A few note from day 3 of the MUFON conference.
Today was basically an in-depth revisiting of alot of familiar topics.
Stanton Friedman's revisiting of the SETI, scientific community, and UFO community relationships - I thought this would be more of the same as Stan's talks tend tend to be rather similar - with new material mixed in with the old. I was pleasantly surprised in that this talk was entirely new material, very contemporary and very appropriate to many of the discussions we've had over the last several days. He looked at a lot of the comments recently made by Shostak, Hawking, Davies and other physicists, in the light of the UFO evidence. Unfortunately, I thought he took many of them considerably out of context.
Having met a number of the SETI community, I can vouch for the fact that the SETI community and the UFO community treat eachother with considerable contempt. Neither understands the other's viewpoints very well, and most statements cited by either are taken pretty much out of context. The best one was Steven Hawking's comments - very speculative - about how contact would not be too healthy - on the European/Native-Americal model. Contact didn't turn out too well for the Native Americans.
Given the talk by Richard Dolan, with was just as speculative as Hawking's comments, and seemed to have somewhat similar conclusions in some respects, I question how badly one can criticize Hawking's comments. In addition, I have heard people in just about every community make quoteable comments in relatively informal settings - in each case, it was not a formal presentation including supporting data. It was merely a creative mind waxing speculative. Enough on that...
Michael Schratt had some interesting stuff on deep black projects that I thought was really interesting. It strongly reinforced Ricard Dolan's talk last night, which speculated on a separate culture or civilization arising in the deep-black world. Given the information that Schratt has related, which is largely unclassified or declassified info - what else is there still deeply under wraps. The possibilities (and likelihoods) are mind boggling.
I didn't attend Kevin Randle's talk, but instead spent time batting the breeze with others in the MUFON community. One of the joys of these conferences is that you get face time with the folks you only talk with on-line, by e-mail, etc... I had some interesting conversations with several of what I would call, the next generation of UFO investigators - most of them are people in their 30's thru 50's. By UFO researcer standards, this is young... Also, these are the people who are comfortable with computers, who are bringing contemporary technology to UFO research that was sometimes stuck in the 1970s (at least in my view). So it was good to rub elbows with some of the folks who are making the UFO community buzz once again...
The next talk was by Linda Moulton Howe. She always has kewl stuff to say, and much of her talk this time was on new stuff in the Bentwaters case - the 1980 incursion of UFOs into the Bentwaters/Woodbridge military installations in the UK. She had some really interesting developments in the case, including more details on the team who went into the woods to chase the UFO that had been sighted by the guards at the East Gate. There is a lot to know about this case, and in later updates to this blog, I will probably need to add more info on that. In the mean time, just do a web search on 1980 Bentwaters UFO case and I think you will find some really interesting paydirt...
The biggest piece of the story, however, was the introduction of one of the people involved, the two men who confronted the object in the woods. Both had VERY close encounters, with one of them being missing for about 45 minutes, and having that period of missing time in his own memory. The other airman who had gone into the woods after the object, apparently touched a panel of lettering on the thing's side and ended up having a rather massive telepathic data dump into his mind. As a result, they both ended up with a world of grief from the military authorities, being extensively "debriefed" - a rather euphamisticc term. Lots more to say on this, though I have never actually followed the case very closely.
The final talk of the evening was by Nick Redfern, on crop circles. He has done some extensive research into the topic and has produced some surprising new (at least to me) info. One of them is that there appears to be contactee reports coming from the UK in recent years, associated with crop circles. A couple of cases he cited have involved typical UK suburbanites, usually walking thier dog or simiar, when confronted by a rather strange but human-looking being. The "alien" appears to be the typical "Nordic" with blonde hair, superb physique (and even a Scandanavian accent), also wearing the stereotypical "alien" coveralls. The alien provides a message to the unsuspecting person, also perhaps, doing a telepathic download, then vanishes. In one case, the person subsequently saw a UFO flying away, then nothing more.
