|
|
I like to think of myself as logical. I like to look at the facts and make up my own mind based on what I see and now. This can then be discussed and if new facts or viewpoints are raised then I can even change my opinion on something. It’s a nice logical approach and has worked pretty well for me in work and at home although with personal issues logic can sometime drop out of the window.
We are illogical creatures and imperfect but that is OK because it makes us what we are. Who wants to be completely logical in everything we do? It makes us help others and brings out the good in us. I hope we never evolve to a stage where we have no emotions at all and everything we do is based on logic. We would quickly become like the Borg. Human ants with no compassion, pity or desire to do anything beyond what we logically decide is our purpose. However, logic is unlikely to give us a real purpose in life.
Anyway, the way we are has been the way we have been for a long time. Only we have become more intelligent, more compassionate, adaptable and innovative. That has allowed us to move away from subsistence farming and hunting just to live to the society we have now where most of us do not work just to feed ourselves and many jobs are actually not necessary but luxury. Which is why when money is tight we stop buying luxury goods but still have to buy necessities.
All in all we are at near the highest point of our progress so far. I’m not calling it the peak as I firmly believe we have a long way to go and I believe we have dipped from the high we had a few years ago. The whole world seems to be going to pot and rational people are now talking about revolution. Not the Citizen Smith youngsters who want, want, want without putting anything in but Patriots and followers of Truth and Justice who are the ones talking. People like those who were around in 1775. So why is this? Well, it may not surprise you to find that I have a theory.
In my opinion the problem can be summed up in one word – Government.
It doesn’t matter what type of government it is, all over the planet we are all facing the same issues. Personally, I thought the US one was one of the best but as we can see it is not immune to the influence of the cancer within. A small cancer, in the UK it infects a couple of thousand people. These people are politicians. For the small number of them they cause damage far beyond what each could do individually. Every aspect of your and your countrymen’s lives are touched by them and destruction follows. If you think about it everything that is wrong with society over the last 30 years has been caused by government. Yet, what have the done that is positive? Nothing I can think of.
Just look at what is happening from the front page of BBC News;
Courts get Booze ASBO powers
Prison food better than hospital food.
Power station invasion planned
Lesbians given equal birth rights
Man shot dead outside nightclub
The 100W bulb bows out.
Wife murderer jailed for life.
Fuel duty to rise from midnight
Almost all of those things have been dictated by the government. Why do they have their cancerous fingers into everything? The man shot dead outside nightclub clearly is actual news. News that I actually feel is indirectly caused by the government due to its namby pamby attitude to self defence and justice. Plod will catch the killer and they will serve time. Not life as it implies but life as in a minimum of 15 years or so like the wife murderer.
Think of anything wrong about this country and our government has its cancerous fingers in the pie;
Children being regularly murdered by their parents.
Benefits of a social system that encourages unwanted children.
Criminals not being punished for their crimes.
Benefits of a Justice system that believes that all criminal activity is a result of society and should not be punished and a target driven police force where more points are given for minor crimes than serious crimes.
Sky high taxes and confiscation of resources.
Benefits of a social system that takes money from productive members of society and gives it freely to unproductive people.
Surveillance society
Benefits of a society where the subjects need to be monitored to make sure they are all paying as much tax as they can and can be traced when necessary for the security of the state.
Abysmal transport system
Benefits of policies that take the tax for the roads and spend them on social programmes stopping the roads keeping up to requirements. Public transport that doesn’t go where needed when needed at a reasonable cost because it is run by politicians.
Expensive and inadequate housing
Benefits of a social policy that stops people building on their own land and dictates what needs to be built to suit social policy rather than what the market needs.
The list goes on and on. I can’t think of a single thing that can’t be traced back to some mickey mouse policy by politicians. There may be some out there but I bet they are few and far between.
The root cause of our failing society is clearly government itself. I’m actually wondering if it was ever any good for us. I don’t see any evidence for that in any history. All it does is interfere and take. So think of a issue that is in our society and then it won’t take long to see the governments fingerprints all over it.
We need smaller government, almost non existent government, down to the local level, we need to get rid of professional politicians and we need to reduce our laws down to the bare minimum and enforce them rigorously. However, it won’t just happen overnight. We need a long term plan, we need to break it into short but feasible steps and we need to start with the easy stuff. Our political parties are not going to do it. It’s like asking turkeys to organise Christmas. It will never happen.
