THOUGHTS ON KNOWLEDGE, EXISTANCE AND REALITY

ON BEING A CONTRARIAN

I have to admit to being a contrarian.  As much as I dislike labels, I can’t deny that I have been a rather contrary person, so maybe I could just say that I have strong contrary tendencies rather than bearing the label contrarian.  I can still hear my mother accusing me of being a contrary child when I characteristically refused to eat my dinner or come out from under the bed so Dr Brogan could give me my whooping cough shot.  It wasn’t that I was a particularly disobedient child but there were definite times when I made up my mind that, come hell or high water, I was simply going to do what I decided and not what someone else wanted me to do.  I have to admit, to this day at age 84, I still won’t do  something or try a food that I have made up my mind against.  I don’t know why I’m that way, much to the chagrin of my wonderful and tolerant wife, Marilyn or my adult children, Lois and Jim, but I am.  That’s just me, now a crotchety old man that refuses to eat mushrooms, brussel sprouts, asparagus and other assorted foods that most other people like and that are “good for you”.  However, these mundane examples of my contrarianism aren’t the purpose of this entry in my collection of “Stuarts Thoughts”.  I actually intend to lead the reader from this rather  inauspicious beginning to my current more mature capacity as one who frequently questions the “conventional wisdom” of the day.

The refining of my early nature as a contrary child to one who seriously questions “conventional wisdom” primarily took place during my 35 year career as a scientist and project manager at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Company and perhaps even began before that during my undergraduate years at Northwestern University as well as during graduate studies at The University of Buffalo and Ohio State University.  I always point to the single most important lesson that I learned during those years and a lesson that has been reinforced over and over again throughout my life,  That is the lesson to “question everything”, “accept nothing on face value,” and above all else, “avoid the trap that has ensnared many good scientists and other intelligent and well-meaning people in all walks of life, “Beware of Conventional Wisdom”.  There is such a song tendency to simply accept conventional wisdom, to want be agreeable,  go along with the majority and to not ask the hard questions. Accepting that which most others accept is an easy way to avoid controversy.  The problem is that, in science, controversy, continually making every effort to disprove the “conventional wisdom,” is often how the most significant progress is made

When Galileo expanded the work of Copernicus suggesting that the earth was not the center of the universe but rather revolved around the sun, he was seen as wildly irresponsible by the intelligentsia of the day and even proclaimed a heretic and held under house arrest by the church.  This is certainly one of the most famous examples of where the “conventional wisdom” of the time which held that the earth was the center of the universe was clearly in error.  Since that time there have been countless examples where “conventional wisdom” has been proven wrong and is replaced by an updated theory.  Aside from the above geocentric theory of the universe, the miasmatic theory of disease, the luminiferous aether “medium” theory of the universe, the stress theory of ulcers, immovable continents and the four humors theory of human physiology represent several widely held beliefs that have subsequently been proven wrong.  The miasmatic “bad air” theory of disease was replaced by the germ theory of disease in the late 1800s.  Likewise, work in the late 1800s provided hard evidence that an aether did not exist throughout the universe, In the 1980’s researcher Barry Marshal found that the bacterium H. pylori rather than the stress of modern life was responsible for peptic ulcer disease.  Development of the science of “plate tectonics” in the second half of the 20th century has replaced the “conventional wisdom “ of immovable continents.

One of the most impressive examples of conventional wisdom being overturned is the concept of a static universe.  For many years, cosmologists believed that the universe was static and perhaps infinite.  It was believed that the planets and, in fact, all material objects in the universe were held in place by gravity.  However, with the publication of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and the subsequent work of Georges Lemaitre and Edwin Hubble, the concept of an expanding universe has been established.  Astonishingly, far from stable, Hubble has calculated that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, eg. one far off galaxy is moving away from us here on earth at a speed roughly 10% of the speed of light, 30,000 km/sec.

