechnologists can manipulate ignorant, undisciplined minds. It is time for America to terminate its failed experiment with tax-financed, second-class, socialist schools.

Even without the ambiance of El Sombrero, San Diego is beautiful in June. This year our annual DDP meeting is being held at the Bahia Hotel on Mission Bay in San Diego during the weekend of June 14-15. Arrangements have been made for extension of the convention rates to those who wish to register early for further enjoyment of the sailing, swimming, and many other activities of this remarkable location.

The speaker schedule already reads like a compiled reference list from Access to Energy and is becoming even better as additional outstanding people agree to participate. So far, the confirmed speakers are: Sallie Baliunas, staff astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Institute, and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the George C. Marshall Institute, will speak about the ozone depletion fraud that is beginning to wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage world-wide as technology is distorted to fit political agendas.

Bernard Cohen, Professor of Physics and Director of the Radon Project at the University of Pittsburgh and an internationally respected authority in health physics, will discuss his research showing a correla- tion between home radon levels and lung cancer (the higher the radon levels, the lower the cancer death rate at the ordinarily found radon lev- els) and its implications regarding the no-threshold hypothesis.

R. Michael Dowe, Jr., Chief Executive Officer of Information Systems Laboratories, will discuss Electron-Beam Irradiation - a safe and economical procedure for eliminating food-borne disease.

Gordon Edwards, Professor of Biological Science and Medical Entomologist at San Jose State University, will speak about DDT and other pesticides - their enormous benefits in the saving of hundreds of millions of human lives and their realistic biological risks.

Robert Jastrow, Director of the Mount Wilson Institute and Director of the George C. Marshall Institute, will speak about current tech- nology available for strategic defense and the urgent need to deploy it.

Cresson Kearny, America's foremost expert on expedient civil defense and on jungle warfare equipment and procedures, will speak about both of these subjects.

Stanford S. Penner, Professor of Engineering Physics at the University of California at San Diego and Editor-in-Chief of Energy - The International Journal, will speak about United States energy supplies for the 21st Century. If your primary interest is access to energy, this presentation alone will be worth the trip.

Michael Sanera, co-author with Jane Shaw of Facts Not Fear - A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment, will speak about environmental education - as it is and as it ought to be.

Edward Teller will speak about the Use of Observation Satellites to Observe Political or Natural Events of Interest and will present the annual Edward Teller award to the person he has chosen as the 1997 recipient (Dr. Teller, for reasons of age and health, is considering video taping this year's presentation in order to avoid the rigors of travel.)

Robert Zubrin, America's foremost advocate of immediate human travel to Mats and colonization of that planet, will speak about Mars travel and habitability and the Mars Direct project.

There will be six additional speakers of comparable accomplishment and expertise. The remainder of the program will be announced in the April issue of Access to Energy.

The DDP meeting format will provide one full hour for each speaker's presentation. There will also be ample opportunity to ask questions and to meet with the speakers individually at two luncheons, the dinner and awards banquet, and various breaks in the formal schedule. Registtation for the meeting is $95 per person., which includes both luncheons and the banquet.. Rooms at the Bahia for participants are $99 per night single or double. A CD-ROM including audio recordings, some with figures and manuscripts, of the 1991 through 1996 DDP meetings will be available at a discount at the meeting.

The 1997 meeting begins on Friday afternoon with recreational activity and a reception Friday evening. All of the formal presentations will be on Saturday and Sunday. The banquet is Saturday evening. Sunday evening there will be an opportunity for participants who are not invited speakers to make short presentations.

This is the 15th annual meeting of DDP, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. The conference is co-sponsored by Access to Energy and Physicians for Civil Defense. There are a limited number of rooms, SO it would be wise to register early with DDP, 2509 North Campbell, Box 272, Tucson, AZ 85719-3362, telephone (520) 325-2680.

Founded as an organization with a special interest in emergency response to natural and man-made disasters, DDP has expanded its purview to include, in addition, many of the slow-motion disasters of our time - especially those resulting from the political misuse of science. Dr. Jane M. Orient is responsible for the excellent annual meetings which have grown in popularity as a result of the very outstanding in- dividuals who have agreed to participate.