Unless we make it so. I’m sharpening my spork as we speak.
I’m not a big fan of movies that use time travel as a key component of the plot. It makes my brain hurt, a simple process, going through all the options and considering the results, if, if, if…… With time travel part of the equation you can justify anything and yet at the same time prove it can’t be so. Aargh.
Now I come across this article on quantum mechanics which is doing the same thing. The article says that ‘we may live in a world in which windows un-break and cold cups of coffee spontaneously heat up’ It is explained by quantum entanglement but goes against every bit of logic and science that I now of. It even has a nice little twist of erasing your memory so you never remember the episodes. Now I’m sure that if a cold cup of coffee heated upon a regular basis, even if our memories are wiped we would have a big queue at hospitals where people were in for scalding or if windows repaired themselves we would have a lot of pissed off glaziers who had been called out for nothing. I just find it too far fetched to believe. Like God we are expected to take a leap of faith and accept this as fact.
Apparently this has been proved mathematically but when you get down to this level very few understand the math and it is easy to prove anything. Luckily though his maths managed to erase your memory as well so you don’t remember it. I think this guy is in the wrong field, there must be room in the climate change camp for someone like this. He can mathematically prove that the temperatures at the monitoring stations spontaneously increased, our memories have been erased but the readings were recorded electronically and quantum entanglement is not yet aware it needs to erase computer memory as well.
I think I need a job like this guy. I have theories on many things. Where can I apply?
Now wouldn’t it be embarrassing if the theory works out to be true and I read, understood and was happy with it but had simply had my memory erased. Oh wait. My brain is hurting again.
Whilst we usually look out into infinity with wonder we usually forget that we can turn our eyes in another direction. We can look down to atoms and molecules and see the wonders at that level. h/t James via ‘it seems to me’
Really makes you think to realise that in something the size of the universe which we are discovering more and more every day there are things still literally within our grasp that we still know so little about. Now with IBM’s new ‘camera’ we can actually take pictures of what previously we only surmised. Proofs where before there was only theory.
Now this is available what leaps could we expect next? What will we be able to see for the first time that will allow us to extrapolate and theorize about now? Could we even find that elusive politicians brain cell?
Although I usually don’t have an interest at the macro level I always find the photographs interesting. The beauty of nature does not stop at the female form. Nature is full of beauty.
Looks like scientists are working towards phase 1 nanobots. Robots on a chip. Robots small enough to be the size of fleas.
The intention is to mass produce them and program them for a multitude of different tasks such as surveillance, micromanufacturing, medicine and cleaning. All tasks that they would be suitable for.
The good bit about micromanufacturing is that they can produce smaller robots which will be able to work at even smaller scales. It looks like this is going to be our entry into many labour and life saving devices.
I only hope that they remember all the sci-fi books, like the late Michael Critchon’s Prey, where nanobots end up escaping and destroying things. They should make sure that their capabilities are simple, one action only and not multitasking. They should not be able to replicate themselves, they should have a very limited lifespan and they should never be aware and able to adapt their programming. You should be able to buy them for specific functions, such as killing weeds, they are inert until you open the packet and then they get to work on the weeds and after a month or something they just stop.
Simple, easy and minimum risk.
Like everything in life we no sooner jump one hurdle than we come across another.
Green issues are no different. Once we reduced CFCs so they no longer depleted the ozone layer we had a new No. 1 and its no laughing matter, it is Nitrous Oxide. Don’t worry though we will solve that and then something else will be next and a threat to our planet.
Its a bit like progress with living longer. We used to die because of lack of shelter, predators and nutrition. Then as we learnt to protect ourselves, clothe ourselves and feed ourselves the biggest cause of death was from injuries. We learnt to heal ourselves and then the biggest cause of death was government and so on. Now we die from diseases that only a hundred years ago were almost unknown because few people lived long enough to get them. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s are common now.
When we cure those there will be others along to take their place as the No. 1 killer and it will go on and on and eventually when we cure all illness and everyone is immortal we will be back to accidental deaths like sports accidents, space accidents etc. and suicides.
