I’m a big reader and like to read a variety of books, mainly fiction such as Sci-Fi, mystery, thrillers and non-fiction books on a variety of subjects. Overall I have over 5000 books in my house stored, either on shelves, the non-fiction reference books or in boxes, the fiction books. I’m always on the lookout for books and although I normally get my fiction fix from Asda at just over £3 a book I get my non-fiction from Amazon, or other web based shops and so every so often I always like to have a browse around.
Imagine my surprise when I found a book from beyond the grave. A new chapter to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy. The original Sci Fi classics were by Douglas Adams who died in 2001. This addition to the series by Eoin Colfer is the sixth part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe trilogy. Maybe this is what is meant by a Ghost writer.
I quite like Eoin Colfer’s books, he writes the Artemis Fowl series of children’s books, among others, and I quite like them. For one thing they tend to be in big print… seriously though they make a good story and the good guys always win in the end whilst the bad guys are put in their place and punished. Not sure though if he will write in the same style as Adams but I’m pretty sure that the book will be popular and worth a read.
I’m still trying to work out what Douglas Adams gets out of the deal though.
I’ve always been a bit wary about vaccines. Sure I know that they are developed to stop some really horrible diseases and keep everyone safe but still, they are something to be concerned about as we have seen over the last few days. Read this article about a schoolgirl dying after she received her HPV vaccine jab. She isn’t alone, many others have been crippled or are suffering other symptoms.
You see the problem with these vaccines is they actually introduce an inert form of the virus into our systems. Simply put many people suffer from that and it can trigger a bad reaction. Clearly the intent is for this reaction to cause less deaths and other symptoms than the actual disease itself. Overall then society gains as it theoretically saves a few lives on paper.
The problem is though that in reality not everyone gets the virus naturally. So deaths from the virus are actually nowhere near the figures calculated. However because people go and deliberately get a vaccine, to prevent the virus, they then roll the dice which are not the same as the calculations they are expecting.
For example if you had a virus that killed or injured 5% of the population it infected. Lets say the vaccine killed or injured 1% of those injected. Lets then say that it here are 5 million people at risk.
So the virus could kill or injure 250,000 people.
The vaccine could kill or injure 50,000 people.
A clear saving and well worth the £5 per shot of the vaccine. The figure that would be quoted is the 250,000 deaths or injuries.
However, when you consider that most of the population would not get this virus at all. Either they stay in their little communities and with modern communications many people work from home and travel only short distances or those out and about minimise contact and take precautions such as washing hands, Vitamin C etc. or are careful with their partners. Once we are down to 1,000,000 people getting the virus then the odds are the same. However, a million people is a lot of people. Maybe in the population centres where contact is inevitable and the environments are offices and shops. Leading to the idea that any vaccine should be targeted at high risk groups but not everyone.
Decisions, decisions. Deliberately roll the dice now or wait and see if the dice is rolled later. Personally, I would argue against compulsory vaccination for anyone with a calculation of the risk of acquiring the virus naturally in each area against the failure rate of the vaccine itself. However, I suspect that many would choose to roll the dice later merely because it is in our nature to put things off. Such is life.
What I would like to see though is a test with every vaccine. Something we can try on a sample of our blood or something we can grow from our stem cells that will accuratelygive us the outcome of the vaccine. A guinea pig made up of your own body cells. I’d keep mine in the fridge. At least then you wouldn’t die or be injured and you would know you need to take precautions like many diabetics or similar do now because of your bodies lack of defences.
On the other hand our government is wanting to inject everyone with the swine flu virus. Should we just inject everyone with everything and wipe out those with any genetic malfunctions? It will make us stronger as a species. That sounds familiar though. I should look it up as wasn’t it something another socialist party wanted to do. It’ll come to me in a minute.
It has become apparent that the latest push is for us to get out of our cars or off the buses and cycle everywhere. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed cycling although it has been a few years since I last used a bike. I’m looking more at powered transport now.
So I was surprised to see an old idea recycled (sic) and a new electric pedal sized bike being marketed. The Mosquito is expected to be available next April for €4K. It has a top speed of 31mph and, this is the best bit, the thick frame and stocky build also have a positive “psychological effect”, giving the rider an improved sense of safety and road presence.
Translation : Its solidly built and gives the rider the impression that they can survive a 30mph crash into a car, pedestrian or even a tree. They can ignore all traffic rules and red lights with impunity. They can’t but perception is everything.
At that speed most other drivers will be taken by surprise, gaps that were there for the car will quickly be filled by fast moving bikes, pedestrians coming out of their homes will find these racing at them on the pavement, hospitals will be filled with people falling off them on corners or hitting road furniture. That is before we even look at these fast movers going through red lights. You can only hope they have beefed up the brakes and, from my memory, the crossbar needs more padding.
