Draining and Storing Water to gain more Land?

What about draining water from the oceans and storing it elsewhere to gain more land? What about trapping water in the form of ice, for instance? But how could one practically do this?

(Microsoft Media)

Optimistically speaking, one might say, let's install something, much like water reservoirs for drinking water, that holds water as ice in huge blocks or mountains, icebergs, so that the oceans' water levels can drop.

Or let's secure the existing land-based ice masses of places like Antarctica and Greenland, and make these ice masses grow further by keeping them cold enough for rain to top them up. But then, what if the installations that freeze and hold all this frozen water together lose the energy to keep it all cold enough to remain solid?

That doesn't sound overly reassuring, or does it? Though the energy could in fact be taken from the sun via an array of solar panels. Yet still these, too, could fail, or couldn't they. Or could the whole system be so failsafe that it could never stop working in its entirety while the faulty parts are being attended to, repaired, maintained, overhauled? Enormous inundations would be the consequence of such a system failing completely.

(Microsoft Media)

Or what about digging enormous cavities and heaping up mountains with the soil and rock that has to be removed for this purpose? Surely, there's space somewhere for cavities and mountains, and if that is in the world's deserts, these mountains would be made of sand, oops.

If this worked, it would result in additional surface to do something with, such as growing vegetables and fruit, or to construct buildings, much like Singapore's and Hong Kong's land reclamations, and the huge hollow spaces could then store surplus water, which would have to be desalinated first, of course, and that could make the world's ocean levels fall. But is this feasible?

There's a bit of "lateral thinking". And this isn't the end of it. The six-thinking-hat approach gives us optimism, drive and creativity, but also the tool of cautious criticism, such as taking into consideration the desalinity point or the consistency of sand, in particular when it's heaped up...

(Microsoft Media)

And it's not the ultimate solution to work against climate change, though it may counter the rising sea levels to some extent, yet it won't do anything about the mess resulting from the changing climate such as a shift in climate zones, rising temperatures and stronger winds, the oceans' warming etc. And land gained from displacing seawater would be under constant threat from further melting ice in places that are not artificially cooled.

It's a complex scenario, but with a bit of creativity one might be able to get somewhere...

Fond of Microsoft

(Microsoft Media)

Peter still likes Microsoft. That was his statement in September 2012. He's been with them ever since the days of DOS 3.2, he stressed, and five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks, no hard-disk drive, 512 KB of basic and total memory. That was the hardware Microsoft software was running on at the time.

People younger than 25 will never even have heard of DOS 3.2, let alone of PCs with only 512 KB of memory. Really? And that worked? What could you do with it?

And people in their early thirties in 2012 were most likely too young at the time of DOS 3.2.Though, surprisingly, in the index of a book about Windows 7 , which Peter had been browsing through only the day before telling me, he had read that there was something for people who liked MS DOS, and he could hardly believe it and said he was keen to find out what this was as soon as he found some time.

(Microsoft Media)

Listening to Peter, I was wondering if it was the command-prompt icon that's been with Windows for so long or even more than that? A complete MS DOS 3.2 emulation? Peter will surely tell me in the fullness of time.

But for Peter, DOS 3.2 was the beginning, his entry into the computer age. And he's been following Microsoft through all its stages of software evolution, or one might be tempted to add "intelligent design" because in this case it is pretty certain that it wasn't just a sequence of coincidences, although outside influences to some extent, and mistakes and over-enthusiasm arising from within cannot be denied.

And Peter's  product loyalty also applies to Word and Excel; in the Windows 3.1 age Publisher came in too; and Access and PowerPoint came and went for Peter in waves of their usefulness to his professional ambitions.

(Microsoft Media)

But since 2006 Peter has remained stuck in the World of Windows XP and Office 2000, and Microsoft is probably not going to like this: Peter is still utterly pleased with Windows XP and content to have read the other day that it is still the world's most appreciated and most widespread operating system.

As far as Office 2000 is concerned, Peter said he wasn't so certain. How many people might still be using is; or rather, how many have got a more advanced Office level taken there have been quite a few upgrades since 2000? But as far as Peter is concerned: Office 2000 does everything he needs and more still, things and functions that he's never even heard of, let alone used.

