LOVELIGHT

Magazine

September 2008 ***Vol. 6, No. 9

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Managing editors: Adamaria Francis and a franciscan taoist

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A special "thank you," to, and acknowledgments of, our special contributors to this issue; they are: Jim Dwyer, Maureen Dwyer, and Chris Finer

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LOVELIGHT MAGAZINE: WHAT WE'RE ALL ABOUT

Lovelight magazine is free, coming to your inboxscreen monthly, to announce the beauty of Love! And we love to laugh!:) So, if you discover any good chuckles, please send them along!:) But no bigoted, prejudiced, scatological, geruntological, low-quality, or poor-taste humor, please.

Still, life is not all laughs. So, we hope also to share pleasant and happy thoughts. Lovelight wants to promote peace and harmony, all over the world, and to aid you to feel good!:) If you are working on any religious, psychological, or spiritual issues, we encourage you to read the ezine, and to write to us at rmfrancis@juno.com

Also, if you come across any wise or touching pieces, not copyrighted, fairly short, please share them with us! Also welcome are practical tips, short pieces on personal philosophies, interesting facts, wordplays, and general spirituality (but no religion or "preachy" dogma, please.:). We reserve the right to make whatever changes we deem necessary or desirable before inclusion in Lovelight. NOTE: This issue was "thrown together" after the breakdown of our computer. Apologies for any deletions or items that had to be left out.:)

A subscription is free. As a subscriber, your email name/address will not be shared. Please share, send, or copy, this magazine, or any parts of it. Share it as widely as possible, with all your friends, and all others. Please use it on your websites and bulletinboards. Please photocopy, email, or snailmail any parts of it to others. Also, please have friends send us their emailaddress and subscribe. Subscriptions are free.

This is "light" reading. And it is also great, fun reading. A collection of magazines is produced once a year. We have published three volumes, and this would make a sweet gift for a loved one. Happy reading!:)

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USING CREDIT/DEBIT CARDS AT THE PUMP, sent in by Maureen Dwyer

People are getting really desperate due to the constantly rising gas prices. One lady used her credit/debit card to purchase gas. She received her receipt.

However, when she checked her statement, there were 2 $50 charges added. She found out that because she did not press the "clear" button, the employee inside the store was able to use her card to purchase her own gas!

To keep this from happening, after you get your receipt, you must press the "clear" button on the pump, or your information will be stored until the next customer inserts her card. Be sure to tell all your friends so that this doesn't happen to them! (I had never noticed the "clear" button, but will be using it from now on!)

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DOG PROTECTS NEWBORN, from cnn 

A dog sheltered a newborn baby abandoned by its 14-year-old mother in a field in rural Argentina until the boy was rescued, a doctor said Friday.

The abandoned infant was found in a field with this dog and her newborn puppies.

A resident of a rural area outside La Plata called police late Wednesday night to say that he had heard the baby crying.

He went outside and found the infant lying beside the dog and its six newborn puppies, said Daniel Salcedo, chief of police of the Province of Buenos Aires.

The temperature was a chilly 37 degrees, Salcedo said.

The dog had apparently carried the baby 50 meters from where his mother had abandoned him to where the puppies were huddled, police said.

"She took it like a puppy and rescued it," Salcedo said. "The doctors told us if she hadn't done this, he would have died.

"The dog is a hero to us."

Dr. Egidio Melia, director of the Melchor Romero Hospital in La Plata, said. Police showed up at the hospital at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday with the baby, who doctors say was only a few hours old.

Though the infant had superficial scratches and bruises and was bleeding from his mouth, he was in good shape, Melia said.

The next morning, the child's mother was driven by a neighbor to the hospital and told authorities that the 8-pound, 13-ounce infant was hers, Melia said.

The teenager was immediately given psychological treatment and was hospitalized, he said. She has said little about the incident.

The child has been transferred to a children's hospital in La Plata, 37 miles from Buenos Aires.

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THINK BEFORE WE SPEAK, sent in by Chris Finer

"Some people!" snorted a man standing in the long line at the grocery store.

"You would think that the manager would pay attention and open another line!" said a woman.

I looked to the front of the line and saw a well dressed, young woman, trying to get the machine to accept her creditcard. No matter how many times she swiped it, the machine kept rejecting it. "It's one of them welfare-card things. Damn' people need to get a job like everyone else," said the man. The young woman turned around to see who had made the comment.  

