Monday 31 January 2011

Will Egypt finally be the beginning of the end to tyranny?

I’ll be honest I haven’t read much about what is happening in Egypt, but the little I have read, seems to suggest that finally the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa are getting sick of dictatorship and tyranny. Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end, to the barbaric way many people of the world are forced live. It’s hard to imagine when you live in the west, what it must be like to live in such a world, yet as we faced in the Middle Ages, when communication and knowledge was at its lowest, when information finally reaches the masses, big changes follow. With our cultures in Europe, it was the printing press, and now in the Middle East it is the internet, and mobile smart phones, twitter, facebook and the like; who would have guessed that a social networking tool may end tyranny. I know I wrote a post of the wonderful internet a few days ago, but I wasn’t aware that it was one of the influences in Egypt.


Let’s hope that if this new peaceful movement towards freedom works in Egypt and like the end of communism, it will start to spread across the whole of the Middle East, and save millions of people from a life of misery and oppression.

What will the massive money making, military force, of the US, do then I wonder. What happens to the trillions of dollars made, selling arms to the world, when there are no more wars to fight? Will it finally be spent on the people, making better homes, better services, better healthcare, and of course a better standard of living for all, everyone, not matter who or where they live.

From Alexander the Great

"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer."

Sunday 30 January 2011

Sadness

Sadness is the lonely tear a tiny drop that falls,

The sinking despair the realisation of regret,

The motion of sorrowful emotion,

The sense you are not all there, and full of loss,

The grief beholds you, as you fade into a melancholy gloom.



Sadness is the lonesome fear; one tear will turn in two,

The painless silence, the wretched recollection,

The deepest loss, too extreme to bear,

The foreboding that nothing will be as was,

Can you cope now you are changed forever?



Sadness is despondency forlorn and dejected,

It never leaves, it always grieves,

Yet over time it does recede,

Until you feel the happy seed, of life’s great need,

Emotionally repaired, and now prepared to face it all once more.

Practice what you Preach

I am sick of talking about climate change, but it just really annoys me the way it is all handled, today I have seen headlines like, Global Warming may rob Basmati (rice) of its fragrance, what sort of headline is that. Here is another stupid headline this time I made it up, Global Warming may mean men go bald quicker, or here is another one, Global Warming may cause cats to grow an extra ear. Global Warming may cause cows to fart more.


The ludicrous headlines are seen all over the place. On top of the ridiculous headlines we also get these sorts of statements from Bill Maher, droughts in America may become dryer, hurricanes may get stronger, even cold winter storms may be colder and stronger, rains might be heavier, blar de blar de blar, and all because of climate change. Now I quite like Bill especially when he is bashing religious nut jobs, but you cannot use the same rhetoric on climate change. Are people really foolish enough to believe these statements, because these are no different to the spam ads you get that tell you if you click on this link you may win car, or click here go get your penis enlarged, or go to this website to find out how to get six pack abs in six weeks. Utter rubbish all of them, just like Bill Maher’s statements. Here is another cracking headline; Eating insects ‘Could cut greenhouse emissions’, and there are many more.

The thing you should always notice about all of these crazy deluded headlines is the wording, they say may, or could, or might. You can say anything may or could or might happen, I might be a millionaire this time next year, and I could be married to a super model. We may have found intelligent life on Mars, and England could win the next football World Cup, but none of these are likely at the present time. Plus stating everything may happen is a bit like a Freudian statement, you cannot be proved wrong or right. It is really pathetic and galling to hear or read, all you need these days is some self righteous celebrity or famous scientist, to make some crazy statement and then they hope everyone will believe them.

Take those Horizon doc’s I watched yesterday, Prof ‘I’m the new pres of the Royal Society’, trying to tell us to save the planet and believe climate scientists, whilst he jets around the world making his biased documentary. Or even the brilliant documentary about reality, showing all those scientists (who probably believe in Global Warming) as they use trillions of gigawatts of energy blasting particles together. I wonder how many homes the Large Hadron Collider could heat in a year, how much of the supposed deadly CO2 will it spew per year. I wonder if there was really any need for the world’s leaders and climate spongers to go to Cancun of all places, to discuss how we should cut back on using energy; ha what a joke.

Practice what you preach and stop insulting us all.

The Wonderful World of the Internet

When I was just an IT manager I didn’t really appreciate the internet, I worked with computers everyday and to be honest the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was browse its vast expanse. The internet seemed to be only for geeks and perverts, but that was many years ago, and now I feel it is my lifetime to the world. Without the internet I dare to think where I would be as a person, I doubt I would have survived the last 18 months without it. The internet is now in my opinion the greatest evolutionary advantage, humanity has been blessed with. I know it is not what you would classify as an evolutionary change, in the true Darwinian sense, but it still is an evolutionary shift forward, communication and information wise.


Now anyone with a computer and a network link can access masses of information on any subject, at anytime night or day, continuously, you should never be ignorant now. The internet has allowed anyone to express themselves, whether they are talented or not, whether they are extroverts or introverts, artists or information geeks, you can be someone on the internet. You can escape the drudgery of your life and find a new life in the shape of blogging (like I do here) or social networking, tweeting, virtual gaming, you name it.

