Solution to the Mother-of-All-Math Problems Found

    TUCSON, AZ, August 17, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Everybody has heard of those tricky math problems, right. Like "Bugs Bunny has three carrots of lengths 10cm, 12cm and 15cm. How can he use these carrots to mark off a length of 17cm?" Some people can answer these instantly and others struggle. The answer to this one would be to lay the 15 and 12cm sticks end to end. Then place the 10 cm stick alongside them, mark the place and the remaining length is 17cm (15+12=27, 27-10=17).

Of course there are harder math problems and some people make a living trying to answer them like physicists and mathematicians. Well there is one math problem that was written in 1989 that has yet to be solved until now. The writer was Dr. Richard Duncan and he titled it the Olduvai Theory. It's an important math problem because it affects us all. The problem is this: If we can correctly estimate population growth, food production, oil production, and other limitations to natural resources, then there should be a point at which the planet will not be able to sustain our current civilization because there simply won't be enough to go around. After a turning point of reduced natural resources (some predict to be around 2011), a period of time of some turbulence in socio-political affairs will be followed by the planet's population being drastically reduced. Some have predicted the resulting population to be about 2 billion. This would be due to a Malthusian catastrophe or simply a sharp reduction in a population due to inability of sustainment by the environment.

Coincidentally, this math problem based on facts of life has been solved by math. The answer is a personal daily calorie budget. In case you're asking what this is, it's when a person controls their food and beverage consumption by keeping a limit to how many calories they can consume throughout the day. This allows them to control their weight. "Ok, what's the catch," you might be asking. You're right there is a catch. It's this: everyone on the whole planet has to do it. With everyone consuming less calories, conservation of agricultural land will start as well as conservation of other limited natural resources.

The World Health Organization projects 3 billion people will be overweight or obese by 2015. If all of those people reduced their calorie intake by 1,000 calories (kcal) every day, that would be a savings of 3 trillion calories a day or over 4 billion meals a day (assuming 700 cal/meal). Not only will all overweight people lose weight and learn to maintain a healthy weight, they will also be helping to save all of us. Overweight individuals can even start with reducing their calorie intake by 500 calories per day to start. The rest of us at a healthy weight can learn to purchase only the amount of food and beverages that we need so we don't waste anything.

Not only will the obesity epidemic be overcome, but this mindset of efficiency with food resources can easily be applied to other resources like oil, coal, electricity, gas, aluminum, steel, wood, etc. This will, at a minimum, greatly extend the life of our current civilization and buy us a lot of time to come up with new technologies to more efficiently use our limited natural resources.

Dow Creative Enterprises released a book called The Pen and Paper Diet which clearly explains how to perform a calorie budget and has been understood and even practiced by an 11 year old. The book has been translated into Spanish and published in a metric edition (http://stores.lulu.com/thepenandpaperdiet). "The curious thing about this book," says the author, "is that it happened by accident. My wife and I came up with it to help her with her obesity issue. I guess like many helpful things such as penicillin, they seem to happen by happenstance."

Dow Creative Enterprises invites Dr. Duncan to promote a personal daily calorie budget as the solution to this math conundrum. He is requested to discuss this solution after all of his lectures about the Olduvai Theory and help ensure the predicted Malthusian catastrophe doesn't occur.

Dow Creative Enterprises, LLC is a book and website publishing company. For further information, please email [email protected].

Website: http://www.ThePenAndPaperDiet.com

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