Nick's talk also talked about the relationship between crop circles, geographically located mostlyu around the Wilshire region, a very ancient region with lots of stone circles, etc. He described how this is also a region with a lot of secret military installations, including at least one massive underground installation. He related one account about how the formation of a crop circle was observed in progress, right within the bounds of one of the ultra-secret installations. Both the fact that it was in restricted area, and that it was observed in progress, spontaneously forming in the material, itself, suggests that this is a very powerful phenomenon that cares little about human political restrictions.
The final part of the crop circle talk was on the hoaxers, or as they call themselves, circle makers - or even "artists." One circle maker apparently has a metaphysical background and it is sugggested that his circle making is a form of channeling - the hoaxing being yet another manifestation of the phenomenon itself. There was also an occult aspect to the crop circle scene - a number of pagan rituals that may have occurred after the crop circle was laid down - or may have had to do with the formation of the circles themselves. The upshot of all these aspects of the phenomenon is that the topic of crop circles is as complex as you can imagine - or more so.
By the end of a long day (I was up way too late the night before, and I'm sitting up wayyy too late right now, too, as I write this), most of us felt pretty fried. We spent the hour or two winding down, just socializing and joking with eachother - a pleasant evening that tells me that the community is quite comfortable with letting its hair down.
And now, it's time for this kid to bag it. Tomorrow begins at 9AM, followed by a long airplane flight home...
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Day 2 - Notes on the busiuness day of the MUFON Conf
It's now Saturday, day three of the annual MUFON conerence. I was planning to write up my notes on day two last night, but I ended up spending more time at the bar, and getting to bed far latger than I had planned. So this is getting written up in the morning before I go to the first talk.
Friday was the business day at the annual MUFON conference. It is the day of the state directors' meeting, the board meeting, the members' reception, etc... And this year, I came away from the day with a lot of hope and excitement. MUFON is planning some pretty kewl stuff in the next year-plus.
One of them is the website - the next generation - they are putting into place. It is really user friendly (so I'm told), and has a lot of useful content. But the most important part of it is a component called MUFON Central. It is a revenue-generating subscription section of the site that allows content for research, a discussion forum, and lots of other things like that. I don't remember how much a subscription would cost but it looked to be extremely reasonable. It remided me of the subscriber features of unknowncountry.com, earthfiles.com, etc.
But what is most important is that the revenue it generates will go toward UFO research, the organization's ultimate goal. Research and education, regardless of what form it takes, all required $$$, and so a reasonable fee, with even a tiny percentage of subscription among those who visit the site - and MUFON.com is a very well viewed site - would provide an extremely good tool for funding our research.
Another thing I learned a bit more about is the various set of research programs that MUFON has in the works. Among them is a next set of efforts by the abduction research team. I have been nominally affiliated with them already, which hadn't yet amounted to much. But now, in talking with the leader of the group, it sounds like he has more of a "rapid deployment" model in mind in which experiencers contacting MUFON can be put in touch with resources inclduing MDs, psychologists and hypnotherapists, as well as the MUFON field investigation infrastructure.
As part of this rapid-deployment model, we need to have field investigators, physical and mental health professionals and certified hypnotherapists available in as many regions as possible. This is something I've found to be a crying need, having heaerd from so many experiencers located far and wide. So one little piece of homework for us in the next few months will be to begin putting together the network of hypnotherapists who are available to work with experiencers. I hope to see this mature into a very useful network of workers who can conduct both healing and research with the experiencer phenomenon, and those who are blessed/cursed with it's attention.
That evening, Richard Dolan did a talk on his new book, A.D., After Disclosure. I'm sure I will have a world to say about this later, but in short, his presentation was phenomenal. It was very, very speculative. But in my view it picked up nicely where Michael Lindemann's work left off. I cite Lindemann's work alot in The Cosmic Bridge, where he talks about the variables of contact. He is more focused on contact than on disclosure, but in Dolan's work, he combines the two in a number of speculative ways. Like Lindemann, Dolan is a futurist par excellence.