The enviro attack upon the periodic table continues to expand - fed largely by unprincipled "scientists" who hope to receive oodles of your tax dollars if only they can cry wolf loudly enough for equally unprincipled politicians and bureaucrats to hear.

"Tallying Nitrogen's Increasing Impact" by C. Milot, Science Naps 151, No. 7 February 151997, based on the claims of a "team of Stanford University ecologists" is classic. They manage to blame nitrogen fixation from human activity for global warming, ozone deple- tion diminishing biological diversity, smog, acid rain polluted water, and damaged soil (defined as soil that grows more plants). Stanford, an institution overflowing with tax subsidies, already has provided us with Global Warmer Schneider and Population Bomb Ehrlich. Agricultural nitrogen fixation by farm technology is the primary reason that Ehrlich's predictions of global starvation have been 100% wrong.

Their primary strategy is to play upon the inherent human fear of change - especially change that people do not understand. With tax-financed schools pumping out armies of students who have been taught just enough of the words of science to hide their illiteracy under a coating of self-esteem, there is fertile ground in which to plant that fear.

The various enviro catastrophes cannot be sold on their merits, since they are just not occurring. All that can be sold is fear - fear that they might occur. The market for that fm depends upon ignorance.

Moreover, as the enviros seek to demonize world agriculture with false claims of its harm, they also overlook its enormous benefits - the vast increase in the quantity and quality of human life.

What is the value of increased quantity and quality of human life? Is a life worth $300,000,000 - the price that the Occupational Health and Safety Administration charges industry per estimated human life saved by its benzene regulations? Or, is it essentially valueless as implied by the political efforts of those who advocate eliminating three fourths of the world's population in favor of fish and other animals?

Although most people would rather not think about this question, it is not avoidable. Economic resources cost human lives when they are withdrawn and save human lives when they are supplied. All eco- nomic activity, whether socialist or free, transfers resources that determine, in part, who lives and who dies.

This is the problem of the forgotten man or woman (or child). It is ever so nice to give resources to others - especially if one avoids think- ing about those from whom the resources were extracted, as by taxes. One easily falls victim to this sort of forgetfulness in many contexts.

As a young man, I loved the musical The Sound of Music (and still do). It tells a wonderful, idyllic, and true story of a young nun who joins a family where the mother has died leaving a husband and seven children. I watched this movie over and over, and I still greatly enjoy it. The family's life following the events in the movie was comparably remarkable, too, as recorded in the autobiogmphy of Maria Von Trapp. It was not, however, until my own wife died leaving our six children with just their father that I, for the first time, thought about the forgotten character in The Sound of Music - the mother who died. The tragedy within the story is forgotten in the subsequent beauty. "Estimated Cost of Person-Sv Exposure" by C. F. Guenther and C. Thein, Health Phy,sics 72, No. 2, pp 204-221 (1997) estimates the value of a year of human life in the United States by the cost people are willing to pay for it in nine different circumstances: jury wrongful death awards, medical expenditures, life insurance coverage, lifetime wages and investments, life-saving inventions, willingness to pay, hu- man capital analysis, values used by government, and law enforcement costs. Assuming a 75-year life span, these nine methods give values fkom $600,000 to $4,200,000 per human life with a mean of about $3,000,000. The authors choose $4,000,000 as their final estimate.

At this point, however, their analysis goes awry because they use the discredited no-threshold linear hypothesis, which erroneously holds that all mdiatioh exposure diminishes human life span. The authors therefore calculate a cost of $2,000 per person-Sv or a person- rem cost of $200,000 per Sv. This is wrong because most people are living in background radiation fields that are below the radiation level for optimum life span. Use of the no-threshold linear hypothesis incorrectly extrapolates from health effects of mdiation levels above the optimum level and gives a false estimate at low levels.

