True Progress is Not Pramila Jayapal

The Point is an Alliance of Radical Utopian Movements

The sex and gender distinctions within feminisms are secondary to the collective identity, hence terms like "person," "queer," "fem," "intersectional" "ally" and "LGBTQIA BIPOC" (which is intersectional and includes queer, person and sometimes ally.) It's easy to make fun of the alienating vibe of these ever changing terms, but that is the point of them: they are collective identities for radical utopian movements. They are not supposed to be tailored to your biology, psychology, personal sex life and local social environment.

The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict of not guilty.

I'm an urban liberal, no alignment with right wing militia types. If I was to see a 17 old kid planning to go out pretending to be a cop and/or first responder like Riitenhouse was I'd call the police to inform. Yet in the situation in which Rittenhouse fired it was 1) self defense 2) a situation of anarchy and wide spread property violence. He was being charged at by people involved in that property vioence. It is not ok to care about them. It is very seriously not ok to stand in solidarity with them.

This trial was really about the most insidious claim of the 2020 Summer of Love / Racial Reckoning: that there is a difference between lives and property, that we sometimes choose between them, and that we should always choose lives over property.

Dave Chapelle says if you take a man's livelihood you might as well be taking his life. Lives is a verb. (Pun intended.) People are the subject and property is the object. Killing either one destroys lives.

People who claim to value people more than property wouldn't actually piss on you if you were on fire. People who destroy property are the same level of criminal as those who kill.

It is not ok to stand in solidarity with them, and it is criminal to want them free and without prosecution.

If you saw burning vehicles and buildings, and thought it was ok in order to serve cultural change, you are a piece of shit and it's not ok that our society accepts your extremist views...and you.

Intersectionality : Allyship and Avoiding Exclusive Monetary Aid to BIPOC (Cronyism)

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Intersectionality

def

the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. -Oxford Dictionary

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Allyship

def

supportive association with another person or group. specifically : such association with the members of a marginalized or mistreated group to which one does not belong. -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

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The general flow of the semantics in the equity agenda is...

ONE...

There are people with greater and lesser points on the intersectionality scale. More intersectionality of historically marginalized groups means a higher personal score of oppression. A black lesbian is going to get a higher intersectionality oppressed score than a gay wealthy white male or a black heterosexual male. A caucasian heterosexual male means no historical oppression and labelled 100% privileged.

TWO..(what to do with the calculation from above)

The higher the intersectionality, the more that person is empowered by allies from the more priviliged end of the spectrum. The groups deemed privileged are to

1) stay silent allowing the marginalized to speak and write in any given civic forum
...
2) vote for the marginalized (ONLY IF that person is serving the equity narrative, moderate POC excluded and despised)
...
3) prefer the marginalized in hiring
...
4) buy from BIPOC owned businesses, and finally
...
5) prefer to grant government contracts to more marginalized owned businesses.

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As a moderate, cultural diversity loving urban liberal I want to declare I...

Oppose the Narrow, Racist, Heterosexual Hating Political Orthodoxy of Equity and Inclusion

...and offer my personal solutions to undermine this cancer of cronyism, racism and and sexual orientation favoritism that is the current system of intersectional allyship.

• If heterosexual then demand equal, vocal, positive acceptance of your heterosexuality, especially including desires for marriage and raising ones own children. Make all interactions of respect for LGBTQ as thoroughly mutual, where there is no reciprocal positivity then the conversation is over and no care either positive or negative is extended.



• Jews and Far East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) have been systematically oppressed and killed, families unable to become citizens and forbidden to join professions. Yet, when they acquire wealth or high professional status their inclusion as marginalized is negated. There are attacks on them by other marginalized groups. I pledge to support wealthy Jews and Asians as equal fellow citizens. I pledge to fight any policies that would undermine their acceptance and enrollment in colleges. I pledge to always consider wealthy Jews and Asians for my vote in elections.



