Creating A Better World

To even begin to understand the so-called “Law of Attraction” you need to start at the beginning and understand what an atom is.  The following is an easy to read report written by Seth when he was told to “make a model of an atom”  which is impossible to do if you have any clue as to what an atom really is.  Unfortunately our schools still teach children science of more than fifty years ago so they will not understand.  Fortunately, Seth is now home-schooled.  This is quite interesting and informative and basic enough to understand.  Enjoy.
The Story of The Atom and Why I Cannot Make a Model of One

Back in ancient times, people decided that everything was made of something, but they didn’t know what.  The idea of everything being made of really tiny bits of stuff was devised by Democritus in 530 B.C.  Back then people didn’t have last names.

Then, in 1808, an English school teacher and scientist named John Dalton proposed the “modern” atomic theory. Dalton decided that the atom was nothing more than a tiny indivisible sphere, and people believed this for a long time.

In 1897, a British physicist, J. J. Thomson did a series of experiments wiith electric current.
He ran electric current from one electrode to another through some gas. This produced a beam which he called a “cathode ray”.
The cathode rays were made of tiny, negatively charged particles, which he then called electrons.
He figured that the electrons must have come from the gas atoms or the metal electrode and since there was nothing else in the tubes, this made sense.
He also figured that the electrons must be really , really small, and that all atoms had them.

Later, an American Physicist named Robert Milikan measured the electrical charge of an electron. He also came to the conclusion that electrons were way smaller than any other part of the atom.

Then other scientists came up with these ideas:

1) Because the electron was negatively charged and atoms are electrically neutral, there must be a positive charge somewhere in the atom.
2) Because electrons are so much smaller than atoms, there must be other, more massive particles in the atom.

With all this information  Thomson came up with  a model of the atom that was like a watermelon. The red part was the positive charge and the seeds were the electrons.

Then Rutherford came along and did some experiments with gold.  He concluded that the gold atoms were mostly empty space.  However, some small region of the atom must be very dense . He called this dense region the nucleus, and decided that  the nucleus comprised most of the mass of the atom.
Then, to offset the negative influence of the electrons, he proposed that protons exist too, only in the nucleus.

So, he envisioned the atom as the positively charged nucleus in the center with the negatively charged electrons circling around it much like a planet with moons. Although he had no evidence that the electrons circled the nucleus, his model seemed to make sense.
This is the kind of model most kids in school make, but it does not make sense.  This is because
as the electrons move in a circle, they would lose energy and give off light. The loss of energy would slow the electrons down. Like any satellite, the slowing electrons would fall into the nucleus.

It was calculated that a Rutherford atom would last only billionths of a second before collapsing, so this is obviously not a good model to use.

In 1913, a Danish physicist named Niels Bohr came up with a new model of the atom.  Bohr decided that the electrons orbiting an atom could only exist at certain energy levels.  Different energy levels means that they would have to be at different levels from the nucleus, not at continuous levels as might be expected from Rutherford’s model.
When atoms in the gas tubes absorbed the energy from the electric current, the electrons became excited and jumped from low energy levels  to high energy levels.  That means that they would be moving from close to the nucleus to farther from the nucleus.  Then, the excited electrons would fall back to their original levels and give off energy as light.

So then he came up with the shell idea.  He decided that each electron orbit of the same size or energy (shell) could only hold so many electrons.  The first shell would have 2 electrons, the second shell would have 8, and the third shell or higher would have 8.  Since he couldn’t actually see the electrons nobody knows why he came up with this model, but it seemed to make sense at the time.
The Bohr model could explain the spectra of atoms with one electron in the outer shell very well, but was not very good for those with more than one electron in the outer shell.
Some smart people questioned why electrons should be confined to certain energy levels, and. more importantly, why don’t electrons give off light all the time?

Then, in 1924, a French physicist named Louis de Broglie came along and suggested that electrons could act as both particles and waves, just like light.  People thought he was a little crazy.

Later, an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrodinger figured out that the French guy was correct!
In fact, the whole question of where exactly the electrons were was one of probabilities.  The electrons could be in any of a number of “electron density clouds” called “orbitals”.  You have to find the densest area of the cloud to have the highest probality of finding the electron.
There are lots of other variables, too.  Like: what is the energy level of the electron?  How fast is it moving?  What is the shape of the orbital?  Where is it in space?  Which direction is the electron spinning?
Another problem is that there are all kinds of “sub-atomic particles” that are part of the atom such as:

Six “flavours” quarks: up, down, bottom, top, strange, and charm;
Six types of leptons: electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tauon, tauon neutrino;
Twelve gauge bosons (force carriers): the photon of electromagnetism, the three W and Z bosons of the weak force, and the eight gluons of the strong force.  I am not making this up!  There is a lot of stuff in an atom and it is all energy.

