Electronic appliances have over-run our world.

Have you ever counted the number of these electronic contraptions and gadgets that you have in your home. Or thought to total up their cost, including the price you paid for those which have already gone to meet their maker because of built-in obsolescence. I know... the total is quite amazing in our home.

Just glance around your living or family rooms. How many HD TVs, wirelessly synchronized clocks, wireless earphones, cable TV set top boxes - which may include a hard drive recorder, of course a DVD player, a stereo system, computers, wireless phones, cell phones etc. etc. And of course there is the inevitable collection of chargers and remote controls. Why on earth could every appliance not use the same ones. (Oh yes, I do know about the universal remotes that you require an engineering degree to set up and operate). And how many computerized appurtenances do you have in your car. Under the hood there are so many mysteries - just ask Honda.

Dueling remotes

Then there are the wireless hotspots in coffee shops, airports and so many other communal gathering places, so that you need never lose contact with your friends. And they (whoever 'they' are) just keep adding to the social networking programs and web sites. I believe one of the latest of these, which appears to be exploding in popularity, is called 4 square. It seems to be able to instantly advise all of your friends, with one push of a button, that you have stopped in for a cup of coffee at a particular haunt, and you desperately hope they too will all immediately pop over there for a friendly chat, union meeting or game of high stakes poker.

I see that Apple just managed to sell 300,000 of its latest electronic wonder toys, the iPad, on its opening day, and possibly 3/4 of a million by the conclusion of their first weekend. At an average price north of $500 a pop, can you believe that represents sales in the 300 to 400 million dollar range, thanks to their superb hype machine... and that's about twice what the gurus had forecast.

No, I'm not going to rush out and buy an iPad as soon as they're released in Canada... but I am looking forward to my first iPhone, which unfortunately costs just as much, or even more.

Now how did you say I go about logging onto 4 square?

Label: Hi tech, low tech.

The eyes are the windows to the soul.

This quotation is from The Bible, Matthew 6:22-23, to be precise. And no, I have not recently attended church, or taken to secretly consulting the Good Book, I am sorry to say. My source for this information was Google, as usual.

Galileo and his telescope

But the eyes are the windows to so much more. Looking outwards through them, unless you have the misfortune to be visually impaired, you are able to perceive the world around you and everything in it. Both the good and the bad, the beauty and the uglyness. Thanks to the Hubble space telescope which circles the earth every 97 minutes, at some 8km per second, man's range of vision has expanded dramatically since the time Galileo first used his, then remarkable scope, to peer into the stars and galaxy around us.

                                                                                        Hubble's bigger and better one

Of course there are those who look into our eyes and know if we are telling the truth... or not. Perhaps judges and cops, husbands and wives, and poker players all fall into this category. Then there are these more ordinary mortals who can recognize whether we are happy or sad, frustrated, mad, satisfied, amazed, puzzled or whatever our feelings may be at that moment, just by glancing at our eyes... and unfortunately there are those insensitive clods who never notice, nor care about, the effect they are having on those around them. We could certainly all name a few of those folk, if we were only a little less sensitive and more outspoken ourselves.

As I write this, there is a question gradually forming in my own mind. Perhaps you can see it if you peer deeply into my eyes? Could blogging also be a window into the darker corners of a blogger's mind? My own for instance?

Be careful out there, it really is a dangerous world.

A Paperless World?

Will we live to see a paperless world? Certainly not in my lifetime, but who knows what the future may bring.

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, which he completed in 1440, was credited not only with a revolution in the production of books, but also with fostering the rapid development of the sciences, arts and religion through the publication of texts.

On the other hand, today many of the major newspapers and publishing houses are failing financially because their advertising revenues are being eroded, or books are being published by their electronic media competition. I, like quite a of my friends, no longer subscribe to printed newspapers, preferring to learn the news from TV or via the internet. And several people I know even purchase their books exclusively as electronic versions, to be read on such recent inventions as Kindles, Sony readers or I-pads.

Misty morning in the Pacific rain forest at Rathtrevor Park on Vancouver Island.

Strangely, despite the fact that many of the pulp mills in the province of British Columbia have ceased operation either temporarily or permanently, the worldwide consumption of pulp is actually increasing. World demand for paper and paper-board was expected to grow from 300 million tons annually in 1999 to over 420 million tons by the year 2010, or an average growth rate of 2.8% per annum.

Unfortunately for BC, although there are many factors to consider in attempting to crystal ball the economic future of this hitherto significant pulp and paper industry in our province, the trend today is for pulp production to increase in areas where the trees grow quickly. Woody material grows by an average of only 4 to 5 cubic meters per hectare annually in northern coniferous forests, but, for example in Brazil or Indonesia, the annual growth is ten times that. Theoretically, a small area of Brazil could meet the entire world’s pulp material needs today.

A paperless world... Well not in the near future, and possibly never, although never is a long long time.