Look to lesbians for fusion solution
 
The fusion reactor is something of a Holy Grail among physicists, as it promises to provide a virtually unlimited, safe source of energy. Fusion, which powers the sun, involves slamming isotopes of hydrogen atoms together at very high temperature and pressure in plasma.
 
The fuel, hydrogen atoms, is plentiful as it can be extracted from water. Fusion is safe. A fusion reactor produces 100,000 times less radioactivity than a fission reactor. Furthermore, a fusion reactor can't melt down and doesn't create air pollution or contribute to global warming. However, scientists have been stymied in their efforts to keep fusion reactions going much longer than in several-second pulses. The primary problem appears to be turbulence, which swiftly cools down the multi million-degree reactor plasma and stops the fusion process.
 
I would suggest that the physicists and engineers working on this challenge are thinking too hard. Sleep on the problem. It's worked before. The 19th-century German chemist, Friedrich Kekule, discovered the molecular structure of benzene through a dream in which a snake had its tail in its mouth, forming a circle. He interpreted the dream to mean that the structure of benzene was a closed carbon ring.
 
We should explore metaphors, not hard reality. Less physics, more metaphysics. Journey into the collective unconscious, into the world of mythology and gods and goddesses. I have taken that journey myself. It began several years ago with Saddam Hussein and ended with lesbians and Homer Simpson.
 
I was always the student in class who vigorously waved his hand when he thought he knew the answer. I had a similar feeling in January 1991 when the US began its first war against Saddam Hussein. I had this idea about something Saddam might do during the Gulf War. I called the Pentagon, which referred me to Army Intelligence in Fort Meade, Maryland.
 
I told a soldier my idea over the phone. Two days later I got a call from an Army Intelligence officer who said he wanted to interview me. He came to my workplace, which was in Napa, California at the time. He said my idea sounded like the sort of thing Saddam would do and asked me if I had gotten it from classified material. I said no.
 
The idea seemed simple: Hussein had constructed a crude nuclear reactor in Kuwait and was prepared to melt it down if forced to retreat. The resulting radiation would contaminate the oil fields in Kuwait and cause illness and death among soldiers invading the country.
 
Sex Bomb  Why hadn't someone thought of this before? I decided this mental block was caused by sexism. We are used to thinking of weapons in "male" terms: weapons that explode or penetrate. A nuclear bomb has "male" characteristics: it is a miniature sun; the sun is usually represented in mythology as a male god. Furthermore, the nuclear bomb explodes quickly like a male orgasm and is usually delivered in a phallic-shaped missile or bomb.
 
The sexuality of the bomb was further emphasized by the introduction of the modern bikini at a Paris fashion show on July 25, 1946. The skimpy, female two-piece outfit was named after the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the site of nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier. Both the atoll and swimsuit were "targets" for the male "bomb."
 
A nuclear reactor, on the other hand, has "female" characteristics: it provides a long continuous release of energy, like the female orgasm. Instead of killing by penetration (like a bullet) or by explosion, the reactor in a meltdown kills by radiation poisoning. Poison is the traditional weapon of the female. Note the double standard: male weapons that kill by penetration or explosion are deemed acceptable in war; female weapons that kill by poisoning, such as germ or chemical warfare, are considered abhorrent.
 
The sexual dichotomy is also expressed in light and darkness: the "male" nuclear bomb produces a white-hot explosion; the black graphite of the "female" Chernobyl reactor suggests the darkness inside the womb. A nuclear reactor in a power plant could also be compared to a woman stuck in a kitchen, forced to cook all her life.
 
I would suggest, then, that a fission bomb (the A-bomb) represents a male form of nuclear energy. A fission reactor represents the female form. What are we to make, then, of a fusion bomb (the H-bomb) and a fusion reactor? I would suggest that these are the "gay" and "lesbian" forms of nuclear power.
 
Let us see if the metaphors fit. The hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear device, is a union of male and male: a male atomic bomb triggers an even greater male explosion, a kind of nuclear sodomy. The H-bomb consists of a phallic-like cylinder with an "anal" sleeve. Ignition of the fission ball excites the cylinder elements: a membrane of U238 arouses the tissue of lithium deuteride, forcing the eruption of U235 or plutonium inside a urethra-like tube.
 
Two donuts  That leaves the fusion reactor as the one incomplete part of the nuclear equation. Current fusion experiments use a chamber in the form of a torus or donut. The donut is a classic "female" geometric shape as it is all curves and no straight lines. However, as a donut represents only one female, one may conclude that a successful "lesbian" reactor must incorporate two donuts, perhaps one on top of another. Ellen DeGeneres can energize us.
 
However, a further study of lesbian relationships suggests that a double torus may not be sufficient to sustain a nuclear fusion reaction.
 