As a science student, you are taught to question all conclusions and hypotheses formulated from experimental data.  Question the initial assumptions underlying experimental design, the validity of the experimental methodology employed including opportunity for bias to enter into data collection techniques and finally, investigator integrity in calculating results.  Are there unintended cracks in the overall experimental sequence that might allow bias to influence results.  Question everything.  Take nothing for granted and only trust that which can be verified.  Watch out for inevitable correlations and accept no conclusions that are not fully supported by quantitative data.  Be especially suspicious of study results based on survey results or other non-objective methods.  Study the numbers.  It’s only quantitative data that can be observed and tortured that deserves ultimate approval.  These are hard criteria and they need to be.  We’ve been deluged by too many studies that have not been conducted using the critical methodology required to yield unbiased quantitative data and that have not undergone rigid examination.  Even less reliable is the vast amount of descriptive information that has flooded the internet and lay press, much with political objectives in mind.  Quasi scientific techniques are often intended to support otherwise questionable concepts.  As I mentioned in my book “What Do You Believe “, actors in white lab coats impersonating doctors or scientists are often used to fake scientific authority in selling products and/or ideas.

In exploring the topic of “conventional wisdom” I need to be careful of my definition of this term.  In general, “conventional wisdom” is regarded as the general understanding about` something.  It may or may not have scientific underpinnings.  In cases where scientific underpinnings exist, we should understand that science is not knowledge forever frozen in time but rather a “liquid flowing” concept of knowledge which is constantly being revised and updated. Yes, much of what we regard as the solid foundation of science such as the commonly accepted basic laws of physics have been fixed and unchanged since first being elucidated many years ago but that doesn’t guarantee that they will remain so forever.  Even today, some are facing challenge as our knowledge of quantum mechanics grows.  It’s best to keep in mind that scientists are human too and even though they study nature in a very systematic way, they are not always right.  Question everything, even though it’s something stated by a “scientist” and whatever you do, never accept the manipulative idea that “the science is settled”.  No-one should ever claim that our state of knowledge on any subject is true for all time.  Accepting the notion that we know all about anything or that the “science is settled” is the fools gold of reason.  In point of fact, our greatest advancements in science often result from older theories, i.e., often the conventional wisdom of the time being questioned and eventually proven wrong.  The previous example of a stable universe is an excellent case in point.

The advancement of human civilization over the brief period that our species inhabited the earth, about 300,000 years is remarkable. In fact, the advancement has not been steady but rather accelerating at such a pace that most of the wonders of man’s modern era have been developed in the last 500 years, i.e., the most recent 0.16% of those 300,000 years. In fact many of our most significant technological advances have taken place in the last century.  The entire history of flight from the Wright Brothers brief hops over the sands of Kitty Hawk to our ability to travel, not only around the world, but into outer space, all took place in a brief interval of 58 years. The automobile, television, computers and the internet have all come into being  and blossomed during our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents.  Our knowledge in all fields of science has grown almost exponentially and the quality of our lives reflect this amazing growth of human knowledge.  We know a great deal, right?  In fact some would say we know almost everything we need to know, right?  Wrong, in fact, we know practically nothing.

KNOWLEDGE

While many would boast about human achievement, we need to take a deep breath, step back and assume a much more humble pose.  We need to recognize that in the total realm of existence, we haven’t even scratched the surface.  I’ve previously suggested that we may only be aware of a fraction of 1% of the total spectrum of knowledge in the universe.  However, it may even be well less than that.  Consider that in spite of our five outstanding senses, we are only able to perceive 5% of the universe.  The undetected 95% consists of dark matter 27% and dark matter 68%. We call it “dark” because we have no idea of what this strange 95% of the universe actually is.  However, we do know it must be there to explain the order of things we observe, such as the way objects travel through space relative to one another.  Scientists are baffled not knowing how to study something that is undetectable by either our senses or present instruments.  Studies continue to tell us more about what we don’t know than about what we know.  In fact the more work we do the more we realize how ignorant we truly are.  In view of the total scope of all knowledge in existence, it’s probably most accurate to say we know nothing.