Using Cohen's data on lung cancer deaths as a function of mdon levels in the United States (see Access to Energy 24, No. 6, pp 1-3, February 1997 and included references) and an estimate of 15 years of life lost per lung cancer death, we calculate (20,000)(15) (4,000,000) / (75) = 16,000,000,000 or $16 billion in annual cost of human lives lost in the United States to lung cancer that could have been saved by increasing the background radiation levels in which the victims lived.

This is just lung cancer. Experiments show that hormesis is a gen- eral phenomenon, although data are not yet available for most diseases. Based on existing indications, however, the overall result in American health would probably be orders of magnitude larger than $16 billion.

"Nuclear-Waste Project at a Nevada Mountain Illustrates How 'Nimby' Has a Long Half-Life" by John J. Fialka in The Wall Street Journal, p. A18, February 19,1997 reports that the Department of Energy does not expect to complete the Nevada nuclear waste depository until 2007 and that the Clinton Administration has already misappropriated the remaining funds paid by public utilities for this site to offset the federal budget deficit. The Administration is also ignoring a federal court order to store waste by 1998 as required by the law under which it has already collected $13 billion from nuclear power producers.

One rational but politically incorrect solution would be to simply dilute the waste until it has a low radiation level and then add it to building materials such as sheet rock and cement. This would extend the lifespans of Americans by hormesis and eliminate the waste.

Vitamin D is routinely added to milk for its health benefits. Too much Vitamin D in the diet is, however, fatal. Like radiation, Vitamin D has a threshold biological effect. Below that threshold it is beneficial, but at too high levels it is toxic.

Modem people like to think of themselves as rational beings who are now free from the superstitions and irrationalities that afflicted people in previous millennia. Unreasoning fear of radiation and chemicals, materials that greatly extend human life when used properly and damage life when used improperly, is, however, evidence of modem superstitions that have very high costs when measured in human lives.

"Space Propulsion - Can Empty Space Itself Provide a Solution" by H. E. Puthoff, pp 42-46, and "Breaking Through to the Stars" by Marc G. Millis,, pp. 36-40, Ad Astra, February 1997, available corn the National Space Society, 600 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E., Suite 201, Washington, DC. 20003, describe the problems of finding energy for intentellar space travel and potential solutions.

Millis calculates that sending a ship the size of the current space shuttle on a trip to our nearest star (4.5 light years away) at a speed such that the trip takes 1,000 years with use of shuttle-style chemical rockets is impossible, since the rockets would require more mass for propulsion than the total of all mass in the known universe. Even futuristic rockets using ion engines or antimatter are impractical. Propellant requirements with these methods for a single 100-year trip to the nearest star are estimated at about 300 million supertankers of fuel.

Puthoff and Millis discuss solutions to this problem based upon experimental and theoretical physics which indicates that space is not empty. It is, according to Richard Feynman and others, filled with energy so dense that it is at least comparable to nuclear energy densities. This sea of energy jiggles in "zero-point fluctuations" that may give rise to mass, inertia, gravity, and even discontinuities in space and time.

It is hypothesized that future interstellar travelers may extract their propulsion energy from the vacuum itself, alter inertia and gravity to reduce their energy needs, or even travel through space-time disconti- nuities to reduce the effective distance of their journeys. All of this isapparently acceptable within the theories and equations of modem physics, and laboratory experiments are beginning to demonstrate the possibility of human manipulation of the zero-point fluctuations.

Human journeys to (and colonizations of) Mars and other bodies in our solar system are now possible because of the theoretical and experimental work of scientists and engineers during the past few centuries. Now, the theoretical and experimental framework is being laid for journeys to the stars by future generations. Let us hope that humanity has the wisdom to continue these efforts. A human lifespan cannot be measured by time alone. It is a product of time and experience. As technology - such as that used for space travel - enriches the experi- ences of human life, whether by actual or vicarious participation, it adds to the effective human lifespan.

If space travel eventually enriched each life by one percent (I think the fiv should be very much higher), then we could calculate: (250,000,000) (4,000,000) / (100) = $10 trillion as the value of space travel to the current population of Americans alone and over $100 trillion to humanity as a whole.