In the 1980s psychologists observed that over time, sexual activity, particularly genital contact, among many lesbian couples would decline and even become non-existent, a phenomenon dubbed “lesbian bed death.” One theory held that “fusion” between lesbians resulted in an emotional connection that resembled incest and thus inhibited sexual expression. Another explanation was that absent a “male force,” women revert to a passive sexuality.

In the last two decades many lesbians have compensated for this deficit by incorporating more maleness into their culture and relationships. New trends include “trannie boys,” who take male hormones and have double mastectomies but keep their female genitalia, and “Bois,” lesbians who dress and act like men, including wearing a dildo under their pants.
 
Thus, to sustain a continuous flow of energy, a fusion reactor must also incorporate a male force, perhaps a phallic instrument that skewers the double torus, like a churro piercing two donuts.

Roswell and the soul killers of Hiroshima

In one of the most popular UFO mythologies, the US government supposedly recovered the remains of a crashed UFO along with its alien passengers near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947.

The Roswell incident began when a rancher reported to the local sheriff that he had found the remains of what might be a "flying saucer." The sheriff then contacted military authorities at Roswell Army Air Field, who sent three people to recover the wreckage. On July 8, the public information office at Roswell AAF made the astonishing announcement that the remains of a "flying disc" had been recovered. However, the next day, the military recanted, reporting the wreckage was simply that of a weather balloon.

The Roswell event faded in the media until 1978 when a UFO researcher found witnesses who upheld the original "flying disc" report. Interest in the story further increased with the 1997 release of film purporting to show the autopsy of an alien recovered in the Roswell UFO crash. The Roswell incident and the alleged autopsy became the grist for several TV shows and movies, and innumerable conspiracy theories.

I don't believe that an actual flying saucer crashed in New Mexico. However, I do believe that the Roswell story persists in the public imagination because it represents an effort by the collective unconscious (spirit world) to convey an important message to the collective conscious in our material world. As in any mythology, the truth will be found in pursuing the metaphor, not the literal facts. A flying saucer is a medium for conveying a message from space (the heavens) to earth (the material world). The "alien" is a spirit or soul who, near Roswell, crashed and died. The purpose of an "alien autopsy" is to determine the cause of death. What, then, could kill a soul?

The commonly held belief is that the soul is separate from the material world, yet is somehow connected to the body. Some cultures believe that the soul leaves the body during dreams. Most religions hold that the soul leaves the body at the time of death and enters a spiritual realm (some kind of heaven, hell or purgatory), and, as some believe, is reincarnated in another body. If the soul occupies or is somehow connected to the body, can it truly be non-material? Is it perhaps just as likely that the soul is a form of matter and/or energy that exists beyond our current comprehension? Maybe the soul exists in another dimension. In any case, a material soul is vulnerable to material destruction.

Ordinarily, death does not a pose a threat to the existence of the soul. Even when death is swift and violent, as in a conventional explosion, destruction may occur at a molecular level, but a soul that existed at the atomic or subatomic level might remain intact. But what if death was so fast and furious that it destroyed all patterns of energy and matter? Under what circumstances would such a death occur? We need only look back at Roswell and heed the real estate maxim: What is important is "location, location, location." Roswell is in New Mexico, home of the first atomic bomb test. Here then is a kind of deadly force that could destroy souls.

At Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was first used against the Japanese, the temperature at the site of the explosion reached approximately 5,400 F. People within a half mile of the fireball were turned into "bundles of smoking char in a fraction of a second," noted Richard Rhodes in the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Such black bundles numbered in the thousands: the shadows of destroyed souls. In the explosion of a much more powerful H-bomb, the fireball can expand to three miles in diameter, claiming the souls of tens of thousands.

Mythology  That the creation of a sun on earth could destroy souls is consistent with mythology. The sun god is often represented by a falcon or other raptor, symbolizing the soaring spirit. The earth goddess is usually depicted with a snake, representing the powers of the flesh and the generation of life. The god and goddess thus represent the duality of soul and body. The angry goddess would destroy the body; the angry god would destroy the soul.

The scientists who created the nuclear bomb were not unaware of the spiritual or mythic dimensions of their actions. Moments after the explosion in the New Mexico desert, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavadgita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In communications with each other, physicists considering the ethics of the bomb cited the Old Testament, the teachings of Buddha and various works of literature, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Yet, for all their soul-searching, apparently none of the physicists in the Manhattan Project ever considered the possibility that a nuclear inferno would destroy both body and soul.

The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately rested with the Commander in Chief, President Harry Truman, who apparently spent little time contemplating the unique destructive power of the atomic bomb. Hitler killed millions of people, but at least the essence of those people — their souls — lived on in the afterlife or through reincarnation. Truman was the first person in history to rob people of both body and soul, and thus he was more destructive than Hitler. Unless, of course, you believe killing souls is a good idea.