What is all existence, what does it encompass, the universe, a multiverse or is it, as some now suggest an infinite, spaceless and timeless web of entangled quantum particles?  In all honesty, we have no idea.  Our senses suggest an expanding universe but then, how much reliability can we place on that given our ability to only sense 5% of that universe.  What exists beyond that small 5% that we know about.

So now, that we admit we don’t even have the slightest idea of what constitutes the whole of existence,  what can we possibly say about reality.  Upon realizing we can only perceive an almost insignificant 5%, what can we possibly say about the whole of existence?  

REALITY

I’ve long been intrigued by the question of whether there is an absolute objective reality or if all reality is simply a collection of subjective realities fabricated collectively by each of us as individual concepts of reality.  The concept of biocentrism, which suggests that all of reality is a creation of the human mind, has been put forward by the highly respected medical doctor and scientist, Robert Lanza,  Lanza is Chief Scientific Officer of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.  His theory of reality is detailed in his book, “Biocentrism”.  His theories are simultaneously preposterous and amazing

While I have never been able to fully accept Lanza’s hypothesis, I believe one aspect of it is essentially accurate.  The aspect I refer to is that which deals with the realm of reality associated with the very small, i.e., the quantum world.  Recent experiments in the field of quantum mechanics have apparently confirmed the notion that absolute reality does not exist at the quantum level. We have had some early clues.  For example, the essential importance of an observer in establishing the form of a stream of photons, i.e., as a wave or as individual particles, in the famous double-slit experiment.  Additionally, our inability to pinpoint the location of electrons, here or over there, as they encircle an atomic nucleus.  However a number of more recent studies in quantum mechanics have seemingly sealed the case for the existence of only subjective reality in the quantum realm.  Werner Heisenberg first interpreted the mathematics of the era to mean that reality doesn’t exist until something is observed.  He stated “The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them…is impossible.”  Recent studies in quantum mechanics have seemingly confirmed that objective reality does not exist in the realm of the small, i.e., the quantum world.

In 2017, Phillippe Grangier, Institute of Optics, Palaiseau, France and Arian Cho report in Physics 10/17/2017 “by bouncing photons off satellites, the team has confirmed that an observer can make the decision (particle or wave) depending on how they measure it - even after a photon has made its way almost completely through the experiment - seemingly well past the point at which it would become either a wave or a particle.”

In 2019, Caslav Brukner, University of Vienna wrote “in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts.  In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.” Phys/Org 11/14/2019

In view of these findings and my own intuition, I have arrived at the following conclusion.  An absolute objective reality exists in the macro world of stones and trees and, for that matter, The Grand Canyon.  It’s hard to imagine that marvelous wonder of nature being repeatedly produced in exactly that location in northern Arizona each time a new visitor shows up.  However, as clearly stated above and proven over and over again, the tables are turned completely in the strange realm of the tiny as established by quantum mechanics.  A key corollary of this, in my opinion, is that human thoughts, ideas and beliefs, as products of the human brain, its neurons and component tiny particles within each cell function essentially within the quantum realm.  Thus, as products of intercellular processes now recognized as the emerging field of quantum biology, these thoughts, ideas and beliefs are also components of subjective realities.

There are huge ramifications of the above.  One person cannot nor should not claim that another's beliefs or ideas are wrong.  He may strongly disagree but remember, in the quantum realm, each individual is entitled to observe his own facts and thus, his own independent or subjective version of reality.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Keeping in mind my individual peculiarities or “faults”, let’s explore where considering various elements of “conventional wisdom” lead.

