The Future(s) That Didn't Come

"To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." - R. Buckminster Fuller

Ever since last week, as the comic con geeks and sci-fi nerds were celebrating Star Wars day around the globe (May the Fourth be with you), I've been dwelling on the not-so-fiction based topics centred around the future and human society. I got to thinking about the ideas I had formulated back in the days of my youth about what I imagined the future (this present) would be like. Helping a friend re-organize and add fixtures to her garage over this weekend drew me to thinking about and the subject of the futuristic architecture and living space again; put into the context of the stuff of what I had envisioned decades ago in my teen years.

I wasn't very hopeful in those formative years that we would ever survive as a society, or that I would even survive to adulthood given that the media was always reporting on the sabre-rattling between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations, spelling out that the Cold War was going to turn hot any second with little or no warning. It was depressing knowing that the most radical advancements in technology then always seemed to be in the hands of the military, which made it feel even more like the race toward Armageddon seem inevitable. There was more than one teacher I had tuned into reminding us of all that gloomy business. I got into reading magazines like Omni*, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics when I was about twelve or thirteen, more to escape that fear than anything: to turn toward looking into some sort of future that didn't involve some sort of annihilation. Back then, I was actively being a 'futurist': actively speculating what the future technologies and society would be like if we survived, or altogether managed to avoid such destruction. I'm, of course, thankful that events occurred where the scenario of being reduced to a pile of ashes or stricken with the lingering torturous suffering of radioactive fallout never happened, but sadly, neither did the better future that I was preparing for come to fruition either. The forecasted future(s) of technical innovation and social evolution that was to provide enough for every citizen on this planet to live comfortably with an abundance of energy and material resources for physical and societal well-being never came, nor is development coming quickly enough for such possibilities. It's great to see that for the most part, we have been able to stamp out and hamper hard-core global Communism to allow ingenuity, technology and efficiency to thrive. Now all what we have to do is stamp out and hamper hard-core global Capitalism and religious theocracies, and the respective crushing poverty, oppression and ignorance it brings to billions. All these radical systems I mentioned do nothing good for the ecology and environment of this planet.

I was very intrigued back then by the work and writings of Richard Buckminster Fuller. He was such a brilliant man. He got me turned on to his version and vision of applied geodesic geometry, the concept of tensegrity, and synergetics. Also, it was he who got me absolutely hating my geometry class in high school at the time, which seemed in comparison so backward, so primitive, so dull with all the in-class recitation, and rote learning of proofs that we would never have practical use for in the real world. There was nothing creative about it; learning from a teacher who didn't do much more than regurgitate from an antiquated textbook from the 1950's. Each minute in that class felt like a step backward into some sort of intellectual retardation. I dropped it. To do that for an entire school year was hell to me.

Today, I'm very disappointed to see that geodesic dome designs aren't more commonplace for being used as self-sufficient homes, or at the very least ones that are used as greenhouses for local sustainable food growth to avoid the cost of shipping. I'm upset that there still isn't a pan-global hydro line network, lines across the Bering Strait to make a Trans-Siberian/Trans-Manchurian hydro line that switches energy from one continent to another at times when low night time use occurs the surplus production gets diverted to the other side of the globe when and where the need is high during their respective daytime hours, thus making the use of that water powering turbines more effectively and efficiently, thus relying less on other more destructive and wasteful power production. It angers me that South Korea and China have more Mag-Lev bullet trains than this continent, a supposedly more technically advanced one. As a citizen of Earth, I'm pissed off that there is money galore to peck into pristine spots on the Earth to access oil and natural gas with methods that contaminate and pollute the water, but isn't yet an established infrastructure for a cleaner hydrogen economy.

The one established trend that I'm glad was predicted correctly by Becky Fuller and is the phenomena he coined as "ephemeralization" or dMass: the trend of being able to do more with less energy and material** and resources. Think of the mass of material that a smart phone has been able to do away with as computing memory capacity with a given amount of chip-space gets ever more faster and powerful as it falls within concordance with Moore's Law. I attached a You Tube video which gets the point across better than I can.

Another great thinker I respect is Jacque Fresco who was a peer to Bucky Fuller, the founder and creator of the Venus Project. He is a (yet) living contemporary architect and social engineer for resource-based synergistic systems.

 

 

In regards to having a better future all comes down to being a depressing realization that lot of great systemic things have not come to fruition because they fly directly into the face of people who are stupid, greedy, incapable of using common sense, and can't fathom what a paradigm of interdependence looks like, and the ideas are supressed because of some institutional propaganda, promotion of omni-ignorance and pervasive poverty in places; not allowing a better systems to get a toe hold to begin with. I'm still lost in wondering if I should be hopeful for a better future or not.

Buckminster Fuller would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that the average schmuck with a cellphone or tablet, something that has manifold times the computing power that was used to put a man on the moon, is using an obscene amount of time doing nothing more with it than trying to reach a next level of Candy Crush instead of using an app or apps to actually make a difference in their lives.