The steeplechase only ever ends in death.
Just watched the remake of the old sci-fi classic ‘The day the Earth stood still’ I can see why it bombed it was rubbish. Story was pretty much as it was in the original but they had to try and spread the Save the Earth gospel and humans are bad. The original was much better but of course without all the latest special effects and CGI.
At least we got to see some cool flying nanites eating all our buildings, vehicles and humans. It is on the list for one of the ways we destroy the planet so its probably interesting just for that. Not a bang but a whimper. Just like the remake.
The remakes have the advantage of the latest technology so why is it that the remakes are not as good as the originals?
In the movie Robocop an advert in the film had a car thief getting electrocuted when he tried to steal a car. Everyone cheered and thought that’s what we really want. Something to teach thieves that whats our is ours. Since then of course we have discovered that the biggest thieves are our own government and there really is no hope of any justice in this country.
Even back then though I was always a bit of a thinker and I remember thinking about the number of times I have sat in my car and the alarm went off. Not a problem when you can just curse and then unset the alarm but more of a problem when you are being electrocuted while you attempt to do so.
So as you can probably guess I’m very much against automated systems for many defensive or most offensive actions. I don’t believe that you should set traps on your doors or inside your house that can incapacitate or kill you because most of the time it will be you or yours that get the sharp end of the stick. People you expect come into your property many many more times than a burglar. In fact most places have never been visited by burglars but I’m sure we all know people who set off their own alarms all the time. I have two homes around here who have done it for years.
Not that there is not a place for defensive tools in your home but you need to be very careful where you put them. Don’t, as one person suggested, put crossbows at the top of the stairs to stop burglars. Just imagine you feel ill in the middle of the night and need to go downstairs feeling unwell or that a fire happens and you need to rush downstairs. Even worse of course is if you need help and someone comes to help you. Nope automated systems are a bad way to go.
The only way I would use automated systems, (non lethal he says covering his bottom), is in an area where you won’t be coming from and rarely need to go through. For example to provide protection on windows or doors which you never come in without going out first. You disable the protection and go out, do what you want and come back in and then re-enable the protection. You should also be able to ensure that when it is deactivated that it gives a visual and audio warning. So when you come back you don’t find someone has switched it back on. Of course all this is hypothetical because I don’t know anywhere where you are allowed to set traps in your own home. It interferes with Plod.
It’s much better to actually make sure all the doors and windows are covered by sheet metal to stop people getting in than setting traps all over the place. Most people don’t want that of course, they want to fit in. Set CCTV to cover the spots where the intrusion is likely to come from and make sure that the alarms are set by default. Draw a plan of the entire area and then attack it from all sides, put protection in place to cover each area, concentrating on the weak points like doors and windows. Put cameras in place to cover all the approach points and feed the signals into a secure area where they can be recorded. Have the alarm system send SMS messages to your security company and yourself. There are many tools you can use, microwaves, IR, pressure mats and all have their uses.
Never forget though that a determined intruder will get anywhere they want. No system is perfect. So all you can do is try and make it so difficult for them that it isn’t worth it. Being worth it of course means what they get away with. Your jewel collection, your latest TV or a tin of beans in a Katrina situation.
Technology nowadays means you can do all this from home without seeing an expert. It also means that you could spend all that money and leave holes in the system to be exploited so you need to be careful.
Much better to get a suppressed Glock and keep it by the bed where you legally can of course. The suppressor is so that you don’t frighten the neighbours. You can check the locks and windows, go back to bed and sort it out in the morning.
Scientists have been looking at ways of producing cheaper solar panels and one of the ways found is using a technique using inks. Read here.
These inks could be printed or painted on to surfaces to make almost any surface a solar panel. When the ink can be any colour or clear then solar panels could be painted everywhere. At home as paint on the outside of your house, your sheds and outhouses. On your car as body paint and the outside of your caravan, not Jeremy Clarkson’s of course, and if this is efficient enough then it could power an electric car for significantly more than the current limits of the batteries. I can even see your clothes being dyed with this ink to provide power to mobile phones and PDAs.
