There are many numbers in the Science 2.0 post. What I’m quoting will be the “Arguably reasonable projections”, which is an estimate meaning that if they are wrong, we might run out sooner.
The earliest the world may run out of oil is about 2070 and the latest by 2105.
Natural gas depletion would be between 2061 and 2095.
For the end of coal, that estimate is between 2079 and 2155.
However, if nations like China and India continue to create the American lifestyle for as many as possible, those dates may be much shorter.
Sustainable Development says that water wars may be coming sooner. In case you haven’t heard, there is a growing shortage of fresh water in the world so this is another cause for concern.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Trying to understand our dreams is as old as history.
Three thousand years ago, Grandmaster Zhou Gong, who lived during the Zhou Dynasty, wrote the book of Auspicious and Inauspicious Dreams.
Freud-Sigmund.com says, Zhou Gong’s book “is a book that is commonplace in a lot of houses of Chinese people.”
When someone wakes up and wants to know the meaning of a dream, he or she opens that book.
Zhou Gong wrote that there were seven dream categories. For example, if you dream of the sun or moon rising, your family will be prosperous, educated and have good jobs.
However, if you dream of dirty clothing covered with mud, your wife’s pregnancy will be challenging.
This video is a short documentary about Chinese interpretations and the meanings of dreams in relation to past lives.
Selfgrowth.com has a post that goes into detail with examples of Zhou Gong’s categories. The interpretations range from good luck to bad.
There’s also a book on Chinese Medicine that has a section about how dreams help with a medical diagnosis.
Sad dreams are due to a deficiency of ‘qi’ in the heart and liver or of ‘yin’ in the liver meaning, you might have liver disease and tuberculosis. Source: Absolutely Feng Shui
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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I’m reading Living With Evolution by K. D. Koratsky. It’s heavy reading and reminds of university textbooks that threatened to put me to sleep while words blurred and paragraphs become forgotten broken records.
My usual reading time is a half hour or so before sleep and I was getting nowhere.
Then I came up with a tactic that worked.
In the morning when I peddle three miles on the stationary bike during daily exercise, I read from Koratsky’s book and what he says is riveting even if it is like slogging through thick oatmeal.
Koratsky has done his homework and the in-depth weaving of details covers the beginning of life billions of years ago and builds to today.
Too bad for the devoutly religious, who firmly believe that the universe and all life started about six thousand years ago with the wave of God’s magic wand.
It baffles me how people hold onto such beliefs. It must be fear and/or denial.
There is too much evidence that says otherwise, and Koratsky’s book spells it out in excruciating detail.
In addition, idealists who believe humanity can evolve into a peace-loving global community where no one suffers or goes hungry while crime is nonexistent and everyone is having fun is in for a BIG disappointment.
In chapter five, Koratsky writes about what happened after North America and South America bumped into each other millions of years ago and fused.
South America has been isolated for millions of years and there hadn’t been much of a challenge for the species that developed there so they had not evolved.
However, life forms in North America had been forced to evolve to survive contact with Asia and Europe and were stronger because of it.
Evidence shows that life from South America couldn’t compete with life from a stronger North America and was all but wiped out.
What I read caused me to think of the West’s invasion of China, which started with the Opium Wars early in the 19th century.
Then for more than a century, the Chinese struggled to survive as the British Empire, the French, Germans, Portuguese, Russians, Japanese and Americans poured in and waged war with Chinese Culture threatening it with extinction.
To survive, China had to evolve or be swallowed by Western culture becoming a second class citizen.
After the Communists won the struggle against Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists in 1949, the metamorphosis began. Under Mao, China wove a cocoon around itself cutting off the world with the bamboo curtain.
During the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China went through drastic and painful changes to evolve into a different civilization—one strong enough to survive in a brutal, complex, competitive modern world.
Some will disagree. He or she will ask, “How can the horrors that took place in China under Mao be called part of the evolutionary process of survival?”
However, once you read about how species that cannot adapt with drastic environmental changes perish, the skeptics might understand what happened.
Evolution and Mother Nature do not care about humanity or how many suffer.
When the global environment changes drastically, death, destruction and extinction are a byproduct and humanity is not exempt from that process.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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In The American Spectator (11-25-09), George H. Wittman wrote China Wins saying, “The Chinese believe they are superior to the United States – and every other country.”
I admit that there may be some truth to Wittman’s opinion.
However, he uses the wrong word. The Chinese believe they are more civilized and there may be some truth in that too since most Westerners do not follow the teachings of Confucius, which after 2500 years is embedded in China’s DNA.
If you have read the Qianlong Emperor’s letter from 1793 to King George saying China needed nothing from the rest of the world, you might understand better.
“Should your vessels touch the shore, your merchants will assuredly never be permitted to land or to reside there, but will be subject to instant expulsion. In that event your barbarian merchants will have had a long journey for nothing.”
The key is the word “barbarian”. When you call someone a barbarian, you are inferring that they are not civilized.
In fact, the Chinese did consider the rest of the world barbarians because Westerners did not behave properly according to the way most Chinese are taught.
A Difference of Opinion
Answer these questions correctly and you may understand why the Chinese might believe they are more civilized.
1. Who started two wars with China in the 19th century to even a trade imbalance by forcing the emperor to allow opium to be sold to his people?
2. When Sun Yat-sen asked for help from the Western democracies at a time when China was in chaos and anarchy while millions starved and died, what was the response?
3. Who invented gunpowder, paper, the printing press and the compass?
4. Who values gaining an education more than most cultures on the earth?
The final answer depends on your point of view. Many westerners may see abortion and the death sentence as a sign of barbarity even though most Chinese do not.
On the other hand, the Chinese tend to stay out of debt and save money while younger Chinese show respect for the elders.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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I admit that that I was surprised when I saw this video of a group of Americans finding enlightenment in China.
The popular stereotype about someone searching for change and enlightenment fits the plot we find in Eat, Pray, Love, a best seller that was made into a movie with Julia Roberts, where Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir takes her to Italy for pleasure, India for enlightenment and Indonesia where she discovers love again – not China.
In this video, we see a group of Kung Fu and Tai Chi students from the U.S. in search of Kung Fu wisdom in China.
While in China, they visit Chinese families, schools, temples and universities. They travel through both ancient and modern China visiting Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.
After surviving personal conflicts and emotional struggles, the group returns to America as Elizabeth Gilbert did in her journey—to be compassionate and harmonious with others and the environment.
In three weeks, this group went places few foreigners have seen.
Of course, after breaking bones twice during martial arts training earlier in life, I’ve stayed away from that form of discovery.
I still climb mountains but not as often as I once did.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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