Beer/Cool Cars

Starting with the least serious just for fun, beer and cars, I can offer a telling glimpse into my tendency to not go along with the crowd.  In fact I often have a tendency to go against the main stream or, if you prefer, to be a non-conformist.  A major factor in this tendency probably arose from teen years experiences.  I was always naturally opposed to common teen interests such as drinking, smoking, focusing on hot cars etc. While I could detail specific examples of how this tendency has affected my teen years behavior, suffice it to say that I almost never cared about fads, fashion trends or “cool” behavior.  I somehow escaped from that  initial human tendency to copy or mimic others, a characteristic routinely observed in children where the youngest mimics the behavior of an older sibling.  I didn’t like the taste of beer so regardless of how much peer pressure I was exposed to, I simply refused a beer and opted for something I liked the taste of like a milkshake (as in one instance at a post college football game party where most followed the crowd in taking up a beer, I left the party scene temporarily to go upstairs where I could order a milkshake.  When I returned to the party with milkshake in hand, others mocked me but I could not have cared less.  I had the drink I wanted.  I don’t ever recall being so intimidated by peer pressure that I allowed it to influence my personal choices.  You might think of me as an oddball, a renegade or apply some other derogatory label but more important to me than peer pressure was following my own chosen path.  To this day, at age 84, I still don’t drink beer or liquor simply because I don’t like the taste not for some higher moral issue.  I do drink wine occasionally because I do like the taste or, can at least tolerate it especially in combination with certain meals, e.g. a glass of shiraz goes well with a nice steak dinner.  

With respect to cars, I simply regard them as tools and not an extension of my personality.  Thus, the cars I have owned have largely been utilitarian, mostly station wagons and vans, never vehicles such as muscle cars, foreign sports cars and the like, which are often owned with the primary goal of impressing others.

Now, let’s turn to more serious issues.

Healthy Foods/Diet

For many years, there has long been a steady flow of opinion regarding what we should eat.  Much of this has been based on credible research conducted by highly qualified investigators representing a range of disciplines from basic biology to biochemistry, nutrition sciences, medicine and nearly all other fields of science with even casual association to the above.  In addition, there has been a plethora of opinion and advice from commercial and various quasi scientific sources.  Any casual observation of TV commercials reveals how pervasive this has become, much of it with obvious financial objectives.  The healthy food and diet industry brings in millions of dollars annually.  In addition to promising good health, the appeal to look good and present a healthy, well proportioned physique to others has an enormous appeal. Before succumbing to the avalanche of reported studies and commercial ads, we would be well advised to think carefully about what we have heard or read in the context of our individual situations and our expectations/assumptions regarding possible courses of action.

Initially, the concept of a “healthy diet” needs to be examined.  Historically, there has been a long list of supposedly “healthy diets” proposed and, in many cases sold to the public.  Some diets on that list intended for weight control include: Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers and a number of other. low-carbohydrate diets, such as Atkins diet, Dukan diet and The South Beach diet as well as a long list of other more targeted diets such as crash diets, detox diets, diets for specific medical conditions, fad diets, food-specific diets, low carbohydrate/high fat diets, high carbohydrate/low fat diets, liquid diets, detox diets, vegetarian diets and many, many more.

The point is, there is a huge demand for dietary ways of dealing with health concerns, real or imagined.  Why are there so many alternatives for dealing with each specific healthy concern?  I suspect that dealing with something so pervasive like excess body weight,  profit potential and market share are often the primary driving forces.  Many people are looking for the easiest and least painful way to loose weight.  They are willing to spend a great deal of money in an effort to achieve an “easy” fix.  In the U.S., this market is estimated to be in excess of $70 billion.  In truth, most of these people could achieve their desired goal by using a free, self administered maneuver - voluntary restriction of caloric intake.  In other words, “just eat less”.  Certainly there are some suffering from pathologic obesity who require sophisticated medical attention, including strict dietary measures but this is a tiny fraction of that entire “overweight market”, most of which could be controlled by that age old sure-fire method - “meal-time push aways”.