• In international affairs I will advocate for the nations of China, Japan, Korea and Israel be given equal respect and considered an inspiration for their success, and also considered in my own country as models for reforms and copying of successful internal policies. My political will for my United States is the acceptance of China's model of social rewards for the lawful and well-behaved citizens, and disallowing those with criminal records from access to better public transportation (such as highspeed rail), some stores and many other forms of convenience. In regards to radical militant Islam, my political will is that the United States aids China and Israel in combating any attempts to create Islamic-first territories. Saying this again to clarify -where there is a cultural push for an Islam-first separatist state the US business community and government should be aiding China in it's counter-offensive to such an agenda.



• Demand that histories all over the world are discussed with equal curiosity, and merit based admiration expressed for any culture that produces widespread civil peace, high standard of living and public safety, technological innovation and wealth spread more broadly than the leader's social-genetic circle.

I hope all moderate, diversity loving urban liberals have gained some insight in how to move forward to a better form of inclusion and allyship -a more modern, intellectually rigorous and less hate-oriented than the current illiberal extremism that has become a domimant unquestioned paradigm in the global West.

Stand your ground with your vote, your informed view, your political will. That is the fundamental node of legitimacy.

Seattle Urban Decline As Mobile Wealth Moves Leaving Poor

REFERENCE: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-ceo-citing-rougher-patch-with-seattle-looks-to-burbs/

Seattle's long climb up from crappy innercity ghetto of the 90's when I got here, to the new highrises full of, yes, biotech and internet tech professionals and wealthy condo buyers...seems to be at a turning point.

The 2020 property violence directed at everything new and gentrified in the city center along with a city council and city court system hostile to wealth and high tech has provided those with the means and ability to move to do just that.

The trend will be simple -mobile wealth will migrate to places where wealth doesn't endure crime and political hostility, leaving the less mobile, especially the poor, eating each other in the myriads of ways crime and poverty does.

I loved seeing the slow then rampant ascension of Seattle's urban core over the last 20 years, and I love urban over suburban in general. But the revolutionary paradigm changing goals expressed often explicitly by Seattle leaders and media, and also expressed in deed by radicals on the streets...deserve a direct slap in the face with what counts -a lower living standard via violence and poverty.

Poetic summation: The wealthy won't feel this hurt. The cleaning lady that gets assaulted at the bus stop...will. And the radicals will never have a mea culpa - all they see is a revolution in their heads.

The African Slave Traders Who Exported to the Middle East and Asia

 The Age of European Exploration is not the first era of long-distance trade-oriented intercontinental networking. Nor is it the first to use and trade in slaves.

In Africa, the Swahili Coast (Somalia, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Tanzania) was the region of world renowned city-states trading with Arabia, India and China beginning over 2000 years ago. As an early year marker, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty was buried in 157 BC, four African elelphant tusks occupied the Emporer to his grave. 

The trade was enabled by the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean, and their seasonal flipping of directions. December to March the "trade winds" blew northeasterly, providing a push on sails to go from Africa to Arabia and India. April to November the winds blew southwest providing power for boats to move from Asia to East Africa. This provided the seafaring traders the ability to make a round trip within one year's time.

Archeological evidence has established that the main Swahili city-states had built themselves up with wealth, substantial infrastructure, building sophistication, and appreciation for foreign fine goods...long before Arabic Islamic influence existed. Popular imports into Africa from the Indian Ocean included glassware and pottery, jewelry, paper, paints, books, gunpowder, pointy weapons, silk, and other precious fabrics.

While the trading abilities and urban sophistication can be directly credited to African indigenous origin, it was the linkage with Arabic Islamic culture and the Muslim far-stretching empire that provided the Swahili port cities an uptick in trade. It is early on in Islam that trade in slaves became a major part of the cultural exchanges, and the Swahili coast began to be the primary source for African slaves exported to the Middle East, India and China.

From "Forgotten History of African Slavery in China" (areomagazine.com )[link]:

The first Africans arrived in China as gifts from the King of Kalinga in Java to the Tang emperor in 813 A.D. These young boys and girls were treated as exotic ornaments, no different from the rhinoceros and other animals they were presented alongside. The Chinese called them Zangzi, a reference to Zanzibar, which at that time described the whole length of the Eastern African coastal region, including Madagascar.