The one thing I think the disclosure community misses: the depths of the close encounter phenomenon. Having looked into abduction and individual contact experiences a wee bit, my own hypothesis is that both contact and disclosure will occur at the grass roots level, one experiencer at a time. For better or for worse, I believe that knowledge and acceptance of the visitor presence (whatever that really is - I don't think we understand it much at all) eventually will reach a critical mass, and disclosure will occur as the subconscious/metaconscious level. Only at some critical point will it merge into the daylight of human social consciousness.
Dolan had some interesting things to say about the "Breakaway Civilization" - a secret group or invisible empire that exists in parallel to our own, with higher technology, visitor contact, etc. How this would relate to a bottom-up contact/disclosure scenario, I have no idea. Do the two ideas contradict? I don't think so. But this is an area for a whole lot of work in the near future.
I hope to have beaucoup to say about this later. But now, off to day 3...
Friday was the business day at the annual MUFON conference. It is the day of the state directors' meeting, the board meeting, the members' reception, etc... And this year, I came away from the day with a lot of hope and excitement. MUFON is planning some pretty kewl stuff in the next year-plus.
One of them is the website - the next generation - they are putting into place. It is really user friendly (so I'm told), and has a lot of useful content. But the most important part of it is a component called MUFON Central. It is a revenue-generating subscription section of the site that allows content for research, a discussion forum, and lots of other things like that. I don't remember how much a subscription would cost but it looked to be extremely reasonable. It remided me of the subscriber features of unknowncountry.com, earthfiles.com, etc.
But what is most important is that the revenue it generates will go toward UFO research, the organization's ultimate goal. Research and education, regardless of what form it takes, all required $$$, and so a reasonable fee, with even a tiny percentage of subscription among those who visit the site - and MUFON.com is a very well viewed site - would provide an extremely good tool for funding our research.
Another thing I learned a bit more about is the various set of research programs that MUFON has in the works. Among them is a next set of efforts by the abduction research team. I have been nominally affiliated with them already, which hadn't yet amounted to much. But now, in talking with the leader of the group, it sounds like he has more of a "rapid deployment" model in mind in which experiencers contacting MUFON can be put in touch with resources inclduing MDs, psychologists and hypnotherapists, as well as the MUFON field investigation infrastructure.
As part of this rapid-deployment model, we need to have field investigators, physical and mental health professionals and certified hypnotherapists available in as many regions as possible. This is something I've found to be a crying need, having heaerd from so many experiencers located far and wide. So one little piece of homework for us in the next few months will be to begin putting together the network of hypnotherapists who are available to work with experiencers. I hope to see this mature into a very useful network of workers who can conduct both healing and research with the experiencer phenomenon, and those who are blessed/cursed with it's attention.
That evening, Richard Dolan did a talk on his new book, A.D., After Disclosure. I'm sure I will have a world to say about this later, but in short, his presentation was phenomenal. It was very, very speculative. But in my view it picked up nicely where Michael Lindemann's work left off. I cite Lindemann's work alot in The Cosmic Bridge, where he talks about the variables of contact. He is more focused on contact than on disclosure, but in Dolan's work, he combines the two in a number of speculative ways. Like Lindemann, Dolan is a futurist par excellence.
The one thing I think the disclosure community misses: the depths of the close encounter phenomenon. Having looked into abduction and individual contact experiences a wee bit, my own hypothesis is that both contact and disclosure will occur at the grass roots level, one experiencer at a time. For better or for worse, I believe that knowledge and acceptance of the visitor presence (whatever that really is - I don't think we understand it much at all) eventually will reach a critical mass, and disclosure will occur as the subconscious/metaconscious level. Only at some critical point will it merge into the daylight of human social consciousness.
Dolan had some interesting things to say about the "Breakaway Civilization" - a secret group or invisible empire that exists in parallel to our own, with higher technology, visitor contact, etc. How this would relate to a bottom-up contact/disclosure scenario, I have no idea. Do the two ideas contradict? I don't think so. But this is an area for a whole lot of work in the near future.
I hope to have beaucoup to say about this later. But now, off to day 3...