"It was me," he proudly said, pointing to himself.

The young lady's face saddened. In tears, she dropped the welfare card and quickly walked out. Everyone watched as she ran to her car. Never looking back, she drove away.

After having developed cancer in 1977, and having had to use Food Stamps, I learned never to judge anyone. That turned out to be the case today.

Several minutes later, a young man walked into the store. He asked the cashier whether she had seen the woman. She told him that she had run out of the store, got into her car, and drove away.

"Why would she do that?" asked the man.

Everyone looked at the guy who had made the statement. '"I made a stupid comment about the Welfare Card she was using.  Something I shouldn't have said. I'm sorry."

"Well, that's bad-- real bad, in fact.  Her brother was killed in Afghanistan two years ago. He had three young children, and she has taken on that responsibility. She's twenty years old, single, and now has three children to support," the younger man said in a very firm voice.

"I'm really truly sorry. I didn't know," he replied. Then he asked, "Are these paid for?" pointing to the shopping cart full of groceries.

"It wouldn't take her card," the clerk told him.

"Do you know where she lives?" asked the man who had made the comment.

"Yes, she goes to our church."

"Excuse me," he said as he made his way to the front. He pulled out his wallet, took out his credit card and told the cashier, "Please use my card. PLEASE!"

The clerk took his credit card and began to ring up the young woman's groceries.

"Hold on," said the gentleman. He walked back to his shopping cart and began loading his own groceries onto the belt to be included. "Come on people. We got three kids to help raise!" he told everyone. Everyone began to place her groceries onto the fastmoving belt. A few customers began bagging the food and placing it into separate carts.

"Go back and get two big turkeys," yelled an overweight woman, as she looked at him.

"NO!" yelled the man.

Everyone stopped dead in her tracks. The entire store became quiet for several seconds. "Four turkeys!" he yelled. Everyone began laughing and went back to work. When all was said and done, the man paid a total of $1,646.57 for the groceries. He pulled out his checkbook, and began writing a check, and handed the check to the young man.

"She will need a freezer and a few other things as well," he said.

The young man looked at the check and said, "This is really very generous of you."

"No," he said. "Her brother was the generous one."

Everyone in the store had been observing and clapped.  And I drove home that day feeling very grateful for compassion and Love.

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GAFFS AND LAUGHS: HUMORTHERAPY

PATIENT INFORMATION, sent in by Jim Dwyer

 A woman called the hospital: "Could you connect me to patient-information? I'd like to check on a patient."

A voice said, "What are the patient's name and room number?"

"Sarah Finkel; room 302."

"I'll connect you with the nursing station."

"3-A Nursing Station.  How can I help you?"

"I'd like to know the condition of Sarah Finkel in room 302."

"Just a moment.  Let me look at her records. Mrs. Finkel is doing very well. In fact, she's had two full meals; her blood pressure is fine; she is to be taken off the heart  monitor in a couple of hours. And if she continues this improvement, Dr. Cohen is going to send her home Tuesday at noon."

The woman said "What a relief! Oh that's fantastic! That's wonderful news!"

The nurse said, "From your enthusiasm, I take it you are a close family member or a very close friend!"

"Neither! I AM Sarah Finkel in 302!  Nobody here tells me a thing!"

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WHY THE CHICKEN CROSSED THE ROAD, sent in by Maureen Dwyer

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted change! It could not possibly stand another second of the past eight years!

      JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road. Does that chicken belong to a corporation? If so, and if it is rich enough, it might qualify for taxbreaks!

      HILARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure-- right from Day one-- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me! . .

      DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems. Generally, you might just say that chickens are usually pretty stupid, and need to have everything explained to them in monosyllables.

      OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

      GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care (who does?) why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here. How much money does that chicken have? Is he a corporate chicken? (If so I'll give him a tax break)

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

      ANDERSON COOPER (cnn): We have reason to believe that there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

           NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

      PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

      ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.

      DR. SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?

      Yes, the chicken crossed the road,

      but why it crossed I've not been told.

      JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side'. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

      GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody

told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

      BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that intewesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the

chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced

a sewious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dweam of

cwossing the woad.

      ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

      ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

      BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

      AL GORE: I invented the chicken!

     DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

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TOP NINE SCREW-UPS AT THE OLYMPICS, sent in by Jim Dwyer

Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so far
during the Summer Olympics:

1. Weightlifting commentator: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing."***2. Dressage commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother."***3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."***4. Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious."***5. Softball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."***6. Basketball analyst: "He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces."***7. At the rowing medal ceremony: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew."***8. Soccer commentator: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field."*** 9. Tennis commentator: "One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them. Oh, my God! What have I just said?"

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COMPUTERVIRUS ALERT, sent in by Chris Finer

HEADS UP!!! THIS ONE IS FOR REAL!!
COMPUTER VIRUS WARNING - http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/ups.asp

The newest virus circulating is the 'UPS Delivery Failure'. You will receive an email from UPS Packet Service along with a packet number. It will say that they were unable to deliver a package sent to you on such and such a date. It then asks you to print out the invoice copy attached. DON'T TRY TO PRINT THIS. IT LAUNCHES THE VIRUS! Please pass this warning on to all your PC operators at work and home. This virus has caused Millions of dollars in damage in
the past few days.

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SELECTIONS FROM BOOKLETS OF LOVE MINISTRIES

Each of the following is an excerpt from a booklet produced by Love Ministries. If you would like to see the entire text, please drop a line to: rmfrancis@Juno.com

"Extraterrestrials, History, and Ufo's" (Liberty Township, Ohio; Love Ministries, Inc, 1999):

It stands as an imposing structure far out in the middle of "nowhere," on a desert floor, covering thirteen acres, weighing over six million tons, and standing 450 feet tall. It is perfectly aligned to the four directions, and reflects an extraordinary precision, often conveniently ignored by traditional scholars, who can offer no explanation for it relatively sudden appearance. It is an unexplained mystery of hitech and engineering accomplishment. It is the great pyramid of the pharaoh Cheops.

Could it be that the human species has a kind of amnesia, that it has forgotten much of its earliest history? For Egypt is not the only place that contains records that indicate a much more ancient origin than is conventionally recognized for human culture. In Teohuanaco, Bolivia, is found a great ceremonial center. Like the Egyptian pyramid, it appears to have been constructed with

intervention from a superior technological source. The biggest blocks in the structure weigh twice as much as those of Gizeh-- about four hundred tons. It is built at over 12,000 feet above sea-level, in an area where it is impossible to grow large quantities of food. It is incredible that it was constructed by primitive peoples with basic, simple tools. It is evidence of a technology that is still not understood. It incorporates astronomical alignments of extreme precision.

Perhaps the most astonishing mystery are the Nazca lines in Peru. Covering over two hundred square miles, they form patterns of gigantic works of art that can be seen only from a vantage point high in the sky. Large, perfectly straight lines stretch out, and birds and other creatures are reproduced in detail. These structures are more than two thousand years old. Could they contain messages aimed at ancient travelers from the stars? Many of the lines reflect astronomical alignments.

In Asia, too, many legends have evolved over millennia; many seem strangely to have been influenced by the UFO phenomenon. In the classic

ancient Indian text, the Mahabarata, tales are told that seem to describe even battles between flying craft, using energy-weapons. Yet it was composed more than two thousand years ago. It is ten times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, and appears to be a tale of conflict on a cosmic scale, among beings seen as "gods." It speaks of the invasion of earth by unfriendly extraterrestrials, who took over the primitive governments of earth. But other powers, those of friendly and good "gods," intervened and saved the human race.

Another great Indian epic, the Ramayana, also tells of cosmic conflict in the ancient past. It tells even of a weapon, the vimana, which was so powerful that it was capable of destroying the entire earth in an instant. In all these stories, there are references to strange flying craft, also called vimanas. Were they ancient space-craft from another civilization? (The vimana exhibits a flight-pattern that closely matches those described of modern ufos.)…

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"A Course in Lifedesign: Figuring Out What You Want, and How to Get It" (Liberty Township, OH; Love Ministries, Inc., 2000):

You'll never get what you want until you know what it is. You are the only one who really, truly knows what exactly will fulfill you, although you must often "dig deeply" to "uncover" this treasure. Remember, millennia of history have repeatedly demonstrated that the "good life" does NOT consist of only material things, so be sure to make your lifedesign a little more comprehensive and inclusive. Don't put yourself in the sad place of those stereotypic people who waste their three magic wishes on a million dollars only to find themselves in various hell-states of suffering and torment.

