Lynda Lovon

The UN Coverup on the Health FX of Nuclear Radiation

2011-04-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

I watched this video earlier today on Russian TV in which Dr.Chris Busby, British scientist and expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation, says that what is most similar between Fukushima and Chernobyl is how much we are being lied to about the seriousness of the consequences. He actually said that Fukushima may be worse because of the high population in the area.

I have sadly spent the rest of the day learning about one of the most evil and horrific scientific and political coverups of all time.

First stop I found this article by Dr. Busby on the Fukushima Radiation Risks:
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/busby_radiation.htm
In it he says that an independent european group of scientists working on the The Low Level Radiation Campaign (http://www.llrc.org) predict that

Radioactivity form the Fukushima Catastrophe is now reaching centres of population like Tokyo and will appear in the USA. Authorities are downplaying the risk on the basis of absorbed dose levels using the dose coefficients of the International Commission on Radiological Protection the ICRP. These dose coefficients and the ICRP radiation risk model is unsafe for this purpose. 17,000 cancers will be caused by Fukushima within the 200 km contamination zone by 2061.

So why do we keep hearing 'experts' say that ''the radiation levels are safe' " It is because they are basing the risk on an old outdated and wrong model. It is the ICRP (http://www.icrp.org/) risk model that the UN and its organizations such as IAEA and UNSCEAR uses to determine the risk due to low level radiation. The ICRP risk model was developed after the Hiroshima nuclear blast and includes exposures and dosages due only to EXTERNAL gamma radiation, not any INTERNAL RADIATION!! It is an entirely outdated model and has been falsified over and over again but these scientific results are suppressed. So. every time you see a chart that shows the health consequences of radiation doses, they are all WRONG because they are based on the ICRP model which is what IAEA and every agency at the UN uses and as well as text book, every reporter and every educator, including me. Up until today. I will no longer perpetuate the lies and coverup.

The Euopean Commitee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) (http://www.euradcom.org/) has developed and tested a new risk model that is based on internal absorption and exposure to radiation. Their model correlates higher cancer rates due to low dosages that are 100x greater than the ICRP model. They have made their study available online free due to Fukushima. http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf

Here is what Dr. Busby says about the different models:

Take the dose which is published by the authorities. Multiply it by 600. This is the approximate ECRR dose for the mixture of internal radionuclides released from Fukushima. Then multiply this number by 0.1. This is the ECRR 2010 cancer risk.

Most of this is clearly explained in this video http://vimeo.com/15382750

which took place in Stockholm, 22nd April 2009. The recently resigned Scientific Secretary of the ICRP, Dr Jack Valentin conceeds to Dr. Chris Busby, that the ICRP model can not be used to predict the health effects of exposures and that for certain internal exposures it is underestimates the risk by up to two orders of magnitude (100 times). He also said that as he was no longer employed by ICRP he could agree that the ICRP and the United Nations committee on radiation protection (UNSCEAR) had been wrong in not examining the evidence from the Chernobyl accident, and other evidence outlined below, which shows large errors in the ICRP risk model. Transcript of the video:

euradcom.org/2009/lesvostranscript.htm

The UN's report on the health consequences of Chernobyl from UNSCEAR is here:http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

It is full of lies: 31 workers dead, 2000 children from leukemia. What is astounding to learn is that the IAEA only counts deaths that have been verified by Los Alamos and its equivalent in France - two nuclear bomb makers!! This is madness. Did you know that?

The independent European Group published a study you can download for free

http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylbook2009.htm

and the New York Academy of Science published a study based on Russian science research that claims that some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

you can read on google books or here is a review

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23745

Another VERY important video to watch is "Nuclear Controversies"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8746168177815160826#

a film made by acclaimed Swiss journalist Wladimir Tchertkoff in which he shows scientists debating the science at the UN regarding the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident. If you are a self proclaimed 'realist' or 'rationalist' you may not like this video because it does show sick children. Many of you all think that this somehow disqualifies an argument, if there is anything emotional or human about it. So get over it. We are all human. Buck up and watch the Russian scientists rage at the UN liars. THey know the consequences. Their families are dying. And Russian scientists are jailed for publishing their scientific studies that dispute the political line. It doesn't make them irrational. It makes them passionate. And there is a huge real difference.