Actually, thinking about it. It sounds great. I recommend all greenies buy one straight away. You can get the ordering details here.
I have long been a believer that the technology we are developing will enable us to grow and adapt to any changes we are making to our environment.
Be it space travel so we can expand and get away from the limits Earth puts on our growth, enhancements to our bodies so we can survive in environments outside the ranges we currently need to meet, the way we grow and process food and many other similar ideas. Ideas totally rejected by a rather noisy few whingey whiney people who think we should all go back in time, put the genie back in the bottle and start killing ourselves off but excluding them of course as they are priests for the newest religion on the planet.
I’ve met a few people on my travels that believe technology will be our saviour, most don’t even think about it until you talk to them and put a few facts on the table while the priests actually started indocrinating our children via our dismal education system. They can’t add up in their heads or work out percentages but they know exactly who is to blame for the earth being devoid of life in 50 years time and what sacrifices we have to make to extend that for another few years. Praise the messiah, and it is not Obama this time.
So, it pleases me immensely that an article in the New Scientist, usually full of Climate Change, overpopulation and other whingy whiney theories has a simple article from someone with similar views to myself.
I am not alone. It is a bit of a relief actually for a while there I was not so sure.
One of the worst things that a government can do to its people is to deny them education. Education is the one thing that allows people to change their lifestyle and be something that they want rather than something the state wants. Lucky lottery winners excluded of course.
Of course denying education is something that in the West we would be quickly up in arms, or sporks in the UK, about. It clearly just can’t be done in the open. However as we have seen the education system can be compromised slowly, by filling the schools with teachers that have political agendas and corrupting the curriculum so that instead of schools producing self reliant and capable, well educated members of society they produce a years worth of barely literate and workshy young people with chips on their shoulders.
Now to be honest it has been apparent this has been going on for several decades but has been accelerated and hidden well under a mountain of paperwork and statistics. There have been a few holdouts, schools which are not controlled by the government, home schooling etc., but these areas are all now under attack even when it is recognised that the general education system is not fit for purpose. The socialist mantra seems to be we cannot have some people being better than others and so we need to make sure everyone is at the same level. Barely literate.
It is time we brought this under control and returned UK education back into one of the best in the world.
Sadly, it is not going to be an easy task. For one thing our schools are full of these socialist teachers who actually believe that what they are doing is right. For another the current education system is full of people already into this process and for many it is already too late. But the main issue is that we don’t actually seem to have anyone in charge who will recognise these facts and can do something about it. None of them have even thought about the options available because this requires more than tinkering around the edges and for politicians that is a risk they are unwilling to take.
So what could be done? I hear talks of vouchers which sounds good. It would also require all schools to go private and become cost centres just like businesses. Business would actually step in and pick these up fairly quickly and with incentives there to pick up inner city schools everyone would join in. The theory being that the market decides but I just can’t see any of our major parties doing that, accepting failure and losing control. It doesn’t matter to them that they are trying, and failing, to control a double decker bus careening down a steep slope what matters to them is the photo op of being seen at the wheel. They won’t be there when the bus hits the bottom. I was hoping that the LPUK would make a good showing next year but so far I’ve not seen any real policies from them outside their website and although I like what they are saying it is going to be too much for a generation brought up on the governments teat.
So what can be done with just tinkering until someone gets in who actually has some decent policies. Well, it seems to me that the last generation that actually got educated was those who were educated in the 1980s. After that the socialist cancer had set in quickly followed by target setting and lies over statistics. Although I must temper that with some irresolvable facts. Our current government is made up of people from those generations. Clearly the education policy then was not perfect either.
So, if we were to make three rather *cough* simple changes; Tinkering if you will.
1) Take the curriculum from the 1970s. Over the next four years for the duration of those currently near the end of the system we need to tailor their classes to ensure that they have the basics of the 3Rs.
2) Purge the revolutionaries and shoot them. Ensure the teachers can and are teaching the subjects required. Removing all those that have agendas. It seems culturally acceptable to sack BNP members so we need to sack any teachers who are Labour party members and anyone that goes on about Climate Change, Big Corporation outside business economics and Socialist agendas. Give teachers the power to discipline pupils and expel them if necessary and make sure the rules support them in their roles.
3) Make the examination board independent. Adjust the scores to reflect the exams if necessary. Peoples IQs don’t jump from year to year. If more people pass then its likely that your exams are easier. However, big hope here, if our education system does improve (It has to eventually, its almost rock bottom now) then we need to adjust our expectations up via the grades awarded. We should be adjusting them down at them moment but that would have blown the whistle a while ago.
So, just tinkering and nothing that even established politicians could complain at but still improves the education system.
