We All Still Love You Harry

          Bill still had no idea where to start or what to do about a situation that seemed to be 

 

turning into a nightmare. He considered Ed Sharp the cause of most of the sudden, highly 

unlikely drama surrounding the sudden "disappearance" of a few fashion models and a sports 

car. 

     For all he knew, Sharp was making this all up anyhow. Maybe he needed a promotion? 

 Maybe he was just bored? He knew Harry since they were kids. They would both laugh 

 themselves to tears over Ed Sharp and his spies and subterfuge. Why not just call his house 

and leave a message? "Hey Harry just wanted to talk with you - give me a call." 

     "OK, we'll give it a try Evelyn. Worst case, he'll get mad at us - even worse something's  

wrong with him. At least, we'll be able to help him." Evelyn wasn't taking this so well at all. "it's 

not natural. We don't even talk like this. He'll see this right away." She was talking about the 

patter that Ed Sharp had made them memorize. "The good of our country and Mankind. We 

never talk like that Bill". "We'll play it by ear. We'll see what it is and deal with it. First things 

first.  We'll see if he's OK and we'll take it from there." What about the devices?" Ed Sharp had 

devices placed into their clothing that recorded and transmitted all their conversations. 'We're not

doing anything wrong - we'll just go and do the very best we can."  Bill was tired and frustrated. 

He was not at all up to what he was about to confront. 

                                                    Origins of Technology

                           How far can you see? Making Telescopes

     It wasn't that long ago, that the "Glass Giant of Palomar" - a huge 200 inch 

that's a 16.6 foot diameter piece of pyrex glass about a foot or two thick. It's an 

incredible story itself from casting the glass mirror at Corning, NY to grinding and

 polishing it to protecting it in it's long railroad journey to North San Diego County,

 California from crackpots that might take a shot at it, to the incredible technology of

 it's mount. The whole story is in a book by David Oakes Woodbury - The Glass 

Giant of Palomar - a great read. 

     I read this and many other books like it on  telescopes, the  history and making

 of telescopes as I built my own six inch - that's  a six inch  diameter mirror - 

reflecting "Newtonian" telescope. I ground it by hand! I  still have a

 photo of it. It cost me eleven dollars for parts, including the glass mirror blank and 

glass  "tool" - the disk you grind the mirror to be against. 

     The theory is that if you simply grind one surface against another you will be left 

with either a totally flat surface, or spherical surface whose reflective focal length 

depends on the length of  the strokes you used to grind it. Only it's not so simple.

      They've been doing these  since before the discovery of glass, using metals 

 instead, that produced actually  excellent results in viewing. 

                                           More in Part II

                                        

                                                       Origins of Technology

                                                   work work work

     I'm not writing this piece for fun. Not at all. in fact, it's brutally difficult and I'll tell 

you why. The purpose is to help me and others clarify something that has had me 

very hard down for quite a while and very difficult to explain. I can recall working for 

the Church of Scientology in the UK. We were at the American University, not the

 large American University in London, but a smaller one and closer to East

 Grinstead  where our organization was based. We were trying to recruit students

 and sell books  by L. Ron Hubbard to the students there. If students from the

 American University  had come to St. Hill - the place where scientology was

 located - in order to sell  books  - any books at all - or recruit students for their

 courses - they would not have been  allowed on the grounds. 

     The L. Ron Hubbard  policy toward standard education  was

 that it was not only worthless, but down right close to evil. Anything not written by

 L.  Ron Hubbard was largely and usually worthless and down right close to evil.

 This  attitude  would make many people defensive and probably somewhat

 annoyed or  offended since they'd spent much time in schools where they'd

 learned to read and  write and add numbers and learn about many important

 subjects. 

     Hubbard  attended George Washington University for two years, had poor

 grades and  dropped out. He majored in Civil Engineering and told Look magazine

 "He never  took his degree". 

     For the record, engineering school is hard work, very hard work. Landing a man

 on the Moon is no little thing, and neither is building a bridge. 

     What got to me at that school was that after having adopted Hubbard's attitude 

 about the worthlessness of higher education, and despite my own real experience

 in excellent schools, I found myself in their gym shooting baskets and had very

 mixed emotions that day about the experience. Something was wrong. Something 

was gnawing at me. Sure, people should not be judged totally by their grades in

 public school or any school for that matter. There are many other important things

 in life. Additionally, many students who haven't the resources, can't afford school or

are pressed into working early instead for economic reasons. Still, most schools

 usually do an excellent job of helping students live better, more useful lives no

 matter their circumstances and, in fact, are there first to help any student have a

 complete and practical education. To say less and to ignore the good schools do is

 far from what you what expect from the "humanitarian" that Hubbard continually

 claimed he was. He's gone now. May he rest in peace. My purpose here is not to

 find things that are wrong about others in my estimation, but to point out the best I

 can the true and most important contributors to today's current and most

 successful technologies, whatever area of life they might be concerned with. 