His greatest secret that he confided in me was that he still had an ancient old office PC that kept running and running, a PC that he was once allowed to take home, because the thing had been fully depreciated and wasn't going to be used any longer, and that was still running on Windows 98. I was flabbergasted.

He couldn't go online with it any longer, he whispered, because Windows 98 wasn't supported any more by Microsoft (which came as no surprise to me), but it was so nice and cute, and he used it when he didn't need to go online, and he had Office 2000 running on it, too, and to balance out the missing Internet connection to look up things he didn't know, he had a CD-based encyclopaedia that worked fine on Windows 98.

(Microsoft Media)

He even let me know, top secret, that he still had a Windows 95 installation CD and that he would have installed that on the ancient PC if only, and that was it, that revealed the limit even for Peter, it supported USB ports. So that was one of Peter's minimum requirements. And even Peter had a mobile phone to be contacted, and even a touch-screen one. The two sides of Peter. I was amazed.

Peter just loves Windows XP (and Windows 98 a bit, too, one may assume), although he can surely imagine, he said, that Microsoft would appreciate it if he could at long last pull himself together and upgrade to Windows 7, now that this operating system, in late 2012, is already three years old and Windows 8 is about to be released, or has it already, Peter was wondering, since he'd read the other day that Mozilla was working at the adaptation of its Firefox browser to the new Windows-8 touch-screen environment.

(Microsoft Media)

So Peter bought himself a plain & simple guide to Windows 7, and that's also pretty much the title of the book, and, wait for this, it's by Microsoft Press, and to such a convinced devotee of so many years as Peter, that was just marvellous.

But knowing Peter, he might, though getting to know Windows 7 in such a nice, colourful and entertaining way, still end up being happy with the knowledge and hold out and keep working with Windows XP until the end of its extended life-cycle in April 2014.

Knowledge Opportunities

(Microsoft Media)

Here's a challenge. Nobody needs a university these days to acquire knowledge in order to just know and be a better neighbour or member of the community, or perhaps even to do something useful or interesting, or both, with that knowledge.

If it's not about science, technology and medicine (yes, well, to be honest, we might want a well-trained GP, not just one having read books on various medical subjects), studying, or let's just say "learning", that'll do, can be done even without having to do annoying assignments for some lecturer giving you a more or less lukewarm and frequently pointless comment and a result for an essay about somebody else's writing or story telling, or some events in history or current politics, some philosopher's remark...

(Microsoft Media)

If you are not too keen on waving about a diploma or degree, saying things like "hey, hey, I can add 'BA' to my name now, and you are happy with just the bare knowledge instead, use the media. There are many documentaries, not just sitcoms and soap operas. Use public libraries, there are many interesting books, not just novels.

Learn to form educated opinions just by reading, observing, thinking (twice, if necessary), listening, comparing. And don't just repeat what others say or write, think about it; if you find you agree after careful consideration, you can still choose to repeat something interesting and valuable you've read.

(Microsoft Media)

Even reading about science, technology and medicine - if you don't insist on becoming a surgeon or rocket scientist - can put you in a position to understand better what a GP or an engineer tells you or what a science documentary is ultimately about, and you can put it all in perspective. And you can even find mistakes or flaws in someone else's logic.

But you've got to use the opportunities that weren't available to previous generations. You owe it to yourself and to your contemporaries, and at times even to future generations.

Greek to all of us?

(Microsoft Media)

Democracy is a Greek word and concept. We all take it for granted and as understood, the rule by the people. The problem in antiquity, however, after the concept had come about and got its Greek brand name, was, alas, that though being much more direct than these days, the use and privilege of it was restricted to the rich Greek upper classes.

Not just about anyone could get his (yes, this, too, was another restriction: women were excluded) presidency, as we'd call it today, for one year before he got assessed on his performance. The neighbourhood baker, for instance, had no chance of ever being elected to be the top-decision maker for a year.

The downside for those who could manage Greek city-state affairs for such a period of time, though, was that when their performance was poor, they could be banned from even residing in the city for some years.