Why is this information suppressed? Why do these agencies keep using the ICRP model when it is clearly false and underestimates risk? I think it is partly due to greed and technology worship. We want to believe that technology and science can save us. We are in a nuclear quagmire. And who is going to pay to clean up the radioactive mess around the world? We are in a nuclear quagmire and we have no idea how to get out of it. So the UN underestimates the risk and promotes

And BTW, let us never overlook that GE, who pays no taxes, built the Fukushima reactor and 23 'sister' reactors in the US. Are they liable for any of this? No. You can see here if there is one near you. http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html

Please spread the word.

After I posted this, I found this brilliant OpEd piece

The U.N. Would Never Lie to George Monbiot

by Joe Giambrone that deconstructs the recent debate between long time anti-nuclear activist, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and pro-nuke 'environmentalist' George Monbiot. The debate video is also posted there.

Women's History Month

2011-03-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

March is Women's History Month! Quick - name a famous woman scientist! Can you? Well, I asked my physics class yesterday to name a woman dead or alive who has made a contribution to science and the only name any one could drum up without racing to their cell phones to look it up was of course: Marie Curie - and that was a struggle, I had to give hints. And then I asked them to name men and, you betcha, the names flew out. Why the discrepancy? Is it because there are no women in history who have made a contribution to science? The answer of course is an emphatic NO. Without getting on my feminist high horse and arguing that women have been written out of history by the dominant group to perpetuate marginalization, blah blah blah....let me just point you to a few songs I wrote to try to bring some parity to our history.

Hi Tech Girl: A Brief History of Women in Science

Annie Jump Cannon

And for fun: Einstein's Angels

And here is an excellent website: 4000 Years of Women in Science:

http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/

And here is a website that I helped Geoff Marcy make a million years ago on the History of Women in Astronomy: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~gmarcy/women/history.html

Lovon!

Stephen Hawking and the Physics Showgirl

2011-01-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

Last week after returning from a lovely vacation in Hawaii, I got an email from one of my favorite physicists (and fans) Kip Thorne, asking me to fly down to Pasadena to perform at a private party for Stephen Hawking. The party was to be held at a local jazz club for about 20 close friends and family after his public talk at Caltech on Tuesday, January 18th. Just what The Physics Chanteuse likes best: emergency performance requests from and for the ROCK STARS of physics!

Stephen, who is Kip's best friend, spends a month each year at Caltech to work with his relativity buddies, always gives a big public talk. The crowd of hopeful fans some of whom waited all day to see the rock star of physics, stretched in a long line across the Caltech Campus. I felt sorry for them because the VIP seats filled up at least half of the auditorium. I nabbed two seats inside the roped off area in the second row for my self and my sister Bergen. Fans who didn't make it in watched outdoors on the lawn with large screen projections of the talk blasting.

Beckman auditorium was packed with so many super smart people you could feel the collective brain power buzzing like a 60 hertz hum in a Best Buy store. The energy was so intense it felt like the place might collapse in on itself into a black brain hole due to the gravitational force of the collective IQ there. If a bomb had dropped on the place, relativity and quantum gravity theory would be set back for years to come. Stephen was pushed down the red carpet amidst a cheering standing ovation by one of his hot blonde bombshell assistants wearing a little black dress and stiletto heels. In the photo I'm blurred out behind Stephen's right shoulder, clapping.

Stephen gave a biographical talk "A Brief History of My Life," that included tales and photos of his humble origins and how he got into physics. To tell you the truth, I was going through such crazed pre-performance anxiety that I didn't absorb most of the talk. I remember him telling us that he was bored through most of school in his youth, that his home was almost bombed by a V-2 in London in WW2, that his father did not want him to study math, and that he holds a chair at Cambridge in math, though he never had any formal training past high school - he is self taught. I remember his metallic voice confessing that he was grateful for his illness because it forced him to focus on his research. You can read more details about his talk here at the LA Times. Being nervous and anxious, I welcomed the hypnotic distraction provided by the sign language interpreters who had the most fantastic signs for physics phrases such as 'big bang,' 'collapse,' 'imaginary time' and 'no boundary birth' and the like. Caltech has the most kick ass science signers I've ever seen. The elegant hula-bali-kathac-moudra inspired hand jestures dancing to Stephen's harsh mechanical robot voice was mesmerizing and performance art in and of itself.