You are allowed to express your hidden desires, enjoy your own erotic fantasies, and meet people with similar tastes as yourself. The internet has made everything mainstream, everything is possible, everything is achievable, you have every tool you will ever need right at your finger tips, all it needs is your imagination, and curiosity to find it.

The internet will save humanity, the internet will create equality, the internet will end tyranny and force changes on the world never dreamed of in the past. So I hold my glass up to those clever blokes from the 60’’s who invented it, to guys like Tim Berners-Lee, the American military and those geniuses who had the foresight to create such an incredible communication, information device.

Saturday 29 January 2011

What is Reality?

You have to laugh, the BBC can make such dreadful biased programs like the ones about Climate Scientists, and then it can make brilliant ones like the Horizon doc about, what is reality? I love docs like this one, lots of weird and complex thoughts and ideas thrown at you, it makes you feel alive to use your brain in such a way, and try to imagine what the scientists are trying to say. This particular one as the title suggests is about reality and the big question, what is it?


As they asked that question at the beginning, I harked back to my original reasons for writing this blog, to get my imaginative ideas on what the Universe is; especially reality. And so I answered the question by saying reality is, the evolutionary perspective of the present moment, created by the observer. The observer in our instance is a human, but I reasoned that reality was totally perspective, and that anything, any object is existence can observe. This seems logical to me, and is the idea I have written about primarily when I first started this blog. Now it is not something that happens to me often, but after watching this Horizon doc, I was totally amazed and went wow that’s an incredible imaginative concept of thought. It came from Prof Leonard Susskind, I had heard of him before after watching a doc about Prof Stephen Hawking, when the great British Professor said that information is lost as Black Holes evaporate. Susskind disagreed with this, and said it was impossible to lose information. Anyway the conclusion he came to, was that the event horizon of a Black Hole was like a hologram and it translated information from 3 dimensions into 2 dimensions which is quite an amazing thought. What makes me go wow though was when he then said, what if the Universe is like a hologram and we are just a 3 dimensional projection of the Universe. I thought that sounded an incredible concept, and as he says it is hard to comprehend, but if it is so, and we are just a 3D version of a 2D disc, then maybe the Universe or reality is many of these discs, googolplex to the power of googolplex amounts, all together creating reality. This seems a plausible concept to me.

It makes me feel incredibly excited to think of ideas like this, and the wonders of reality and all that the Universe is or might be, can be, should be, or whatever, is just like nectar to a honey bee. I will look forward to seeing what the great scientists in the physical fields come up with next, and please Horizon make more doc’s like this one. It makes me want to delve back into my thoughts about reality and perspective and what it is to exist in a reality. Ah I wish I could talk to some scientists about this sort of thing, I always find myself having lots of questions to ask, as I watch these programs. They talked about how a single photon particle of light when fired through two slits creates three lines instead of two, yet when they observe this it goes back to making two lines. So in essence I presume, this is what they mean by the particle being a particle when observed but a wave when not, amazing. I even thought of a name for the holographic universe, it can be a Holographic Universal Disc, or HUD, imagine if they prove we are just a holographic image what would that mean to our lives and will it change everything, who knows.

Don’t believe me, find out for yourself

Continuing on from the Horizon doc I should say, and I think it is one of the most important points from that unusual episode, is that you shouldn’t just believe what you read on the internet. I like to think I am unbiased and can see both points of view, but I am recovering from mental health issues, that said being crazy does not make me stupid. People need to see more unbiased information and they don’t get it that often, taking that Horizon episode further, it was on an hour, 45 minutes of that hour was spent talking about climate science, the main cause for sceptical concern in the UK. The last 15 minutes discussed scepticism regarding AIDS and whether we should use genetically modified food. Well what was this trying to say, that they are the same, or is it trying to get the majority of the public to shy away from being sceptical, by showing plausible scepticism with something that isn’t as plausible. They used to put climate sceptics with the evolution deniers and moon landing deniers, but that just doesn’t cut it anymore because they are not the same at all.


It is something to think about when weighing up the arguments for and against, something like the legitimacy of information you receive via documentaries. Things that spring to mind are the fact it is the coldest summer on record in Australia, a country according to the climate models that should be getting far warmer, it is the coldest winter on record in Europe; this was not part of the climate models that caused so much exaggeration in the early 00’s. Snow was meant to be a thing of the past here in Britain, based on the efforts of our friends at the CRU, and glaciers were meant to disappear in the Himalayas, all prophesised by extremely expensive climate models. These sorts of things are not mentioned in the Horizon doc, all it really wanted to say is, are you a little naive like the guy who believes AIDS does not come from contracting the virus HIV.

The world, our wonderful Planet Earth is a special place, and I don’t want to see it polluted and destroyed by humans. I want to see the end of the need for fossil fuels, and the eventual introduction of free, reusable, none polluting, energy sources. But to get to that point, we have to progress forward in finding better solutions, and we need to realise that it is the extreme desire for profit and greed, which I have mentioned millions of times before, which is the major cause of the strife of this planet.