There are a few other problems with making a “model of an atom”.
Protons and  neutrons are 2000x more massive than the electrons.

Most of an atom is empty space — the electron cloud is a trillion times bigger than the nucleus.

So if I made a nucleus of styrofoam balls, the electrons would be invisible, and somewhere in Texas…maybe.
Here is a picture, but it doesn’t give the actual perspective, just an idea. It’s really not even very close.

Now, there are some other very interesting things about atoms.  The electrons will show up as either particles or waves, depending on what the experimenters expect!  Some people think that the “usual” form is the wave, so what we think (expect) turns that wave into a particle (matter).

Another thing is that 99.99999% of an atom (or anything) is empty space.  There is so much empty space that if you could remove all the empty space, everything in the universe that’s left would fit into the palm of your hand!  Is it really empty space?  Some people think that it is some kind of “plasma” which is a bunch of subatomic particles.  That means that they are smaller than atoms, much smaller.

And the last, most important reason why I can’t make a model of an atom is this:
Electrons are negatively charged energy, protons are positively charged energy, and neutrons are neutral energy.  An atom is energy surrounded by huge amounts of empty space and some more tiny bits of energy.  An atom is not a solid.  It is energy.  How do you make a model of that?  So I wrote this report instead, to set the record straight.

Studies have shown that when people feel loved or give love they live longer, feel happier, have better health, make more money and are less prone to depression.

Love, compassion and joy make our immune system function better and help fight diseases.

Researchers found happily married people had the best blood pressure, followed by singles. Unhappily married participants fared the worst.

In another study, researchers subjected 16 married women to the threat of an electric shock. When the women were holding their husband’s hand, they showed less response in the brain areas associated with stress. The happier the marriage, the greater the effect.

Researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center gave married couples blister wounds. The wounds healed nearly twice as fast in spouses who interacted warmly compared with those who demonstrated a lot of hostility toward each other. The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Oxytocin is a brain chemical that is released when mothers and babies first bond.

Massage, eye contact, hugs, and orgasms all increase oxytocin levels. A close, loving relationship increases the production of this brain chemical (single men and women produce less oxytocin than those in intimate relationships). Any positive experience can increase oxytocin levels – and so can simply recalling positive events.  Oxytocin is associated with positive relationships.

Dr Kai MacDonald and other University of California (San Diego) researchers are theorizing that oxytocin could help with psychological disorders. It reduces fear, increases eye contact, and increases trust and generosity.

In another study, people who considered themselves to be passionately in love were given brain scans (MRIs) and it was seen that the brain sees romantic love as a reward, stimulating activity in the same areas that light up when a person receives any kind of a reward.

I received the following e-mail from a friend:

This is from an article in the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper on Sunday.
The Business Section asked readers for ideas on “How Would You Fix the
Economy?”

Dear Mr. President:

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America’s economy.
Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander
the  money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following
plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force.
Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the
Following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered - Auto
Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing
Crisis fixed.

It can’t get any easier than that!

If more money is needed, have all members of Congress and their
constituents pay their taxes…

I thought this was a great idea, until I sent it to my son Elijah, who is probably 40 million times smarter than me.  What do you think?   Is it cost effective?  Leave a comment!

There is enough STUFF already! For the most part it is incredibly wasteful to keep buying more and more new stuff when you can get used…OK…pre-owned, for a lot less money.  Our landfills are full, our Earth is dying, we need to stop making more STUFF and start re-cycling what we have.

I almost always go to the Salvation Army or Goodwill or other “thrift” shop first when I need something, then Craigslist is my next choice.  Just a few days ago I found this other classified site, OLX which is somewhat like Craigslist except that it has a lot more features and it’s worldwide.  It’s free, and if you have items you need to find a home for (instead of throwing in the trash) you can add pictures and videos to your listings.

You can also display your listings on Facebook, or Myspace.
You can click here to go to the site

Many years ago I lived in an apartment house in the city that had a dry, ugly dirt parking lot across the street.  In that desolate little area between even uglier apartment buildings  was a tree.  Not just any tree, it had berries of some sort, and I soon learned that they were mulberries.  Nobody touched these berries, the city folk probably thought they were poisonous, but I scoured all the low-hanging branches to indulge in the most delectable fruits imaginable.  Mulberries are amazing!  Why doesn’t everybody grow mulberry trees in their parking lots?