I thought the best part of the talk was when Kip took the stage and shared some insights into how Stephen communicates and does physics. Kip has known Stephen for over 45 years as both a fellow relativist black hole time warper physicist and best friend. Kip showed us how Stephen uses his eye brows to communicate: raising them means yes; doing nothing means no. He told us that since Stephen lost the use of his hands years ago, and thus the ability to write formulas and equations - the hammer and chisels of a theoretical physicist - he has reinterpreted the algebraic theories into geometrical representations that he sees and solves in his mind. Kip told us that Stephen can solve many problems faster in his mind than others can do with their pencils and paper. Kip's love and respect for his friend was palpable, inspiring. Kip later told me that Stephen is the longest survivor of ALS and that he has outlived his prognosis by some 40 years due to sheer joie la vivre. And perhaps his longevity is in part due to the mega doses of Vitamin B he has taken since being diagnosed, as suggested by his father who was a biologist specializing in parasitic diseases from Africa.

After the talk, Kip and Stephen, along with his sextet of assistants, flew out of auditorium at light speed to the after party location where I was slated to perform. Kip's wife Carolee Winstein, a professor of Neuroscience at USC and a wonderfully kind fun woman, drove me to the venue: RedWhite and Bluezz - a wine and jazz club in Pasadena. We had the back room which was about the size of my living room. Kip, the host, stood on a chair and welcomed the guests and invited everyone to order food and drink. Stephen was lovingly spoon fed by another buxom assistant.

After about an hour of partying, Kip introduced me. It was very casual: I controlled the boom box playing my CD with a remote control while I sang so I could pause and start the songs and adjust the volume. There was no microphone so I just belted the songs which wasn't a problem in the small room. I thanked Stephen and Kip for being my 'muses' (am I worthy? eek gads ;-) and sang three short songs that I wrote with their inspiration: Big Bang, Black Hole Disco, and Lovon Boson. I shimmied and sashayed around the room, around Stephen, trying to keep it sultry but not too sexy, out of respect to Stephen's son and daughter in-law who were present, and out of sheer intimidation. I mean!

During Big Bang, something happened and Stephen's assistants jumped into action, turning on a respirator or some machine and swarming around him. Although Stephen can breathe on his own, he requires assisted respiration several hours per day and while he is sleeping to give his body sufficient oxygen. I looked to Kip for cues and kept on singing and dancing. In such situations, the show must definitely go on. After the third song, I was given an ovation and calls for an encore, so I sang one of my favorite songs, Kip Warp, which is a parody of the song Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was a big hit and a great way to end the show. I gave hugs and kisses to everyone who wanted them and finally relaxed with a glass of Chardonnay and mingled.

One very interesting person I chatted with was Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist who recently co-wrote a book with Stephen, The Grand Design, currently at the top of the NYTimes best sellar's list, about how a 'designer' is not needed for the creation of the Universe. I'm waiting to get a signed copy to read it but even more interesting than that, is the new book he is co-writing with that quantum blasphemer, Depak Chopra! The two will 'debate' in print the claims Chopra makes about quantum phenomena as applied to human consciousness, psychology and paranormal phenomena. That should be a fun read! Len has also written quite a bit for TV including many of my favorite shows such as Next Generation. All dressed in NYC black, the dude is one cool geek!

All in all, it was a fascinating evening filled with a very interesting eclectic group of people: physicists, billionaires, authors, actresses, nurses, lawyers, neuroscientists, torch singers, and party crashers all partying and mingling with and around that super famous miracle man and rock star of science: Stephen Hawking. I've performed for many famous scientists, billionaires and nobel prize winners at all sorts of straight and bizarre gigs and venues all over the world - from CERN where the LHC lives to a medieval castle in Sweden during a IT boar hunt, but this one took the proverbial cake! I think this gig will rank as one of the best I will ever have - an opportunity of a lifetime. A big thanks to Kip for inviting me and to my dean at SRJC, Kimberlee Messina, for covering my classes I had to miss at the last minute to make the trip.

Of course, one never knows who will need an emergency performance from the Physics Chanteuse next! You? Stay tuned!

To Boldly Go Unbiased!

