And the clock ticks one second closer to midnight.

I have come to the subtle realization recently that the clock is moving forward despite everyone's best intentions.

Why does the Christian right in the U.S. Love war? Why are Putin and Medvedev playing this very deadly game? The two scariest things in the world right now are the fact that a full 1/3 of the American population believe a myth.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-untruth epically when that lie is used to control your sex life and tell you that you will never be good enough. We deserve better than that kind of insecurity. The tenants of all faiths have the golden rule in some shape or form.

I cannot but help be reminded after watching Jesus Camp that indoctrination happens everywhere all the time, as a matter of fact. In western societies we often forget to indoctrinate our kids with the best of ourselves, i mean I figure that's the goal of having kids in the first place right?

Yet right below us in the bible belt there are people teaching right wing evangelists that it's ok to kill for god. I have tons of issues with that; for starters it's a hypocracy.

I've said it many times; the central hypocracy of the christian faith is that if you talk to god it's called prayer, if god talks to you it's called schitzophrenia.

Our legal system is designed to have mercy on the mentally ill as we cannot understand what it's like to be told by a deity to kill somone; thus we have Jail and Mental Institutions.

Islam was once great, the highest achievement of Islam in the old middle east was the translataion of Greek and Roman works into the Vernacular (Saxxon, Norman...) This was done becasue these cities had massive libraries; like byzantium and constantinople.

The interesteing side effect of this was the renicence; where church and state began to seperate and people began to really think for themselfs. The age of reason rozenkrantz called it but again I'm pretty sure god spoke to him.

At one point we wared over religion, now it's over raw resources; religious diffrences simply make it ok.

We are hypocrites, we critisize the russians for pissing on georgia for rights to build pipelines to europe so they can bully the europeans some more. Yet we say nothing to the american take over of Iraq. WMD's or none Hussien was between a rock and a hard place; stating he had none but making the world think he had some to prevent the Iranians from invading; or the kurds from rioting & looting.

On to my next question, the war of Ideology. We exist in a world polarized by confilict; it's one of the most peaceful times in human history. Africa is still in turmoil with no forseeable end; we have the U.K. with BP in nigeria; China in Rawanda for the exact same reason, human rights violations all over the globe and for what?

Russian ideoligy has changed; it was and now isin't pro west let's get paid, since they've gotten paid we demonize them for helping the really poor parts of break away states; Now that they have economic power they are a worrysome foe for all the break away states that have little to no economic stability.

Chinese ideology is the epitome of a fascist capitolist nation with the paradigm of socialisam, they don't care about thier neibours so much but they do care about natural resources.

The americans? well we all know that they care about oil more than human rights, but the judeo christian war on Islam is just getting started, and with 100 million christians trained not to question authority this is a scary place to be.

So who's going to wake up and tell these people that they can make these consumeables at less than cost? Oil can be made with sunlight and life; phytoplankton and algae specifically strains of Bracthaterius Brauni; I mean I love T Boons Pickens; however I plan to help make his investments obsolete, they are a good interim solution, but not a complete one.

The middle powers on this globe are pro west and most of them are NATO members. What scares me is the russian forign policy of pre-emptive attacks that may include nuclear weapons on forign states that don't fall in line.

I once heard a Lecture by a forign minister under Gorbechev; Sergey Zaitsev, he stated: Canada is lucky as they have only one neibour and you both get along, Russia has 24 and they hate eachother.

So These break away states are becomming pro west and pro nato out of self preservation more than anything else. As NATO member states if russia tries to help them with any bandits or peace keeping missions they risk global conflict. If Poland, the Ukraine Georga and others become NATO members will nato be able to meet an all out industrialized war with russia?

The clock has ticked one second closer to midnight and have we even noticed? A man once stated he had the ultimate soltuion. Look where that got us? Now the ideological debate is over, it's been 50 odd years of cold war and the Impearial historic views of russia have changed yet the current administration wishes to re-kindle that era; or somthing akin to it.

The problem as Ronald Wright framed it is that we have developed fire powerful enough kill us all. Oppenhimers brainchild threatens us all so now what?

The only awnser is self sufficency on a national scale. Canada is right next to russia, we have two neibours and they aren't getting along, and we don't have the forces to defend ourselfs, espically against a reborn superpower.

So what now?

Hazzah!

Oh my dear; I've found it a Cheap windmill. Oddly enough there's a lot of irony to be had by purchasing "Green" technology made in China, due to the complete lack of environmental regulation chances are whatever windmill or solar cell you may be considering to purchase was probably made there. Don't believe me? I dare you not to believe me.