I’ll insert here another general concept that I first heard emphasized by an NCSU professor in an Olli course on metabolism.  In discussing therapeutic choices in dealing with health issues, this professor emphasized the tremendous variation from one person to the next with the statement “we all different”.  This is no doubt why there are so many choices of diet.  Diet “A” addresses my problem but you need diet “B” to adequately address your problem.  This concept also needs to be extended to all of health care.  One specific medication may work for one person but may have no effect on another.  Likewise all other aspects of treatment needs to be individualized including proper dose for achieving satisfactory results. This can be a daunting and time consuming task for the physician and, more often than not, is arrived at through trial and error.  In most cases, diagnostic methods are not available to provide such subject-specific, information.

How should one respond if you are a reasonably normal, non-obese, relatively healthy individual who frequently receives advise usually from a family member, on what you should or should not be eating?  Because you don’t want to appear non-appreciative or insult the person you could simply thank them for their advise and tell them that you’ll take their recommendation under consideration.  This is where my impulse to question the conventional wisdom rears it’s head.  For most relatively healthy, normal, individuals, i.e., many of us, we might best simply listen to our own bodies.  If we listen, our body will send us signals on what and how much we should eat.  Some people are both able to receive this internal advise and possess the will power and  desire to follow it.  Those people generally have normal body weight and appear to be generally happy and healthy.  Others are obviously lacking in one or both of those  key abilities.  In my opinion, the rationale for this strategy can be observed by studying behaviors in other animal species.  Diets for many species appear to be nearly fixed in stone.  Koalas eat only Eucalyptus leaves, Pandas eat only bamboo shoots, stalks and leaves and there are many more examples.  Most animals have a built in mechanism so that they won’t overeat.  How many obese lions, tigers or giraffes have been observed?  The point is that dietary choice and caloric restriction might be characteristics of the human species as well if allowed to emerge naturally.  Maybe we shouldn’t insist that our children “clean up” their plates.  Maybe we shouldn’t burden them with guilt regarding the “poor children” in other countries. “Eat everything on your plate - think of the poor starving children in India.”

We humans have long felt a desire, perhaps even an obligation, to identify the cause of many, if not most, of the misfortunes we encounter throughout life. Our first thought following a misfortune is that we must have done something wrong.  Primitive man often blamed misfortune on some human action that displeased the Gods.  In modern times, we seek some human action that disrupted the natural, benign, sequence of events,.  While this may often be true, it is likely also to be misinterpreted,  For example, eating the “wrong” thing is frequently blamed for an illness.  Someone who is allergic to peanuts might get very sick if they eat peanuts.  The cause of the illness in this case is obvious and advising them to never again eat peanuts is perfectly rational advice.  On the other hand, if a person gets sick the evening after enjoying a seafood dinner, it is not rational to jump to the conclusion that they should never again eat seafood.  Yes, there is a correlation between the illness and having a seafood dinner but there might not be a cause and effect relationship as there most certainly was in the peanut allergy case.  The illness following the seafood dinner might have been caused by a bacterial or viral infection contracted the day before the seafood dinner.  In this case it would be prudent to suggest the person eventually be checked to see if they might have a seafood allergy.

In general, we have significant influence over our health by virtue of the life habits we adopt.  Certain aspects of life which we have direct control over including diet, exercise and medical attention likely have significant influence over both the quality and length of our lives.

