Microbiology is the study of bacteria, yeasts, viruses, diseases, immunology and tissue cultures along with the genetics, evolution and physiology of those subjects. Molecular biology grew out of microbiology through the study of viruses called phage which attack bacteria.

After getting a masters degree in microbiology at the University of Arizona, I studied toward a Ph.D. degree at the University of California at Davis, but mental pain drove me out after a year of taking courses. Mental pain is caused by memories of pain being too close to the surface and contacted by distracting sights and sounds. It goes away in quiet environments. The mental pain began before getting to Davis, but I didn't know what it was or how long it would last. It is primarily social environments that create the mental pain, which means the university environment was the worst possible place for it.

Davis was a center for evolution biology. Mortimer Starr taught microbial taxonomy as evolution. He would hand out stacks of recent publications, and we would go to his house a block away and discuss the evolution. Robert Hungate, who wrote the primary text on bacterial metabolism, would hand out stacks of pathways for energy metabolism by bacteria, many of which he charted in his lab. H.J. Phaff had the world's largest collection of yeasts, the most unusual of which we would evaluate in the lab. I was in Mark Wheelis's first physiology class. He, along with Carl Woesse and Otto Kandler, created the taxonomic classification of Archaea.

Before I left U.C. Davis, the Scientologists located me on campus looking for followers and claiming to have the answers to problems of the mind. The attractive thing about Scientology is the introductory methodology. A variation on meditation is applied to mind discipline, which they call the communication course. It attempts to replace reactive behavior with habitual control. Practicing highly rigid mental discipline is of value in being less reactive. Similarly, a highly rigid and rudimentary method of study focusses on definitions of words. It's a good focus. It shows the limitations of human philosophy in the definitions of words given in a dictionary. But the purpose is to focus on power as measured by achievement scores. Power is not a constructive thing, and striving for it results in a lot of nonconstructivity. It becomes a motive for cutting corners and glossing over wrongs for the purpose of achieving power.

So after accomplishing nothing more in Scientology, I got out after six months. I then needed to straighten out errors, such as the claim that reality is agreement, which is how reality is falsified. In correcting the errors, I got into moral philosophy, and I've been writing moral philosophy ever since.

One of the things that Scientology accomplishes is breaking through the barrier of minds being part of the spirit rather than part of the brain. Universities really screw up that subject pretending to study the mind as a bag of chemicals which function like a computer. Computers are made of switches which are turned on and off by a clock (high frequency oscillator). There are no switches and no clock in the brain. Neurotransmitter junctions are not switches, they are fine tuning mechanisms for determining how sensitive neural responses are.

I then worked for awhile in the rock quarries in Oregon, which I had been doing during the summers while in college, since my uncle was superintendent and part owner. I drove a lot of weird equipment. In the rock quarries, I drove an electric steering "rocker" end-dump. You would push a button, and several seconds later, it would turn in that direction. On narrow cliffs, it could be hair raising. I was in the Teamsters Union while driving the rocker in college. I once drove a 40 yard Euclid double-L, which had two in-line motors, hauling shale along the Missouri River for Interstate 90 in South Dakota. I drove a concrete batch truck, which was real top-heavy, since the concrete had to be quite a ways up to slide down. With no mixing, it had to be dumped in about 20 minutes while we backed up half a mile between roadway forms and a drop-off bank. You would line up about eight tires through the mirrors and keep them straight.

While in college and driving equipment, I was in the Teamsters Union making $4.85 per hour during the summers. The kids working in the stores were making about $1.70 plus or minus. With that I could pay my way through college, while the kids working in the stores could not quite do the same thing.

That's not the same thing as privilege; it's opportunity. Privilege means social force, injustice, taking something away from someone else. Opportunity is none of that. In fact, relatives hiring relatives creates efficiency. I also did other things, such as clearing trees from river banks for putting on rip rap. The Oregon rivers are lined with oak. My uncle wanted the oak split for burning in his fireplace.