So me being the semi-anarchistic down with the man with his hands in my pockets kind of guy would like to build my home out of recycled shipping containers. That means i have to find a local source for these things; the closest major port to my home town is Montreal and I can get 40 ft High-Cubes sent over for around 3000 each used. That's around 350 sq feet of living space ($8.50 / sq foot) with an unfinished 9'6" ceiling. So I could buy 4 and lay a foundation for them and then get a whole bunch of industrial building materials including crazy insulation; more on those here:



Container Bay



Now it's called sustainable living, since I cannot find a tire dump anywhere near by; Automobile tires must be recycled by law! Dumps will actually give you money to take them away and once filled with around 16KG of dirt each they tend to make very good walls after a light coating of concrete, not to mention in glass and mass designs you end up with a 3' thermal mass, in terms of solar heating that's about a weeks worth of heat. But I digress this posting is about the irony of Chinese wind mills being sold to Americans under an American branding. Obviously you lay the filled tires like interlocking brick.



Here's the Raw Jiggy:



Water Treatment, power distribution, heat generation all in one place, brilliant idea and the company is in Mississauga:

Eco Nomad



Now it's all nice and good to have a home with in floor radiant heat with bamboo flooring and Italian and German kitchens and baths and lot's of large solar windows with furniture that was made in an environmentally friendly manner however without power what good is it?



We forget that most things in this country are made in China even if they are branded here. Here's the excellent example:



Bergey Wind Power is probably one of the most if not the most successful supplier of 5Kw and 10Kw windmills. The windmill by itself from them directly (the 10Kw is actually a 7.5Kw) is around 10K; that's roughly $1.33 per Kw, not including the requierd Tower to mount the thing you'll want at least 18M to 20M so another $5K to $10K there. So a 10Kw windmill made in the USA for 20K all told puts the cost of that KW of production even higher.



Bergey Wind Power



Now, enter China Best; they are a portal with lots of good engrish! I love engrish; it makes me laugh.

China best Wind Power

Now they sell a 20Kw windmill with an 18M STEEL MONOPOLE TOWER for around a $1 / KW. I'm in sheer amazement, I'm assuming slave labor, the killing of small tracts of land via coal based steel production somewhere in mainland china and the raping and pillaging of some other small African country is involved (re Darfour) in the completely low low price. Or maybe they just have really really really cheap labor. Note the 5Kw looks a lot like the Bergey.



As for Batteries and control:

Outback Power is the world leader in the design and sales of Charger / Inverter / Controllers. These systems allow you to take your windmill and or solar panels and connect them to a battery bank since it's not always windy or sunny.

Outbackpower



As for batteries when dealing with backup power deep cycle lead acid gel packed batteries are what are required. The technology was originally developed for Diesel electric submarines during WWII, then utilized by the Telecommunication industry as a means to maintain ring voltages on lines only recently removed the legacy of which is a -48V power standard.

Again China to the rescue:

BSB Power's GEL Plus2-2000

This thing is a 2V 2000Ah battery with a service life of 15 years. At $500 each one could build a 2000Ah battery bank for 12K + shipping. Hell they even sent me wiring diagrams.



So all told freedom from the grid may be had for around 45K, since I'm hoping to save that much or more on building materials my home will still cost around $120 per sq. ft however my utility bill will be replaced with a cheque and I'll have enough power to have at least two racks of computer equipment on site. Now if I could just find a cheap rural optical provider I'd be set, then again "Cheap" and "Optical" never reside in the same sentence.



Well I guess once i have a fusion reactor on site I can simply use Boron and Hydrogen but that's at least a Decade away.

I've signed my life away.

Well From a provisional acceptance to a formal one:

Here's the confirmation e-mail I received today.

=====================================================================================
Dear Prospective Student,

Congratulations! I am pleased to announce your provisional acceptance into the Master of Science in Information Technology program of The University of Liverpool. Under the acceptance conditions that the University of Liverpool has put forth, you will be accepted unconditionally upon the completion of two modules.

Upon the receipt of this letter, please take the time to review if your registration process has been completed. Only when completed will you become a registered student of the University of Liverpool and allowed to begin the program.

1. Admission fee paid.

2. Student agreement signed and returned.

3. Arrangement of tuition fees in accordance with your signed student agreement.

If you have any concerns and/or questions regarding payment or completion of the above, please do not hesitate to contact your Enrolment Advisor or the Finance Department at finance@ohecampus.com

Sincerely,


Iris Effendi (B.Ed, Dip Teach)
Admissions Coordinator

=====================================================================================

Looks like I'm going to get a masters after all. Now for the real fun, the hard work and toil.

It's about that time again.

Oh displaying my ego online, pontifications on a note of somewhat mute stance? So, as of Today I have completed my Advanced Diploma in Computing from Oxford University. which was enough to get me into a Masters Program at the University of Liverpool. That's right what normally takes 6 to 8 years here takes only 3 in the United Kingdom, well they did pretty much invent the modern university standards used by most if not all north American schools. Which all in all makes me question the Merit of our Canadian Educational System on a whole. You see for those few of you that actually read this already know; I never finished high school, High school and me never got along that and teachers don't like bieng told they are wrong :D; not because I was not intelligent enough but because I was lazy, plain and simple. Mind you I had my share of excuses but an unstable home environment would be the primary cause of my litany of failures as a student.