Now the only thing that can’t be changed quickly is the kids themselves. This is a problem because we don’t want to write them off but at the same time we need to recognise that many of them will be beyond help. Cold hard fact. Although I am a fan of compulsory education I accept that at this time many people are not interested in educating themselves and are expecting state handouts for the rest of their lives. They will be in for a shock like many have had before. Also we are unable to adapt in the way that school vouchers would for those who find the regime of education not to their liking. Perhaps we could set up something to cater for these or actively encourage home education or some other alternative. However, we need to accept that disruptive pupils will need to be handled differently to the way they do now. They need to be able to be kept in classes where they cannot disturbthose getting an education and in a way it does not encourage others to copy them. Perhaps staked out on the school playing field or something. (Mmmm, bang goes my career in education)
In my view education should be available to all up stages to degree level on vouchers. One voucher for each year at school, X vouchers for A levels etc., One for a degree course. You want more, then you need to pay for it yourself. If you want or need to stop education and work for a while then fine, the vouchers are still there for you. One trip through the system courtesy of all the tax payers who you need to thank by looking after in return by paying taxes.
One contentious area where I also have an opinion is when you leave school. I agree that to keep someone in school who does not want to learn is a waste of time. However, I think that kids are too young to make that decision and should only be allowed to leave when they reach whatever age is deemed acceptable, 14, 15 or 16, certainly not 18, and they must have passed the basics of the 3Rs plus anything else deemed necessary to live nowadays. Year 5 (or whatever) you can sit as many times as you need to gain those skills.
We need to create new generations of self reliant, capable, well educated members of society starting now because when the last well educated generation starts popping off we need someone with an IQ over 80 to take over otherwise we will end up with clones of the current bunch with no real experience of running a business but plenty of experience whining about how life is unfair and a population that agrees with them and neither unable to do anything about it.
Over the years we have learnt new techniques for educating people. New areas where we should be looking to include in the curriculum which reflect changes in our technology and capabilities. We should avoid social issues like the plague as they tend to be subjective being variable and so changes from year to year but technological and capability issues allow us to learn economics by running virtual businesses or countries to actually learn how to make a profit. Just look at our current governments party accounts to see they could have done with that. Yet I find that moving backwards seems to be the best way forward. Who would have thought?
It seems that instead of replacing batteries nanotubes could be used to increase their capacity by ten fold. Read here.
Now we can have the best of both worlds. Nanotube batteries with all their inherent advantages such as long term storage and versatile storage requirements, the standard batteries with larger capacities or hybrids with both built in.
Like I said before these nanotubes are going to change the world. Nothing else on this planet, excluding human ingenuity, seems as versatile.
The biggest problem we have on this planet is creating usable power in a clean way. Once we do so the world will change for the better. Although there are many clean power generating methods being tried or in theoretical testing none are available or appear to be coming available in the near future. So at the moment none available that are both practical and clean. Practical ones are basically nuclear, coal, gas and hydro. Clean ones are wind, tidal and solar where hydro is the nearest thing to clean and practical we can get but suffers from environmental and location issues. Solar is the next best but doesn’t generate the power we need. So of course our governments chose wind as its power generation method.
The problem with the clean ones is that they just don’t generate enough power due to sunlight requirements, are too variable or cause other environmental issues. The methods that are more popular seem to create too much CO2 or radioactive waste and unfortunatly neither is something we want. If it was fresh water that was created or artificial diamonds we wouldn’t have a problem but it is boring old CO2 or nuclear waste and we need to get rid of it.
Nuclear waste is a problem in its own right. It will last for tens of thousands of years. Can’t just leave it lying around on the planet. Nor can we take it into space and send it into the sun because the transporting it is so dangerous. Imagine the disaster if a rocket with radioactive waste blew up in the upper atmosphere. So currently it is a no no. Personally, I think we should bury it in Afghanistan or somewhere similar. It seems of little use other than growing poppies but that doesn’t seem to be an acceptable way to progress.
But CO2 is a different matter. It can be extracted and stored but there are issues with storage. There are various options but mainly revolve around sticking them in tanks or holes in the ground neither of which will be a long term solution. We really need a use for CO2. So, what is it used for?
Well as far as I can tell the only use for CO2 is to grow plants. Pretty important I would have thought. But as part of the cycle of life we end up with the CO2 stored into the plants which is then released on the plants demise. Ouch. It appears that we need only a certain amount of CO2 before we overbalance.
However, I seem to remember from my science days, when they actually taught it at schools, that CO2 was heavily involved in changing Earth into a planet we could life on. It helped create a greenhouse environment that allowed life to thrive. Now consider that the *cough* consensus is that the CO2 we are generating is changing, terraforming, Earth. If we could capture this and send it to Mars we could terraform Mars. Bear in mind that Mars is about half the diameter of earth which makes it significantly smaller in surface area. Thus the CO2 that would terraform Earth will have a much greater effect on Mars.