As a final note of caution, I believe before jumping on the conventional wisdom bandwagon, make sure of the accuracy, precision and strength of the supposed “medical”/“scientific” evidence that is being advocated.  While there may be substantial correlations, no one has ever presented proof of a cause and effect relationship between any particular piece of dietary advice and human life expectancy.  Such a study, where food intake would have to be strictly controlled throughout human lifetimes, would be impossible to conduct.  Is some food “healthy and good for you” and other food “bad for you”.  Maybe, but my advice is to avoid jumping on the conventional wisdom bandwagon and look to your own body for direction in dietary choices.  In my own case, perhaps I’m just fortunate but I seem to get strong signals from within and I mainly eat what I sense as an internal desire from within.  I seldom construct my diet based on what I’ve heard from others or read in a recent health newsletter.  But the most important internal signal I receive is when I’ve had enough.  My internal voice tells when I’ve had enough and I routinely put down my fork when that voice says “You’re no longer hungry”.  I believe that the best practice in eating should be moderation in all things.  a moderate amount of nearly any food will not hurt you and if it’s something you like, go ahead and have some.  Eating should be one of life’s pleasures, not an exercise in medical therapy.  Don’t deny yourself that pleasure but keep in mind “moderation in all things”, especially moderation in the quantity of food consumed.  Your body strictly observes the laws of thermodynamics and cannot create calories out of thin air.  It only can use energy received from what you eat.  When someone claims to have gained 2 pounds after eating only a 3 ounce piece of cake, be suspicious of “:spooky” science and suggest that maybe they should buy a new scale.

Global Warming

Now we arrive at “global warming” or “climate change”, one of my favorite targets.  This has been such easy picking for the politicians, i.e., the low hanging fruit on the tree of oneupmanship  opportunity to pull in support.  It has the advantage of being claimed to be “settled science” by quasi-scientific types, usually more often politicians than actual scientists. Claiming to study “global warming” or “climate change” has made many “scientists” rich.  There is a literal flood of money available to those able to convince others that they can study this disaster about to consume us all.  Is the earth not warming? aren’t we truly experiencing climate change?  All of the data says that both of these things are happening.  But why wouldn’t good data, properly collected depict a warming earth and a changing climate?  The point here us that the data are correct, the earth is warming and the climate is changing,  However, more importantly, that is exactly what should be happening.  We are presently coming out of the last ice age and are on the upward arm of the temperature cycle.  Check out Figure 1.  As you can see, the current temperature cycle is very similar to past cycles.  The earth’s temperature always rises as the earth cycles out of an ice age.  The current cycle is not unlike several other cycles that have taken place over the last 800 thousand years.  The problem is, in my opinion, one of perspective.  Humans have not been around for most of this time.  We have only experienced a tiny sliver of this 800 thousand years.  In all of the 3000 years modern man has inhabited the earth, we have been creeping along near the peak of the upward arm following the last ice age 20,000 years ago. Our lack of perspective makes it difficult for us to properly frame the “breathing” of our living world.   We have no significant frame of reference so a tiny move upward in temperature is misinterpreted as a looming disaster rather than just another tiny part of the “ho-hum” cycle in earths climate.   Earth’s climate it’s always changing.  Earth is a young living planet and its ever changing climate is its pulse.  So chill out, stop predicting that the sky is falling.  We need to just ride it out with mother earth and adapt as needed.  After all, no matter how much we might want to stop all this “frightening change”, there is no way we minuscule , weak, humans can stop this cycle nor should we want to. Rather than convulsing on climate change we should focus on related issues that we can do something about, specifically the pollution of our air, land and water.

Now, the perspective I’ve just presented does not mean we shouldn’t carefully monitor things like atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, other aspects of air pollution, how we may be polluting waterways and maintaining our forests and other natural resources but from my perspective, this all comes under the heading of common sense and adaptation to changing natural and sociological conditions.  It’s good we’re looking to modern technology for help.  Maybe it makes sense to go to electric cars and other non-fossil fuel dependent means of transportation, but caution is also advisable here.  Would all-electric automobiles truly save energy.  Some have suggested that when all energy needed to produce these vehicles and batteries and eventually get rid of them at the end of their useful lives, is taken into account, they may, in fact, result in greater consumption of energy than the current fossil fuel powered vehicles.