Splitting oak is awful hard work. Later, I split elm, which is impossible, until temperatures are twenty below zero. Then it shatters like ice. So on January nights I would put on three pairs of jeans, two pairs of gloves and a parka and split elm. I did that at nights, because there was a county road nearby with traffic that created mental pain during the days. In fact, to cover over the traffic noise, I created a high powered amplifier and a sound synthesizer and put speakers in every room. Then I would switch on a speaker when going into a room.

White noise is uniform noise which is used to cover over distracting noise. Devices that create white noise are sold in the stores. So I took the thermal noise that all transistors produce at a very low level and amplified it. Then I added sixty-cycle hum with it, as transformers produce. Then variations could be tuned to produce all sorts of sounds.

From the rock quarries in Oregon I moved onto the vacated farm in South Dakota where my grandparents used to live and studied mushrooms while living on social security disability due to the mental pain caused by distracting environments.

Electronics

The mushroom research which I did involved a lot of rudimentary technology and engineering; and since mushrooms require cool temperatures, I did electronic work during the summers. I then made important discoveries in electronics designing improved outputs for audio amplifiers and a new method of measuring capacitance. The previous method of measuring capacitance was so cumbersome and slow that it would not measure the smallest capacitor (one picofarad) with less than 50% error. My method of measuring capacitance is so fast and precise that it is now used for touch screens and accelerometers.

Even though I produced these circuits during the 1980s, electrical engineers wouldn't touch them, until Steve Jobs needed the capacitance circuit for touch screens for the smart phone; and from there, the circuit entered the university system, where accelerometers were designed with it. Since Steve Jobs was disconnected from the power structures, he was free to use a circuit designed by an outsider. Industry will not touch inventions by private inventors who have to do their own patenting, manufacturing and selling.

Agriculture Background

I spent summers on the same farm while in school, because my grampa died of a heart attack when I was eleven years old. My dad was an auto mechanic in town. He sold the cattle, rented out the pasture ground and converted the rest into winter wheat. I would spend summers doing field work. I then studied vocational agriculture in high school, which involved a project each year.

My senior year, I planted 40 acres of oats and bought a new car with it. I got 80 bushels per acre, which was 3,200 bushels, and sold it for 75¢ per bushel, which was $2,400. The auto dealer where my dad was working sold me a new Pontiac V-8 for $50 over his cost, which was $2,350.

Vocational agriculture is irreplaceable for the study of science. For land judging, you go down into holes in the ground for various types of soil and evaluate types of soil, texture (capillary action), hardness, how far down roots go and terrain. It locates a lot of biology in its natural origins.

Most biologists don't know there was a transition from primitive biology to modern biology when the dinosaurs died out. They are looking through a straw and have no way of knowing what is outside their view. Agriculture starts the process of looking at the origins of biology. Getting to that starting point is awful important.

I started college studying agriculture, but the professors said I should switch to microbiology, since my chemistry grades were high. I took eight microbiology courses as an undergrad, which are not usually available. But South Dakota State University had almost no graduate department, so the undergrads got the attention.

Science Evaluation

Science is abstract, basic reality. Knowledge is abstract, which means nonperceivable, being a human construct. Humans use knowledge to simplify complexities for easier managing. As simplification, knowledge can never be complete and always needs improving.

So I spend sixteen hours per day producing abstract evaluation. Abstract evaluation is easily disrupted; so being disconnected from everything else is necessary for that. I never watch much television and haven't owned a TV in fourteen years.

Scientists are responsible for everything related to their subject matter. How do they cover everything in a science library? By learning how to skim and look for clues for new information, particularly what other scientists are saying. That way scientific knowledge can spread easily throughout science.

The internet has been irreplaceable for skimming to find relevant material. But the real internet is rapidly disappearing; and information is getting hard to find on the remnants of the internet. That's no accident. Power mongers are systematically stripping the old fashioned "information super highway" of usable information and replacing human activity with distracting, absorbing and worthless schemes for being winners.