Some People Have Burning Bushes

Sometimes life gives you lemons and you start to make lemonade without first realizing that you might need that thing that squeezes out the lemon juice so you do it by hand and get lemon all over you. Slowly your drive to make lemonade wanes and eventually it becomes a chore each day to work on your lemonade project. You go to wipe your eyes and get lemon juice in them. Then you start to cry and you can't tell if it's caused by your defeat or the acid reacting with your gazers.

Feeling defeated and energy-drained from a laborious game of golf I realized why the sport has been claimed by the rich. It's not because clubs are expensive and you have to wear collared shirts. It's because it's boring. Rich people love to do boring things because it's the easiest way to separate themselves from poor people. Poor people aren't going to waste their time doing something as frustrating, boring and tiring as golf, so they leave it to the rich. Rich people like this. It allows for a one-to-one correspondence between playing golf and being loaded.

After golf I felt what worms feel like when they wander onto pavement and then the sun comes out. No, not blind and helpless, more like hot.

I slunk into a deep depression as a result of my lack of motivation to work on my own version of Linux. I glimpsed scenes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians in horror and I had a serious conversation with the dog since no one else was listening.

Tired, frustrated and bored, I decided to brush the pearlies and go to bed.

When, what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a tiny caterpillar on my toothpaste. Caterpillar had been there before, all week in fact, but today his presence was awesome.

Not everyone has a toothpaste caterpillar, sent from the heavens to watch over them and provide guidance in their time of need. Most likely, I'm the only one blessed with a toothpaste fairy goderpillar and I should be thankful for that.

He might be dead and he sure as hell isn't going to find any nutrition from Crest so maybe he's a sign. "Don't live in the bathroom" or "Be better at not dying". At this point I'm not sure. I am quite certain, however, that caterpillar's significance will come clear to me later in the week.

I did have to euthanize a mouse yesterday and I've heard these things come in threes from people who like to make stupid comments during difficult situations.

I'll keep you all posted.

Next time I'll talk about that inspiring thing I was thinking of, if I don't have too much lemon in my eye.

Nostrabezas

I like when people draw pictures of what the future will look like.

Like, like, like. Like like.

Everything is always pristine white or onyx black. There's an exorbitant number of lights and technology isn't innovative, it's just an advanced version of what we have already.

For example, we have cars now, future predictors always draw future cars or air cars. Are we going to need cars in the future? What if we can make people think they're somewhere they're not? Or how about televisions. They keep getting bigger, with improved picture quality, but I don't really see a need for them to be separated from the Internet. Why don't we just stream all our shows? We do it already, the technology is just not as pervasive as it should be.

Predictions of the future are linear. They take what we have today and shoot that out 20, 50, or 100 years into the future, but that's not how evolution works. Improvements are not isolated instances. Every time we have an improvement in one field, that improvement lends itself to every other field.

Predictions shouldn't be straight shots off of what we have today. They need to be part of a web of innovation that all works together.

For example, the World Wide Web. Before we had the WWW we had two, separate innovations: the Internet and HyperText. The Internet was just a collection of connected computers that could communicate. HyperText was a software program that allowed you to traverse text by clicking on HyperText links. Wikipedia is a great example of HyperText at work. These two technological improvements were very separate until Tim Berners Lee came along. He made the necessary connections between HyperText and the Internet thereby developing the World Wide Web platform that we use today.

If predictors looked at the Internet and HyperText back then, they'd just linearly improve those technologies. The Internet connections would get faster and more data could get sent through using different protocols. HyperText would just allow you to navigate through more and more information on a single machine.

The real future is going to be hybrids. Taking one idea and smashing it into another.

Smart phones and GPS? "Damn I have to pee, where's the closest restroom?"

Eye-tracking and 360 webcams? "Hey Bill, does this look infected?"

RFIDs, smart garbage cans and smart phones? "Looks like someone finished the milk, good thing they did it while I was at the grocery store."

Of course, who knows if we'll even have grocery stores down the line. But then again if no one cares to improve on it, they're going to stay the same. Kind of like body hair.

There are so many things that can be done by forcing technologies to mate. But don't focus on what we have, take a look at the minor annoyances in your life, develop a simple solution and see if we've got the goods needed to produce something like that. Chances are we do, and chances are, whatever you come up with will get mixed in with something else later on down the road.

Get some Crayola crayons, they'll never be improved upon, and draw up your own pictures of the future. I doubt anyone will do this, but if you want, put them online through Flickr or something and post the link as a comment. Use lot's of color, I'm tired of high contrast futures, they're so bleak.