In later accounts, African slaves turn up as the personal property of Arab merchants residing in Chinese port cities such as Guangzhou (map), which housed a significant Arab community. The average Guangzhou resident is likely to have encountered Africans as she went about her daily tasks. Eventually, wealthy Chinese also started demanding such slaves in large numbers. This required a supply line beginning from East Africa, traversing the Indian Ocean, stopping in India and finally crossing the Malaccan Straits to reach the port cities of China.

Before closing with a strong invite to read or view the references below, here are some thoughts and thought experiments.

Picture the highest classes of society in the Swahili port cities, keeping the rare and precious imports within their cities, mostly in their homes, unapologetically engaged in exporting Africans to the Middle East and Asia. This breaks the false narrative of African solidarity opposed to an unfair, cruel, merchantilist world. They are the merchants. There is no such African solidarity.

It is a false equivalence to point to these merchants of slavery as the same as US southern plantation owners. It is easy to break that equivalence by this simple thought experiment: proponents within US southern plantation culture stated many times over that blacks are suited only for slavery. Can we imagine the elite wealthy slave trading blacks of the African coast saying the same thing? Of course not. The US plantation south taught some things about human subgroups (black) that was untrue propaganda aimed at their own selves to feel better about the whole slave owning arrangement. The elite blacks of the Swahili port cities practiced no such indoctrination.

Advocates for "indigenous ways" who take that stance without nuance or knowledge are missing out on a horror they invite back into our world. Where did all these slaves come from through those many centuries of the African port cities? They came from the interior and a product of raids and contentious battles. Indigenous cultures didn't have prisons like their contemporaries in the Roman and Persian sphere. At the end of a battle the losing side faced two primary outcomes: total annihilation or bondage. As hostiles against the victorious group, they can't be let lose to win on another day. They have to be deleted from the region that day, either through death or exported in bondage as forced wives or forced workers.

Finally, the idea of "Kunlun", dark people, in pre-modern China is fascinating. The Chinese gave the kunlun title to any from deep southeast Asia or Africa. The Chinese took many female slaves from Korea, but didn't refer to them as kunlun, rather they remarked how Korean women where so white (white is a beauty standard first mentioned in writings as far back as 1100 BC, 3000 years old). The native peoples from the Philippines to Indonesia, much less Australia, are very dark. Here is my suggestion for the seismic rift between these people -thousands of years living on the edge of glaciers of the last glacial maximum (link). What we call Asians of the Far East were hunter-gatherers on glacial ice, and that environment molded them to be better suited for the environs with wider heads, slanted eyes for snow glare, and other physical traits. Africa and areas south of Asia didn't get that ice, and thus didn't get shapped by it over thousands of years. Therein is the difference that isn't cultural or made up in our minds.

REFERENCES

1. The Swahili Culture 0 to 1500 AD (Youtube)
2. Forgotten History of African Slavery in China (areomagazine.com )
3. Kunlun Nu ( Wikipedia ) A Tang Dynasty era novel about a black man in China.
4. Slavery in China ( Wikipedia )
5. Kunlun People China <-Google Search
6. The Blacks of Premodern China ( University of Pennsylvania Press ) Read the excerpt, it has the a free reprint of the entire introduction within the book.
8. Chinese-style ceramics in East Africa from the 9th to 16th century (journals.openedition.org)

My Self-Identity : Pronoun Declaration ...and more

I self-identify as a he, and feel more information should be presented in the interest of self-identifying and proper representation.

I was born a male, and became a heterosexual male with the onset of puberty.

I have never been medically diagnosed with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS). So my gender status at birth continued to genetically express like the majority of mammals.

I have never been evaluated by a psychiatrist as having gender dysphoria. Nor have I ever had an episode of gender dysphoria to my unprofessional subjective opinion.

Since I've never had AIS or gender dysphoria there is no need for a self-identity declaration. That act of self-identity is only pertinent or needed by those with those physical and psychiatric conditions, or by those in the majority (less marginalized) who want to normalize the act. It isn't important or relevant for me to do it.

I accept all with AIS or gender dysphoria as people with all the rights their nation's laws provide. Safety and privilege are not mine to offer, as the source of these are in our Constitution and legislation.

I understand intersectionality - how to deconstruct ones intersectional identities -mapping race, sexual orientation, body type, religion, disability status, age, gender identity and citizenship. Some may have no identity that has been historically or currently marginalized, others may have many or all aspects of their identity as marginalized.