*- Omni was a futuristic magazine, but unfortunately, it itself didn't have a future. It stopped publication in the early 90's. However, I heard rumours that it may be revived in a digital edition. Omni is an interesting title, because as it relates to Fuller, it was frequently used as a prefix by him in a lot of his visionary writings.

**- Bucky would argue that there really is no such thing as solid "material", but rather "energy-events".

Under-Stimulated/ The Art of Manliness/Emasculating Waffles

You would think that I would be grateful to have a Saturday off after working them for two weeks in a row, but for this evening I'm in a mood that is beyond depressed and bored. The past five days of dull gloomy grey skies and occasional rain/wet snow have dulled all the edge off any wits I had left in me. The only thing I could think of doing for "shaking it up a bit" was trudging out to get an actual shake (an exotically flavoured one) at Jerry's Food Emporium, and heading back home*. I'm so appalled, saddened, and somewhat disturbed at realizing and admitting that this was the only wild idea I could come up with. It was a double coconut gelato milkshake, and I would like to think that it would be a worthy rival of say the legendary, yet fictitious, five dollar shake at Jack Rabbit Slim's in Pulp Fiction. Maybe it was, but my spirits were too low to register it; I still returned back thinking that my time could have been used more wisely.

After I came home with my big cup full of drinkable instant heart attack, and gave some thought to going to the casino south of town for a thrill, and just about caved to the idea to hitting the Blackjack tables. First, I drilled and tested myself as a refresher with table strategy and card counting with a Blackjack app for almost an hour. I played 98% of my hands correctly with using orthodox basic play strategy (including for doubles, splits, and surrenders), but I only did an abysmal 47% with correct tracking and counting with the high-low system on a six deck shoe, only putting me at a 51.4% win ratio (pushes included) whilst sticking to minimum bets, and I wouldn't call it a lucrative trip there unless that figure could get above 60%**. I don't imagine I'll do any better with the extra noise and distractions over there. Even with boning up on things mnemonically, I figured the house would still have too much of a statistical advantage over me. I'm in too much of a funk to do anything that mentally intensive. Mathematical reasoning beat out my reckless impulsivity, and I instead opted for the safer way of doubling my money: folding it over once and then sticking it back into my pocket. I stayed home just watching comedies on Netflix. That didn't even do much to cheer me up.

As unmanly as I feel for being an adult spontaneously running out in the middle of the evening to get a PG-rated calorie bomb to slurp on, and shoving aside the thought of casino gaming; the one thing that would make me feel even more embarrassed to admit to doing as a man, if I actually wasted admission money to attend it, is going to the actual MAN SHOW 2014 that is happening this weekend at Prairieland. My commentary in my entry about MAN SHOW 2013 pretty much sums my attitude towards all that. It's one thing, as a guy, to just feel down, unimportant, rejected, and powerless at times, but it's a whole other realm of stupidity happening there when you are constantly doing too much going over the top to over-compensate for all that. The Man Show is there to exploit the real dummies for that. They just run short of trying to peddle pecker pills and codpieces to them there. It's that kind of testosterone-driven shit show stupidity that I just don't want to have any part of. I'll be better off with the milkshake, thank you. If I really am so depressed, this aorta-clogging concoction may at least kill me quickly.

It's not like I have to "go back into training" for knowing now to be an average guy, but I was curious to see what was out there on the net in this regard. I found the ART OF MANLINESS website, and started to peruse it. "How to Tie a Tie" . . . great to know, "10 Worst Products Invented for Men" . . . educational and hilarious. This site almost had my respect and almost sold me that this could do wonders for re-instilling my manliness . . . that is until I discovered the waffle recipe on one of the links.

WHAT!!!???

I don't care if they are the savory kind instead of sweet, I don't care if they are being served with some wild rabbit that you trapped and killed yourself with a snare line fashioned out of your own plucked and braided chest hair. In my mind, waffles ≠ manliness. This man site instantly turned into Chatelaine once I spotted that. I am a guy, and (unfortunately) I already know how to make goddamned waffles, thank you very much. I would count this as actually one of the more emasculating talents that I have. I don't ever make them for me, because really I hate the fuckin' things. They are made by a bulky space-consuming appliance for that singular specific use only, and it if doesn't work right, you feel doubly screwed. Finding that recipe there was also a funny juxtaposition to have as a "manly" food along with all the other manly food fare that you supposed to be able to kill, catch, and prepare with just a gun, fishhook, or a knife. Waffles do nothing for me except be preparation intensive (lots of prep time for very little), attention demanding and finicky to work with (like working around drama-queens), bland, and stupid dimply things that you can't spread stuff evenly onto. Eat some toast for Crissakes! The only time ever I make them is for someone else. The people (who by now know how much I hate making them) that I serve them to don't ever give me enough thanks or anything else in return for doing so*** , and thus it's a very unrewarding thing to do, so I feel exploited; and the one of the main rules of manliness, I'd presume, is to never let yourself become exploited. Therefore . . . waffles do nothing for my manliness!