Go wild. Use robots and kittens and chandeliers with color changing LEDs.

Wait a minute, I'm inspired. Next time you read this I'll have my little plan outlined. Get ready. Get excited.

Rewind.

Oh yeah, unconsciousness. I've been thinking lately, mostly existential thinking. What if everything has a consciousness? That would explain the probability of quantum mechanics. Imagine everything has a consciousness, from the cells in my body, to atoms to me, a bunch of cells thrown together. Now my consciousness has a memory connected to it which helps me make decisions, but in the end I get to make those decisions.

Don't think about this too hard. I need it to be right so that I can think I have some kind of control, cause without that what is there?

Two days ago unconsciousness was Zen. It still is, it's nothing. Don't go for Zen. Go for something, cause why not?

Fast foward.

So next time you check here, you're going to blown away. My new idea is boiling and when it's ready, well, it's going to change your world.

Unconsciousness

Unconsciousness is a very hard word to spell.

Some people are concerned with time travel, why we're here, if there's a heaven...

I'm much more concerned with consciousness, more specifically, the lack there of.

What is consciousness? Who the hell knows. See that, that last sentence was a statement, not a question. I don't care who knows. In fact, if someone did know, deity or not, I'd be pissed, because they'd know before me.

Let's get back on track you muddle-minds. Consciousness. Why am I concerned with it? Well I'm on a quest to will myself into severe, irreversible depression. I'm doing a pretty good job now, but for me to really lose it, I need to know what consciousness is. Once I know that, I can take the inverse of the reciprocal and figure out what unconsciousness is. Cause right now, I'm pretty sure unconsciousness is Zen - more on that later.

Let's get you all up to speed on how consciousness is the last piece in my emo puzzle. First of all, here are the facts:

• Everything in the universe (including us) is made up of particles
• These particles follow a set of rules, these rules escape scientists now, but there are rules governing these particles nonetheless
  
• Since we're made of particles, we follow these same quantum rules

Right now scientists believe that the motion of quantum particles is based on probability, some think that we just don't know enough and that probability isn't a factor. Point is, everything is a big predetermined physics equation. Even if it was probabilistic, we still don't have any control, and why would we?

I'd like to think this is all wrong. And by-golly, we definitely don't have near enough information to prove it, but the trends are pointing this way. So we're not in control, we don't really make decisions. Everything is planned out already, we just think we're in control. Kind of like a really good con.

Here's where consciousness comes in. What the hell is it? I mean seriously? How come I have it, but I'm pretty sure a rock doesn't. Also, when do we get consciousness? And if you don't remember having it, did you really have it then? I have an infinite number of questions on the topic. The key thing here is, consciousness is what you and I make decisions with. If consciousness is outside of the particle rules somehow, then maybe, just maybe, we have free will.

I highly doubt it.

"Enjoy the ride," I say. We're all on a big roller coaster. No control whatsoever. We can either like it or not. But then again, do we even get to make that decision?

So that's why I'm depressed. Of course it was meant to be and if I stop being depressed, that was meant to be as well. Well, unless it wasn't.

I've run out of time. I'll get to unconsciousness next episode.

Until then, don't jump.

Well if you do, you couldn't help it, well, unless you could have and if that's true, then you had no reason to get depressed in -

I need to stop, see ya.

Get Rich Quick

Sounds too good to be true.

But it's not.

Here's how...

There's a minor problem with our economy right now. We're in what's called a recession. I know, I know, it sounds like recess, but words play tricks on you. "Pervading" the landscape doesn't mean you make the mountains into perverts.

Recessions are generally seen as a bad thing... Well unless you've got a furnace or Bunsen burner that can reach 1084.62 °C.

Yep, you got it, the temperature required to melt copper. Nice work paying attention in chemistry. Today's pennies are 97.5% zinc with a thin 2.5% copper outside coating called the "clad". That clad has a melting point of 1084.62 °C which is significantly higher than the 419.6 °C melting point of zinc. So go get yourself a serious furnace.

Well it turns out that it costs 1.73 cents to make a 1 cent penny. With the metal required costing 1.12 cents.

I think you understand where I'm going.

To make 1 million dollars you'll need to melt down and sell the resulting metal from 892,858 pennies.

Or you can start with $100 worth of pennies, melt them, sell them for more pennies and repeat this process 82 times.

Get to it. There's plenty of pennies around so I don't want to hear any complaints.

Disclaimer: This is incredibly illegal. So don't do this.

So what was Anton Beza doing today? A lot of useless math.