Since lifedesign is the most important creation you will undertake in this life, be sure not to hurry or act impulsively. Take your time, consider all contingencies, and make careful, thoughtful decisions that take into account your psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual natures.

For the successful lifedesign is not the mere brainless accumulation of material "stuff" or money. Success in lifedesign means being able to do what you love to do. The most important question for you to answer, then, is not, "What does society expect of me?" or, "How can I earn the most money?" or, "How can I impress others?" but this: "What do I truly love to do? What really makes me satisfied, content, and fulfilled? What brings me joy and peace?"

Significantly, people who selfdescribe as "happy" are not always, or even usually, wealthy. They always have in common the feeling that their lives are about something larger and more important than a large car, home, or bank-account. They feel that they are engaged in the service of something larger than their little egos, or selfish desires. Usually, they are engaged in some form of aid, help, or service.

Happy people who do not have everything that they want ultimately to have share two factors in common: 1) They are clear about exactly what they want, where they want to be, and 2) They feel that they are taking actual steps to get to their final goals. Note that the issue of skills has not yet even entered the picture. What is important to happy people is not what they CAN do, but what they WANT to do.

Let us repeat the crucial factor: Do what you love.

The very first step in lifedesign is to decide exactly what that is. In all the history of creation, in all the universes, the cosmos will never again produce another exactly like you. Thus, your choices arise from your startling uniqueness. No one can fulfill exactly your place, with exactly your path, your friends, your family, or your insights.

There is an over-abundance of options. But it is not at all unusual for people to need direction through this mass of tangled potentials and possibilities. Not that anyone will tell you what to do; that is your right, and your job. It can be your pleasure. But it has been noted that depression often lifts during wartime because people are too busy to worry. They also have crystal-clear goals and strong direction. These latter two factors you will learn to draw from within yourself. So, begin by getting busy, exploring your options.

"Too much freedom" can scare us, and be baffling. So, the need is to create a goal; make it as realistic as possible. And use your dreams to fuel your goal.

THE FANTASY EXERCISE. Try for a few moments to imagine that you have NO LIMITATIONS, in time, energy, or resources, including money. For this moment, you have all power, and can do anything. How would you be spending this minute, this hour, if this were the situation? Don't neglect or shrug off this crucial exercise; it will clearly demonstrate your direction. So answer the question as clearly, with as much detail, as possible.

Believe it or not, what usually blocks clarity in defining goals is inner conflict. The first step in examining this factor is to stop wasting timenergy in blaming. Stop blaming yourself for past errors or "failures," and use that timenergy to create your new goals. Remember two important factors: 1) You don't have to be a totally different person to find success; you simply need to learn to rearrange your timenergy, and 2) Positive thinking is good and fine, but it is not enough by itself to change your life-- no matter what "positivity gurus" may claim! Try not to take absolutely complete responsibility for even your success; if you do this, then you will have symmetrically to blame yourself when you do not find full success. You are affected and influenced by factors that you do not, and cannot, control. Do some practical research, and try to find, or create, a "niche" where you can excel.

WHAT YOU ARE "SUPPOSED" TO DO. Everyone has a personal opinion about this, and everyone wants to tell you what they want from you. This has been going on for so long, that we usually forget where we internalized the messages. Still, we respond; even rebellion, like obedience, is allowing ourselves to be controlled by these old "tapes." Even if you already love your work, your "supposed to" message might be different. But WHO SAYS that you are, or are not, supposed to be doing certain tasks? Who implanted the original message? Usually, it is the family, or the parents. Take a moment, and write down the names of everyone close, or important, to you, and under each name, write what he/she expected, or wanted, you to do with your life. Jot down your first impulse. Remember that families were never taught to converse with, or listen to, you as a child, but were taught that they should guide, train, mold, and force you to do what is "right." But your personal dreams represent your essential, authentic self, what is specifically "right" for you. So they are more important than, and supersede, family expectations. Also, families are not taught to respect your dreams; indeed, almost any stranger would show more respect for your dreams. Sooner or later, you will have to forgive your family for its lack of interest/respect. In fact, with fullest detachment, in order to move to a place of fullest manifestation, you will have to arrive at a state where you see your family's opinions as NO MORE IMPORTANT than those of strangers.