(Microsoft Media)

So, one might wonder if Greek democracy, antiquity style, wasn't more of an oligarchy. But maybe that was still a lot better than a monarchy, where the sole ruler is, more or less, the head of a more or less drastically managed cleptocracy.

All these Greek words. We might need a glossary, pardon my Greek, before we continue: demos basically means people, monos is just one, oligoi are a few, kratein means to rule and a cleptes is a thief. Giving just a single English meaning for every Greek word isn't always enough, nor is a single meaning in any language for every English word, but it'll do for now. So, let's think on.

Monarchies may in fact already in pre-historic times, when bad things didn't get written down yet, let alone video-recorded, have come about in the shape of something like a bullying bikie gang, and not necessarily along the lines of the often so academically proposed benevolent community elders.

(Microsoft Media)

Bikie gangs on horseback bullying villagers into submission, mafia style, and getting them to feed them and pay them a little extra for being left in peace, are a more realistic assumption when one looks at international news feeds and the history of just the last century or so; and perhaps occasionally the villagers also were privileged enough to get protected by the bikie gang against another one, but one would have been well-advised not to hold one's breath for this latter opportunity.

When would it have been best to live and work as the neighbourhood's baker?

Enforcing Peace

Neighbours can be a pain in the neck, and more often than not some of them force you to do something about them, of all people, whether you want it or not - and whether they want it or not. Peter's new neighbour, new for about six months at the time this happened and from whose perspective it was actually Peter to whom "new" would have to apply, was eager to ask him over for a drink after he'd been in the area for about a month.

(Microsoft Media)

Peter doesn't generally drink but he thought it might be a good idea to show neighbourly spirit, thinking it wouldn't happen all too often, anyway, and that there might be a reason of sorts, beyond the obvious of saying hello, which might as well have been done over the fence, for the invitation that could more or less easily be dealt with.

Here's to good neighbours, the man uttered after a while of small talk, in the understandable hope of not being bothered by Peter too much. Well, Peter thought, it looked pretty much as if he wasn't going to be bothered by his neighbour either, and the latter could have had this result as far as Peter was concerned anyway, even without a glass of beer.

Alas, the neighbour's dog, an aggressive and noisy little automaton, performing the same annoying antics over and over again, meaning deafeningly bark at just about anyone in Peter's garden at any given time of the day or night, as if at the press of a button, got in the way of good neighbourhood relations. When Peter asked his self-proclaimed "good neighbour" after a few days if he couldn't control his dog a bit since its behaviours was having a negative if not outright unhealthy effect on life on Peter's side of the fence, the neighbour self-importantly answered he couldn't do anything about it and that Peter was going to have to live with it.

(Microsoft Media)

What a good neighbour this is, Peter thought. Luckily, he knew what he could do about the situation and bought himself a dog chaser to pay the beast back until, necessarily and unavoidably bullied into submission already by Peter's very footsteps after a while, conditioned much like Pavlov's salivating dog, it stopped barking at him, preferred to run away at the mere sight of Peter, and finally also let him sleep at night.

Peter realised that the ultrasound a dog chaser emits was at least as painful to a dog as its barking was to him - or any other peace-loving fellow being. Sometimes, yes, peace has to be enforced, Peter concluded. And weren't there many parallels between micro- and macro-politics.

The Trouble of making a Warranty Claim

That's probably something you just have to do before you return anything to the shop where you bought it and claim warranty. The six-point powerboard came with a surge protector. Fine, basically, Peter thought. The surge-protect function works as long as the little LED lamp is on, most of them shining red as this one.

(Microsoft Media)

But the lamp on Peter's powerboard didn't shine any more, only about three weeks after he'd bought it. Something had to be wrong, Peter was certain of it. Before risking the attached computer in case of a power surge, he thought it wise to return the board to the shop where he'd got it, and ask for a replacement.

After he had pulled out all the plugs from it to conveniently pass by the shop on the way home from work, Peter subjected it to another test, just to be on the safe side since hardly anything is more embarrassing in a shop than a warranty claim for no apparent reason; for when the shop assistant tries it for himself and everything seems to be just fine, what is one to say, Peter mused. So he tried it once more himself. And it was just fine!