Debt financing apologists have a line to the effect that "we owe it to ourselves" regarding the national debt. Figure 1, from Strategic Investment, p 1, February 19, 1997 available from 12 17 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD 21202, shows that this has changed markedly during the Clinton Administration. Now, fully 90% of United States annual federal deficits are being financed by foreign central banks. How long are people outside of the United States going to continue to finance our deficits?

US Treasuries held by foreign central banks (12-month change) divided by federal deficit (12-month sum).

Even at a very conservative estimate of $200 billion per year, the termination of this borrowing binge is going to cost approximately (200,000,000,000) / (4,000,000) = 50,000 lifetimes per year or about twice the annual loss to fatalities on our nation's highways. The deaths will, of come, be among our economically marginal people - the forgotten victims of socialist misallocations of resources.

A related report, "Sometimes, Stocks Go Nowhere for Years" by David Wessel in fie Wall Street Journal, p 1, January 13, 1997, gives a graph of stock market earnings-to-price ratio vs. percentage gain in stock prices during the subsequent 10 years compiled from 1881 to 1987. The current ratio is at the lowest level of the century and corresponds to a zero percent gain in stock prices for the next ten years.

Under the Clinton Administration, even the capability of measuring radiation is apparently politically incorrect. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is eliminating their radiological safety program for the measurement of high levels of radiation in case of accident, terrorism, or war. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of working, calibrated radiation meters are now being discarded nationwide as each state terminates its FEMA radiological safety program.

Faced, however, with grass-roots civil defense activists who volun- teer to store meters for public redistribution in emergency or to distrib- ute them now to the schools, FEMA is offering to pay the states if they will return the meters to FEMA for destruction rather than allowing the citizens to have them. Information is available from Steve Jones at 1402 South 1000 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84104 or (801) 972-0863.

"Gauging Gas Reserves" in Science Navs 151,p 111, February 15, 1997, reports that the first direct measurement of methane hydrate and free methane (in ocean floor sediment of the Blake Ridge off the coast of North Carolina) revealed 10 times the expected concentration of methane. A single 9,000 square mile section of this 35,000 square mile ridge has measured methane equivalent to 35 billion tons of carb- on - sufficient for 100 years of U.S. usage. Worldwide, methane hy- drate and free methane reserves are essentially inexhaustible.

Meanwhile, "An Fe(IV)2O2 Diamond Core Structure for the Key Intermediate Q of Methane Monooxygenase" by Shu, et. al., Science 275, pp 5 15-5 18, January 24,1997, reports the structure and functional states of the catalytic center for a bacterial enzyme that currently con- verts 1 billion tons of methane to methanol each year. (Lest we forget,Science reminds us in the page453 summary of this article that meth- ane is a "greenhouse gas.")

• "Safety That Kills" by Jacob Sullum, Reason, p 20, March 1997, available from 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064, reports that a commission headed by Vice President Al Gore has caused annual airline regulation for terrorist control to rise in cost by over $8 billion already, with a final estimated annual cost of $22 billion when fully implemented. The commission was formed in response to the crash of TWA Flight 800 even though the crash has not been proved to have been caused by terrorists. Assuming that all airline sabotage is stopped by these measures, the regulations would already be costing $200 million per life saved (37 per year) were it not for the fact that an estimated 60 additional lives are lost annually in auto accidents involving people who drive rather than fly as a result of the higher regulatory costs. The net effect of Gore's commission appears to be the expenditure of about $400 million per person to kill 23 Americans each year. Fully implemented, Gore's regulations will kill people at an estimated $1 billion each.
  
  
• "Flies before the people" by Ike C. Sugg in Ike Wall Street Journal, P A20, February 11, 1997, reports that the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly has received protection from U. S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, a Clinton appointee, under the Endangered Species Act. Judge Urbina wrote that "The government has offered uncon- troverted evidence that the Fly is, and would likely continue to be, an article in interstate commerce. " It turns out that, prior to listing, a total of five flies were sold at a price of two dollars each. As a result, the Fish and Wildlife Service has demanded that an eight-lane section of Interstate 10 near San Bernadino, California be shut down - or at least its traf& slowed to 15 miles per hour during August and September. A hospital is now one year behind in construc- tion, and San Bemadino County has now spent $4.5 million to accom- modate eight flies that live on the hospital's property. They have relocated the hospital and are funding biological and behavioral studies of the fly - which lives above ground for two weeks each year.
  