An idea has been promoted that those with less or no marginalized identity offer intersectional allyship to the more marginalized -especially by staying silent and allowing the marginalized to speak, or at least speak first. I counter that idea with the following.

The amount of marginalized identities in one person will not make their value or voice go up or down in any social space we may share. I demand the same respect for my identities, and lowering my status based on any one of my identities will be considered an unfortunate act of discrimination, and be met with less consideration of that person in regards to any social construct.

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A special note on sexual orientation. Ones orientation is going to shape ones communication. This is more relevant to settings outside of the workplace, but it is pertinent in relation to intersectionality. Heterosexuals, especially in younger years when searching for a mate to settle down with and have children, have non-verbal and verbal signals they are trying to send and receive in the process of finding a mate. When heterosexuals are pursuing their agenda of finding an optimum mate, whether that be females dressing with the intent to attract the male gaze or whatever, don't pollute the communication channel with anti-hetero misinformation such as "she doesn't want men's attention, she's doing it for herself". (I've encountered many heterosexual females that have explicitly said they are trying to attract males specifically with their looks)

Suppressing heterosexual communication in the act of deference to the intersectional marginalized other orientations is not offered. Heterosexuals, especially compounded with the identities of being wealthy or physically fit, don't owe any form of deference, quietness or humility for their desires and agendas.

Androgen insensitivity syndrome: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001180.htm

Illiberal Left Subcategories

Intersectionality: the more groups of marginalized you belong to, the more authoritative your opinion, the more you get to speak, the more others have to listen, and ultimately the more bounty and privilege should be doled out to you in the revolution. e.g. black lesbian has higher points than black hetero male, and he gets more than white hetero female, etc etc.

Militant Liberation Theology: Being in the top 20% wealthy is evil no matter how nice you are, being in the bottom 20% is to be void of any wrong or guilt in any way. The only redemption for anyone is to end the existence of the top 20% and give the bounty to the bottom 20% (along with intersectional)

Anti-Heterosexual Agenda: Gaslight heterosexuals into not being able to pursue a mate selection strategy via shaming, denial of good looks and fitness as a virtue and desirable, among a myriad of confusion causing rhetorical strategies. The confusion causes disorientation, which is the opposite of orientation. Heterosexual orientation…disorientated…that is the goal.

Athletic Women - The Contemporary Feminine Ideal

The photo of two women in dresses is a typical photo from the 1950's in the USA, and the ideal feminine image of that era. The women and their clothes were not meant for anything adventurous such as alpine hiking, trail running, desert camping or hanging out in a gym. 

Social change of the 1960s began to challenge the narrow confines of the 50's woman. In 1967 Katherine Virginia Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. 

Men ceased to see outdoor adventures and time at the gym as a "chance to hang out with the guys" and instead saw those as ideal things to do with a girlfriend or wife. 

In the 1980's weightlifting gyms spread across the USA, with early dominant chains such as Gold's Gym. I was involved in that phenomenon in the 80's and 90's, and women were no small minority in those gyms. I was living in the South and Midwest in those years, a part of the country that doesn't trailblaze in social change, and yet as I said, women were in every gym I ever saw.

Feminists might use the image of the 50's to convince us what men want their women to be. In reality it is a rare type of man that would prefer the 50's women over the fit woman with the kettlebell. 

The emancipated woman in the fitness photo, we might assume she is also in law school, or a marketing professional, or a real estate agent operating in an upscale market. Fitness isn't mastered by the dumb, if she's fit she's also smart.

Any man capable of success is going to want a fit educated woman as his partner. Women don't need to worry about being pulled back into the 50's or into the Handsmaid Tale. The men that are going to be able to afford a house, and kids, is demanding...yes demanding...the woman to be fit, smart and rugged. 

Since the 1990's third wave feminism has pushed a more complex dynamic into all this. The latest feminism is proudly unfit, proudly obese, and full of nothing but contempt and hostility for  fit and badass women. Third wave feminism shames fitness and heterosexuality. It is a Mean Girls Club that insults and harasses any woman that is actually strong and intelligent. 