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"Sex and Morality, Victorian Style" (Liberty Township, Ohio; Love Ministries, Inc., 1998):

Obscenity, perversion, lust, and lasciviousness have been with human beings since the earliest records. But nowhere in history has such a gargantuan attempt to bottle up natural energies been made as in Victorian England, towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Today, however, in the post-"liberation" era, the amorality and immorality of the sixties appears gradually to be giving way to a new sense of morality which has some things in common with Victorianism. There is a resurrection of "family values," a nebulous phrase that has suffered from its politicization, but which nevertheless represents the need for a real value-system. Because so much in "family values" reflects Victorian morality, it is wise to study the latter in order to get a historical perspective.

Victorian values included character, conduct, and social systems of positive interaction. Although Victorian and Christian values are often interchanged, they are not quite the same. For one thing, Victorianism saw the physical body and sex as intrinsically undesirable and unclean, so that they could never, as real Christianity does, reflect a system of universal values.

The entire mangled complex of rules and morality might be traced to King George 3, who in 1787 issued a decree calling for the cultivation of "virtue" and the punishment of "vice." To show just how ludicrously the system evolved, in time, editions of Shakespeare and even of the Bible were produced that stripped them of all "sexual indelicacies."

But there were also positive aspects; reformers helped to design programs to help the poor, and to aid the physically challenged, leading directly to the Progressive Era of American history in the early twentieth century: Orphanages, hospitals, and charity-schools were established. Even among the very poor, the latter led to a relatively high degree of literacy, which in turn led to attempts to better their condition. This reform-spirit also led to the kinder treatment of animals, and to the prohibition of ghastly atrocities such as the cock-fight, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting. It also did away with public shipping, the pillory, and the slave-trade. Religious and secular authorities collaborated, and humanitarian programs blossomed.

The "classes" of society were motivated, in fact, largely by religion. Evangelicism motivated the middle classes, and Methodism the lower, working classes.

Nor was this moral reformation simply a repeat of the older philosophic systems. Aristotle, for example, celebrated the "cardinal virtues" of courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance. These gave rise to prudence, generosity, liberality, and gentleness. Plato modified the virtues and set them in a social milieu; in his "perfect" communism, property, women, and children were shared in common by all-- something of which the Victorians would hardly have approved!

Victorians, although they clearly went too far, truly did try to construct a value-system that partially reflected the Christian values of faith, hope, and love. Thomas Aquinas saw these virtues as complementary to the Greek classical ones. Philosophers ever since have accepted the notion of "virtue." In ancient Chinese texts, such as "The Way of Virtue," virtue is seen even as a kind of power.

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"Infinite Possibilities, Abundance for All: The Promise of Nanotech" (Liberty Township, Ohio; Love Ministries, Inc., 1995):

Will it ever be possible on earth to fulfill absolutely the material needs and desires of every creature on the planet? Yes, it appears that it will, and even now, science is beginning to explore a mind-boggling technology that might make it possible for people to create diamond from grass-clippings, steak from dirt, and building materials from mud.

This emerging science is called "nano-technology." The name comes from the Greek word nano, which means "very tiny." The idea is that, someday, it will be possible to build tiny robots that will be capable of taking materials apart and reassembling them-- at the level of atoms!

Now, the reason that this is at once so astonishing and so promising is that everything is made up of atoms, and a remarkable spectrum of substances are made up of only a few basic kinds of atoms. Your body and its fuels, for example, consist very largely of arrangements of the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Put together in one configuration, these atoms create skin, bone, and hair; in another, they can form an apple; in another, the wood of a tree; in another, pure diamonds. Thus, if we could learn to manipulate matter on the tiniest level, the atomic level, these components, found everywhere in the soil, could be rearranged to make a wide variety of different substances and objects from dirt.

The tiny, ultramicroscopic robots that would do this work would be called "nanobots"-- an unofficial term describing robots capable of moving around individual atoms and sticking them together into various configurations. The atoms that make up a crème Brule and those making up a weak soup are exactly the same, but are simply arranged differently. Also, the atoms in that soup and those of a building plank are the same, but simply aligned and oriented differently.

Imagine for a moment a world in which nanotech exists as a viable technology. A superabundance of everything would be available for everyone; as a result, crime would simply disappear. Since the tiny nanobots will be created in forms that can be injected into the bloodstream to make changes in the body, this world would also have no disease; and since meat, potatoes, or any other food could be created directly from dirt (as nature does, in so many steps, though less efficiently), world-starvation would come to a screeching halt, and forever be a thing of the past.

