One report recently flickering across my screen suggested that the energy bill to light up Las Vegas runs about $1,000,000 year. I have been there so I would not argue with that figure. And with the daily take, they probably pay in advance to ensure the best service with no outages.

When Thomas Edison invented the incandescent lamp on October 21,1879, the world and our view of energy changed dramatically. The working day lengthened, as people could work around the clock. (Clocks were round then, you see!) That started nurses, streetcar conductors, train engineers, steamboat captains, restaurant workers, and other workers moving into extended hours, which in turn extended useable leisure time and eventually kick-started showbiz -- the movies, radio, and soon television. And now the Net.

The energy business blossomed around the world. Major cities turned on their lights. Standard light bulbs turned into various shapes, neon lighting became popular for commercial establishments, and bridges, buildings, ships at sea, and even the Giza pyramids, began putting on light-and-sound shows. All at considerable cost.

With fibre-optic lighting, a whole new field is rapidly opening up, and is saving electricity instead of consuming even more. Monk McQueen's waterfront restaurant in Vancouver is outlined with 300 metres (1,000 feet) of Ultratec fibre-optic lighting. This much neon lighting from another era would have required 5,000 watts of power. In fibre-optics, only 750 watts are required. If you have ever owned a car near a coastline, you know what the words "hostile environment" can mean. Instant rust! Copper cable rusts. Even aluminum cable oxidizes. Fibre-optic cable does not rust, corrode, or oxidize, and maintenance is minimal. Initial cost is about six to eight times higher, so use is limited to big business. But it will not be long before economies of scale and diminishing production costs bring fibre-optics into the average household.

In Japan, himiwari are appearing on some roofs. (The word is Japanese for "sunflower.") The device looks like a large satellite dish inside a plastic enclosure which contains fresnel lenses that collect and intensify the sun's rays. The rays are then piped down into buildings. On the way, they undergo a "light-shift" which remove the harmful ultraviolet rays that burn people and tomatoes. The infrared beams are extracted and used to heat the building. Then fibre-optic cable containing pure light is run close to growing plants -- and vro-o-o-m! Plants love it. The fibre-optic cables illuminate rooms and provide decorative strip lighting. No electricity is used here, so there is little chance of fire. There are lower insurance rates too. In some installations, accompanying solar panels and/or other himiwari units load up batteries during the day so that energy can be converted at night into artificial light diverted down the fibre optic channel. No electricity is required here except for the low voltage (safely contained in a electricity-to-light switching station on the roof) to feed the fibre-optic cable running into the building.

B.L. Innovative Lighting of Vancouver, which supplied materials for the Monk McQueen installation, says that a single 150-watt metal halide light with 10 fibres connected to 10 light fixtures will provide as much light as 1,000 watts of conventional lighting. Only one bulb is required. The lighting retrofit market stands to take a huge leap during the next few years, as further developments of fibre-optic lighting replace earlier methods of extending man's working hours and making artificial light more like natural light. With colour-wheel control, varying colours can be directed around any installation for added effect.

Thomas Edison would have been pleased -- and his face would have lit up!

My first introduction to quicksand and the whole scientific theory about liquefaction occurred after a chance encounter with a French geologist working near Port au Prince, Haiti, in 1973. He immediately caught my attention when he mentioned that Richmond, British Columbia, was the best place not to be, if a substantial earthquake struck the West Coast. It seems that glacial till (finely ground rock dust residue) from all those mountains lining the Fraser and Thompson Rivers (the rivers merge at Lytton, B.C.) has been pouring into the delta area, now the city of Richmond, at the mouth of the Fraser, since time began.

Lots of rock dust mixed with sand and larger pebbles do not forever firm ground make. The danger is that when, not that it is always when, never if -- an earthquake Point 7 higher on the Richter Scale hits, the rolling action continues through sandy soil, like that in the Richmond delta, water penetrates the sand, and the whole mess turns into a colloidal suspension. Anything heavier than the specific gravity of saltwater sinks. It does not happen immediately. Home owners will have time to watch if they can find solid ground somewhere to use as a viewing platform.

If you question the above, conduct your own test. These are not my words, but those of Karl Kruszelnecki, an Australian writer who specializes in the strange but true. "Put a hose in a bucket, fill the bucket with sand, put a heavy object on top, then turn the water on. Instant quicksand -- and a helluva way to go."

In an article in the New Scientist, Kruszelnicki tracked historical events to find what was behind the "strange-but-true" legends of the past. One example happened almost 112,000 days ago in Port Royal, Jamaica. (That is only 305 years ago.)

It was Tuesday, June 7,1692, when the earthquake struck. Given the superstition of the day, that seemed strange and unearthly. The town sank beneath the sea, and it is still there today. It is a great tourist attraction. Yet examined from the science of today, with our detailed knowledge of geology, the town did not move. It was swallowed up by sand, according to George, R. Clark of Kansas State University. It was the underwater reverse of Pompeii after the volcano.

