Virtual Employment

   

Want to stop wasting fossil fuel and help end global warming? Easy, just stay home!

  
Given the surface technology that’s rapidly becoming available, nearly 90% of today’s white-collar workforce will soon no longer find it necessary to be physically present at their workplace in order to do their job. As you will see in the video above, it is now becoming ‘virtually’ possible to be almost anywhere, anytime…and with anyone…without leaving your home.

And this same technology is also about to transform the future of education. Whether its a class at the local grade school, high school, community college, or Harvard Law School, it won’t be any further away than your bedroom wall.

Of course, you won’t see much benefit if you’re a carpenter. But, hey…all you have to do is ‘turn on’ your living room wall and spend a little time learning a new, stay-at-home way to earn your pay! Or maybe holster your hammer and take up card dealing for a virtual casino on your kitchen counter? The possibilities are virtually endless. ;-)

Graphic Stimulus (25)

 

‘Stimulated’ by the graphic on Subtlekate’s post, “Things I Covet”

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A picture is worth a thousand words? Yes, but sometimes imaginatively mixing them results in a much larger multiplier!

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Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or “Wild West”-era United States—that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology, or futuristic innovations as Victorians might have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc. This technology includes such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or the contemporary authors Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld and China Mieville.

Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history-style presentations of such technology as lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace’s Analytical engine.

Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical “steampunk” style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

From Wikipedia

Impulsive Writing (31)

Rock + Water = Time

If nothing changes, does it happen in time?

The concept of change effectively defines what is meant by identity. More specifically, for something to have a distinct identity it must exhibit resistance to change.

For example, pick up and try biting a rock. What you immediately discover is that it likes being what it is, and isn’t terribly interested in changing either its position or size. Yet, over time, it will inevitably do both…when it comes into direct contact with another, equally resistant identity. Of course if it is floating in space, unless it strikes another rock it will likely retain its unique ‘state of being’ for a very long time. But if it resides at the bottom of a stream, or the edge of a river, it will inevitably be reduced over time to bits of sand, and then be further reduced to smaller particles (e.g., molecules) which will eventually dissolve and become part of the surrounding water. So…first rock, then water.*

And thus it is ‘change’ (in terms of ‘identity’) that defines time. So…slow change, slow time. Fast change, fast time. No change, no time. (If you wonder about the difference between fast and slow time, in terms of change…imagine being an electron in the middle of a nuclear explosion. Then imagine that same electron residing deep in an iceberg. ;-)

*Which then eventually evaporates and separates into air and sand…which may again become rock, given enough time. (But that’s another story.)

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Quiz: If you take a picture of a rock, develop and frame it, then hang it on your wall…will the photo of that rock never change? Or is it now an ‘identity’ (independent of the rock it depicts) who’s time has just begun…changing, as it slowly fades away in the light of day?

This post was ‘stimulated’ by Rivenrod’s Ca3(PO4)2 – pt. 10

Junk Food Threatens Environment!

Following are the harmful effects of junk food on the environment:

Fuel consumption

In the US around 19 percent of total energy consumed in the country is used for producing food and supplying it to different places. Currently, most of the energy demand is met using nonrenewable sources of energy, making it important for us to look for ways to reduce the fuel consumption. Research shows that energy consumption can be lowered around 50 percent by the adoption of traditional farming and following a healthier diet pattern. The energy required to produce junk and processed foods is much more than what is used to produce staple foods. If Americans were to reduce their junk food consumption it would affect fuel consumption in a major way, and also substantially improve overall health.

Snappy vs. Prozac

Graphic ‘stimulus’ from HerdersDaughter

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911? My name is Mrs. Cuthbert, and I want to report some obscene behavior across the street from my house!

Around 5:30 AM his cell phone began to ring. Chris reached over the bed, grabbed his pants off the floor, rummaged through pockets until he found his phone, flipped it open, checked the number (it was Carrie, his next door neighbor), then pressed the “talk” button.