(Microsoft Media)

Oh, all right, he pondered. So it didn't look like he had to go and claim warranty after all. But he first wanted to try it yet once more on another power point. Still fine; then a third one, just to make sure. And there it didn't work. That was strange. Peter turned the power board off and then decided to try and see what happened when he turned it back on once again. And it worked. Off and on. It still worked.

Odd though it was, Peter took it and went back to the original power point, right next to the computer desk. It still worked there! Off and on. It still worked. Well, be that as it may, Peter thought, He'd just have to have an eye out for it in the coming days to see if it kept working. He couldn't possibly expect the shop assistant to attach too much meaning to his little story anyway, and a seemingly working powerboard won't generally convince anyone a warranty claim is justified.

Paying up

(Microsoft Media)

Charles was complaining the other day about the carbon tax, saying that he was sufficiently conscious of what he was doing and that he had for ages already been cautious about resources in general, so much so that he hated having to pay extra for the lack of concern displayed by others.

After all, he added, forcing people to adopt different habits wasn't a convincing approach from his point of view since that included wholesale everybody else willing to use their marbles even if they, admittedly, at times seemed to constitute a clear minority.

Instead the government might want to try and convince people via incentives, if appealing to most people's common sense wasn't going to help most of the time. Incentives could make some things cheaper for those who followed these common-sense approaches.

(Microsoft Media)

It was exasperating, Charles went on. It was just like for insurances, he added, where he had to pay more just because so many other people were behaving so foolishly, inconsiderately or even outright recklessly. They were smoking too much, eating too much, becoming aggressive in traffic situations, there were all sorts of reasons, he moaned, and expensive ones, that left insurance companies having to pay obscene amounts for the consequences of foolish behaviour.

And for all that he, Charles, had to foot the bills more than the insurance companies themselves who simply passed the buck and raked the dough back in from ALL of their members, he cried, by increasing the premiums time and again to replace what they had to fork out for so many of their members.

(Microsoft Media)

Peter found himself in not much of a position to help Charles out of this rut. In spite of seeing the point he was making, he couldn't present him with a quick-fix solution. He helped himself to another cup of coffee, uttered a furtive "oh dear, oh dear", and was happy enough about not being overweight.

On top of that he found comfort in coming in to work every day by bus, so that even on the occasional day that he was in a bad mood, he wasn't behind the steering wheel and couldn't cause much distress to others on the road; and last but not least Peter was content about not smoking - which brought with it his insurer's non-smoker tariff, after all, through which he hoped to have a somewhat lower premium, though he had so far never actually checked this out properly to be certain.

Nature, one way or another

(Microsoft Media)

The other afternoon, there was a pretty severe storm and one of the two pencil pines, hardly two metres tall and thin, as you'd expect, standing at the back of the garden, had given way to it. Or so it seemed. Naturally, Peter's wife immediately asked him to go and have a look. "But it's raining," Peter complained. Well, wait till there's a break and then go and have a look.

Ok, let's wait, and Peter hoped that the rain and storm weren't going to abate anytime soon, so he settled back into his chair and continued reading in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice hoping to find out how Elizabeth was going to react to Darcy's letter.

Suddenly, though, his wife announced a break in the pelting rain's pattern. Oh, blimey, Peter thought, oh well, let's go and have a look then for heaven's sake. When he opened the terrace door it was still raining, though somewhat less, and Peter began wondering what his wife might call it when the rain really stopped.

(Microsoft Media)

But he ventured through the raindrops anyway and arrived at the deplorable pencil pine in the farthest corner of the garden. Luckily, the stem wasn't broken, only bent over. Peter found it remarkable that a tree should be so flexible, but then, it's a pencil pine and they remain thin and flexible to a certain extent, at least for as long as they aren't considerably taller than Peter himself.

After Peter had realised that he could easily put the pine straight up again since there was still a strong wooden staff standing beside it and that the string that had previously held the pine to it had simply become loose, he tied everything back together, pressed the soil around the staff tight and went back inside, just, however, to find his wife asking him why he hadn't brought the three lemons that were lying under the lemon tree, and if he couldn't also bring along some parsley while he was down there anyway.