I hope Sunday has a lot more coming to me for something for more engaging stimulation. However,I expect it will be windy and rain (again). Maybe I'll be a bit sharper mentally and actually try out the casino, or at the very least encounter something else crazy to attack and apply reason to.

* - Woohoo, I know . . . so manly <sarcasm>, but it was a better option for me at the time than drinking alcohol, as I had no wish or mood to make my brain operate with anymore impairment than I think it already has.

**-  Nine possible hand playing strategy outcomes, in Blackjack game theory: 1. Hand played correctly/beat the dealer - orthodoxy pays off, 2. Hand played incorrectly/dealer still loses - you're just a lucky bastard, 3. Hand played correctly/dealer still wins - it sucks, but it happens, 4. Hand played incorrectly/dealer wins - you are just playing stupidly, 5. Correct play/tying (push)with the dealer - wasted time, 6. Incorrect play/push with dealer - you were stupid, but the fates have forgiven you, 7. Blackjack/ automatic win - most desirable, 8. Correct play/surrendering- Oops, too bad, 9. Incorrect play/surrendering - stop playing immediately when you turn into this kind of idiot. The real money is made with opportunities for doubling and splitting cards and knowing when to take them. I don't bother pissing around with the insurance bets, or else there would be eleven outcomes. The betting strategy with the card counts taken into consideration is too complicated for me to explain.

***- If you're a woman and really want me to be genuinely happy to make &#^%in'  waffles for you, you better be prepared to clear your calendar for a whole weekend of doing stuff with me that would make Caligula blush!

The Passion of the Yeast/Pseudo-Lent/Vegan Stupidity

It's Easter weekend, and I'm stuck with working throughout all of it. I just arrived home tonight after work; welcomed by the pleasant sound of my latest creation coming alive. I mixed together a batch of beer (real ale)* wort early yesterday, Good Friday, and now the yeast is doing its thing. I hear that lovely sound of respired CO₂ thumping and pulsating from the air lock of my closed primary fermentation system. It has a smooth and relaxing steady rhythm like that of a human heartbeat at rest. It reminds me of, and is putting me in the mood to listen to, the opening track of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Brewing seemed to be the proper thing to do given the occasion. Taking and blending these ordinarily inert ingredients together to make something that starts to foam up and emit heartbeat sounds is the closest thing I can do to perform something that resembles some sort of resurrection.

I'm reminded that the Lent season is ending; not that I really practice any such thing myself. It just brought me to thinking about voluntary dietary restrictions in general and the (mostly superstitious) reasons that people do such things. I was also prompted to think about the subject of meatless eating because I realize that I absent-mindedly forgot to pack up some steaks that someone gifted to me before I came home, and I'm in the middle of kicking myself about it. I began contemplating about my own eating habits, and how unwittingly they have become quite erratic for me as of late. I have no meat left now, and I'm down to my last few containers of frozen homemade soups, homemade pickles and other canned preserves, plus another few options of what I have stored in my pantry. My intentional restriction to eating just this stuff to the point where it's running out is sort of a pseudo-Lent: it's a purposeful reduction and elimination of my stores to make it easier in having less things to muddle through once I progress to the arduous task of taking my spring cleaning into the kitchen, and for the ease of re-organizing and re-stocking with healthier stuff later. I'll be resuming a high protein-slow-carb diet for my training season.

Overall, I try not to be a fussy eater, and I get adventurous enough to try something new out at least once. However, the thing that I know that I could never get into is total vegetarianism; more specifically veganism. I actually do eat less meat than I used to, but the reason is stemmed more out of economy. I really do seem to need some form of animal protein each day, at the very least in the form of eggs or milk. I did go through a fasting spell once where I gave up eating all forms of animal protein (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) along with refined flours and sugar for a week for the sake of following a strict body cleanse regimen I was performing at the time. During that week of this special diet, the only thing that I lost was seven days of energy and sanity. I was very miserable and lethargic throughout that ordeal. Sure, it could be argued that it was the result of going through some sort of detox process, but given the way I felt through it all, and the very unnoticable 'improvement' I sensed afterward, I doubt if it was giving me any benefits. The only time I felt better after it was from eating a chicken dinner when it came time to finish the damn thing.

Being an occasional quasi-vegetarian isn't an entirely repulsive thought to me, or at least I'm not completely opposed to the idea. I do find myself enjoying more varieties of veggies and salads than I ever have, and I know and respect that there would be some significant benefit ecologically for this planet if we halved our intake of meat, or else just excluded animal flesh even for just one meal each day, or exclude it for one entire day of a week. The vegan meme though to me is a whole other issue of mindless extremism. Of all the real life people I've encountered who professed to me to be practicing vegans, very few of them struck me as ideal specimens of health (or sanity for that matter). They sure as hell didn't look like any of the models that PETA exploits for their campaign billboards. They either looked quite sickly, weak, and anemic; or else they fell on the other end of the spectrum of being (surprisingly) grossly obese. These latter people seemed to have over-compensated for the lack of protein by boosting and bulking up their intake of sugar, highly-processed hydrogenated plant oils/trans-fats, and excessive salt for flavouring. They looked like even more abnormally misshapen blobs possibly due to water-retention, probably suffering liver** and pancreatic issues or God knows only what other metabolic problems because of insufficient enzymes, or perhaps they were becoming hormonally screwed up from the onslaught of phytoestrogens from an excess of soybean products.