     I felt bad at that gym because I had stopped supporting standard education and

 instead was supporting those who considered it a waste of time at best. And, here

 it  had done so much good for myself and my friends. 

     Look, it is probably true that Hitler's camps for Germany's youth had many fond

 moments for the young boys and girls that attended. That's not the point at all. The

point is that there is practically no hard sell to public school or most private

 universities either, yet the human and social value is extremely high. The same

 thing can be said about good family. The parents do everything they can to help

 their children. In the same way, schools are among the finest things a community

 has to help  its children. Technologies are developed to help people, to make their

 lives easier, their work more efficient. The best, the true sources that help man, do

 not make fun of other people. They point out the good and they point out the

 failures in a way that is simply to prevent others making the same mistakes. This is

 a characteristic of a good technology, whether it is in medicine, study itself, or

 basketball. It has this about it. It is humble and wishes only to serve and help man,

 not in the spirit of sacrifice, but in the spirit of having fun, enjoying life. Like most

 people really are when they are being themselves..,. 

         

                                             

                                           We All Still Love You Harry 

                                             Ed Sharp grooves Bill in 

     "I'm going to have to cover a lot of ground very quickly William. We simply haven't enough 

time to waltz around what's been going on or why we believe it's as we think it is." Ed Sharp 

had a slightly reddened complexion, almost like he'd just returned from a few days fishing. He 

took a  couple of quick breaths and got  right back into the 'machine gun' rat a tat he started  

with.

   "Harry Adelman has apparently make good on his thesis and work about holographic 

living transport. Either that, or he's doing a great job at pretending he did. If he was off on  

some desert island, playing around, who would care? But, when people start to disappear - 

not just  any people - but when beautiful movie stars and four of the  highest dollar models in 

this  world just zip out without a hint or a word, it makes you wonder. Then, look at these 

others -  million dollar sports  cars with attaché cases full of money - nearly completed 

mansions from  southern California - gone - no trace - where? - how? - tankers full of 

gasoline. Bill started to laugh. "It's definitely  Harry". "He always talked about it - I remember 

when we were roommates at school. He'd shoot  this stuff by me and I'd laugh and laugh, and 

he would too. Leave him alone, he'll cool off. He  would never hurt anybody, I know him. He 

wouldn't."  

    Ed Sharp wasn't laughing though, he wasn't even smiling. He'd been with the FBI since

 Vietnam, chasing draft dodgers and peaceniks - not just anybody - bomb throwers -  fire

 starters. Nasty people. He saw Harry as an anarchist, someone who wanted to bring down 

the  whole system. Injured feelings or serious losses or simply just actually crazy, he saw 

people  like Harry as serious threats to our society that had to be reined in and tamed like 

you  would a wild animal. 

      "Bill, I know it seems funny to you, and it is, but it can also get out of hand. He's kidnapped

 these girls. Who knows what he's done with them. We need you to go in - you're his friend. 

I'm  sure he trusts you. Just put it to him how it affects us and assure him that it's OK - we

 understand - he'll get credit for his discoveries and inventions - no harm done - assuming no

 harm has been done. Return the girls - and whatever else and he'll be the national hero that

 he should be. That's more or less what we need and want from you." He took a few more 

breaths.  "No, I won't do it". 

     Bill was really upset at being asked to betray his friend. "How would you  feel if someone 

grabbed your girlfriend, daughter, sister, for fun?" Ed looked right at him. "Not  so good," Bill 

answered. "He'll straighten it out - he would never hurt anyone". Bill repeated. 

    "We're going to set him up with another model - send her in with a note to get back to us -

 and we'll take it from there - I'll be in touch." 

     He left as abruptly as he'd left himself in to the apartment. Bill didn't like him. "He'd already 

worked out all the details, without knowing Harry or himself or Evelyn or anything at all about 

the work they'd put into this,  a  lifetime of dreams and little pilots, deep into the night study, 

and for what? He understood exactly why Harry walked out of his presentation and how he'd 

felt about their snide cracks. And now this cop comes crashing through his door with his plans 

to trap his best friend, right or wrong, 'the FBI gets their man'. 'It's gonna happen see'."