So they can produce all the documentaries they want showing their unwavering bias towards one thing or the other, but when you get down to brass tacks, people really don’t want to hear it. They just want a better life, a better existence, they want to be happy and fulfilled, they want to enjoy the short time they have alive on this world. Is that too much to ask for, yet a few people who enjoy this more than everyone else; they don’t want this, they want you to be miserable, unhappy, full of debt, and under their total control. Until this attitude changes, we will continue arguing the toss about one thing or the other for all eternity.

The Oscars are like watching an each-way bet on a long shot

I have just read an interesting article about Oscar nominations and whether the best picture actually wins. Well as we all know this does not happen very often and it got me thinking why do I like to watch the Oscars? I think it is because to me it’s like betting each-way on an outside horse, you know your horse probably will not win, but you get the thrill of watching anyway. That is how I feel about the Oscars, I never watch them live, I record it and watch the next day then I can fast forward past all the mushy crap and get to the bits I want to see.


Back to the Oscars and this year’s nominations, the article I was reading was saying how often does the best film win, and they used something called Metacritic to analyse all reviews on the internet, to gain an aggregate score. I’ve added the link to it below.

http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/988675/The-Oscars---do-the-best-pictures-win.html

In summary though, basically it says that it does not happen very often; only 6 times in the last 18 years, has the best film (or best aggregate score) won, which is not very good. Then I thought some more, because if you look at the films nominated this year, as seen below, the highest is The Social Network and the lowest is Inception, which to me shows a lack of faith in the audience. In fact of all the films on the list, the ones I regard as the best, only Toy Story 3 scores highly (which shows how little I know), the others Inception was bottom, Black Swan and True Grit did not do much better.



I think the biggest thing it shows, is the diversity in people’s appreciation of films and how different they are, and also the massive gap between what a film critic thinks, and what the audience (the films are basically supposed to attract) thinks.


Finally in one of the comments someone added this link below it is an excellent article about why Oscars don’t necessarily award the best actors, actresses, or films.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18460_5-reasons-oscars-matter-even-less-than-you-thought.html

Making good decisions, is incredibly hard

I think I need to be a bit more proactive with my life; I seem to let it pass me by without trying as hard as I should. At least I feel that way; do I try hard enough, can I try harder? I suppose you can always try harder, but what I feel I need to do better, is trying harder at the right parts of my life. It is no use trying harder at something that has little to no benefit to my life. I know what I need to try harder at, and that is making better decisions, as I feel I make some bad ones at times; I say things I don’t really mean and I never understand why I do this. I convince myself afterwards I am in some way either testing myself or the person I am saying it to. As if to see how loyal a friend are you? Or do I really want to be doing this? Or is this really the right path to take? Why should that be necessary?


I make irrational choices, lots of them and I have made them all my life. It’s as if I know the right decision to make is A, but since it is so obvious, I will not make that choice; I will make choice Z instead. This leads to confusion, as eventually there comes a time when you need to know with certainty that picking choice A is the right decision and since I have made so many false choices through sheer bloody mindedness, I allow myself to become less certain and more confused. I then find myself in a position of disadvantage, the laws of averages have been reduced and are now not in my favour to make the right decision, and because of this I tend to make the wrong one, more often than not. Stupid really, isn’t it?

So how to change it, well this has to be the hardest thing about my mental illness to change, because I am at a stage in my life where bad decisions will have far greater damage to my life, far more than when I was younger. When you are young you can shrug off any obstacle, and carry on regardless, it becomes more difficult to do this when you enter the terrible forties.

Can I change it? I don’t know, I hope I can, I feel I am starting to make better decisions, though I am still making the wrong ones. Maybe I need to not punish myself so much for making them. Luckily for me, I have an unusual optimistic streak that runs through me and has run through me all my life, it has caused issues most of my life, since I can be too optimistic at times. It is different to being positive or negative, as that is a more of a short term perspective to me; optimism is a long term view point. Looking at my life as a whole and saying I will succeed, I will get out of this mess and find the peace and happiness, the freedom and level of success I feel I can achieve. I have this inner belief I will do it, and this keeps me alive, I know deep down that I am starting to make more good decisions, and less bad ones, which I will take as a positive.

So to sum it all up, I love writing my blog, because it is helping me to rationalise my situation better, it is hopefully improving my writing skills in many facets of writing. It must be quite weird for anyone who reads it to see, I post about tennis, then cricket, then films, then my mental health, then a blast about society or politics and then of course my philosophical views on the Universe; haha what a strange weirdo, but so, that is me, oh and I cannot believe I forgot this, my fictional writing.