Now we can launch CO2 into space without significant risk. If it crashes or the gas is released we just capture it again. Whoo Hoo. We don’t even have to use rockets to launch the containers we can use a launch ramp like Fireball XL5, remember that? as there will be no humans on board G forces are less critical. We could put the CO2 into large bladders, like we do fuel and water, freeze them and launch into space where they will remain frozen. We can then use robot arms to throw them to Mars for release into the atmosphere. We could even automate the whole process and if some go missing there won’t be a big issue.
Now I think about it would a large bladder full of frozen CO2 be of any use as a radiation shield fora Mars trip? Water does so why not liquefied CO2?
The best bit is the energy used to freeze and orbit the CO2 can be created using coal or gas because no longer will have an issue with the surplus CO2.
I still think we would be better off with fusion and personally I think we should create giant solar panel farms in wasted space like deserts but just thinking about how we could continue with what we have considering that because our government has done nothing to resolve this issue we will start running out of power within a decade. Not enough time to build clean plants but enough to build quick and dirty ones like coal, gas or nuclear if we keep our existing dirty plants going.
It seems that nanotubes have more uses than we originally thought. Or I thought anyway, as scientists have been testing their uses for a variety of different uses. One such use is power storage.
It seems that nanotubes can be made into little tiny springs that can be literally wound up like steel springs in traps or in clocks, except obviously much smaller. Enough of these can store as much power as an ordinary battery with the potential to store much more with more durability and a lot more reliability. Read here.
Again, the potential (pun intended) here is that we have batteries that never lose the power in them. As we know ordinary batteries just go flat over time even with no load. This power can be on tap for many years without concern and can be discharged in one big burst or slowly over a period of time depending on the rate required. Ideal for emergency systems that are stored for a long time before use such as emergency beacons and also for items that are infrequently used like lights in the loft. Add in the fact that they have no rigid storage requirements like temperature or humidity and you can see how handy that could be.
Now the only issue is that most of the items we have that require power require it in electrical form. This power is kinetic energy and would need to be converted via some way. We know how to do this easily enough but as usual there are losses involved. However there is undoubtedly ways to build the converter into the battery and convert the power to a usable format. Alternatively we could make some devices that could utilise the kinetic energy directly and not need electricity although that would be difficult to start with as we are electrically biased in our technology. There is one area where we store power at home which is not in electrical form as we will see later.
Then next step of course is to get the battery charged in situ. That would be good. Rechargeable batteries that charged off the mains and were on call when required when the mains was unavailable and in a form that does not use valuable metals or chemicals that are destined just to be thrown away. All normal batteries end up being thrown away at the end of their life, even rechargeable ones. That means more metals and chemicals that we can use for other things.
I wonder what other uses these could be put to? Well, the potential energy in the spring would be sufficient to fire a bullet. That would herald in a new era of government fear for unlike the mythical polymer gun these truly would be invisible to Xray and metal detectors. A simple tube with a trigger, a nanotube battery with the spring ready to send a nanotube bullet flying and no explosive means no container to hold the explosive gases so it need not be too bulky. A bit like a rubber band gun. Think of the trouble you have getting anything past airport security now. It will be nothing compared to what will need to be done to try, only try, to stop you getting anything on aboard. Plus the bullet will always be ready, again no storage requirement like ordinary bullets and no big noise either.
Imagine the scene. There is an accident, an electric VW Beetle van with 250 greenies on board has been destroyed in an accident with a SUV. The SUV driver has just failed the breathalyser. In court he claims that after the accident he banged his head and the ambulance took so long to arrive he had a drink to stave off death and that is why he was over the limit.
I wonder if any of these researchers would come forward as expert witnesses for the defence.
Just being funny. Of course we all know that in a few years time alcohol will be illegal and only available for medical reasons.
From beyond the grave
I’m a big reader and like to read a variety of books, mainly fiction such as Sci-Fi, mystery, thrillers and non-fiction books on a variety of subjects. Overall I have over 5000 books in my house stored, either on shelves, the non-fiction reference books or in boxes, the fiction books. I’m always on the lookout for books and although I normally get my fiction fix from Asda at just over £3 a book I get my non-fiction from Amazon, or other web based shops and so every so often I always like to have a browse around.
Imagine my surprise when I found a book from beyond the grave. A new chapter to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy. The original Sci Fi classics were by Douglas Adams who died in 2001. This addition to the series by Eoin Colfer is the sixth part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe trilogy. Maybe this is what is meant by a Ghost writer.
I quite like Eoin Colfer’s books, he writes the Artemis Fowl series of children’s books, among others, and I quite like them. For one thing they tend to be in big print… seriously though they make a good story and the good guys always win in the end whilst the bad guys are put in their place and punished. Not sure though if he will write in the same style as Adams but I’m pretty sure that the book will be popular and worth a read.
I’m still trying to work out what Douglas Adams gets out of the deal though.