Some aspects of a strictly all vegetable diet are no better for you than having a high meat protein diet. There are lots of unhealthy fast/snack food around that would comply with a "vegan" diet, e.g. french fries fried in soy/corn oil, potato chips, and palm oil based dessert whip. There are no animal products at all in the beer I'm making, so technically it's vegan fare too. Even though a pint of beer and a plate of chips at the pub may qualify as vegan friendly, no one can say that it's the healthiest thing for you.

It's the personalities of these vegan-folk that bother me the most. I haven't yet met one of these vegans who didn't have a sanctimonious attitude about their chosen lifestyle, and felt some need to preach about it, while belittling others who do eat meat and are content with just being their natural omnivore selves. I have to laugh at the ones who endeavour to be so particular, and take such a hard core stand about having no "disgusting meat" enter their bodies, but have no such restrictions or concerns about smoking***. I saw an all-vegan recipe book in a book store, with the woman author on the front cover who had both her arms permanently covered and sleeved with a bunch of skank-ass tattoos. No "poisonous meat" for her, but it's evident that she never gave any second thought about how many toxic compounds were in that ink that she chose to inject and impregnate her skin with. Someone like that just strikes me as being just another annoyingly ditsy hypocritical shit-head. Just like the fashion dummies and celebrity spokespersons who gain publicity by admitting that they just can't bring themselves to eat those sweet little cows, but apparently have no problem with buying, wearing, and hoarding shoes and purses made from the their cute little hides, or tucking their asses into the seat of a Mercedes or Bentley made with the same leather.

The vegans and vegetarians who are so because of their religious beliefs have equally annoyed me as well; just the ones who claim that they have a "better religion and society" because they are vegetarian, with a "respect for all life". One woman, a new immigrant from India I met, was trying to explain all that very same bullshit to me some while ago. I held my tongue, but I could have been really tough and cruel on her, by bluntly and unrelentingly lambasting and pointing out that their largely Hindu vegetarian society hasn't prompted enough of a "respect for all life" to stop all the gang rapes that have been reported there in the last while, nor does it seem to be doing anything to curb the alarming number of female infanticides that regularly occur there (so poor families won't be forced later to pay some ridiculous customary dowry to get a daughter married), nor does it do anything to fully extinguish the segregating caste system that they still have, where such incidents have occurred where the impoverished Dalits (the so-called "untouchables") are sometimes beaten to death for doing something as minor using the "wrong" well for fetching the life essential of water. If I did get around to saying all that, without even mentioning the grinding poverty there and the lower life expectancy, I would have ended by asking her that if her "society and religion" were so much "better" there, then why in the hell did she bother to move here? Oh goodie for you if you were born and raised in an ancient culture living on a tropical subcontinent with a convenient year round growing season for fruits and vegetables. In a climate where dead flesh would spoil and go rancid in minutes without proper refrigeration, and where there is no clean enough water to process it, vegetarianism was/is a sensible and practical lifestyle there. This person didn't think at all, before she made her ethno-centric judgement, that hers was not a cultural paradigm that jibes well with living in a region where early settlement needed to account for only a four month growing season, extreme winters, and a need to can, dry, freeze and preserve food; which degrades the nutrient content significantly. Having fresh meat, poultry, or fish available was necessary for society to establish itself here. People must be cognisant and appreciative of that before they criticize. I'd like to see her and the other ignorant vegan dummies go up north and try to argue with the Inuit about meatless eating and social betterment with that kind of stupid self-righteous attitude.

The evolution of hominids into Homo Sapiens wouldn't have happened at all if our brain growth wasn't accelerated and fostered out of the necessity of trying to survive through an Ice Age by eating meat from hunting. Otherwise, we would have turned out to be not much different than pot-bellied ruminating gorillas who need to use most of their time foraging and eating to acquire their protein. Even within the perspective of modernity, if everyone was to spontaneously become a vegan here (as the more radical ones wish would happen) in this region of Canada, that means extra taxing and exploiting of the land and water resources in some other temperate/tropical agriculture zones somewhere else to grow more, and use more fuel for importing and shipping of this perishable nutritious living produce that we couldn't up grow here to sustain us for eight months of the year. We weren't made to live strictly on grain, which is the plant based thing we could do for a local homegrown vegetarian option throughout the winter months if we were to actively limit energy and costs for shipping. Furthermore, the grain-based diet itself has undergone lots of negative press in the past decade.

