I was watching a Discovery Channel show about how they make perfectly smooth telescope lenses for observatories, and as it turns out there is a technology like sand blasting, but instead of sand they use individual atoms. They didn't explain how this device actually functions, but they proved it darn well buy taking a single hair from the show host, putting it under an electron microscope, and proceeding to inscribe his name into the hair width-wise, quite neatly at that.

The first thought that hit my mind was that this sort of technology is only possible thanks to a massive division lf labour in industrialized workforces. Renissaince men aren't really around much these days, because technologies are so well-developed that to be innovative in any one field tends to require years upon years of training in that specific field.

In fact most of our famous recent technological leaps (e.g. steel, steam engines, aviation, combustion engines, computer chips, lightbulbs), weren't at all leaps but the products of numerous small-step developments, failed experiments, inventors you've never heard about, and lessons learned. Those history-book "eureka!" moments rarely happened.

Some famous and indispensible technologies, such as penicillin and vulcanization, were discovered entirely by accident; they were merely beneficial byproducts of failed experiments to do other things entirely.

Anyway. Speaking of atoms, my toothbrush cup fell off the toilet and shattered in the middle of the night. The bathroom window was closed (so no breeze), and it sat there motionless for hours upon hours before suddenly just falling and scaring the bejesus out of me at 3:30AM. But, I suppose it wasn't ever motionless. When I last threw my toothbrush into it yesterday evening, It must have started sliding toward the edge of the slightly-curved toilet top at a pace so slow that it took half the night to travel a millimeter or two.

This will be my last blog for some time. I'm going camping/hiking for 5 days starting tomorrow, followed by a week in China with only one day in between. I'll check in from China, and compose a big photo blog from the two trips when I come back on the 22nd.

So, UVic has an MA program for writing, that accepts people from non-writing disciplines. I'd have to come up with some sort of portfolio and mission statement, but it sure is a tempting idea because it would mean a post graduate degree rather than more undergraduate work. Does anyone think I could cut it was some sort of writing-type-person? Travel writing? Fiction? Dave Barry-style humor editorials about the soul-crushing mundanities of daily life and custom? Corporate catch phrases? Obituaries? Erotica? Hmmm, scratch the last one; I'd have to change the title of my website.