The Thing about Weeds

(Microsoft Media)

Bruce had been wondering for a while whether it wouldn't be better to stop trying to get rid of weeds altogether.

When he had a closer look, therefore, at some of them last Sunday, out in the backyard, where his wife had sent him to do some weeding, and where he spotted every so many new islands of unasked-for green, he noticed that some of the so-called weeds actually had pretty little flowers, light violet ones for instance in one case.

Agreed, he told his wife when she joined him noticing from the kitchen window that he was just standing about without doing anything much, onions weeds are a nuisance, but then again, it's also a nuisance to keep having to rip them out.

He knew it was going to be hard convincing her that a change of attitude towards weeds might not be such a bad idea after all. It might even be a form of lateral thinking. Look, if you cannot efficiently get rid of weeds, turn them into a feature, or at least some of them.

(Microsoft Media)

And the "some of them" bit was exactly the point. If some of them have got nice flowers, why not just rip out the ugly ones and leave more space to fill for the prettier ones. They'll then take over all the space where we ripped out the ugly ones, fast as they, too, grow. And then we'll never have to spray herbicides that aren't good for the environment anyway, and costly on top of that. And we can skip thinking about regularly weeding the garden, too.

Besides, the prettier weeds are low-maintenance plants, in a way, aren't they, love? They pretty much look after themselves and need little care and attention, or water for that matter, and you can forget about the fertiliser, too. They'll be just fine.

(Microsoft Media)

On top of that you'll turn the garden into a nice Mediterranean paradise almost automatically, and without any particular effort or the need to buy or order new plants. The line between weeds and herbs is a blurred kind of field anyway. And, yes, there really are lovely weeds. Just look at them.

By the time he had finished painting his paradise of a garden in the most colourful of words he realised that his wife had gone back inside and that he had been left talking to himself. He was wondering, though, if she was having another look at that book she had order the other day: the little-water, low-maintenance garden, or something along those lines.

The Difficulty of Thinking bigger

Perhaps people should at last make a real effort to think bigger, I mean, all of us, Peter told George in a pondering kind of way during their lunch break. If we all kept our views and interests to ourselves wherever necessary, i.e. when we notice that someone else isn't really interested, and this happens more often than not, then we'd avoid difficulties between one another forever and a day.

(Microsoft Media)

This applies to ideologies of all sorts, he added. If someone else wants to hear about them, fine, but may the narrator keep from being overbearing. If others don't, that should be fine, too. Accepting this would mean real tolerance, wouldn't it?

Maybe we should even all settle for one world language and speak our own native or favourite-for-whatever-other-reason languages at home or amongst our closest friends who share it, which is to say we shouldn't restrict our understanding of friend to common languages.

So what's the problem with humanity? There are the incurable bullies, for one; there are the people who enjoy controlling and dominating others, for another; there are people who are simply too aggressive for various reasons, there are all sorts of damaging characteristics out there, Peter shouted, that one could endlessly go on about.

George sighted assuming Peter had again witnessed something on his way to work in his train compartment in the morning. George didn't sigh for Peter telling him, he genuinely sighed out of compassion, and for knowing all too well that there was too much unnecessary trouble around.

(Microsoft Media)

The problem is, he said, it often starts already with an inconsiderate neighbour and his aggressive dog that barks at just about anything, for the most part for no particular reason other than its own aggressiveness.

And when you kindly ask the neighbour to be more mindful of others, George added raising his voice which told Peter that this was about George's own experience, and to do something about the nuisance or even a potential risk to others, and the answer you get is "I can't do anything about it, you've got to live with it.", then that's it again, and you will find yourself compelled to do something about the problem on your own accord.

Doesn't this tell you once more, it is very unlikely the bigger problems, most of them man-made, will ever be solved? And doesn't that also keep holding you down and preventing you from getting up in the morning full of vim, thinking big by default?

I don't know, replied Peter despondently. You tell me where this is going to end.... We've come this far and we're still the ancient old stone-age people, aren't' we....