Fuel, Sustainable vs Fossil/Going Green

This is an issue that we eventually are going to have to solve.  The question is when and how?  I recall going into a colleague’s office sometime in the mid 1970s and seeing him pondering an article in Science magazine that was predicting all of earth’s petroleum reserves would be depleted within ten years.  Another disaster was on our doorstep and we were continuing to drive gas guzzling vehicles and flying off to needless research conferences both at home and to all corners of the globe.  Another disaster was at our doorstep and my colleague was fretting about how this terrible situation was going to disrupt his life and plans for a European vacation still a year out.  That was in the mid 1970s and today we are living with an oil glut.  Yes, science and the scientists often get it wrong but more importantly nothing is forever, conditions change as does “settled” science, not always just a little but often in orders of magnitudes.  In this case how did our experts go from believing we were about to run out of oil 30 year ago to now recognizing that the earth has an almost unlimited supply?

So, does it really make sense to stress our economy and ruin industries for the sake of “going green”.  I would say the answer depends on what is meant by “going green”.  I prefer to talk about maintaining a clean environment (land, air and water) rather than averting some imagined impending disaster (running out of oil or run away climate change).  Few would argue with efforts to maintain pristine air and water.  After all we all live in that air and water.  None of us wants to mess our own bed.  The oil supply and climate issues are largely imagined or at best “hypothetical”.  In the long run, we almost certainly will develop alternatives for fuel as well as currently unimagined alternatives for transportation but these advances are in the future and will naturally occur in response to inevitable advances in technology and future economic forces.  We don’t need forced government dictates.  More often than not, the kind of dictates being discussed in climate action groups do more harm than good.  

2/16/21 Added Note! In the last two days, the central U.S. has been hit by a major winter storm with unusually low temperatures and heavy snow.  Many residents of several southern states including Texas have suffered power outages partially due to failure of certain “green initiative sources”.  News reports of frozen wind turbines and inoperable solar panels, due to accumulation of snow and ice, point out the potential unreliability of such technology. Maybe before we trash our tried and true fossil fuel electricity-generating capability, we should do a better job of planning for all eventualities, like future “record breaking” winter weather or strong wind storms that devastate wind mills.  Wind and solar should be regarded as supplemental and, at this time, potentially unreliable.

Extraterrestrial Life/Exploring The Universe

I regard this as a fun topic and I’m not quit sure what proportion of our population believes that we have been visited by beings from another planet.  There are many reports of unidentified flying objects, some from what would be considered highly reliable sources, airline pilots, the military, multiple simultaneous observers and even me myself.  One summer evening in the late 1950s, I was driving on the road between Allegany State Park and Salamanca, New York when I noticed a line of about 5 or 6 lights quietly moving through the sky above the Allegany River,

I pulled the car off the road and got out for a better look.  The only description that I was able to give was that stated above, a string of 5 or 6 lights moving above the river in the same direction that I was traveling, from the park toward Salamanca.  There was no sound and to this day, I have no logical explanation for what I saw.  However, whatever it was, the Ground Observer Corps in Salamanca as well as others in the western New York area reported seeing the same thing that night.  As no aircraft, civilian or military, were reported to be in that air space, the identity of this string of lights in the sky has remained a mystery.  Thus, I believe it is accurate to claim that I observed UFOs.

I’m not even sure what the “conventional wisdom” is regarding the UFO situation.  I suspect that most people who have never encountered a UFO sighting would poo poo the idea as silly and certainly figments of people’s imagination.  So, if this is the conventional wisdom, I definitely disagree.  No-one can ever convince me that I didn’t see objects in the sky that couldn’t be identified.  I did and so did thousands of others over the last 100 or more years.  I’m not claiming these sighting represent visitors from other worlds, I’m simply saying they are unexplained sightings of unknown origin.  If you think I’m a total “wacko”, watch one or more of the documentary videos available on Amazon Prime such as “The Phoenix Lights”, “I Know What I Saw” or one of the others.  You’ll see testimony by a wide variety of people including a number of highly qualified observers including military and civilian pilots, former astronauts and scientists.