That was many years ago and to this day I don’t understand why we are not taking advantage of so much empty space to grow FOOD.  Why are we planting useless ornamental shrubs and trees when we could be planting something edible?  Imagine what we could do, and the people we could feed if we planted nut trees, berry bushes, herbs and fruit trees?  The animals and people would have their fill with plenty leftover.

Along those lines, I have never been able to understand the desire for a lifeless, monotonous expanse of water-sucking lawn when we could grow food and use mulch instead. Finally, I’ve found some like-minded folks over at Edible Estates, here are a few lines from the website:

Edible Estates is an attack on the front lawn and everything it has come to represent!

Edible Estates is an ongoing series of projects to replace the front lawn with edible garden landscapes responsive to culture, climate, context and people!

Edible Estates reconciles issues of global food production and urbanized land use with the modest gesture of a small domestic garden!

Edible Estates is a provocation, a call to arms and a radical intervention on the banal, repressive streets of zombie lawn-lined monotony!

Edible Estates is nothing new, growing our own food is the first thing we did when we stopped being nomadic and started being “civilized”!

Edible Estates is a practical food producing initiative, a place-responsive landscape design proposal, a scientific horticultural experiment, a conceptual land-art project, a defiant political statement, a community out-reach program and an act of radical gardening!

The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape. Food grown in our front yards will connect us to the seasons, the organic cycles of the earth, and our neighbors. The banal lifeless space of uniform grass in front of the house will be replaced with the chaotic abundance of biodiversity. In becoming gardeners we will reconsider our connection to the land, what we take from it, and what we put in it. Each yard will be a unique expression of its location and of the inhabitant and his or her desires.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
Landscaping With Fruit: Strawberry ground covers, blueberry hedges, grape arbors, and 39 other luscious fruits to make your yard an edible paradise.
The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping: Home Landscaping with Food-Bearing Plants and Resource-Saving Techniques

This is absolutely amazing, what an awesome way to protect our Earth by using less paper and fewer resources.

With the Amazon Kindle you can buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute!

More than 230,000 books are available, including more than 105 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers, and New Releases many priced at $9.99, unless marked otherwise.

You can get top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes and top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.

You also get more than 1100 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.

You don’t need a  computer, cables, or syncing, no monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments.

And, it includes free wireless access to Wikipedia.org!  How’s that for reducing paper use, and the resources used for shipping your favorite books and newspapers?

Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device

What is the meaning of E=MC2?   

Why on earth would a mathematical equation for a sophisticated theory be so famous that even nonscientists recognize it immediately? Because with that simple equation, “Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared,” Einstein shattered centuries of thinking and radically altered our view of how the world works.

One reason Einstein’s idea was so transformative was that for the first time ever, it described how energy and matter are not only related, but can be transformed back and forth into each other. Now the elegant, clear-cut world of classical, Newtonian physics would be forced to move over and make room for the fuzzy, strange, nearly unimaginable world of quantum physics.

Quantum physics is the study of how the world works on the smallest scale, at a level far smaller than the atom. And as scientists studied the nature of reality on a smaller and smaller scale, something strange began to happen: The deeper we went into reality, the more it seemed to dissolve from view. The search for the smallest known particle of matter had instead turned up distinct yet elusive little packets of energy, which physicists called quanta.

The Einstein breakthrough comes down to this: Everything is energy. A rock, a planet, a glass of water, your hand, everything you can touch, taste, or smell - it’s all made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of protons and electrons and neutrons, which are made of nothing but vibrating packets of energy.   

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” Albert Einstein

In his book Science and the Akashic Field, physicist Ervin Laszlo describes a series of experiments conducted by lie detector expert Cleve Backster. Backster took some white blood cells from the mouths of his subjects and cultured them in a test tube. He then moved the cultures to distant locations, more than seven miles away. He attached lie detectors to the cultures and then performed a series of experiments on his subjects.

In one of his tests, he showed his subject a television program depicting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This man was a former navy gunner who had actually been present at Pearl Harbor during the attack. When the face of a navy gunner appeared on the screen, the man’s face betrayed an emotional reaction—and at that precise moment, the lie detector’s needle seven and a half miles away jumped, exactly as it would have had it been attached to the man himself, and not just to a test tube of his cultured white blood cells miles away.

How is such a thing possible? In the language of quantum physics, the particles of the gunner’s body are still connected or “entangled” with one another, and no matter how far apart they are separated in space, they will continue to influence one another. In fact, this effect appears to occur at speeds faster than the speed of light, which violates one of Einstein’s basic rules.

Scientists dubbed this mind-boggling capacity for instantaneous interconnection nonlocality. Einstein had a somewhat less technical term for it. He called it spooky action at a distance.