Friday, July 23, 2010
Notes on the MUFON conference - day 1
A few notes from day one of the MUFON conference, which involved the field investigation workshop. MUFON has done a great job of updating their field work procedures. They have put together a (relatively) new field investigator manual over the last few years, and yesterday saw a really good set of training materials on how to do investigation work, how to use the MUFON sighting and investigation database, etc.
What was missing was the thing that I most wanted to see, and that was the concluding workshop on working with UFO abductees. Budd Hopkins, the dean of abduction researchers (at least in my book) was to be the presenter. Unfortunately, Budd's health has not been that great recently, so they replaced his presentation with one by Marc D'antonio on astronomy topics for field investigators, including using satellite trackers, star/sky chart programs, etc.
One thing I noted this time, as in previous MUFON conferences is the two threads of thought - one being the focus on abduction, the implications of the UFO phenomenon and realted topics. The other is on the need for scientific rigor and skeptical inquiry. Much of the FI workshop focused on the latter topic - skeptical inquiry. The first one or two presenters actually (I thought) were a bit too conservative on that topic. One talk was on differentiating hoaxes, natural phenomena, etc., and did a good job of providing the latest in some of the UFO-like things out there - and there are a lot of them (mostly new RC hovering toys, etc.).
I thought that the first talk missed the distinction between identifying what could be a prosaic explanation for a UFO sighting, and what in fact, a UFO-->IFO actually was. It used the Mexicali UFO sightings in 2008 as an example, and plotted the geometry and the physics of the sighting, a ball of light seen from the town by multiple witnesses. They interviewed a host of people in the town who had seen the object and developed a pretty solid profile of what had been seen, when and by whom.
They then developed a hypothesis that it was actually power line corona seen from some distance away. In my view, the hypothesis was potentially quite sound. However, they never actually established that this was in fact the case - only that it could be the explanation. Thus, I believe that they never actually established the explanation, only a hypothesis for the explanation.
In my view this is one of the big dilemas of skeptical inquiry. It is quite possible to establish potential prosaic explanations for many sightings (but believe me, not all of them). However, to prove that that particular sighting was actually due to that explanation is nearly impossible to prove. Thus, at least in the more complex cases, the UFO never actually becomes an IFO, just a potential IFO. Most debunkers seem to ignore this distinction, and field investigators (some times including myself) have occasionally missed it as well.
UFO research seems to tread the limits of science. It is studying an apparently-intelligent phenomenon and in the process, seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff of sighting reports. As a result, many potential explanations for UFO sightings are found. However the difference is between hypothesis and scientific knowledge are vital to note. A hypothesis may be consistent with the data, but it is not yet proven that it is actually true. And in my view, this is where many of the IFO explanations of sightings stand today.
The other thread of thought is primarily that of abduction research. It is (arguably) much softer science (a loose term in itself), often dealing with social and statistical material. The picture is much fuzzier here than in the field investigation of UFO sightings, and often the ambiguity is downright frustrating. One talk was on several of the recent studies of experiencers - statistics comparing the mental makeup of experiencers with random controls from the general population. The results were fascinating.
Experiencers were no more fantasy prone than anyone else. However, they had far higher openness for parapsychological and paranormal events, more universal spiritual views and had also had more difficult life histories than the general population.
A lot more work needs to be done on this and it will probably provide a lot of work for statisticians. The data involved needs to be massive in order to develop an accurate profile of the CE4 phenomenon. But I believe we need to connect the dots on this mystery - it is probably one of the biggest mysteries and, according to some one of the biggest concerns, that humanity faces.
Just exactly how many experiencers are there? How do they relate to other phenomena such as the Indigo children, paranormal and parapsychologial experiences, etc...? The questions are legion and we have only scratched the surface of them.
Fortunately, it appears that a new wave of abduction research appears to be taking shape. So in the next few years, I believe some definitive data will begin to emerge on the (para)psychological mechanics of the phenomenon. It is a refreshing burst of new energy in the field, and I believe it is long overdue...
