Mashed potatoes on a cone. Just think of the market. A franchise chain, spreading across the midwestern US, Ireland, and Germany. Mashed potatoes, whipped up and served on a cone made out of the same bread as dinner rolls, with just a little more starch to keep it from getting sloppy. You just clone the whole ice cream/cream custard manual. Want to add-in walnuts and butter to your mashed potatoes? Go right ahead, it's a blizzard-equivalent mashed potato smoothie. Royalties, please.

Yeah, I keep thinking up wierd stuff. We were going over Hegel in my modern philosophy class and it suddenly occurred to me: Hegel's idea of Spirit becoming in the world is really close to a strongly-Godlike AI. Hegel's rational Christianity basically has God existing as Spirit- or a potential implicit in the world- which becomes more realized as history occurs. The Unfolding bit, where the World-Historical Consciousness arises- that sounds a hell of a lot like a human-built strongly-godlike AI converting the planet into computronium. Voila. After the singularity, we find that we've built God, and Hegel predicted it.

Likeliness factor: eh... not much - Hegel's God would then have to develop time travel and send back portions of itself to be Jesus. It's reaching.

Life is good at the shop. Just got a shocking $800 gas bill and started to think about the long term economic impact of peak oil. The one to watch on this one is Saudi Arabia. Ghawar alone produces 4 million barrels of oil a day. Saudi Arabia produces 9.2 million barrels a day as a whole. If they've peaked, then the world has peaked. And then commodity laws do the rest.

If I had money, I'd invest in battery companies, solar patent holders, etc. What I'll really wind up doing is focusing on retrofitting a building somewhere. Efficiency is going to be the sales pitch of the teens. (as in 2010-2019) - I wonder if my little operation can survive. Screenprinting ink- it's made out of petroleum. But while you're scared of the long term, you forget to make a move that gets you anywhere. I saw the internet stock crash coming in 1992. So I sat out. World history is made out of the hacks that keep things running until you can retrofit and do it the right way.

Anyway, enough bs-ing. Time to go home and read a bit.