Friday 28 January 2011

Alive and Free

Wow we are nearly into February of another year; I notice I have not written much about ‘My Universe’ recently. I am not sure why, not sure what changed in me to stop, I feel more relaxed at the moment. Then again as long as work don’t contact me, my stress levels stay down, they have a strange affect on me now I think about it. A friend of mind asked if I would speak to another friend who is connected with my old work, I became very flustered and anxious, I told him I could not speak to that person, because of their association with my old hell hole. He was surprised but he doesn’t understand, they basically abandoned me, left me for dead so to speak. It is a bit like that bit in ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’, when Blonde leaves Tuco in the desert to die, without any remorse I was forgotten about, after so many years service. So you could say I despise my old work place, I hate everything associated with it, and I will never be well until I am free of that company. This causes me a massive problem, because I cannot be rid of them whilst I am ill, so I am stuck in a Catch 22 situation. And I have to deal with that, it crosses my mind sometimes, but I am like a snake, I can easily shed my skin and replace it with a new one. It does not bother me as much as it did, as I realise people have lives to lead and they are very busy and who wants to take the time to deal with a mentally ill person who is causing distress, as well as being a pain in the arse. No one actually does, well that is not quite true, there are some people who have been brilliant, they have been patient with me and not told me to get lost. Many times they could have, I have let many people down over the last 12 months, yet those last twelve months seem like a blur to me. It is as if I have watched it happen from a massive cinema screen, watching a character that I knew was me, yet not me at the same time. One hellish biopic of my pitiful life, played out like a scary movie, it does not seem real, it is terrifying to me personally.


This saved me, this blog saved me from total despair, it has brought me into a saner situation, I feel safer, yet still incredibly emotional, I still do stupid things and I still feel like crap. I felt dreadful Sunday until Wednesday of this week, but I was able to cope with it better, I was able to assess the damage it was causing and rationalise it, and hopefully learn from it. I still feel trapped, I still feel I want to leave here and go somewhere else, anywhere else, a place where no one knows me, and I can be a new person, like a butterfly changes from a caterpillar.

I am sick of winter, and want to feel the warmth of the sun on my face once more; I want to see the greenest trees and the flowers in bloom. I want to feel alive, and free, let’s hope this year I will feel both many times.

Tuesday 25 January 2011

The Pool of Deepest Blue

High upon the precipice do I stand in awe, the glory of the world before me, its grace and beauty, its violent anger, its raging torment of expression and feeling. Slowly I kneel down, and close my eyes, and breathe in the freshest air of existence, long and deep, revitalising my heart and soul. I smile a content meditation, thoughts so peaceful envelope me, what do I do next? I force my left hand into the dirt below my knees, and rise slowly, taking into account the incredible height around me. I wipe the beads of sweat from my brow, and turn away from the majesty of the view.


Now in front of my eyes, a deep blue, nearly black, it is a pool of emptiness and longing, it draws me closer, ever closer to its soothing liquid. As if in a trance, I move slowly forward, tiny step by tiny step, will I be saved before I reach the pool of deepest blue. Will someone come along and pull me back and revitalise my life once more. I hope I will be saved; I pray to the inner god, that I will be pulled back before it is too late. I see my reflection in the pool, it is distorted, it is a cruel manifestation of what I feel I am. It is a devilish pose, it forces me to close my eyes, I do not like its masquerade, I do not like the way it makes me feel. I want to turn around, I want to turn back towards the light, please bring me back to the light. Do not let me fall into the pool of deepest blue, for once I am smothered in the deep blue liquid, once it has my whole, I will be doomed.

Saturday 22 January 2011

Ummm a worrying trend


Is it good, that as I progress in my writing prowess; that I notice all the stupid grammatical errors, the poor use of punctuation, the lack of sentence awareness.  And the general poor level of my writing skills (that was deliberate I hope).  Is it good that I notice this now, whereas in the past, I was unable to comprehend such details?  I would hope it is, the worrying part is, that even though I am starting to see my poor use of English, I don’t seem to be improving.  Or am I improving, and like when you suddenly start to realise you are fat, and need to lose weight; will it suddenly dawn on me.  I don’t know to be honest, but hey at least I notice bad writing now, so I must be learning something.

Note***
I should read my own work back, more thoroughly than I do, Christ it is really bad, too many mistakes.

Take life less seriously in future

You know your life is at the arse end of the barrel, when you are quite content to sit in the house by yourself, watching the British Comedy Awards. Oh well you gotta laugh, and take the piss out of yourself once in a while. It’s got me thinking though as I watched, that I don’t really watch that much comedy, because I didn’t know many of the shows they were awarding. Yet I used to love the good old British Comedy, maybe it shows I am more mature now, and nearing my middle age, halfway through my midlife crisis and taking life a bit too seriously. Or more likely, I’ve turned into a boring bastard.


Yet as I say this, and knowing what I have written in this blog over the past five months, I think, is that long. I feel I have a good sense of humour, and enjoy a good laugh, but I don’t seem to do it much these days; what a boring bastard I have become. Looking back at what I have written makes me think what a pretentious t*at (not sure why on my blog I added the * instead of a w) I’ve turned into, or maybe I have always been like that and just never realised it.

So in future I will endeavour, though likely to fail, in taking life a little less seriously, and try to enjoy it more. A bit like I used to, when I was younger and less cynical, and before shitness of life engrained its terrible brown stain on me.

Life's a bitch and then you die, so why not laugh whilst you stuck in the middle of it. Thank humans for comedy, for without it everyone would be boring, self righteous bastards, like me haha.