It is important for men, and fit smart women, to keep vigilant and know the Mean Girls Club is just our uglier end of the genetic pool trying to gaslight us into not seeing they are simply the very height of undesirable.

Appendix A: (somewhat related to the above blog entry)

"Men are just interested in big boobs" is a myth spread by fat lazy women. I see that claim plastered all over discussion threads where mostly women are posting. It stigmatizes men as simpletons, negates the trend towards liking fit women, and places a falsely higher value on a body shape fat lazy women tend to have.

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How to Inoculate Against Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory does not ask society to improve itself through laws, which is the only way a civilization can apply improvement.

CRT invents a new moral rule - a new "sin" - of which people can be guilty because of their relationship to a skin color. Unlike other sins - which you can see happening and try to avoid doing - you can only see the results of this new sin by listening to a certain kind of testimony which blames people's problems on this sin, and you can only resist this sin by accepting that testimony, which stridently insists that you accept a radical worldview and agenda.

In other words systemic or structural oppression isn't real. It doesn't help explain our experiences. CRT does not even TRY to describe what systemic/structural oppression is or the process by which it causes suffering. (In fact it aggressively beats back this line of questioning by asserting that rationality and cause-effect thinking are themselves systemic/structural oppression.)

CRT neophytes will sometimes cite overtly discriminatory policies like redlining or Jim Crow as examples. However, CRT academics and activists all agree that systemic/structural oppression is something else entirely, that personal bigotry and legal discrimination are merely manifestations of the underlying sin, and their decline does not indicate a decline in systemic/structural oppression.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/

the-child-soldiers-of-portland/

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The Source of the West's Totally Wrong Radical Thought

First, take a scroll through the following photos. My writing resumes.

( The photos are of contemporary Chinese cities and infrastructure. )

What values lead to creating such a complex and technologically advanced environment? Implied by roads and high-rise residences, what kind of economy creates a massive amount of relatively wealthy people? 

I am not going to answer those questions, but I am going to answer with what doesn't.

What doesn't create these scenes is the shaming of wealth and the shaming of material things.  I am not villifying an individualistic pursuit of a simple life, but on a mass scale and baked into policy decision-making this is toxic and leads to a society that correctly can be called simpletons and will be servants for a more enterprising society.

If we look a bit wider at the philosophy Jesus preaches I think we'll see he favored the poor, and he preached the dangers of seeking wealth. This is his overwhelming message in the gospels.

…but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the Word, and it proves unfruitful.

Mark 4: 19    
 
17      And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 
18      And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 
19      You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and mother’.” 
20      And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 
21      And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
22      Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Mark 10: 17-22 (similar story in Matthew 19: 16-22) 
“Give to anyone who asks of you…”

Matthew 5: 42

 

19      “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 
20      but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 
21      For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

24      …You cannot serve God and money.

Matthew 6: 19-21, 24    
 

17      And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. 
18      Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 19: 23-24    

Mary’s Song of Praise (The Magnificat):

51      He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52      He has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
53      He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.

Luke 1: 51-53




27      After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” 
28      And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
29      And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. 
30      And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 
31      And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 
32      I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Luke 5: 27-32  

  
“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors… But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…”

Luke 14: 12-13
__________

“You cannot serve God and money.” 

Luke 16: 13
__________

 

15      Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 

16      For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

1 John 2: 15-16

Freeman Dyson: Biological Engineering for Space Colonization

THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL

Freeman J. Dyson

Institute for Advanced Study

Princeton, New Jersey

IV.  Big Trees

I have spoken about the two first steps of biological engineering.  

The first will transform our industry and the second will transform

our earth-bound ecology.  It is now time to speak of the third step,

which is the colonization of space.  I believe in fact that biological

engineering is the essential tool which will make Bernal's dream of

the expansion of mankind in space a practical possibility.  

First I have to clear away a few popular misconcpetions about space

as a habitat.  It is generally considered that planets are important.  

Except for Earth, they are not.  Mars is waterless, and the others are

for various reasons basically inhospitable to man.  It is generally

considered that beyond the sun's family of planets there is absolute

emptiness extending for light years until you come to another star.  