     Bill resented Ed Sharp's attitude and his disrespect for Harry. Harry stood to be one of the 

greatest scientists that ever lived. One who'd already built a system that worked, that would 

revolutionize transportation on our world almost beyond belief, and being treated like a 

common criminal for it. All these things flashed through his mind and he decided that if 

anyone had his help here, it would be Harry.. 

                                          Origins of Technology

     Real research looks very much like we witness today in the struggle to defeat the threat of

the deadly Coronavirus to the health of mankind on this earth. It's highly organized. The

methods of development of an effective vaccine are well known, yet involve an enormous

amount of careful and exhausting research. It also demands a deep theoretical and practical

understanding of the subject being researched. I don't want to bore you, about a subject that

is as intensely interesting .as the origins of technology, nor do I wish to see you get lost in

the seemingly endless processes of trial after trial after trial with not even the slightest trace

discovery that characterize real research. I will, however. enlist the help of the ancient method'

of story telling, which worked, I understand to help earlier peoples to bear the everyday

near impossible challenges of simply surviving on the deserts of the Middle East, and which,

in fact, became the very structures supporting the hope and patience of most of the western

world still today.  

     It was the summer of 1960. I had just graduated High School and was on my way to the

 University of Pennsylvania in the Fall. It was a long way to work at the Bartol Research

Foundation of the Franklin Institute. A bus, and then the elevated train all the way to the end of

the line, and then another long bus ride and there it was, on the same grounds as Swarthmore

University. Dr. Metzger introduced himself. He turned out to be quite an accomplished

 

physicist  in the field of nuclear radiation. Swiss, and the reason the "Swiss never suffered in

 any war was that they were so carefully trained and prepared." Well, the boy scouts knew 

that too. A lot of grass and singing birds outside, and me and a console full of electronic 

devices designed to count and keep track of the amount of nuclear radiation falling on a 

sensor. Different electromagnetic "shields" had been configured to surround our radioactive 

sample, and this was the basis of our research. Did changing the current or shape or 

distance  from the sample alter the amount of radiation passing through the shield - or not.

     Every morning, I would take a short trip down a floor and carefully extract a sample of

Cesium 137 if I recall correctly - radioactive Cesium. It was in a lead lined box with a string

above with which you could pull out the small vial of sample and hold it at arms length, "lest

you lose the ability to reproduce" walking back upstairs and setting it carefully again, down

into our apparatus for the experiment. If I dropped the glass vial, "they would have to shut

down Bartol for 50 years", explained Dr. Metzger. Yes, of course, I was careful. But, remember

I was eighteen years old and at a new job and I had a lot of confidence in atomic scientists. In

this case as most, it was well deserved, You know, thinking about it, in about 1997 or so, we

had a conference at Broward Community College with many of the participants in the first

detonation of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo, NM, who confided that they slept up on the

platform with the bomb to prevent sabotage! Also I have experience with nuclear missiles

which I am not free to discuss. Interesting how these things occur. Yeah, Alamogordo was a

different kind of research. 

    

     The point of all this story - and it lasted all summer - every day pretty much the same until

we did a special job tor an Israeli physicist who was in charge of this enormous Van de Graf

generator and who sold me a 1955 Chevy which I used to drive to school that first year! 

     You know, this little story was supposed to cushion the effect of day after day of no

significant changes. Which, by the way, is not necessarily bad results in any way. Still, very

very boring, to the extent that I did tell Dr, Metzger that I thought "we might have something" in

an attempt to justify all those readings -see? It was then that he warned me about subjective 

bias damaging objective research. At any rate, I find now, that this was a particularly exciting 

 

period of my life and especially accelerated significant education. Go learn!...

     

                                               Origins of Technology 

                                               Stumbling onto Answers

        In about 2003, I had the honor of working with my former freshman chemistry teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, the Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alan MacDiarmid  

       Way back in 1960, when I first started at Penn, his lectures were full of interesting demonstrations as well as insights into his research then into the element silicon. I remember all that, and I remember his ideas about mankind's progress on this earth following closely along the discovery of workable materials for his use at different times in his development. Silicon, you might recall, is currently highly useful in our society as a primary material for electronic circuits, probably being used by yourself right now to read this! Interesting eh? His Nobel prize though, was for the development of conductive polymers (plastics), which we were working on at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter at the Univ. of Penna. around 2003. The School District of Philadelphia had invited science teachers to participate in a teacher outreach program and I was lucky enough that Dr. MacDiarmid introduced me to a large meeting in the auditorium as his former freshman chemistry student. I really felt great about that. We worked on a paste that would help damaged nerve tissue regrow. It simply needs to conduct electricity see, otherwise it simply wouldn't regrow. The hope was that Dr. MacDiarmid's material would help it along. He passed on in 2007, i believe, may his memory be a blessing, and I read earlier that there had been some measure of success in nervous tissue repair. Most research takes a long time. 

