About myself

I was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1931, have been married to the former flight attendant Flo Wittwer since 1964. Between us we share the pleasure of our son Thomas, born 1968, living in Sydney, Australia and recently married. He is in charge of a company providing intranet services. Before retirement at age 65, my professional specialties were the application of vitamins, proteins and sugar replacers in nutrition and health. I have published 42 papers, am the co-inventor of 4 patents and have had 36 presentations in 5 languages in 19 countries. In the course of my 39 years of work I was delegated to several specialist missions for the UN groups FAO and UNIDO in developing countries. In the last years of my career, I specialised in corporate technical publications and developed a FileMaker based Food Science & Technology Data Base on CD-ROM. I retired in March 1996, after 39 years in the food and food additive industries. During my career as a food technologist, I have worked first in research, then in manufacturing and, finally in marketing groups of two multinational companies. The years between 1968 and 1986 were filled with worldwide travel, some of it in an all-weather personal aircraft. When I gave up flying at age 55, I had a commercial, multiengine land, instrument rating, validated in 3 countries, and nearly 3000 hours flown during 34 years. My reasons for quitting were

a) loss of business flying opportunities and
b) the onset of insulin-dependent diabetes.

Since soloing in 1958, I've owned and operated three aircraft:

• A Cessna 150 that I used to temporarily escape my job as plant manager in a tomato
  cannery to visit the nearby Panamanian jungle, diving in the Caribbean and Pacific archipelagos
  and visiting the San Blas Kuna indians. Real "Bush Flying" time!

• A Cessna 177 "Cardinal", IFR-equiped used for business travel within all
  European, including the former iron curtain countries.

• A US-registered Piper "Seneca II", all weather twin-engined 7 seater, used for business and
  family flights in Europe, including trips to Israel, the Canary islands and to
  the Bahamas via Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States.

This flight is documented in my 16 mm film "Operation Blue Spruce".

I made my first movie at the age of 16 with my father's 16 mm camera.
It was a b&w farce, casting most of my high school class as musicians dubbing Tommy Dorsey's "Well, git it!".
From 1964 to 1969 two dozen documentary and travel films were produced in the 8 mm format:

• "Operation Protein" compiling a protein addition against Kwashlorkor (1966).
• "Robinson am Bürgenstock" living in the woods for weeks. (1966)
•  Modellflug" building and flying radio controlled aircraft./1965)
• "Leben im Wassertropfen" Collecting and identifying fresh water plankton (1965) and many others.

In the following year I began making 16 mm instructional films and documentaries, three of which were commercial. The first covers the story of beta-carotene from discovery of the natural colourant in nature to the application of its synthesised counterpart as a food colour and as a nutrient. The second is on the subject of ecology and the population explosion based on the example of Switzerland. This film was awarded a prize for best contribution at the 1979 Prague competition. The third is an instructional film on the topic of instrument navigation in business flying. It contains animated graphics made by single-frame exposures on foil.

In 1996 I grudgingly moved to making digital videos instead of real films - a drawback considering the decrease in resolution, the absence of single frame exposures and slow motion facilities, but a gain with respect to reduced cost, immediate accessibility and sensitivity under low light conditions.
I have since converted all of my 16mm documentaries to DVD.

• "Tahiti" Business in Paradise - about a mission in public dental health (1980/91).
  
• "Cuatro Caras del Ecuador" - in the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt, Francisco de Orellana and Charles Darwin (2001).

My most important film, establishing connections between many current global problems and offering solutions, is called

• "The River", (also in a Swiss-German verson as "Der Fluss"), updated 2004 from the 1971 eco-documentary.

I indulge in a variety of "hobbies"in the areas of:

• Physics and Cosmology
• Movie making, computer animations,videos and DVD production
• Jazz, from its roots to contemporary mainstream
• Electronics - mainly electroacoustics
• SCUBA Diving - in tropical coral reefs
• Collecting fresh water plankton from travel all over the world. The first samples' drawings date back to 1947.

• Happy's Jazz Corner the refuge of those who love swinging jazz, and the philosophy forum
  
• Taboo-Breaker to which you are now linked.

Why I prefer using my own URL to start a discussion rather than threading one of the News Groups or "blogs" for similar topics:

• My statements need not necessarily be "News".
• There is too much trash passed on in the threads!
• I prefer to discuss with individuals who really have something to add to my criticism of the taboo-like status shrouding certain vital topics.

In a way, I think of TABOO-BREAKER as a global electronic poster-session, hopefully one with a rich worldwide response.

Definitely, I expect to be offering suggestions for a solution in some instances.
Certainly, I am prepared to accept arguments to the contrary in others.

Whichever it may be, this "Think Tank" is filled with my very own views.
But they are views based on the foundations laid down by generations of outstanding seekers.

I may not be the best of writers to plant the seeds for scepticism about the way vital problems are being dealt with today.
But the scope of subjects addressed in this "electronic brainstorming". represents an extremely wide range of unsolved problems. And they were all picked by a single non-professional author, not by groupings of salaried specialists.

Sig

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