Saturday 15 January 2011

Napoleon, Wellington, Waterloo and the significance of insignificant things

A couple of nights ago I watched a fascinating documentary about Napoleon Bonaparte and his ill-fated escape from Elba, and his return to France. As one of the historians said, the whole four or five months of 1815 could not have been written as a myth or legend any better than what unfolded.


Napoleon as everyone should know was the great general of France that let his sociopathic delusions of grandeur, get the better of him, by becoming Emperor of France and attempting to conquer the whole of Europe. He nearly succeeded, and only the Russian winter and a certain General sticking a thorn in his side down in Spain and Portugal, stopped Napoleon from achieving his dream.

Of course we all know who that general was; he was the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley.

In February 1815, Napoleon (in what would be called the ‘hundred days’) with a tiny army of around 1000 of his greatest and most trusted troops, the Imperial Guard, landed near Cannes, he was not welcomed with open arms, the people did not want the little tyrant back. Napoleon did not let this stop him though, he knew if he could get the army on his side then France would be his once more. Arriving near Grenoble, in the centre of France, Napoleon was greeted by the new Royal French army; the monarchy had been restored after many years of the republic. In charge of this army was Marshal Ney, once part of Napoleons Grand Army, now supposedly Napoleons enemy. Bonaparte took one of his many gambles and stood facing this massive force, and he gave a speech, a speech that would lead to him retaking France and eventually meeting his nemesis Wellington at Waterloo.

Throughout Europe the fear generated by Napoleons return was tremendous, and the major powers thought it could be catastrophic, unless he was defeated, all the countries turned to Wellington. Two ragtag armies were being assembled in Belgium, one lead by Marshal Blucher, the ageing Prussian General, the other lead by Wellington.

Napoleon being Napoleon decided to ignore everything he had told his country, about not wanting to fight anymore battles or wars. Raised another Grand Army and went to Belgium to face Blucher and Wellington, he reasoned that the enemy was divided and this division may lead to their downfall. He noticed a split between the two armies and two full advantage of it. He faced Blucher’s Prussians and defeated them; he faced a small British force and could only manage a stalemate. He thought he had nearly won the battle, and he headed towards Brussels.

On the road to Brussels was a little known town called Waterloo, where Wellington had some years earlier, in a kind of sixth sense sort of way, decided he would be able to fight a battle there, if ever it was required. As he had predicted it was required and Wellington placed his troops on a ridge overlooking the whole battlefield; Napoleon was immediately at a disadvantage. As well as this, he had made a grave error of judgement, Bonaparte had sent 30,000 of his troops east supposedly chasing Blucher’s defeated army back to Prussia, but Blucher had went north and was waiting to help Wellington when the time arrived.

So to one of the most significant days in the history of Europe and the World; 17th June 1815, Napoleon with around 70,000 troops faced Wellingtons 60,000 troops. Blucher’s 50,000 were a day’s march away. I will not bore you with the details of the battle suffice to say, Napoleon did not have one of his better days in the field and was eventually routed by Wellington’s superior strategy. Napoleon showed his true colours in defeat and blamed everyone but himself for the loss. He was then exiled to St Helena, in the middle of the Atlantic where he died 6 years later.

The thing that fascinated me apart from the fact it’s an incredible part of history, is the fact it is a sort of mythical battle Waterloo, two great generals who had never fought each other directly facing off for the future of Europe. How significant a battle it turned out to be, there was not another battle in Europe for hundred years afterwards (unless you count the Crimea). There is also the similarities with Hitler and his Wehrmacht matching across Europe, losing in the Russian winter. There is a quote from a captured German general during the Second World War, he said, “There are two people who did not know it gets cold during winter in Russia, Hitler and Napoleon”.

I also find it strange the way Napoleon is thought of in history as being some kind of great hero, which clearly he wasn’t. He was no different to Hitler in many ways, OK Hitler was the more evil man, but they were both deluded sociopaths, megalomaniacs, who had a mass of good fortune, and started to think of themselves as god like, and invincible, which eventually lead to the downfall.

I am not sure what point I am trying to make apart from the fact of the significance of insignificant situations and circumstances, and how these can turn into dreadful misery for many concerned. The fact that power hungry megalomaniacs never seen to learn from past megalomaniacs, I also find interesting; as Hitler was well aware of Napoleon and wanted to emulate him.

In the end I just marvelled at the mythical status of the battle of Waterloo, and thought of other similar battles with similar significance in history. From Alexander the Great, at Gaugamela, or Hannibal, Julius Caesar, William the Conquer at Hastings, Henry V, at Agincourt. Or Battle of Blenheim, and Nelson at Trafalgar. The significance of the Battle of Yorktown, and of course the many battles throughout the first and second world wars. How many of them hinged on small insignificant things, and how easily history might be different if those insignificant things had not happened or others had happened in their place.

Friday 14 January 2011

Changing Society for the better

You know I have been thinking about the whole global warming, climate change argument, and why it seems to be necessary in this day and age to sensationalise and exaggerate issues around the world, because it is the only way to change the greedy, selfish attitudes, of many humans.