In fact it is likely that space around the solar system is populated

by huge numbers of comets, small worlds a few miles in diameter, rich

in water and the other chemicals essential to life.  We see one of

these comets only when it happens to suffer a random perturbation of

its orbit which sends it plunging close to the sun.  It seems that

roughly one comet per year is captured into the region near the sun,

where it eventually evaporates and disintegrates.  If we assume that

the supply of distant comets is sufficient to sustain this process

over the thousands of millions of years that the solar system has

existed, then the total population of comets loosely attached to the

sun must be numbered in the thousands of millions.  The combined

surface area of these comets is then a thousand or ten thousand times

that of Earth.  I conclude from these facts that comets, not planets,

are the major potential habitat of life in space.  If it were true

that other stars have as many comets as the sun, it then would follow

that comets pervade our entire Galaxy.  We have no evidence either

supporting or contradicting this hypothesis.  If true, it implies

that our Galaxy is a much friendlier place for interstellar travelers

than it is popularly supposed to be.  The average distance between

habitable oases in the desert of space is not measured in light years,

but is of the order of a light day or less.  

I propose to you then an optimistic view of the Galaxy an an abode of

life.  Countless millions of comets are out there, amply supplied with

water, carbon, and nitrogen, the basic constituents of living cells.  

We see when they fall close to the sun that they contain all the

common elements necessary to our existence.  They lack only two

essential requirements for human settlement, namely warmth and air.  

And now biological engineering will come to our rescue.  We shall

learn how to grow trees on comets.  

To make a tree grow in airless space by the light of a distant sun is

basically a problem of redesigning the skin of its leaves.  In every

organism the skin is the crucial part which must be most delicately

tailored to the demands of the environment.  The skin of a leaf in

space must satisfy four requirements.  It must be opaque to far-

ultraviolet radiation to protect the vital tissues from radiation

damage.  It must be impervious to water.  It must transmit visible

light to the organs of photosynthesis.  It must have extremely low

emissivity for far-infrared radiation, so that it can limit loss of

heat and keep itself from freezing.  A tree whose leaves possess such

a skin should be able to take root and flourish upon any comet as near

to the sun as the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.  Farther out than

Saturn the sunlight is too feeble to keep a simple leaf warm, but

trees can grow at far greater distances if they provide themselves with

compound leaves.  A compound leaf would consist of a photosynthetic

part which is able to keep itself warm, together with a convex mirror

part which itself remains cold but focuses concentrated sunlight upon

the photosynthetic part.  It should be possible to program the genetic

instructions of a tree to produce such leaves and orient them correctly

toward the sun.  Many existing plants possess structures more

complicated than this.  

Once leaves can be made to function in space, the remaining parts

of a tree -- trunk, branches, and roots -- do not present any great

problems.  The branches must not freeze, and therefore the bark must

be a superior heat insulator.  The roots will penetrate and gradually

melt the frozen interior of the comet, and the tree will build its

substance from the materials that the roots find there.  The oxygen

which the leaves manufacture must not be exhaled into space; instead

it will be transported down to the roots and released into the regions

where men will live and take their ease among the tree trunks.  One

question still remains.  How high can a tree on a comet grow?  The

answer is surprising.  On any celestial body whose diameter is of the

order of ten miles or less, the force of gravity is so weak that a

tree can grow infinitely high.  Ordinary wood is strong enough to lift

its own weight to an arbitrary distance from the center of gravity.  

This means that from a comet of ten-mile diameter, trees can grow out

for hundreds of miles, collecting the energy of sunlight from an area

thousands of times as large as the area of the comet itself.  Seen

from far away, the comet will look like a small potato sprouting an

immense growth of stems and foliage.  When man comes to live on the

comets, he will find himself returning to the arboreal existence of

his ancestors.  

We shall bring to the comets not only trees but a great variety of

other flora and fauna to create for ourselves an environment as

beautiful as ever existed on Earth.  Perhaps we shall teach our

plants to make seeds which will sail out across the ocean of space to

propagate life upon comets still unvisited by man.  Perhaps we shall

start a wave of life which will spread from comet to comet without end

until we have achieved the greening of the Galaxy.  That may be an end

or a beginning, as Bernal said, but from here it is out of sight