What was missing was the thing that I most wanted to see, and that was the concluding workshop on working with UFO abductees. Budd Hopkins, the dean of abduction researchers (at least in my book) was to be the presenter. Unfortunately, Budd's health has not been that great recently, so they replaced his presentation with one by Marc D'antonio on astronomy topics for field investigators, including using satellite trackers, star/sky chart programs, etc.
One thing I noted this time, as in previous MUFON conferences is the two threads of thought - one being the focus on abduction, the implications of the UFO phenomenon and realted topics. The other is on the need for scientific rigor and skeptical inquiry. Much of the FI workshop focused on the latter topic - skeptical inquiry. The first one or two presenters actually (I thought) were a bit too conservative on that topic. One talk was on differentiating hoaxes, natural phenomena, etc., and did a good job of providing the latest in some of the UFO-like things out there - and there are a lot of them (mostly new RC hovering toys, etc.).
I thought that the first talk missed the distinction between identifying what could be a prosaic explanation for a UFO sighting, and what in fact, a UFO-->IFO actually was. It used the Mexicali UFO sightings in 2008 as an example, and plotted the geometry and the physics of the sighting, a ball of light seen from the town by multiple witnesses. They interviewed a host of people in the town who had seen the object and developed a pretty solid profile of what had been seen, when and by whom.
They then developed a hypothesis that it was actually power line corona seen from some distance away. In my view, the hypothesis was potentially quite sound. However, they never actually established that this was in fact the case - only that it could be the explanation. Thus, I believe that they never actually established the explanation, only a hypothesis for the explanation.
In my view this is one of the big dilemas of skeptical inquiry. It is quite possible to establish potential prosaic explanations for many sightings (but believe me, not all of them). However, to prove that that particular sighting was actually due to that explanation is nearly impossible to prove. Thus, at least in the more complex cases, the UFO never actually becomes an IFO, just a potential IFO. Most debunkers seem to ignore this distinction, and field investigators (some times including myself) have occasionally missed it as well.
UFO research seems to tread the limits of science. It is studying an apparently-intelligent phenomenon and in the process, seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff of sighting reports. As a result, many potential explanations for UFO sightings are found. However the difference is between hypothesis and scientific knowledge are vital to note. A hypothesis may be consistent with the data, but it is not yet proven that it is actually true. And in my view, this is where many of the IFO explanations of sightings stand today.
The other thread of thought is primarily that of abduction research. It is (arguably) much softer science (a loose term in itself), often dealing with social and statistical material. The picture is much fuzzier here than in the field investigation of UFO sightings, and often the ambiguity is downright frustrating. One talk was on several of the recent studies of experiencers - statistics comparing the mental makeup of experiencers with random controls from the general population. The results were fascinating.
Experiencers were no more fantasy prone than anyone else. However, they had far higher openness for parapsychological and paranormal events, more universal spiritual views and had also had more difficult life histories than the general population.
A lot more work needs to be done on this and it will probably provide a lot of work for statisticians. The data involved needs to be massive in order to develop an accurate profile of the CE4 phenomenon. But I believe we need to connect the dots on this mystery - it is probably one of the biggest mysteries and, according to some one of the biggest concerns, that humanity faces.
Just exactly how many experiencers are there? How do they relate to other phenomena such as the Indigo children, paranormal and parapsychologial experiences, etc...? The questions are legion and we have only scratched the surface of them.
Fortunately, it appears that a new wave of abduction research appears to be taking shape. So in the next few years, I believe some definitive data will begin to emerge on the (para)psychological mechanics of the phenomenon. It is a refreshing burst of new energy in the field, and I believe it is long overdue...
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Ramblings about tree branches and tarballs
Today, as I write this, it is July 4th. It is Independence day in the USA, one of the nation's biggest days of festivities. For Gwyn and I, it has been a day of relaxation - that is, after we got done cleaning up after a minor disaster (very minor, in the grand scale of things).
Yesterday, late in the afternoon, Gwyn heard a noise from just outside the house. The weather was clear, but hot and muggy, no thunderstorm (yet). I was sitting in the very spot I am now, in our sun room plinking away on my laptop PC, writing this month's edition of The CE4 Corner. She called the noise to my attention and the two of us went outside to investigate. There, we saw a rather large branch from the maple tree over our house had broken off. It had fallen in the neighbor's driveway, barely missing his pickup truck. I guess that just as they were five years ago, the tree-felling spirits were kind to us.