This notion that I must have finished high school to further my education kept me from entering both university and college. I completed my GED with Algonquin in 2002. At the time all programs wanted me to enroll full time for an extra year, The only university in Canada that would recognize my work and experience in Information Technology was Western and even then they wanted full course prices for any credit given in an equivalency manner. I applied to Algonquin in 2002 they lost my application, and I gave up. I was looking at it and everywhere I looked we required 4 years for anything of merit (3 years for a Bachelor of Science with 1 for Honors).

Now the Program from Oxford is designed to catch people like me and teach us Systems and Requirements Engineering; very useful for my field since I act as a project manager half the time anyway, that and the evolving software market will have us outsourcing any work of value anyhow. 1 year and $5300 later (did I mention they might even buy my plane ticket to the awards ceremony in March?) and they give me a 60 Credit Equivalent 3rd year diploma from one of the Oldest institutions on the planet. I can't find anything even remotely that good here.

Now as for Masters applications, having experienced University of Phoenix's crap before for all of six months I decided that this time I'm going with Reputation, I want first class paper since it's going to be expensive in the first place. Within our program at Oxford the Tutor's MADE the course, as in not only did they make the projects and assignments but they also helped us in selecting our places of higher education thereafter. It's too bad Oxford does not have an online masters program, So I applied to University of Hartford (one of the best polytechnics in the U.K.)and the University of Liverpool. Since these were the only two major online programs available to me.

Here's the funny part, the University of Hartford wanted me to do a Bsc in Compsci before going into my MSc, that's an extra year so all told a 3 year program to the tune of $22K. (MSc is 12K+Bsc is another $10K). They still have not gotten back to me on my application, as it's august and everyone and their dog is on vacation.

Around the same time I was contacted by Admissions from the University of Liverpool. They had an exclusive application representative work with me, which was nice. Here I am trying to create my admissions and here is what sounds like someone with TONS of sales experience helping me apply. Needeless to say I have been accepted for my Masters studies at the Unversity of Liverpool, I sent all the same information to both institutions, Liverpool not only accepted me but is also way more expensive. ($30K CDN).

On a side Note I did make an informal application to the Queens Cambridge Executive MBa program offered here in Ottawa, they accepted me even before I completed my Advanced Diploma however their cost was way out to lunch ($73K). Upon recounting this story to a good family friend and retired school teacher he asked "How can they justify that cost for a one year program?" I currently know one person enrolled in that program whom is receiving federal sponsorship as he is employed at the c-level in the public sector he has stated that it's a "World Class MBa". Which makes me believe that our civil servants get way too much for tuition money, but I digress.

So for 36K all told I'll have a masters in Information Technology Security, I'm hoping to do an MBa as well. I figure I'll be able to put the following letters on my card "Adipl. MSc ITS. MBa. ...(insert certifications here)" Not that I'm a fan of showmanship but when I expect to charge in excess of $100 / hr for my services I want my clients to know what they are getting.

I still refuse to use it as a signature for my e-mail on principal, hell I don't even include my certs in e-mail now for a good reason, I like to engage my cohorts in an even playing field manner to allow their opinions to come out unabated so I may utilize them in consideration of all factors when looking for solutions.

So back to my point. Education in this country is overpriced, under-subsidized and not as competitive as other places in Europe like say France or the U.K. but why is that? These are the countries that the largest portion of Canada's population descended from, as a result do we feel that University should take 4 years? what's the principal? Is it an institution of higher learning or another method to babysit our teens as they mature?

We have first rate arts and sciences programs, however our engineering is world renowned with schools like Waterloo garnering fame from companies like RIM. Hell Carleton named their school after a man whom is one of the best Hedge fund managers in North America. yet the MBa there is only 10K.

Schools are cheaper for local students the U.K. Numbers above are for myself as a foreign student. Which brings me to my point;

Since when did education here take such a turn as to become non-competitive with other global middle power economies? It was unaccessable for me as an individual unless I had corporate sponsorship and even then why should my employer or business fork over close to $100K for time spent at the feet of those in business?

Like Mr. O'leary states "What about the Money?" the payback for any investment to be considered feasible is two years. I can afford $30K over 3 years, i cannot afford $73K over five. and I am in a middle upper class income bracket with corporate sponsorship. Even then I can barely grow my business with things the way they are now. So I am off to a cheap school that's been around for over 100 years, then maybe I'll hit up Carleton for an MBa after submitting my Dissertation for a Phd. to a few hundred non local institutions. The reson for that is so i can teach what I have learned. The reason for the MBa is so that I am taken seriously by my peers when I put forward my ideas that require funding.