I remember when I was at school, one of my more eccentric teachers told us how many of the patents to improve life are hidden away, stifled, and literately stopped from happening by large corporations, so we still use oil, we still buy products, and they still make profit.

I wonder if; because of this pig headed attitude towards our planet, and the life forms on it in general, activists accentuate the global warming argument, to make corporations change their attitude and in doing so change our all our lives for the better. I would like to think this is the primary goal, but they seem to go about it wrongly in my opinion.

Then again maybe they haven’t, I have just watched a commercial, where a car company is making their cars more efficient, so they don’t use energy when stationary. I have seen other car companies selling the same ideas, then we have the introduction of hybrid cars (though I feel at present they are more a gimmick than actually doing any good). I remember reading about hydro cars, which I think is the way we should be going.

So all this scaring us to death, is trying to bring about change; to improve our planet and how we exist on it. We lie or exaggerate, make things up, confuse but in the end if we have clean cars, cheap energy and a better standard of living. Is it all worth it? I suspect it is; the problem I have is the fact we have to go to such lengths to see these changes happen.

We shouldn’t have to deceive, delude, confuse or even make people feel guilty to get these changes to happen, because it is not the general public that forces these situations it is the greedy profit making companies, institutions, governments, you name it. And unfortunately we the public have to suffer until the greedy buggers change.

Surely there is an easier way. Surely we need to stop the stupid ideology of stopping patents which may have a beneficial affect on the planet, from being bought and lost in some corporate red tape and bureaucracy. If it can improve, or might improve, it should not be stifled, it should be immediately comprehended, tried and tested, to see if it can have a benefit to us. To hell with profit and protecting old and divisive products and consumables, we need to change this type of thinking.

Would it be better to be honest and say, we are not using our incredible intelligence to its proper levels, by being obsessed with exponential growth, profit and greed? Than to say untruths about our planet like CO2 causes global warming.

It’s just a thought.

Absolute Zero and the Speed of Light. Waves, Particles, Energy, it's all a bit confusing.

An unusual thought has just popped into my head, and it has got me thinking, I was watching a doc about temperature last night. It is mostly normal, basic stuff, most people should know but clearly don’t; anyway, they are talking about Absolute Zero minus 273 C or 0K, and how you never can reach it. No matter how hard they try to reduce the temperature, by the methods required, they can only ever get close to it. Now this has got me thinking, we say you cannot go faster than the speed of light and when we try to achieve that speed we fall short, getting to 99.99 whatever percent of it.


I am a little confused, maybe I need to do a little bit of research, but all night it has been going through my head, the idea of light being a wave and a particle. The nagging thought that won’t leave me is how light travels at the speed it travels at, and does it do this as a wave or as a particle, I presume the former. Then I thought some more and realised that a wave is only a frequency so to speak (apologies for my laymen’s terms here), the visible part of the whole Electromagnetic spectrum, and then I got more confused, because the spectrum based on the frequency, changes the wave, shorter waves are gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet. Longer waves radio, infrared, and the infrared bit are where the heat comes from. Now what is confusing me, is this; if temperature is just the speed in which atoms move, how do Electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light through deep space, if the temperature through parts of space is near to being, Absolute Zero. Or have I missed something here? If atoms find it difficult to move when temps near Absolute Zero, how does light move at the speed of light, if you know what I mean.

The other perplexing thing for me is this; light can be a particle and a wave, does this mean that the energy emitted hits the particle that makes light, the photon; or is the photon travelling through space at the speed of light, as a wave? Wow this is the most baffled I have been by science for a while, well the basic science I know at least.

Surely the speed of atoms cannot be the only way to produce heat, since the light bursting from every star would produce more heat in a similar vein the amount of light we see from stars. How come we can see light from a distant star but not feel its heat? Or is this to do with the frequency of waves, plus how does the heat or light get from the star to us? I know this maybe a stupid question, but I don’t know. Then again is it just that somehow the energy from the sun has an effect on the atoms even at massive distances causing them to move hence creating the heat?

I realise that the sun is a massive fusion reactor and the smashing of Hydrogen atoms together, fusing them, creates Helium and a tiny amount of energy is released and this energy somehow blasts out of the sun and in approximately 8 minutes, it reaches us in the form of light, heat, and all the other waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, some are blocked by our atmosphere and our own electromagnetic field, others (the ones we use and need) hit our planet and create life. What is the energy, as it leaves our sun and how does it travel here so quickly? And of course it then travels passed us and continues onwards and upwards to the outer solar system and then on further. Is this just plasma? Is the energy travelling as plasma, or I am missing the boat again. I know I am waffling now and I have completely gone off on a tangent from where I originally started, but it is all so confusing.

Space is cold, just above Absolute Zero, at these temperatures atoms have no energy and so cannot move, yet the movement of atoms and I presume particles causes heat, or at least the rise in temperature, yet electromagnetic energy does not seem to be affected by this. It can move at incredible speeds no matter the temperature, yet this does not make sense since energy according to what I have read, “In physics, energy (from the Greek ἐνέργεια - energeia, "activity, operation", from ἐνεργός - energos, "active, working") is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force, an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law. ...”