Five years ago, during a big storm, we lost two of the four maples in our back yard when some horrendous straight-line winds uprooted them. One dropped squarely between the house and garage - it couldn't have been aimed any better - in such a way that it did not do significant damage. Now, today, the tree-felling spirits or random chance (use your own discernment), again dropped the branch only a few feet from our neighbor's truck. It could have been a fiasco, but it wasn't.
The collapsing branch fit right in. I have been thinking a fair abount about disaster, lately - ever since finishing the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond. The book explores the collapse of various civilizations such as the Maya, the Anasazi, Easter Island, the norse colonies on Greenland, etc. It also explores the long-term survival of civilizations such as Japan, Iceland, some long-lived societies in the south Pacific, etc., and asks what constitutes the difference between the two. And the biggest reason he offers is the societies' management of its resources.
Basically, Diamond lists five factors that determine whether a civilization will survive
Yesterday, late in the afternoon, Gwyn heard a noise from just outside the house. The weather was clear, but hot and muggy, no thunderstorm (yet). I was sitting in the very spot I am now, in our sun room plinking away on my laptop PC, writing this month's edition of The CE4 Corner. She called the noise to my attention and the two of us went outside to investigate. There, we saw a rather large branch from the maple tree over our house had broken off. It had fallen in the neighbor's driveway, barely missing his pickup truck. I guess that just as they were five years ago, the tree-felling spirits were kind to us.
Five years ago, during a big storm, we lost two of the four maples in our back yard when some horrendous straight-line winds uprooted them. One dropped squarely between the house and garage - it couldn't have been aimed any better - in such a way that it did not do significant damage. Now, today, the tree-felling spirits or random chance (use your own discernment), again dropped the branch only a few feet from our neighbor's truck. It could have been a fiasco, but it wasn't.
The collapsing branch fit right in. I have been thinking a fair abount about disaster, lately - ever since finishing the book Collapse, by Jared Diamond. The book explores the collapse of various civilizations such as the Maya, the Anasazi, Easter Island, the norse colonies on Greenland, etc. It also explores the long-term survival of civilizations such as Japan, Iceland, some long-lived societies in the south Pacific, etc., and asks what constitutes the difference between the two. And the biggest reason he offers is the societies' management of its resources.
Basically, Diamond lists five factors that determine whether a civilization will survive
- Relations with the neighbors: Do the neighbors become enemies at the gates, or do they become trading partners, allies, etc...
- Dependence upon trade with vital trading partners, such as Greenland depending upon imports of iron and wood from Scandanavia
- Management of natural resources, such as land and fertility of the soil: Is the agriculture and land use of the society conducted sustainably, such that it can continue indefinitely?
- Stable social instutions: Are the government and religious institutions of the society structured so as to provide a sustainable (and presumably, at least reasonably equitable) framework for the on-going life of the poeple.
- Adaptabliity to change: Any civilization must be able to adapt to changes in the environment such as climate change, drought, etc. Such things DO happen, and for many civilizations, such as the Greenland norse and the Anasazi, they have brought about doom. Yet for others, such as Japan, Iceland and those long-lived island societies in the Pacific, the people and social institutions were able to adapt - and so those civilizations are still here.
He then applies these five factors to our present civilization.
1) How are our relations with our neighbors?
So far, western civilization has managed to eliminate any neighbors that might pose a threat to it. These have constituted rival civilizations during its earlier history, indigenous populations, etc. So in the short term, there would seem to be little military threat (unless you count the current tide of friction between the Christian and Islamic worlds).
Yet, the other side of the coin is how much a civilization learns from its neighbors - and in that we have probably fared rather poorly. From what I've observed, we westerners have not learned too much from the societies we have replaced. While we are now taking lessons from them - increasingly learning about shamanic spiritual practices and journeys, etc., it has taken a long time. Diamond describes how we have adopted a few of the ways of various eastern and indigenous cultures (mostly technologies - though can't think of any examples at the moment). Yet they remain a precious few.