At the moment the solar panel systems out there, using the current technology, take up several square feet are any decent size is expensive. Too expensive for the power generated to make it viable for ordinary people to buy for home use. However, solar power is used quite a bit on boats. Boats tend to sit for long periods of time so that being trickle charged is viable and the most the power is used is to start the engine, power some running lights and power bits of kit such as radar, sonar, navigation and radios for a few hours. If you had ink on the entire boating surfaces, even sails, then you could even have viable electric boats. Tankers and container ships have massive amounts of unused surface area.
For the cost of the smart meters they are going to force on us they could improve solar cell efficiency, make them cheaper by economy of scale and supply panels to reduce our electricity usage. Now that would give more benefits than smart meters. First an economy boost in the green sector, second an improvement in panel efficiency, thirdly a actual reduction in power usage. Instead they will spend our money on ways for them to control our energy usage as they see fit. Not that I believe they should do either of these things and should just leave us alone.
If we ever want to get off this planet and travel even the shortest distance in interstellar terms then we need to improve our application of closed eco systems. The nearest star remember is over 4 light years away and that is just outside our door in interstellar terms. Closed in this context means entirely self contained except for energy, which all ecosystems get from the sun either directly or indirectly.
We know this and recycling air and water has always been one of the basic things we can do already. Unfortunately, it is not enough for longer journeys as animals, and that is what we are, are very hard on food resources and require a significant amount of space to grow enough food for our survival. There are ways of reducing the requirements for space and new techniques are being tried on a regular basis. We will need to have a completely closed system to ensure safe journeys in any venture outside our solar system and preferably within to save of the amount of foodstuffs we have to take with us.
I’ve always had an interest in nature and in particular fish where I have had several tanks of fish of all types mainly tropical whilst I was younger and then marine fish when I was older and earned my own money. One thing I’ve always wanted is an Octopus. These creatures are one of the most intelligent on the planet and can solve puzzles, like the cute tree rats, and can be taught things as they have long term memory. One day I’ll get around to purchasing one.
Home fish tanks however are not complete ecosystems, they are simply subsets of a marine ecosystem because they require inputs beyond energy, food for the fish and replacement water, and output, cleaning of debris and dirty water removal. These are being improved and the larger the water volume the more it approaches a closed system. If you have really big tanks or a decent sized outdoor pool then you can create a closed ecosystem yourself.
I have an interest in ecosystems because despite my skepticism on global warming I do believe that we should take care of the environment, recycle what we can and minimise our impact on our planet. I was taking bottles, plastics and newspapers down to the local recycling area before it was corrupted and became a cash cow for our political class. Plus, I’m pretty hopeless at looking after things and all the plants, animals etc. that fully rely on me die.
Creating a simple closed ecosystem is actually quite easy, providing you do not have any complex animals in it. There are several projects out there where you can create an entire closed ecosystem in a jar or a 2lt pop bottle. You can even buy sealed containers with the ecosystem already built on the web. These ecosystems can last years as long as they are set up correctly and get some light. It does not matter how little there is of some of the components, moss, ferns, etc. as the ecosystem will quickly come into balance and then stay there.
Of course ecosystems that are comprised of invisible creatures, ferns and moss are pretty boring. A quick look and you have seen it all. Even the ones with brine shrimp in are unlikely to keep your attention long. I want something a bit more interesting.
I read somewhere about someone coming across a complete, non enclosed, ecosystem in an old bath. It was partially filled with water, had a family of frogs, some snails and a snake. Mosquitoes, one of the few inputs, laid the eggs which the frogs ate, the frogs had tadpoles which the snake ate and it seemed to be nicely balanced. I wanted to replicate this is a large tank I had but we don’t have many snakes here and it isn’t really self sustaining having only one snake never mind the problem with getting the mosquitoes. It would have been interesting though having a snake and not having to feed it directly.
I suppose though that if I want a complete ecosystem in something the size of a fish tank, even a large one, we are looking at animals no bigger than beetles, ants, spiders etc. Anyone know how to train a spider to do tricks?
Well after listening to rock music and spending time in front of speakers at concerts over the years I would guess I don’t have the ears for a £108,000 set of speakers.
I would expect the sounds produced to be excellent but who, in reality, would get the benefit from these over some of the expensive speakers out there?