The other ignorant criticism at the global level that bothers me is the blaming of Western nations for not doing enough agriculturally to promote conditions more conducive to freeing the world from eating so much animal protein, and growing more protein rich crops. There is a real failure to note the interdependence. Canada (specifically here in Saskatchewan) is already the largest producer of lentils, a protein rich pulse crop, in the world; it's the Middle East, and other regions of Africa and South Asia where they are most frequently exported to, with India being the largest consumer. Ironically, our lentils are being shipped to places where climatically they are even better suited for growing such crops if their resources were managed better. I heard it speculated that if the entire pulse crop production in Saskatchewan alone were to totally fail in a year, there would be a real possibility of widespread famine and/or violent unrest due to hikes in food prices in those regions populated by those on strictly vegetarian diets. The real points of shame are that these nations and regions are not committing themselves to enough of an effort for a peaceful and stable political climate to enable themselves to establish their own sustainable agriculture systems, infrastructure, and practices to allow them to produce enough of their own food locally. The other great shame is ultimately the higher cost and fuel waste for us to be transporting this stuff half way around the world for them, as fuel prices go up due to terrorism threats from some of these very regions who demand this stuff, and there is added inefficiency due to skirting around and avoiding dangerous shipping lanes, like around the horn of Africa, where piracy is a real threat.

I don't have all the answers on how to live rightly, but I do know that being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't automatically make you a better person, although those who are would like us to believe it does. A lot of people have forgotten, or don't realize, that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

* - Hydrometer reading: 1.043 for the original gravity. I speculate a 5.2% alcohol by volume end result, barring stalls and accidents.
** - The Dalai Lama even eats meat on occasion, more so to settle and remedy a pre-existing liver condition he has. Being a Buddhist monk, he is a vegetarian at heart, and not tuned into making other beings suffer, but he's also not so foolish about it as to compromise his own health. 
***- Tobacco and "other-than"

Re-Purposing Litter: A New Type of Green Justice

We took a great big giant stride into spring this week. I halted any full-scale spring cleaning for a while because it was pointless to do while all the dust and debris was being tracked into the place, and blown around with all the vicious wind we've been having lately. It's hard to scrounge up energy for it also after runs in such wind. The absence of puddles and road slush finally got me ambitious enough to fix up my bike. I accidentally destroyed two inner tubes getting it done (due to a tire defect), but it's done. I'm so much happier to finally see some green grass peeking and poking up above the dead mulch. I also gleaned a small profit in refunds since the thaw started.

I have a ritual, once spring thaw comes, of being proactive with doing something about some of the litter that's exposed once the snow recedes; as a winter's worth of evidence of morons rambling through the neighbourhood gets revealed on the sidewalks, the streets, the alleys, and the nearby parks. Waste and litter (and those who pitch it) sicken me. I wish there was a solution getting rid of these ghetto-scum idiot culprits with the stupid and lazy mindset that perpetuates all this, but that will have to be a topic for another entry. I could bitch and moan about the problem, or I could turn the lemons into lemonade. I clean up some of it. It's just a passive and casual thing I do when I walk the dog in the morning and evening.  The pitched coffee cups we find are reused for cleaning up after my own dog during the walk, and are disposed of properly, and we collect the bottles and cans we come across for recycling. This habit started back in the days when I tended a garden space on another property I was living on, I would do the same ritual every spring and throughout summer. This spot was in the centre of the "party district" in town, so there was always a substantial enough mass of strewn-about recyclables left behind. Enough such that after I collected and took all this junk to SARCAN, our provincial recycling outlet, I got enough from the refunds to use for purchasing my seed stock, and other gardening supplies; the amount from the refunds always completely covered the costs for doing all of that.

From the commercial side of the alley, I reclaimed the wood from broken and discarded shipping pallets, and built composters and bedding frames from them. It all yielded to me some fresh homegrown organic produce in the fall, and I even had enough of a surplus a couple times that some was donated to the local food bank. I called this activity 'Operation Green Justice'. Even now, if someone were to play a random word association game with me, my automatic response to "plastic bottle" would probably be "tomato seedling". The upside is that it's an effort of being a good steward to the community and the environment, I didn't need to join any special club to give me license to do it, and I learned and applied a useful hobby like gardening. The downside is that I'm probably often looked at, by those who witness me doing this, as some sort of vagrant scrounging around for enough of a refund to fritter away on booze, smokes, or on some other confection for sin and vice.

Using my energy this way to convert trash into nutritious produce won't serve to build me any sort of fortune or empire soon, but it is an effort to transform negatives to positives, and I'd like to think that it will somehow create some sort of better karma later on. My motives are still purely selfish.

