This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
National Academy of Sciences NULL
Based on the strength of evidence from DNA comparisons, the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived approximately 6 to 7 million years ago in Africa. The evolutionary tree leading from this ancestral species to modern humans contains a number of side branches, representing populations and species that eventually went extinct. At various times in the past, the planet appears to have been populated by several human-like species.
Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong
The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.
Achievement | Humanity | Important |
Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination.
The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible; therefore I devoted the next few months to the study of this work. One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.
Ability | Cause | Energy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Mother | Observation | Order | Phenomena | Power | Reflection | Study | Truth | Will |
While I have not lost faith in its potentialities, my views have changed since. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only though annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.
Barbarism | Better | Cause | Devotion | Earth | Energy | Faith | Ideals | Mercy | Understanding | War | Will | World |
Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.
Democracy | Government | Lord | Mankind | Will | Government | Trouble |
Pat Buchanan, fully Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan
Our intellectual, cultural, and political elites are today engaged in one of the most audacious and ambitious experiments in history. They are trying to transform a Western Christian republic into an egalitarian democracy made up of all the tribes, races, creeds, and cultures of planet Earth. They have dethroned our God, purged our cradle faith from public life, and repudiated the Judeo-Christian moral code by which previous generations sought to live.
None of the producers (of coal) are held accountable for the effect coal is having on the atmosphere--the prospect of global warming. The result? Planet Earth is having a once-in-a-billion-year carbon blow-out sale, all fossil fuels priced to move, no reasonable offer refused. And when this eon's hydrocarbons are sold, they're gone, never to be seen again. Another way of imagining the scale of the carbon dioxide problem is by removing its two oxygen molecules. Looked at that way, every time you fill up... you are depositing into the atmosphere the equivalent of a 100-pound sack of pure carbon. It stands to reason that coal should be the most expensive form of energy, not the least expensive. The only reason that it is now the cheapest is that the newer technologies (solar, biomass, etc), ...more accurately internalize their costs to the environment and future generations
One statistic makes clear the demand placed on the earth by our economic system: every day the worldwide economy burns an amount of energy the planet required 10,000 days (27 years) to create.
Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich
The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic... Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything... We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else... Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland... Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources... We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably... The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality.
Earth | Nothing | Problems | Space | Technology | Will | World | Think |
Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich
The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated.
Capacity | People | Understanding |
Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings. Like her, these men, and the many others who sought her company, were all tormented by that same destructive feeling, the sense that no one else on the planet cared for them… Hunger, thirst is truly desire to be around a person. And from there, everything changes, men and women together into a play, but before that happens-the appeal has brought them closer together-it cannot be explained. The attraction was not the desire to touch; it is in a state of clarity and purity. When desire is still in a pure state, the man and woman feel love life, and they live every moment in a respectful, alert, always ready to honor and celebrate the blessings that are coming. When people feel like they will not rush, they will not rush to into action without thinking. They know that the inevitable will happen, what is real will always find a way to express itself. When that time comes, they will not hesitate, they will not miss the opportunity, they will not lose a single magic moment, because they appreciate the significance of each moment… I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul.
Action | Blessings | Desire | Honor | Inevitable | Love | Magic | Man | Men | People | Sense | Time | Will | Woman |
The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions… The optimist and the pessimist both die in the end, but each lives his life in a completely different way… The pain of yesterday is the strength of today… The past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning… The two toughest tests on the spiritual path are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage to not disappoint us with what we find… The universe always helps us in the fight for our dreams, as crazy as they may be. Because they are our dreams, and we even know how much trouble it costs us to dream them… The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
Courage | Dreams | Feelings | Future | Life | Life | Pain | Past | Patience | Power | Right | Sense | Soul | Strength | Universe | Trouble |
As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population. While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute... that, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialized nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return. When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason... for a plant based diet.
Energy | Extravagance | Nations | Thought | Will | Loss | Thought |
Animal Liberation will require greater altruism on the part of human beings than any other liberation movement. The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with self-interest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels and terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?
Altruism | Capacity | Challenge | Morality | Nothing | Position | Power | Tyranny | Will |
Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers.
We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole.
Individual | Reality |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
To all of you and to each one of you, young and old, weak and powerful, I appeal: embrace peace as the great unifying value of your lives. Wherever you live on this planet I earnestly exhort you to pursue in solidarity and sincere dialogue: Peace as a value with no frontiers: North-South, East-West, everywhere one people united in only one Peace.