2010-07-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Maybe it is because I'm a feminist, or because I've experienced decades of gender bias in the sciences, or because as a science songwriter, I work diligently to be gender sensitive and inclusive in my lyrics, I don't know why, but when I came across explicitly gender biased lyrics in a kid's science song yesterday, I got pissed and had to take action. Monty Harper is a children's science songwriter and performer who is doing good work in science outreach to kids in Oklahoma where he is based. I learned about him yesterday when I received an email he posted to a listserv of science songsters requesting financial support for a CD music project he is working on "Songs from the Science Frontiers" featuring his original songs about science research in Oklahoma. The project sounds worthy of support and I was even more impressed with his using the online funding service Kickstarter to try to fund the production costs. I was ready to click and fund, until I listened to the sample song, "Ain't it Beautiful, " a cute diddy about USDA scientists in Oklahoma trying to combat the Russian wheat aphid which is a major pest worldwide of wheat, barley, and other cereal crops. The gender bias was in the hook:

Ain't it beautiful; Ain't it clever
Ain't it just about the best news ever
How science feeds our global needs
When man and nature work together

Man and nature? Just hearing and seeing that antiquated generic gender biased word representing all humanity made my stomach turn. This is a new song. This song was not written in 1955 before civil rights or gender bias and equity issues became part of our common social knowledge. So I contacted Mr. Harper and told him I was interested in his project and possibly supporting it but that I had an issue with his gender biased lyrics and suggested that he change the lyrics to be more gender neutral. After all, girls and women are at least half of the global population and girls and women are severely underrepresented in the sciences, it seems like a no brainer to try to be as inclusive in educational lyrics as possible. Why not change the lyric to "When humans and nature work together" or use the term 'people' or 'we.' Mr. Harper was as resilient as the modified wheat grain. He replied:

Unfortunately our language has gender bias built into it. The word
"man" in "Ain't It Beautiful" is meant in the sense of "mankind." I
think most people get that....I'm not sure using the word equates to perpetuating a bias.

Well Mr Harper, scientific research would suggest otherwise. In a quick online search I found a study on gender bias in the english language which concluded:

This evidence demonstrates that the use of "generic" masculine and even other grammatically neutral terms in effect serves to exclude women from the English language. The resulting masculine bias in our language reflects and reinforces the pattern of male dominance in society.

We need to err on the side of perpetuating inclusion and not exclusion in education and especially in the sciences. In my opinion it is lame and sexist to continue to use such outdated and biased lyrics in a science song for kids! I can't support a project that perpetuates gender bias in any form. Look, even Star Trek the Next Generation changed the famous final frontier motto from:

"...to boldly go where no MAN has gone before."

to
"...to boldly go where no ONE has gone before."

Star Trek is so universally inclusive, "one" includes ALIENS!!!! We should aspire to be as inclusive with our species.

Mr. Harper, please modify your lyrics so they are gender neutral and inclusive so that all children can be inspired and included in the final frontier of science. That is a project I can and will support.

Expanding Your Horizons: Tween Science Pep Rally

2010-03-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I performed a science pep rally for about 200 tween girls at the annual Expanding Your Horizons conference held at Sonoma State University. According the the EYH website, "Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics™ conferences nurture girls' interest in science and math courses to encourage them to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.' Girls (and some boys too) are bussed in from several counties for a half day of workshops with fun hands-on activities lead by real live female scientists and engineers. The conference ends with a motivational talk by a woman scientist - an astronaut if they are really lucky - who shares their story of how they beat the odds and became a successful scientist. Or, on a few rare occasions, they get a science singer, me, who does something entirely different.

I couldn't tell them the true story of how I got into physics, because quite frankly, I am not a good role model. I hated school, never studied, and math and science bored me to tears. I flunked algebra, got a D in physics and refused to take biology because I would not dissect animals. I didn't get turned on to science and math until I was in college and it was through my own curiosity that brought me to it, not a graduation requirement. In retrospect, I regret not studying math and science (and music) in high school because being a delayed science learner created a real and permanent mental handicap for me. If the parts of a young forming brain involved in 'higher' mathematical reasoning are not used, then the neural pathways in those areas are not established or are pruned away: If you don't use it, you lose it. I surmise that since I wasn't using those parts of my brain, I'm missing some essential neural connections for doing math and science. My neural net connections are seriously twisted and though I'm still smart and able to do science, it takes me more time to work problems through my funky mental wiring, which is a serious handicap in the academic world of timed exams and cognitive conformity. Luckily, my plastic brain compensated by giving me a holistic intuition about nature and a crazy knack for putting science into song and theater. My brain is so weirdly wired that I prepped for my graduate oral exams by writing songs about Maxwell's equations (no, I did not sing during the exams but I wish I had!)