I don't really have a garden to tend anymore. Since I've been living here, my effort to do some container plantings on my deck has been all in vain. I never had a substantial yield of anything. I tried to set up some passive hydroponic experiments, but to no avail; there were just too many shortcomings to allow for it. There are also no bees around to pollenate the plants properly. Even with setting things up to have hanging planters and growing things vertically, the space is too limited; and I have no convenient outdoor watering system. I'm pretty much limited to producing a few pots of fresh herbs and that's it. I think it's more worth my while to retire from the gardening, and thus re-purpose the SARCAN money for another noble pursuit. . . probably another couple of fermentation projects. The refunds I collected so far amount to enough for a couple of beer kits: that's 46 litres worth of beer (132 - 330 mL bottles, or 22 six-packs); in which the expenses for it don't really come out of my own pocket.

I guess, like some vagrant, but in a more indirect way, I'll be using my money for confections of vice after all. The difference is that I won't be giving any extra money away for sin taxes. A cleaner park and street to look at as I sip my homebrew from my balcony is ultimately the reward for doing all of this. I'm curious as to what else I could 'seed and grow' with any other surplus of this can money: both for me and the common good.

Last Entry's solution, Reaching the Equinox

Down the page is the solution to last entry's logic problem, but if you are still doing it, don't give up yet. I included the following hints to  help you sort through the challenge before you scroll to the answer table.

Hints

From Clue 1., as well as there being no such leprechaun as Smiley O'Riley, one should reason that there are also no such leprechauns as Bleary O'Leary, Greeny McSweeny, Tally McNally, Whirly O'Hearly, or Greeny Mc'Nally. Greeny then wasn't the one with the pocket watch who hid his gold in a tree (Clue 2). McSweeny didn't use the well nor clay pipe nor the hayloft in Limerick, therefore no gold watch nor well in Limerick (Clues 3 and 4). From Clue 3., there is no leprechaun named Tally O'Riley, neither Tally or O'Riley then used the clay pipe. The well was either in Cork or Galway. There is no such leprechaun is Bleary O'Hearly (clue 4). From clues 1 and 5, we see that O'Riley didn't possess the pewter flask; there is also no Whirley McNally, so from the previous clues McNally's first name is either Smiley or Bleary. In clue 6, it can be deduced that the fifth leprechaun not included in the list is the one from Limerick, thus Smiley wasn't in Limerick. If the flask belongs to the bog leprechaun, the pipe belongs to the well leprechaun, and the walking stick belongs the manure pile leprechaun from Meath (not Limerick, Galway, Cork or Kildare) (clue 7), and the watch with the hollow tree leprauchaun, the tin whistle thus belongs to the hayloft trickster in Limerick. Thus O'Riley, not Smiley (from clues 1 and 6) owned the tin whistle, and from clue 5, we determine that his first name was Whirly. Using Clues 6 and 1, we eliminate McNally as the walking stick owner/manure pile leprechaun from Meath county. I could go on, but the rest of the puzzle should logically solved from here on in.

First Name	Last Name	County	Lucky Charm	Hiding Spot
Smiley	McSweeny	Cork	Pocket Watch	Hollow Tree
Bleary	McNally	Galway	Clay Pipe	Brackish Well
Greeny	O’Leary	Kildare	Pewter Flask	Peat Bog
Whirly	O’Riley	Limerick	Tin Whistle	Hayloft
Tally	O’Hearly	Meath	Walking Stick	Manure Pile

I wish I were able to add something else cheerful and positive to this entry, but today greeted me with some grief: my own challenge is to tear it apart with some focus, common sense, and logic. I'm faced with using my day to do my best to muddle through it. I'll just say that I'm at least glad that we've reached the point where the days are getting longer than the hours of darkness.

Blockages and Drainages, Logic and Leprechauns

I'm glad to say that the spring thaw has been coming aggressively throughout the past week here. It's still not quite warm enough to allow me to roost out on the deck to enjoy morning coffee/tea and my post-breakfast reading in the fresh air though. I'm hoping that will be possible within the next couple of weeks if the melting continues at this rate. I hope to be cycling then too as the streets get drier. For now, it still gets cold enough overnight to freeze things hard and thick enough to restrict all the run off from flowing away and draining properly. This part of the season seems to be a direct reflection of the way my own mind is working now*.
   
There has been a lapse between now and my last entry. It's because since I began la vie sans TV, I've been taking advantage of the extra silence and liberation from one less distraction, and I have been shifting my attention and focus to another writing project. I think the overall concepts of it are sound, but I'm still having problems with transposing the things from my notes, tables and spreadsheets into a workably progressive, and manageable flow of content. There doesn't seem to be enough time in the world to allow me to fix this stuff up right; especially not while working full-time hours, plus doing my unit chair position duties. The lightning bolts of originality and creativity just don't seem to be striking me as frequently anymore. The week off I had at the beginning of the month, although I welcomed it, didn't do as much to help me sort out things as I had hoped.

