WinSol +

The short answer for me is HECK NO!  We may have this romantic illusion that we are part of nature, but in reality we are playing God.  We are busy ants trying to control and change nature at every chance we get.  The very purpose of advanced physics is to unlock the 'secrets of the universe'.  To what end?  What comes after discovery and understanding of these secrets?  We will unleash whatever new powers we discover for our own benefit, may it be atomic power, bombs or what have you.   Stewart Brand said it best in his two seminal works:  in the 1960's with his Whole Earth Catalog he stated:  we are like gods, and we need to get good at it'  and in his 2003?????  book 'Eco Discipline' he stated:  'we are gods'.   As an engineering student at the University of Wyoming, I had to look at the inscription on top of the engineering building that state:  'the control of nature is not given, it is won... strive on'....

There's a major do-over going on for the greenhouse.  Hundreds of flower and vegie seeds have been planted.  A new dwarf cherry tree and a relocated one from the outside have been moved inside the greenhouse.  It'll be interesting to see how the 10' tall ceiling curbs their growth - bonsai maybe?  The solar hot shower is working again - so the luxury of  more frequent hot rainwater showers will be the norm until October. I like this time period.  April through October is always the nice period at WinSol. between  October - April you never know when an artic front will move in - like they have for the last 5+ weeks.  ------------------------------------------------------------ COVID19  Life is pretty normal here compared to most other places. I have noticed myself being a bit more cautious about bats flying around - are they kissing cousins from Wuhan?  (they sure do look like flying rats, don't they? If only we could evolv...

I spend a l ot of time contemplating and exploring AI (artificial intelligence).  I've recently gotten into Alexa and Google Assistant.  I find it fun, but also with some serious consequences.  I constantly game the algorithms in my news feeds and purposely will click on things to throw off AI trackers. i use duck-duck go for searching, and VPN's with changing locations to throw off harvesters and trackers.   But it's a losing game.  AI is now so ubiquitous and prevalent in our everyday lives that humans don't stand a chance.  Every location ( and almost every movement), every transaction, every search, every conversation and email, every text/twitter/instagram/FB posting is part of your DNA.  We are fast becoming cyborgs.   Elon Musk says we already are.    Our digital selves ( and decades of tracking/recordings of each of us) is way bigger than our physical selves. Here's a great conversation about AI by Elon Musk an...

in response to this growing social media trend of millenials dismissing gray hairs with the diminutive phrase 'OK Boomer'  I'd like to propose a counter 'OK Millenial'. Did we (boomers) know that the policies of the 80's and 90's would result in inequity, unaffordability and crippling student loan debt - heck no!  The government watchdogs were asleep at the wheel.  But these three big problems are nothing compared to what's coming (this was written before the COVID19 pandemic).   If the watchdogs were asleep at the wheel during the last 30 years, they have all but disappeared over the last 10 years.  Except for Europe.  European watchdogs have a different, more uplifting social agenda than USA capitalists.  European watchdogs have done way better on enforcing things like corporate transparency rules, utility microgrids, 'right-to-be'forgotten', data privacy, and now the right to repair issues.  Meanwhile USA watchdogs are allowing net ...

How do we bounce back from our collective COVID19 calamity?   How risk adverse are we?  It's about resilience, and mother Nature can teach of some lessons here. Its (nature's)  biomimicry process and strategies have proven over eons how to be more resilient.  After all she's done  10 43   experiments over her lifetime:    In a study on how quickly plants recover from storms, destruction etc., scientists were able to find some that did well, and others that didn't.    The orchid seems to have the best resilience, while the buttercup has none!   "The common spotted orchid does it largely by just bending the main stem," said Prof Scott Armbruster from the University of Portsmouth who led the research:  "It's pretty quick, within a day or two, it's reoriented its main stem so that now all the flowers are in the right position," he told BBC News.  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52204434 ---...