Digging Deeper …
by Justin Angell
I’m not sure if anybody really reads this hodgepodge of information and stories. Sometimes I just like to tell a good story and maybe give a travel update and other times I like to pass along information that I think would make an impactful amount of money. This month I’m gonna try and do all three. Let’s start with the travel update.
In April, Kelly is dragging me to Italy for a week with mutual friends. After a week, the initial schedule was to come home, but I told her that if we go that far we should stay longer than a week. Agreeing, we talked about going through Switzerland and Germany, then maybe some eastern European countries, but April is still cold weather time for them. That’s when I floated the idea of taking something off my bucket list that has been there for 43 years.
So, a long time ago in another life, I was a 20 year-old archaeology student who spent the summer working at an archaeological dig on the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, specifically Capernaum. I did a lot of growing up that summer and I learned what being an American abroad both good and bad was all about.
Just to make the story more interesting, 1982 is when Israel invaded Lebanon the first time. We were only 55 miles from the front lines and leading up to the invasion, the Israeli F-16 fighter jets began using our dig site to practice their bombing runs. They’d fly over in pairs just a few yards above the lake screaming right over the top of us, then banking hard to the west to come back around in about 20 minutes. At one point, I was able to look up as the jet banked hard left, I could actually see the pilot’s face.
A little-known fact, I eventually graduated with a minor in religious studies from Missouri State University, specifically Biblical archaeology.
Another interesting milestone (there were many that summer), was an invitation to me and my buddy Ron from an Israeli army officer who was stationed at our youth hostel after the war broke out. The invitation was for fresh fish dinner after boating out on Lake Tiberius, also more popularly known as the Sea of Galilee. Little did I know that my buddy Ron and I would spend the afternoon water skiing on the sea of Galilee.
Obviously, there’s a joke there somewhere about Jesus walked on the water but the Angell only waterskied?
My summer was filled with lessons of appreciation learned by being without things I had until then taken for granted. To that point of my life, I had never been anywhere at any time where I could not either go to the kitchen or get in my car and go down the road and get something to eat. Israel was the first time in my life I experienced hunger and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I found that hunger is the international seasoning to make anything delicious.
Also, taken for granted was toilet paper. Where we were staying in Israel, toilet paper was rationed, 12 squares per restroom visit. There was also two very different kinds. One was a very rough toilet paper that I found somewhat similar to corn cobs. The other was more of a wax paper that we called “John Wayne paper” because it wasn’t gonna take crap off of anybody.
Something else I learned was how much of a Christian I, as an American, was raised to be. I had the chance with the student group to visit the top of the Temple Mount where the El Aksa mosque is today. At the top of those stairs on that stone plaza, there was no Christianity, only Islam. I’ve seldom felt closer to God than at that point when I felt spiritually alone.
The trip was to conclude July 1 and traveling home on schedule I’d return to home and family just before July 4. It was about two days before we were scheduled to leave and some of the people that I was with opted to change their flights and stay another week. The extension was to travel to Egypt to see the pyramids. I was invited, but my little American heart ached to be home for July 4 celebrations. I told them that I was going to head on home, but I would come back next year to see Egypt and the pyramids.
That was 43 years ago. I look forward to the trip and scratching this off the bucket list. I’ll keep you posted, and if you’re really interested, hit me up to be Snapchat friends… I’m not a big tech guy, but snapping might be fun.
How about something that I’ve run across that I have found incredibly interesting. Has anyone ever heard of “graphene”?
First the chemistry lesson… Carbon is the most ubiquitous element on earth with nearly all life forms being carbon based. A diamond is pure carbon that has been pressed and heated, widely known to be the hardest substance on earth while the lead in a #2 pencil is also a pure carbon called graphite.
Also pure carbon, graphene’s structure is a carbon lattice arrangement of carbon atoms only one atom thick that are bound extremely tightly to the point where this substance is stronger than steel, nearly as light as air, more conductive than copper, harder than diamonds and many, many other properties that make this a truly fascinating material whose future uses are really limitless.
What is truly fascinating is the number of uses and attributes this substance has, for example, copper infused with graphene is 400 times more conductive than pure copper.
Graphene can be mixed with various fibers to produce substances that make stealth aircraft stealthier, or perhaps even garments similar to a wetsuit or sport coat that are bulletproof. Graphene may truly be 007 and Mission Impossible stuff.
Although not new, being discovered at Kansas State University of all places in 2004 by Former Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Chris Sorensen, originally pure graphene was difficult to impossible to produce in a pure form.
Dr. Sorensen’s cell team serendipitously discovered that acetylene mixed with oxygen in a closed combustion chamber when ignited produces a pure sheet of graphene.
I have recently been following a new company, Hydrograph, that has perfected the production process of pure sheets of graphene on an industrial scale. Hydrograph trades over the counter in Canada, but will soon be stepping up to the NASDAQ and moving headquarters from Canada to Austin, Texas with new production facilities near Houston. (Publisher’s note: this isn’t investment advice but merely Justin providing information on how he is contemplating his next wild and possibly foolish speculation, for entertainment purposes only!)
I have for a long time stated that the United States is poised for a huge economic boom. The reason I find companies like this so interesting is because their potential is unlimited, and these companies will open the door towards a future that sitting here today hard to imagine. What will they think of next … I can’t wait to see what the next 20 years brings.
Here are two interesting statistics that I’ve seen this month specifically from a Maria Bartiromo interview of Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergman.
His opinion was that all types of mining have been neglected too long in this country and that a career in mining will be a prosperous one.
He noted that last year America’s education system graduated 36,000 lawyers, but only 300 people with mining and metallurgical degrees. Similarly. Bergman revealed there are twice as many government workers than there are workers in manufacturing; 24 million versus 12 million. Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, I believe for our country to be economically successful, besides the leadership, it equally depends on the people around the President. The All-Star team Trump has put in place brings me a lot of reassurance.
A good example would be Chris Wright who is the head of the Department of Energy. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen the head of the Department of Energy have a degree in nuclear physics. What makes Chris Wright’s qualifications even more impressive is that he graduated from MIT with a nuclear physics degree when he was only 20 years old!
We have a few problems to solve, but for the most part, I believe we’ve got a lot of good people in the right place. I could go on, but I believe I’ll leave it there.