I use multiple learning styles for my multiple intelligences but I wonder what value that has in academia because by the time I sing, dance, write, mime and paint the derivation of electromagnetic waves in vacuum, the proverbial bell has rung and time has run out. Sadly, our educational system doesn't allow time for true inquiry based learning or for 'different learners' to think differently if that means to take more time to think. Hence, I do believe that had I studied math and science in high school while my brain was forming or pruning those fast neural connections that process higher math reasoning, I would have suffered less about feeling too dumb to do science and done better in academia. Would I still be a freaky-artist-science-geek? I believe so but the point is, my story is way too messy and complicated to tell tweens in a 30 minute science pep rally. So I gave the following talk instead, this is part of it, as best as I can recall, and with some editing.

(I'm taking out he call and response type pep rally yelling that helps to engage and settle down seat twitching tweens such as 'Shout if you are having fun,' "Shout if you are from Napa County," etc. Every question in my talk is actually a call to the audience to shout the answer back, but I don't know how to make that work in a writing. Note: call and response is critical for a successful tween science pep rally!)

Hi everybody! It is great to be here today to celebrate Expanding Your Horizons! Hey! Do you know what that phrase means? What to they mean by 'your horizon'? They mean your future! And this conference is all about expanding your future potential by learning math, science and engineering. At the workshops today, you learned about science and technology and the many exciting careers you can have in those fields. You heard that if you want to purse a career in science or engineering, it is absolutely necessary for you to study math and science, right? It is true - if you want to be a research scientist, or environmental engineer, or an astronaut, or a doctor, or a math teacher, or a CSI chemist, or any science or tech job, you have to know math and science. Well what I want to talk with you about today is that even if you don't pursue a career in science or engineering, you still need to know math and science. EVERYBODY needs to know math and science, even if you want to be a professional football player or dancer. Every person needs to know math and science in order to live in our high tech scientific world.

Now many of you may be thinking or saying: "I like science but I am not good at it. I can't do math because it is too hard. My brain doesn't think that way." Well you are partly right, math and science are hard and anyone who tells you differently is lying to you. But what isn't hard that is worth pursuing? Is it easy to be a great dancer? Do you wake up one day and instantly you can play the guitar? Of course not. It takes practice, practice and more practice to do anything difficult well. But you'd be wrong in saying that your brain doesn't think mathematically. Every one's brain is mathematical. It is a fact. Every time you reach your arm out to catch a ball, your brain is doing a zillion calculations to put your hand in the right place at the right time. Math was invented by human brains just like your brains. But it takes practice to learn it, to figure out how the language of math, of how our brains reason, and put it on a piece of paper as an algebraic equation. Do you wake up one day and -bang- you can speak another language perfectly? Of course not! It takes practice and a lot of embarrassing mistakes to learn a new language, but you do it, so you can live in a world where that language is spoken. Math is like that. If you learn math, then you can live in the world of science, which is the world we live in. And math and science are like sports. The more you practice, the stronger and smarter you get. But it isn't easy and it takes time. So be kind and patient with yourself as you would be learning any other challenging and worthwhile thing.

OK, so what if all that doesn't mean beans to you. You are just not interested in math and science and couldn't care less about it. Well let me try to make it more personal, and more scary. There are real and serious problems you will face in your life, whether you like it or want it or not that will involve science, and if you do not become scientifically literate, and by 'literate' I mean to be able to read, speak and engage in conversation and debate about science, you will be in trouble. Our modern high tech world is dependent on science and technology, isn't it? As an adult you will have to make many decisions that require scientific literacy. For example, what if a big company wants to build a factor in your neighborhood that puts waste into the air and water? They say it is safe but others say it is toxic especially children. How do you figure it out? Who do you believe? Or, what if there is a new experimental drug your grandma can try to cure her cancer, how can you decide if it is worth the risks? Or what if people tell you nuclear power plants are safe and you should vote to pay for them? Should you eat genetically modified food? What about giving your children vaccines? What science should our tax dollars pay for? What would you vote for? Solving global warming? Cancer research? Finding life on other planets? What about building big solar energy collectors in space? Good idea or bad idea? What if you are on a jury and have to decide if the crime scene evidence warrant putting a criminal to death? And a million other scientific questions you will face in the future that are indeed a matter of life and death. A sad fact of our times is that people lie to sell stuff and get rich. You know it is true. And so I ask you, how are you going to know who is lying or telling the truth? How are you going to handle these complicated issues if you are scientifically illiterate? Will you just believe the white guy in the white coat? Turn over all your power to the so called 'experts'? "Oh, my brain doesn't think that way, you decide for what is safe for me and my baby." Come on! Do you want to live that way? You don't have to.