Port Royal, touted by town boosters as "the richest and wickedest city in the New World," was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It certainly was in the wrong place. Located at the very end of a sandy spit 16 kilometres (10 miles) long, the town was designed for sinking. In this way it is Richmond's sister city.

Two thousand lives were lost after the Port Royal earthquake. The earthquake may have occurred some time ago, but it took place in only a short period of time -- six minutes. The buildings did not collapse and fall over, as usually happens during an earthquake on solid land. In Port Royal, the buildings went straight down. Bricks and mortar have a specific gravity far heavier a colloidal suspension of salt water and fine sand.

If you are intrigued by quicksand, remember the specific gravity of humans is just under 1, while water is 1. That is why humans float. We float better in salt water, with a specific gravity of 1.02. We float best of all in the Dead Sea. Quicksand is not all bad. Quicksand has a 1.6 density, so floating, not struggling, is possible. You have to know the neighborhood. Where quicksand is concerned, it is wise to remember the real estate mantra: location, location, location.

Your local beach, sandspit. or sandbar can also perform like quicksand under certain conditions. Park your car and leave it overnight and you may wish you had not. A storm forcing water higher up the beach and through the sand under your car could provide similar but smaller conditions to an earthquake. Here is where a knowledge of physics may save your life.

Does your insurance cover "eaten by sand"? Perhaps you had better check.

Way back in the 1980s, big was beautiful. Big factories, big government, big labour, big business, big buildings. Today the first of the new factories-in-a-box production methods allow a home basement to produce like a factory. Big government is already entering the throes of shrinking faster than shirt collars. Unions in America are down to 16 percent of the work force and have lost hundreds of thousands of members as industries move to right-to-work states which out-compete similar plants in other highly restricted locations. In America, the land that created the skyscraper, there is currently not one 31-storey or higher building under construction.

Success in the Communications Age does not depend on larger size. With continual shrinking in physical size of micro-processors -- by 50 percent every two years -- and with their abilities to perform double in the same period, the trend of the past to bigger things is reversing. Massive investment in land, in concrete-and-brick buildings, and in increasingly high-cost and bulky equipment to locate in such factories is diminishing dramatically. The large labour pools needed on assembly lines have vanished. Yesterday is over the horizon. If you are there, you are in the wrong neighbourhood.

But if we feel uncomfortable and can see and understand how everything has changed, and that we require new skills and new understanding, half our fears will vanish. Try to stay uncomfortable -- that way you will realize that you are still learning something new everyday. As soon as you start to feel comfortable, quit. Before you are again seduced into thinking you have found the new "soft life," it will be gone.

Every day learn something new. It really does not matter what it is other than the fact that it must be something different. Let horizons widen beyond belief. Today's opportunities were all unknown yesterday. So some of those things that seemed useless suddenly becomes valuable. Remember the nerd-to-king phenomenon? His name is Bill Gates. Can you imagine the parents of young daughters who barely yesterday would not let their offspring associate with such a nerd?

Look at some venture capital newsletters. Where do these gamblers on the future find their 5O-to-one shots, where 50 investments of $1,000 can turn into 200-to-one returns? They find it with the 10 out of 50 startups that make it big. They can afford to lose out on 40 that fail or merely break even year after year. Yet where do many who continually complain about governments not taxing business enough place their investments? In lottery tickets. Horse racing is more honest. At least the track shows honestly the odds of winning. Lottery winnings even exempt the lone winner from normal income taxes, while they heavily tax the lower-income worker to make up for the tax governments missed out on with that sole winner. Better to make a donation to charity. At least you can get a tax receipt that is deductible from your income.

Who are making it now, when 40 percent of North Americans are sliding into the land of the technopeasant? Those who have learned, not been taught, something they did not know a year ago -- and who continue learning today something they did not know yesterday. Tiny companies, with 10 or fewer employees (usually partners, shareholders or stock-optioned employees), are creating production outputs valued over $5 million. That amounts to an average $500,000 per worker. With that high value and the accompanying high-profit margin, annual pay-offs of $100,000 per worker are no burden. Labour costs (10 x $100,000) then only total $1 million of the $5 million produced. Material costs in the new regime, even with the added expense of the latest technology, still usually would not exceed another million. That leaves the small company with $3 million for other relatively minor expenses, plus a sizable profit. It is a new game. And in many cases it can be operated from home.

Restructure your head. The future is complex, yes. But the new tools (even a second-hand computer with a modem) can be obtained for $300. Tools today are not a drill, electrical saw, punch-press, or jack-hammer. They are -- the so-called hardware at least -- mainly machines that do not contain parts that wear out. In a computer, only the keyboard has mechanical parts. Yes, they do need upgrading regularly to stay on the cutting edge. But that's where the big bucks wait. Spend for it, you can afford it then.

Go for it. Small is more beautiful than ever.