The Story Untold

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Write about a lost thing that shows up again in an unlikely place.
(An irresistible ‘prompt’ from Mattie’s Pillow)

Lost

I was around two years old when my father left for Newfoundland. He bought a small, isolated cabin located deep in a remote inlet on the south coast of the island, and planned to spend the winter there working on a book.

He Got The Message

She’d left it at the front desk.

“Meet me at the used bookstore at Provinski Square a little before five. When you get there, buy the green copy of Great Expectations that has a small piece missing from the top of its cover. Make sure they put it in a bag. When you see me coming, leave the store, turn right and walk toward the subway entrance. I’ll be right behind you. Have the bag under your arm. I’ll exchange it with my copy (which contains the codes you need) as we pass through the entrance area. Once we’re inside, you head toward the information kiosk, and I’ll continue to the escalator. As soon as I’m out of sight, leave the station and walk across the square. You’ll see a black Yugo parked on the other side. The driver will be standing next to it. He’ll take you where you need to go.”

It was now five o’clock. It was cold and starting to rain. He had the book, and was waiting just inside the store entrance. He could see the black Yugo parked across the square. The driver was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk next to it, and appeared to be nervous.

Graphic Stimulation (24)

With January 1st just around the corner, what is the one thing in your life you’d most wish to leave behind as the new year begins?

Impulsive Writing (30)

“I defy any poet to deny ever having written about the trials and joys of writing poetry. All the Greats have.” – Ca3(PO4)2 – A Creative Journey (by Rivenrod)

Well, I’ve never written anything about writing poetry so I guess I ain’t one…much less one of the ‘Greats.’ In fact I’m so unsophisticated as to still believe that poetry evolved to make oral story-telling easier to remember and repeat. Only after printing and publishing became commonplace, did the ‘meaning of poetry’ begin to morph into something that words alone could no longer describe, especially if no longer crudely ‘shaped’ by using rhythm or rhyme. In other words, it was no longer simply a means of relating a story, but instead became the story…whether ‘memorable’ or not. (After all, once printed, what was said could not be so easily forgot! ;-)

For example…

A Poem Becoming Poetry

I find that…

Poems (of mine)
usually rhyme
if there’s time.

But probably not
if they’re thought
then soon forgot.

As for meaning,
Its like dreaming:

You like to feel
you’re at the wheel,
and turning it for real;
deciding what’s right
and what’s not.

But when you awake
you better write quick
before meaning fades
and all those words
so deeply thought
so creatively wrought
rush back to amend
a void in the pot
where rainbows end
and dreams begin…

again…

or not.

Yet UNDERSTAND that
in the room there was
no unwashed hand to
blot the force from
that dim light above
the frame of doors
hanging limp on hinges
forged from fear
or joy to seal a
child’s lips to
stiffened paddles of
sailboats. (Not ships!)

(I would go on but
cabbage has begun
ominously to sprout
from my fingertips.)

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Impulsive Writing (29)

Tonguing A Grunt?

For years I’ve listened to dogs barking, yet still can’t really distinguish any substantial difference (in meaning) between one bark and another. Somehow I get the feeling that ‘texting’ is heading in a similar direction. Or perhaps we’re in the process of reverting back to our original, grunt-based paradigm.

And why not? Almost everything that’s being said anymore could easily be packaged in a ‘grunt.’ And most of the time you don’t really need to distinguish one grunt from another…’cause no one really cares what you’re saying anyway. Nor you they.

For example:

*Umphg!” (Say what?)

“Umphgg!” (Screw you!)

“Umphgh?” (Really?)

“Umphgff!” (Damn right!)

“Umphxd?” (Wow, when?)

“Umphyfy!” (Right now!)

“Umphok?” (On my iPhone?)

“Umpdxt!” (Yeah, a txt quickie!)

“Umphf*y!?” (Like that?)

“Ummmm!” (Wow. Yeah, that WAS quick!!!)

“Umphgby!” (Ok, glad you enjoyed it. Gotta go. See ya later.)

“Umphgyor…Grrr” (Yeah, ok. Hey…don’t forget to brush your teeth! ;-)

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Stimulated by Lizzie Cracked’s post on “Text Etiquette”