But isn’t light energy? And if it is, how the hell does it travel so fast without creating heat? Unless it doesn’t, and something else is at work, something we have not figured out yet. Or is it that heat can only be created by a particle moving fast (atom molecule etc), because of the Electromagnetic spectrum.

So back to my original idea about the connection between Absolute Zero and the Speed of Light, one moves fast as a wave I presume (since if it was a particle it would create heat) without producing heat. The other is a circumstance of no movement, the point where there is no energy and atoms or particles are static, and change into a superconductor and work in some kind of unusual tandem state.

Haha I suppose this is why physics and the Universe and science and everything involved in the whys and wherefores of our existence is so fascinating. I could sit here all day writing like this but I can imagine it would be dull and boring to read. It might come in useful in the future though, at least for me it will.

Back to my original argument again, I will have to think it through further, but something seems to connect the two, apart from the obvious, energy or the lack of. Or is it our perception of this energy that is the key, does it mean anything to have speed of light multiplied by speed of particles or is it divided or is it particles by waves, who knows but it is fascinating to think about. Brilliant I haven’t had a barmy thought like that for ages.

Thursday 13 January 2011

Test, One Day, or 20/20

As I have mentioned many times I don’t like cricket eh, oh no, I love it, haha. Anyway humour aside I do like to watch and even play cricket, it was a game I was not bad at as a child, but never played enough to get any better at. Hopefully that might change soon.


Digressing again, which form of cricket do I like the best, well that depends on who is playing? I will say I prefer the long game, Test Cricket is definitely the least popular because to most people it is boring, dull, and uninteresting, where nothing seems to happen for long periods of time and then after all this time, it can end up a draw. To me that is missing the point of Test Cricket. I see it as a chess match, a battle of wits and nerves, of skill and determination, as Kipling writes, “Can you keep your head when all around you are losing theirs”. You need to be mentally tough to play Test Cricket, and it’s also a lot to do with statistics, which I also like; highest averages, big scores, most wickets, etc, etc. If you are a professional cricketer, the pinnacle of your sport is to play Test Cricket for your country, if you are English or Australian, it is to play and win the Ashes. I know this sounds boring, but I find parts of test cricket, extremely exciting, nail biting at times. When England was on the verge of beating Australia, in 05 at Edgbaston, on the Sunday morning of the 4th day; believe me that was nerve-racking stuff to watch. We just managed to beat them by 2 runs.

One day cricket you could say is more exciting especially when you get down to the end, but there is less skill involved or should I say a different type of skill. I still like to watch it, but I am not enthused as much by the shorter format, as I am with Test Cricket. One day cricket like Test Cricket was started in England in the 70’s I think, but became popular down under when Kerry Packer started his own World Series Cricket. Since then we have had One Day World Cups, and though popular, to me it’s just not the same as Test Cricket. If you ever look at the one day game, the players who are only noted as one day cricketers are not held in the same high esteem as the best Test Cricketers. I have also heard with the introduction of 20/20, One Dayers may be phased out altogether. I think that would be a shame because it is a good stepping stone between the other two formats, the slow Test and the super fast 20/20. One of the most exciting and possibly the greatest cricket match ever played was in this format, South Africa v Australia; it was being shown on Sky. I switched it on by accident, the Aussies were batting and they scored 6, after 6, after 6, and racked up a World Record 434, at the time no team had went near to 400 runs in a One Day game. Then the South Africans came out to bat, and well they just went for it, they had nothing to lose, it was one of those fantasy games you make up as a kid, in which ever sport you like. In Britain you could say it was one of the ‘Roy of the Rovers’ moments. South Africa hammered the ball all over the park, scoring 6’s and 4’s just as easily as the Aussies, and in the last over they hit the winning runs scoring a new World Record of 438 beating the Aussies, it was an incredible match to watch. Nearly 900 runs in a day, quite unbelievable and something that will never happen again unfortunately.



Twenty/20 or however it is written, is probably one of the fastest growing sports and initially I thought might become one of the biggest sports in the world; and it still might. If test cricket is about control, and skill, then 20/20 is wham bam, quick exciting form of the game. Or at least it was to begin with, in the beginning there were a lot of big scores by eager batsmen, belting the ball out of the ground, the first 20/20 World Cup in South Africa was brilliant to watch because of this. Lots of 6’s and 4’s, US style razzmatazz, I honestly thought this would be the game to sell to the Americans and it still maybe, its far more exciting than baseball. The problem I found with 20/20 happened when the bowlers figured out how to stifle the batsmen, stopping massive scores as many 6’s and 4’s and making the game less interesting. Hopefully considering it is still a fledgling sport it will find a happy medium in the middle. Yesterdays 20/20 Australia v England was exciting, nail biting right down to the last ball, but the scores were mediocre. Still 20/20 is popular with the average sports lover, who does not want to sit around all day, it can be more family orientated, and may eventually become popular in countries that presently do not play cricket. Still it does not take away the fact that even though 20/20 players can now be paid vast sums of money, especially in the IPL (Indian Premier League) the best test cricketers sometimes prefer to miss it out knowing their legacy is made in the longer game.