We are a still a society based upon individualism - each person is considered to be separate from his/her neighbors, and thus does not form a common experience with them. Actions are (at least somewhat) separated from consequences and people are separated from spirit. These things are changing but not very fast. We have a lot of learning to do, myself included.
2) Dependence upon trade with outsiders
In our society now, there really are no outsiders, so we don't have much of an issue there. However, as we become more globalized, a danger exists that the transportation system could break down - fuel becomes too expensive, some problem with the technology, economic factors change, etc... Still, the issue is no where near as dicey as, say, the Greenland norse who were dependent upon imports for their very existence.
3) Management of resources
I am not very knowledgeable about agricultural issues, so I have very little to say about our land use policy, farming practices, etc. But I do know a fair amount (and only that) about energy use. This is already a widely discussed topic, so I don't think I need to say too much. Enough to say that our current energy use is unsustainable, yet we understand that enough that we are working to solve the issues. Whether we succeed or not is an open question, probably the most urgent question facing our civilization.
4) Stable social institutions
I believe that this is probably where our society is most vulnerable. In our society, those who make the decisions - such as CEOs and entrenched politicians - are largely removed from the consequence of those decisions. As I write this, the BP oil spill is reeking havoc with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. There could (and will) be much written about this disaster. In many ways, it is one of the classic engineering disasters of all time - technology at its limits, coupled with a decision making in which a conflict of interest is built into the system. In this case, the conflict of interest is the profit motive of the company - wanting to squeeze as much money from operations as they can while minimizing the cost of those operations. History is rife with examples of how this results in cutting corners - frequently on safety. And these decisions are made by managers who are rewarded for the short term gain of improved profits, often regardless of the resulting risk.
Other fiascos such as the credit and home mortgage crunch, the current recession, the ballooning budget deficit, etc... all point to similar structural conflicts of interest. Those in leadership are rewarded for results which are not optimal for the long term longevity of our civilization.
5) Adaptability to change
Is our society adaptable to fundamental changes such as climate shifts? Are we able to adjust to fundamental economic and technological shifts such as are inherent in 21st century world politics? I guess that remains to be seen. So far we have done OK, yet according to global warming forcasts, climate change is just beginning. We'll have a lot of tests before this is all done.
So how does this all relate to a falling tree branch? To me, the branch is symbolic. In this tree branch, the failure point has been present for many years. The danger was present yet we didn't know it. As I was chain-sawing the branch, I noted several major cracks in the branch - probably from the storm we had five years ago - that would have brought it down eventually. How many other aspects of life have similar potential failure points?
In this case, the consequence were minor. The branch missed our neighbor's car. It could have been much worse. Any number of things could have happened, yet very little did. We were lucky. How lucky? Was this the extent of the problem, or is this the tip of the iceberg? I guess a tree trimmer will have to tell us that in the near future.
Meanwhile, a many-orders-of-magnitude greater disaster continues to unfold. And like cracks in a tree branch, oil slicks and tar balls appear on beaches all over the Gulf of Mexico. Fish and birds are dying or fleeing to habitats where they have never been observed before, etc. Oil is being found in places along the Florida coast. And one of the biggest dangers apparently is that the spill could get into the gulf stream and be carried far and wide in the Atlantic. In short, there are myriad warning signs that an already bad catastrophe could get much worse.
Could this whole BP-oil-leak scenario bring about our downfall? I doubt it. Yet I wonder how many Mayan priests said that as another corn field dried up. Did any chieftanis on Easter Island say the same thing as the next tree was felled - perhaps the one that pushed their civilization past the tipping point and on to the glideslope to oblivion?
Like the tree branch in our driveway, could tarballs on a Florida beach be the sign of even bigger problems ahead? Or, like our branch dropping in just the right spot to cause minimum damage, will we get lucky and see consequences far less than the worst-case scenario? I guess only time will tell - that and a lot of hard work by folks who (we hope) know what they are doing.
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