Nanotechnologist call the "nanobots" that will take things apart and restructure them "assemblers." Their job is to rearrange atoms into molecules (a "molecule" is two or more atoms connected) of completely different substances. As another example, carbohydrates are chemically related, distantly, to hydrocarbons-- as their names suggest. So a carbohydrate, such as grass-clippings-- could be transformed into gasoline or oil by nanobots. This occurs simply through the shifting, shuffling, and rearrangement of the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

In time, all the necessary work in the world could be done by nanobots. This would free human beings to express their deeper creative and constructive talents, artistry, and plain playfulness. It would produce a recreational world in which hard labor would be nothing but a dim memory. Entire buildings could be constructed by a sufficient number of nanobot-assemblers.

The very good news is that we already currently have all the technology in place to make this revolutionary manufacturing science possible. Now, it is just a matter of perfecting our vision of the future, and working out the practical ramifications and implementations. For nanotech promises nothing less than the complete human control of the very ultrastructure of matter itself. By simple extension and modification to a medial use, this nanotech implies also the end of all aging and all disease, as well as the end of all poverty and crime.

In time, every home might have a nano-synthesizer-- a box about the size of a microwave oven-- in which you could put a shovelful of dirt and return later to take out wheat, bread, fruit, or other foods. As a matter of fact, there is nothing more natural than nanotech, for nature is always transforming soil into other things. Human beings, cows, dogs, cats, pigs, rice, corn, fruits, vegetables, and flowers are all examples of dirt or soil metamorphosed by the relatively slow and inefficient processes of nano-nature (natural rearrangement of atoms) through processes of growth, consumption, digestion, etc.

The nanofactory in nanomanufacturing would be doing the same thing, only much faster. This kind of manufacture would involve trillions of nanobots performing millions of atomic rearrangements every second. In the future, the plans, schematics, or "blue-prints" for any device might be sent through computer to your home, and then fed into your nano-synthesizer, constructor, or builder; and then that device or object would be manufactured on the spot. Anything could be manufactured, created, or constructed on site for free.

Some scientists predict that nanotech might have practical, realistic applications in as few as twenty years. The more optimistic say that by 2020, nanotech might be fully implemented. Indeed, if the explosion in nanotech is anything like that in computers, it could very well happen by then.

What has kept this remarkable technology from implementation? Until now, the atom has been too amorphous, too elusive, to be handled individually, or to be stacked or stuck together with other atoms. In fact, the atom actually exists in a strange quantum state, in a non-ordinary quantum world, wherein it appears almost as if it is not a real thing at all. Another problem in "grabbing" an individual atom is thermal agitation, which means that atoms are always moving or vibrating at very high rates of speed.

Still, the field of nanotech has been an object of discussion since 1959. And in the year 1989, a break-through occurred; in that year, individual atoms were moved and manipulated successfully, at an IBM research center in San Jose. In this primary experiment, thirty-five individual atoms were manipulated on a tiny surface to spell out the letters IBM. Thus, the basis of nanotech is no longer theoretical; atoms can actually be moved and controlled.

But can machines actually be constructed that are so tiny that they can move individual atoms, and be programmed to do specific tasks? The experiments that have been done so far indicate that this can indeed be done. In fact, systems of gears have already been created at this tiny molecular level. Also an electric switch has been created from individual atoms, in which a single atom acts as the switch. This represents the embryonic beginning of an entire series of electronic nanodevices. Nanospheres and nanotubes have also been created as the construction-prototypes of more complex structures….

Already, in fact, a kind of tiny "railroad car," constructed of only a few dozen atoms, has been built. At room temp, it moves three hundred times a second between two "stations."

By way of comparison, the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953, but it was less than twenty years later that scientists were able to cut and replace (splice) sections of this life-molecule. (This was the beginning of genetic recombinant DNA experimentation. Since then, many useful products have arisen and been marketed.) If nanotech follows a similar course, development should be rapid. Only a few years later, in fact, the "gene machine" was invented, which makes DNA molecules to "order," and automatically. It fits neatly on an average desk-top, and can be programmed by anyone who knows how to type!

And technology is much sharper, better advance, organized, and rapid than it was in the fifties.

Nanotech represents the ultimate science, the final "victory" over nature, and is capable of many forms of abuse. But we must not allow this to paralyze us or to impede progress in this extraordinary field.