I think it would be GREAT if you decide to pursue a career in science and engineering, it is a very rewarding job and I encourage you to consider it. But quite frankly, I don't care what career you choose, you still need to know math and science. What I do care about is that you become smart, well educated empowered citizens who have the knowledge and ability to understand the complicated scientific world world you live in, so that you can make educated decisions, and if necessary speak scientific truth to power, to protect yourself, your family, your community and our planet. If you want to be a player in the expanding horizon of this high tech scientific world, you need to be scientifically literate and that means you need to study math and science at least through high school. You need to study math and science NOW. And here is why.

Let me tell you a little about how brains work. Right now your brain is growing and forming. As far as we know, it does most of the growing and forming until you are in your early 20s so now is a critical time in your brain development. What you lean now, will affect the way your brain works for the rest of your life. When you learn something, neural pathways and connections are formed for that sort of thinking to happen. The more you use those connections, the stronger they become. It is sort of like muscles - the more you exercise them, the stronger they get. It may hurt at first but the more you lift weights, the easier it gets. Similarly, the more you think about math, the stronger those neural connections get and the easier math gets. Learning math hurts at first because your brain is changing shape, just like your muscles in your arm! That is why it is so important that you are patient with yourself and trust that the more you do math, the easier and less painful it will get. However, there is a very significant way in which brains are not like muscles. With muscles, if you stop exercising and get weak, you can just work out again and build the muscles back up. You don't permanently lose your strength. With brains on the other hand, if you stop using the neural connections to do math, the brain literally prunes them away. If you don't use it, you lose it! Now, clearly you can still learn math as an older adult, but, trust me, it is so much more difficult. The brain is less plastic when it is older - it is harder to teach an old dog new tricks! Therefore, it is very important FOR THE REST OF YOUR THINKING LIVES that you learn math and science NOW while your brains are forming these neural connections of complex reasoning. Learning math and science while you are young will make you smarter for the rest of your lives, whether or not you become scientists and engineers.

You are growing up in very exciting and complicated times. On one hand, technological development and scientific discoveries are occurring at what seems to be speed of light rates - it is hard to keep up and make sense of it all! And at the same time, we are swamped with a lot of bad news of doom and gloom about our environment: global climate change, polluted air and oceans, fish too toxic to eat, species extinction, the list goes on and on - it can be overwhelming and downright depressing! And it is perplexing: if science and technology are so advanced and are progressing so quickly, why do we still have so many environmental problems? If we are so smart, why are we so stupid?

The fact is, very little science and technology is used to solve our environmental problems today. Most science and technology is used to make stuff to sell and make money for corporations. Your cellphones, computers, video games, the internet, all those high tech goodies come at a very high environmental price. For the past hundred years or so since the beginning of the industrial revolution, our species, humans, have been living like a locust on this planet, consuming everything in our path towards so-called "progress." We chop down forests, over fish the oceans, consume all the natural resources we can to build stuff to sell to get rich, and then dump our waste in the air and water. These natural resources will not last forever and the environment can not absorb pollution forever. We have belched so much carbon dioxide into the air from cars and factory smoke stacks that we are changing the planet. Global climate change threatens the health and habitats of not only humans but also of all the other creatures who live on Earth: plants, animals & insects. The cost for keeping the high tech engine of capitalism going is the degradation of our environment. Although the irresponsible use of technology is largely to blame for our environmental problems, we must use science and technology in new creative and responsible ways to solve them.

It is a very sad fact is that even though you didn't cause any of these problems, you are the ones who will inherit them, and either your generation will fix them (if they can be fixed) or you will pass them down to your own children. And that is why is so very vital for you to be scientifically literate, so you can understand science and technology and how we can use it responsibly to help solve the environmental problems facing us. So whether you become a scientist or an engineer, or a dancer or farmer or cook, every person in this room must learn math and science and become scientifically literate. It will make you smarter and it will empower you with the knowledge you will need in the expanding horizons of our future.

Well, that's about all I have time to recall for now. I also talked about lovons and spaceship earth, and hell, I also sang 7 songs! It takes much longer to write this than it does to say it, that is for sure. Stay tuned, maybe someday I'll video tape one of these shows and put it online. For some of the songs I did perform, check out my youtube channel: einsteinangel

Lovon!