Monday 10 January 2011

Day

Day move by as you would, so I can understand you more,

Day move by faster if you are being such a bore,

Day move by slower if things are turning out to be good,

Day please stop if you are greater than you could,

Day what are you really, a bit of light, a bit of dark,

Day sometimes nothing, other times you leave your mark,

Day when you finally end, I hope I will miss you greatly,

Day when you say goodbye forever, I will say thanks for meeting thee.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

A Gory Painting

Apologies I have a weird sense of humour but I found this comment hilariously funny. I also apologise for entering tennis geekidom, by even writing about it. It was said by a tennis commentator, about Rafa Nadal, after he just blasted a forehand winner. This is roughly what he said.


“It’s not an impressionist painting is it? It’s more of a gory one”.

Well I thought it was a funny haha analogy to say, and made me laugh. I told you I had a weird sense of humour, but describing Nadal’s tennis being like a gory painting, I suppose in contrast to Federer’s impressionist style of tennis, I just thought was funny.

I would describe Nadal’s tennis, if like a painting genre, more similar to modern abstract. Loads of colour, totally illogical, but somehow it just works.

Maybe that is what the commentator meant by gory, who knows, I just found it incredibly funny. I like to make analogies and I suppose in some ways I can see what he means, but Nadal’s tennis isn’t gory; it’s brutal and destructively devastating for any opponent, but it’s never gory.

Gory implies a lack of self control, limited mindfulness, and no will power; which Nadal certainly does not lack in every aspect, more so excels in, way beyond normality.  Maybe that is why I found it so funny.

Monday 3 January 2011

3D – Does it have a future?

I watched Tron Legacy at the IMAX 3D cinema yesterday, and I thought it was excellent, far better than I expected. I had a feeling it would be one of the few films presently being produced, which I actually thought would benefit from 3D. The only other film was of course Avatar, but most 3D creations have so far either not been necessary, or made the film worse. When I watched Toy Story 3D I didn’t think the film was enhanced greatly by the 3D, it was just as good in 2D. I didn’t think Alice in Wonderland, was better in 3D and Clash of the Titans was much, much worse. You get the impression the big studios licked their greedy lips after Avatar, but only a fool would think the cash cow could continue for long. And they were even more foolish by drastically shortening its longevity by making so much crap in 3D. Will 3D survive the cinemas devaluation of the product, maybe not?  Somehow though I think it will, and it will thrive.

Why?

They did not realise what it was about Avatar that made people go wow, and want to go back and see it again. It wasn’t the story or the characters; it was the wonder and joy of witnessing an alien world with florescence, and all its bluish beauty. It was the flying in amongst the clouds, weaving between the floating mountains, and lush green forest. With Tron, it was fluorescence again, this time enhanced by music.

Seeing Woody with Buzz is not any funnier in 3D, neither will Captain Jack Sparrow in the next Pirates film, or Harry Potter flourishing his wand, yet we have or will be nearly forced to watch these films in 3D, and then there is all the dreadful garbage that is also produced. Will they eventually learn, I somehow doubt they will, before it’s too late, TV will rule 3D.

I am not sure about the rest of the world but I would expect it is likely the same, 3D TV is starting to take off, once Murdoch and Sky started showing sports, especially football, 3D TV seems to be on the increase. I expect everyone will have a 3D TV in less than 5 years because so much TV will be made in 3D. Most people will probably say rubbish, but here is why I think so, for one Sky or Murdoch, who owns Fox, and most of the newspapers in the world, as well as news channels, you name it he has a finger in the pie if its media communication. They start with films then sport, sports grows from football (soccer if you are American), darts, golf, cricket, imagine American Football in 3D, they might be doing it already in the US; it would look pretty cool seeing the Super Bowl in 3D. I hear The Masters; golf major will be in 3D. So once sports are shown in 3D you have a massive audience, I then hear that Sir David Attenborough is creating a nature documentary series in 3D, how cool will that look? Documentaries will be created in 3D especially ones about nature or space, imagine seeing the Hubble imagines in 3D, wait a minute you can on a massive IMAX and if you live in the US. I would buy a 3D TV just for that alone, the one thing that I think would not do well, is drama, or comedy; horror knows they have a niche market, and definitely porn will find a way to make a buck or two.

Gaming will also benefit, and I would imagine the internet, dating sites will do a roaring business when you can see a 3D version of a potential partner. The ability to see objects we have never had the good fortune to see before, whatever they are. The opportunities are endless, making cheap 3D monitors for computers, so the internet will become 3D; I see that side of the 3D revolution potentially being the biggest, and most influential over all. Learning will never be the same again.

So even though the film industry has for years tried to destroy 3D, now technology has advance enough, to allow 3D to enter our living rooms, and change our visual experience for the first time since the emergence of television itself.

PS


I forgot the one area where we will see a 3D market, smart phones with 3D screens, and eventually the ability to show 3D without the need for glasses.