I took a break before I began this paragraph; a spell of creativity did manage to seize me. I directed it to fashioning something through writing that I enjoy doing: a logic problem. I do them once in a while. They are made for more esoteric and quirky personalities and are the less popular of the pen and paper puzzles, much less so than puzzles like Sudoku or crosswords, and sadly they seem to be a dying art form. They are to the puzzle magazine world like what polka is in the music world. I know the magazines dedicated to them are becoming harder to find. It's a shame too, because logical thinking is something that the world needs more of. I guess I like to retreat to them, and create them, because working with this kind of hard pure logic is compensation for feeling too often deprived of just being able to just verbally bash some common sense into some people I'm forced to interact with when I've exhausted all my tact and patience. Given that St. Patrick's Day is winding up quickly, I used an hour and a half of time to burn away some insomnia to compose this puzzle. The inspiration came to me from reading one of my cousin's posts on Facebook. I tested it, and the solution works. I'm still trying to figure out where to get these things published for a little extra cash. I risk showing everyone the weird way my mind works. I should have stashed it away in my portfolio of other such problems I made, but I thought I would share and sacrifice this one to the public, for anyone else who is up for the challenge. I crafted and pasted a logic grid for your convenience, to be found on the bottom of this entry. I'll post the solution in my next entry. St. Patrick's Day may have passed by the time you read this, but I hope you get a kick out of doing it anyway. All names used in this puzzle are completely fictitious.

The Leprechauns

The leprechauns of Ireland come out of seclusion once in a while to roam the land and collect treasure; and at the end of the day, the miserly little fellows make it a habit of returning to, and adding to, their hidden pots of hoarded gold; which in truth are found in far less enchanted places than at the ends of rainbows. If you’re lucky enough to find one and stealthily follow him, he may lead you to his preferred treasure hiding place. Leprechauns pretty much all look and dress alike; they usually can only be told apart from each other by whatever single prized possession they carry on their person. This ordinary looking possession they carry is actually their characteristic magical “lucky charm”. There are five such leprechauns in this problem, each one of them lives in a different Irish county. From the seven clues below, can you correctly sort out: the first and last name of each leprechaun, which county each one lives in (and keeps his treasure), which distinguishing lucky charm each one carries with himself (like a pocket watch that can detect where gold can be found), and which strange location each one stashes his pot o’ gold?

1. Smiley O’Riley has lovely lyrical ring to it; but this is not the full name of any of the leprechauns. In fact, none of the leprechauns’ proper first and last names rhyme together at all. However, the bearer of the magical tin whistle has either the first name Smiley, or the last name of O’Riley (who never goes near any peat bogs). When the tin whistle was played, it stunned the senses of whoever heard it, so that the leprechaun could have ample time to make a hasty escape from greedy people who found him or his gold. Greeny never possessed this enchanted object, neither did McNally (whose pot of gold isn’t in Meath county).
2. A pocket watch that magically signaled an alert to its keeper for the presence of gold was a mighty useful thing to have for indicating which unsuspecting strangers to pick-pocket. McSweeny, a very absent-minded leprechaun, also often used it to locate the right hollow tree when he lost his way in the thickly wooded forest (not in Kildare county) where he kept his hoarded stash. 
3. While walking home one evening, Mrs. O’Hara was scared half to death when she spotted an impish little figure crawling out from a derelict roadside well.  The locals never used it anymore because the water in it had long ago turned brackish and undrinkable, and some claimed that it was haunted by spirits. The clever little leprechaun she encountered took advantage of the well’s reputation and neglect, and had used his long stemmed clay pipe as a snorkel while he secretly dived in there to stash his gold coins in the submerged pot. This well wasn’t in either Meath or in county Kildare; nor did Tally or O’Riley use this place to hide their treasure.
4. It was near dusk when Mr. O’Toole, a farmer in Limerick, thought he heard a strange sound coming from the hayloft of his barn. When he went to inspect the place, he could have swore that he caught a glimpse of a shadow of an odd-looking little fellow, but he felt a bit dazed and thought it was just his weary eyes playing tricks on him. Neither Bleary nor O’Hearly was responsible for this commotion. Greeny didn’t do it either.
5. The constantly tipsy leprechaun with the pewter flask was also the one that always stank like the vile peat bog where he frequently visited to cache his gold. Very few curious people wanted to follow him. His first name wasn’t Whirly, his last name wasn’t McNally, and he never lived or roamed around Cork County. Whirly and McNally actually weren’t from that county either; one of these two did have a tin whistle, while the other one kept his gold in Galway County.
6. Four of the five leprechauns were: the one who drank from a pewter flask that turned bog water into whisky, Tally (who wasn’t in Limerick), the mischievous trickster from the county of Galway, and Smiley (who hid his gold in either a hollow tree or the brackish well).
7. A sneaky young vagrant, named Rowan McManus, secretly followed a tiny stranger who headed towards a great mound of rotting horse manure by a potato field. The little fellow poked his walking stick in the pile three times, and all of a sudden a pot of shimmering gold coins magically rose out of the dung heap. The leprechaun then tossed a few more coins into the pot, which then sank back into the compost pile and was once again concealed from view. The leprechaun suddenly caught sight of the astonished McManus, who witnessed it all while hiding behind a hedgerow. With an elfish grin and a wink, the leprechaun then said, “Well ya didn’t seriously think I was going to dig through all that mess, did ya?” Rowan left there and quickly returned after finding a shovel, and then he dug around and rummaged madly all day through that manure pile like the greedy fool he was, but he never did find any of the gold, and he never saw this rascally leprechaun (who wasn’t O’Riley) ever again. This incident never happened in the counties of Cork, Kildare or Galway.