  
• The Pacific Northwest was inundated with unusually heavy rains this winter that caused wide-spread flood damage. Oregon state enviro bureaucrats have seized upon this opportunity to nudge the state's fanning industry one step further toward extinction.
  
  If the storm blew the roof from your house, you are entitled to fix it. If the flood left several inches of silt in your living room, it is acceptable to shovel it out. If, however, the flood damaged an irrigation water diversion dam for your farm - even though the dam has been in use for over one hundred years and you have a legal right to water your farm, you are required to ask the Water Resources Department, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Army Core of Engineers for permission to repair the dam. The fine for not doing so is $10,000, and it is evident that many applications will be denied. Sensing a new revenue source, the bureaucrats have airplanes and helicopters flying continu- ously over the streams and rivers in Southern Oregon in an effort to catch fanners or other landowners attempting to repair their property.
  Yesterday, I spoke with a fencing contractor who is building a new fence near a home in Jackson County, Oregon. The Applegate river, which was about one-fourth mile from the home before the flood, now is right next to the house - threatening the life of a small child who lives in the home. The homeowner has been refused permission to repair the dike that would move the stream back to its prior location.
  
  Much of the land in this region lies along rivers and streams. During winter, debris often blocks these streams, causing the water to erode the banks and flood across the land. New enviro regulations prohibit the removal of this "natural" debris. Then, when property is damaged., the regulators also prevent the repair of "natural" damage.

• "The Dark Fiber Paradigm" in the Gilder Technology Report 2, No. 2, pp l-8, February 1997. Over 6 million miles of fiber optics are now being installed each year in North America. Gilder reports that, with new technology, it will be possible for each fiber thread to carry 25 times more than last year's average traffic load on all worldwide communication networks put together. He calculates that the information transfer capacity of a fiber optic thread is at least 1,000 times that of air and describes new non-electronic optical amplifiers that allow uninterrupted fiber transmissions. overall, he makes a compelling case for his prediction that data transmission will soon become almost instantaneous and virtually free.
  
  
• The Death of Realityby Lawrence Dawson available from Paradigm Publishing, Box 45 161, Boise, ID 837 11. This book documents the increasing tendency of public opinion to move in directions that are inconsistent with truth and the dangers this poses for our civilization.
  
  
• "When Can Rogue Nation Nuclear Missiles Hit the U.S.?" by Sam Cohen in the Washingtolz Inquirer, 17, No. 4, p 8, January 27, 1997. This article discredits the Clinton Administration anti-strategic defense argument that the United States will not be in danger of missile attack for another decade. Moreover, missiles are only one of several means for delivering a nuclear or biological weapon of mass destruction. Read this article, and do not miss the presentation on Strategic Defense by Robert Jastrow at the June DDP meeting in San Diego.
  
  
• Makers and Takers by Edmund Contoski, published by Ameri- can Liberty Publishers, Box 18296, Minneapolis, MN 554 18. The web address is http://www.webcom.com/amlibpub for ordering information and a toll-free 800 number. The subtitle is "How Wealth and Progress are Made and How They are Taken Away or Prevented."
  
  
• The Coming Century of Communism - The Beauty and the Beast ofGlobal Governanceby Philip C. Born published by Policy Books, Inc., Virginia Beach, VA. The elite who have done such a poor job of running our nation states now want to abandon those states and run the world. Unfortunately, we all are "invited" to participate.
  
  
• "The Gift of Lincoln" by Bruce Newman inThe Wall Street Journal, p A18, February 12,1997. A rededication to theDeclaration of I ndependence and the truth that all men are created equal - but must not be forced to remain so.