It reminds me of the high tech bits of audio kit we put in our cars and then proceed to play music on. Only if you have a very expensive car do you get the benefit from these expensive units. I’ve seen some of them in cars worth less than the audio equipment.
Or is it I’m just a philistine?
|
|
Root cause of our ills
I like to think of myself as logical. I like to look at the facts and make up my own mind based on what I see and now. This can then be discussed and if new facts or viewpoints are raised then I can even change my opinion on something. It’s a nice logical approach and has worked pretty well for me in work and at home although with personal issues logic can sometime drop out of the window.
We are illogical creatures and imperfect but that is OK because it makes us what we are. Who wants to be completely logical in everything we do? It makes us help others and brings out the good in us. I hope we never evolve to a stage where we have no emotions at all and everything we do is based on logic. We would quickly become like the Borg. Human ants with no compassion, pity or desire to do anything beyond what we logically decide is our purpose. However, logic is unlikely to give us a real purpose in life.
Anyway, the way we are has been the way we have been for a long time. Only we have become more intelligent, more compassionate, adaptable and innovative. That has allowed us to move away from subsistence farming and hunting just to live to the society we have now where most of us do not work just to feed ourselves and many jobs are actually not necessary but luxury. Which is why when money is tight we stop buying luxury goods but still have to buy necessities.
All in all we are at near the highest point of our progress so far. I’m not calling it the peak as I firmly believe we have a long way to go and I believe we have dipped from the high we had a few years ago. The whole world seems to be going to pot and rational people are now talking about revolution. Not the Citizen Smith youngsters who want, want, want without putting anything in but Patriots and followers of Truth and Justice who are the ones talking. People like those who were around in 1775. So why is this? Well, it may not surprise you to find that I have a theory.
In my opinion the problem can be summed up in one word – Government.
It doesn’t matter what type of government it is, all over the planet we are all facing the same issues. Personally, I thought the US one was one of the best but as we can see it is not immune to the influence of the cancer within. A small cancer, in the UK it infects a couple of thousand people. These people are politicians. For the small number of them they cause damage far beyond what each could do individually. Every aspect of your and your countrymen’s lives are touched by them and destruction follows. If you think about it everything that is wrong with society over the last 30 years has been caused by government. Yet, what have the done that is positive? Nothing I can think of.
Just look at what is happening from the front page of BBC News;
Almost all of those things have been dictated by the government. Why do they have their cancerous fingers into everything? The man shot dead outside nightclub clearly is actual news. News that I actually feel is indirectly caused by the government due to its namby pamby attitude to self defence and justice. Plod will catch the killer and they will serve time. Not life as it implies but life as in a minimum of 15 years or so like the wife murderer.
Think of anything wrong about this country and our government has its cancerous fingers in the pie;
Benefits of a social system that encourages unwanted children.
Benefits of a Justice system that believes that all criminal activity is a result of society and should not be punished and a target driven police force where more points are given for minor crimes than serious crimes.
Benefits of a social system that takes money from productive members of society and gives it freely to unproductive people.
Benefits of a society where the subjects need to be monitored to make sure they are all paying as much tax as they can and can be traced when necessary for the security of the state.
Benefits of policies that take the tax for the roads and spend them on social programmes stopping the roads keeping up to requirements. Public transport that doesn’t go where needed when needed at a reasonable cost because it is run by politicians.
Benefits of a social policy that stops people building on their own land and dictates what needs to be built to suit social policy rather than what the market needs.
The list goes on and on. I can’t think of a single thing that can’t be traced back to some mickey mouse policy by politicians. There may be some out there but I bet they are few and far between.
The root cause of our failing society is clearly government itself. I’m actually wondering if it was ever any good for us. I don’t see any evidence for that in any history. All it does is interfere and take. So think of a issue that is in our society and then it won’t take long to see the governments fingerprints all over it.
We need smaller government, almost non existent government, down to the local level, we need to get rid of professional politicians and we need to reduce our laws down to the bare minimum and enforce them rigorously. However, it won’t just happen overnight. We need a long term plan, we need to break it into short but feasible steps and we need to start with the easy stuff. Our political parties are not going to do it. It’s like asking turkeys to organise Christmas. It will never happen.
Unless we make it so. I’m sharpening my spork as we speak.