*- I'm also pissed off about recently discovering that my dishwasher (something I deem as an essential time-saver) has also all of a sudden failed to drain properly. I stayed up until 2:00 AM last night trying to fix the damn thing to no avail. It represents yet another inconvenient blockage coming along my way, both reminding and frustrating me about how stuck I'm feeling about so many other things.

In Like a Pride of Lions/ Re-Evaluating Education

As happy as I am to see the wretched month of February pass, I can't say that I'm any more relieved that March has finally arrived. "In like a lion . . ." just isn't a sufficient enough of a simile to describe the coming of this month in this province. Yesterday was the coldest March 1st on record for many places in Saskatchewan, including here*. The extreme cold has been twisting a real crappy beginning into my string of days off in the weirdest and unexpected of ways. It is yet another proven case of the fates conspiring against me whenever I yup myself into doing any part of a night shift, or to try make some extra coin. I was already short of a lot of sleep as I worked overtime prior to the last night of my last evening shift. Hoping to just collapse into bed and go into some sort of coma, I instead was pestered all night by false alarms from the fire detection system. I don't take blaring fire alarms lightly, especially since after the building just across the street went up in flames last fall. For the first time, the residents evacuated and were forced outside to stand in the wicked -42 below temperature. It's suspected that the sensors downstairs were being buggered up and triggered by the super-condensed, car exhaust-laden cold air drafts coming in from the lower parkade entrance. Whatever the case, the alarm bells were set off several times over night, and for the day after; with cumulative loss of a night and a half of sleep, I was completely dead to the world throughout most of yesterday. I just got to be thankful that there was no actual fire emergency to contend with.

The exhaustion and the miserable frigidity outside didn't make me feel compelled to do much of anything; but I did make the effort to escape the place in late morning to avoid the noise from the service repair and system testing that they were following up with after that night's incident. I used that time to volunteer some help for my friend get some electrical supplies for a home improvement project. I thought the trip might give me some inspiration for doing similar stuff around my own home, but I was too brain dead to be ignited with any ideas for such things. My back and legs were stiffening up too much to do the running that I should have been doing as part of my training program. I could only handle absolute stillness and silence. It ended up being a wasted day for me.

Today, I've been trying to compensate for yesterday's lethargy. I occupied myself all morning with laundry, housecleaning, filing and taming of paperwork, and noting all my stock shortages to shop for later. Now that the slate has been cleared of that stuff, I'm now exploring options for the remaining week or so I have to be absent from work. It began with taking my head offline** to allow my brain to reboot itself. The insomnia left me stricken with a massive headache anyway, and my eyes were too sore for reading or viewing screens after I came back home.

Now that I'm re-invigorated, I'm going to share what I'll be doing this during frozen time off. If I can't physically go anywhere, I have to do different things with my brain to take it to different states and places. I've been thinking more about I feel I need more formal education to do any meaningful shifting of career, moreover, I've been wondering where in the hell am I going to find the time and money for it. I become very sickened and bitter when I start thinking about the current paradigm of post-secondary and polytechnic education for so many reasons: too many to list here. I predict a disaster coming ahead socially and economically if the universities and tech school administrations in this province don't pull their heads out of their asses soon enough, and start designing curricula and programmes that reflect the times coming ahead, i.e. considering the rate in which technology is changing things.***

For now on my personal time with no TV to distract me, I'm sticking to the fundamentals of staying sharp mentally for what ever is to come.

• memory (re)training/logic puzzles
• programming/language learning
• increasing my own general teachability index
• learning more life hacks/template creation for efficiency
• using Creative Commons and other free open source online university programmes 
• finding other projects and useful and demonstrable applications for them, and to make a recognizable portfolio in lieu of a certificate

How ironic it is that the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs: the richest and greatest technical innovators of our time, were college drop outs. Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on Earth, says "The best education you can get is investing in yourself. But this doesn’t always mean college or university".

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-trashes-higher-education-says-its-not-for-everyone-2012-5#ixzz2uxmqKzWu
He sent none of his three children to college. Even though he has formal university degrees, the only certificate he has on display is one for the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking Course, which only cost him $100.

*- With the wind chill accounted for, it was -52° Celsius here in this town.
** - I was strictly audio. No computer, no books, and no TV; I turned my cable service off for spring and summer.
***- Have you ever just looked at the apps on your smart phone and wondered how many human jobs these things have eliminated?