     It's the research about research though that we're doing here, and the relationship of the need for answers as well as methods to success in finding valid solutions to problems. Do we just stumble onto answers? The "eureka" method. "I dreamt i was fighting a huge covid-19 motecule and my tears killed it - the next day - I thought - Yes! - salt water - tried it and it worked - wiped out the entire jar of these viruses! - or - do we employ more logical methods - like - things that worked in the past: "My mom always gave us chicken soup and told us to dress warm" - which does work often you know!  What's important here is that the entire world has received over 300 million shots of 99% proven workable vaccine so far - starting from scratch less than a year ago - and already touching the "R" (reproductive) number of less than one - means it's all over for the covid-19 virus. This is an amazing result. It's like "we'll put a man on the moon by the end of the decade" - and we did; We sure did...RIP JFK. Mankind certainly has enemies - all kinds...

     

 

Origins of technology

I worked several years counselling people for all kinds of things. Unwanted problems, upsets, attitudes - you name it. Many study problems as well. One of the things you learn when you help other people effectively, is how incredibly bright people actually are. I learned this as a high school teacher too - very early on. Kids are smart. Here's a tip: "you're stuck on some problem, don't know what to do? - ask someone - they'll tell you what it is." The human search engine is out there just waiting to be used.

New kid on the block. "Here's how you hold the ball to throw a curve." Then they watch you till you get it right. It's an entre technology - baseball. I spent an entire lifetime learning engineering in two languages. You'd be surprised how important fresh water is in Israel - or the number of tests you have to run on a camera that went to the moon on the Apollo shot and still sits there today! Different technologies - each, easily as important as winning a world series. You see how quickly they came up with a vaccine for the covid-19 virus? - and got about 300 million shots in people around the world already? Impossible - it's like watching the parting of the Red Sea - can't be done - and yet it does get done. i find myself asking - "why all this?" - what am I doing here? Yet, we're, all of us. on this same voyage. You see this when you teach it. What's going on? We are! we are going on...

I can recall finishing my studies of Chemical Engineering in Israel and getting caught up in the study of communication and scientology while still living in the student dormitory in Be'er Sheva. It was summer and I had been busy manufacturing little souvenir brass plates with little wooden table legs that were miniature tea tables that are so common in the middle east. I was able to etch the plates rather than work them with chisels and bang out patters, which allowed them to be completed very quickly. i tried selling them at a local souvenir shop and was surprised at how much money the proprietor gave me for them. Another Chemical Engineering student from Chile helped me find brass and acid I needed to make the little tables and volunteered to help me finish the little leg sets as well. In time he started asking me about scientology and I told him what L had heard on the radio where they had scientologists talking about e-meters and word clearing. I had a negative impression about it and let him know. I was invited to a party and told that a scientologist would be there. The scientologist was a math professor for the university and asked me about my opinions of scientology and invited me to try out the e-meter which I had been critical about and give me a demonstration "session'. I was highly impressed by the accuracy of the session and the care about definitions and the end result was a sensible way to handle problems and upsets in life which was very new for me at the time. The other student went on with his wife to England to study and I followed about a year later with my own wife and child. My brother had moved to London about two years earlier than us. I often wonder about that as well as moving to Israel. These were both life changing large moves. There was lots of social motion in the 60's and 70's in the US and world. LSD and marijuana and even wide usage of much more serious drugs, Hippies and flower children and the Symbionese liberation army and Patty Hearst. But, hey, the generation before mine went through a lot more motion than we did, tens of millions died horrible deaths in the war - millions in gas chambers in Europe. They had psychoanalysis and Freud. We had yoga and L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics. I could have become an orthodox Jew - there's wisdom there that's lasted thousands of years on this Earth - it's all documented - the good and the bad. You wonder about causes and events and where to spend your money and who to vote for. And there's answers in Scientology and there's answers in Judaism and psychoanalysis. We don't really have a national religion here. In fact, we're probably successful because we don't take sides here and just let people be whatever they like to be and stop killing each other for differences of opinion. When you get right down to it, you, yourself should be master of your own destiny and your "way' is the right 'way" for you! Every person is unique - absolutely different - perfect in themselves - infinitely fine. How in the world did that happen?