Friday, November 19, 2010
More Marie Srbic Bookmarks
Just so you all know, submit as many entries as you like and, if you want to update old entries you can do that too.
Worlds Without End
Another SFF site I haven't come across before. The guy running it is also one of the contenders in this bookmarks competition: Worlds Without End. It's quite odd to look at biographical bit beside my photo and see that the 'Died' section is ready to be filled in.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Antimatter
I just received an email from ‘spaceoperaghost’:
‘Thought this might interest you if it hasn't been emailed or otherwise brought to your attention already. CERN trapped antimatter! I suppose it's too soon to start demanding warp drives and clean energy, but it's still awesome.’
Yeah, I think we can safely assume that this is of interest to me.
Geneva, 17 November 2011. The ALPHA experiment at CERN1 has taken an important step forward in developing techniques to understand one of the Universe’s open questions: is there a difference between matter and antimatter? In a paper published in Nature today, the collaboration shows that it has successfully produced and trapped atoms of antihydrogen. This development opens the path to new ways of making detailed measurements of antihydrogen, which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter.
...
Here’s a link to the article at CERN, and here’s the press release. It’s all rather dry, but then, I have become rather tired of ‘scientists’ who step over the line into politics, produce self-aggrandizing press releases and start making ludicrous predictions based on their work.
Update:
CERN created the first nine atoms of antihydrogen in 1995, and then started to produce atoms in large quantities in 2002, as part of the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments. This is the first time that scientists have been able to trap antihydrogen atoms for a long enough time to study them, keeping them at 9 degrees kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius), suspended in a magnetic field inside this Ghostbusters-style machine. The other reason why this is an important step is its potential to solve our need for unlimited energy. When antihydrogen touches matter—as shown in the image above—it releases a huge amount of energy. Many scientists speculate that antimatter may be the key to provide unlimited power capable of driving machines that are unthinkable right now. Eventually, it could be the stuff that could power new engines capable of taking us to the stars at near-light speed.
Um, so why the present press release?
‘Thought this might interest you if it hasn't been emailed or otherwise brought to your attention already. CERN trapped antimatter! I suppose it's too soon to start demanding warp drives and clean energy, but it's still awesome.’
Yeah, I think we can safely assume that this is of interest to me.
Geneva, 17 November 2011. The ALPHA experiment at CERN1 has taken an important step forward in developing techniques to understand one of the Universe’s open questions: is there a difference between matter and antimatter? In a paper published in Nature today, the collaboration shows that it has successfully produced and trapped atoms of antihydrogen. This development opens the path to new ways of making detailed measurements of antihydrogen, which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter.
...
Here’s a link to the article at CERN, and here’s the press release. It’s all rather dry, but then, I have become rather tired of ‘scientists’ who step over the line into politics, produce self-aggrandizing press releases and start making ludicrous predictions based on their work.
Update:
CERN created the first nine atoms of antihydrogen in 1995, and then started to produce atoms in large quantities in 2002, as part of the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments. This is the first time that scientists have been able to trap antihydrogen atoms for a long enough time to study them, keeping them at 9 degrees kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius), suspended in a magnetic field inside this Ghostbusters-style machine. The other reason why this is an important step is its potential to solve our need for unlimited energy. When antihydrogen touches matter—as shown in the image above—it releases a huge amount of energy. Many scientists speculate that antimatter may be the key to provide unlimited power capable of driving machines that are unthinkable right now. Eventually, it could be the stuff that could power new engines capable of taking us to the stars at near-light speed.
Um, so why the present press release?
More About the Bookmarks Competition.
Now, first off, I'm not trying to opt out of the responsibility for judging all of these. This bookmark competition itself, just like the art competitions before it, the pictures of people's collections and that 'who reads my books' thing I ran a while back, is me trying to make this blog more 'inclusive'. I want people to join in, have a bit of input, and this to not be all about me standing on a pedestal and prating into a vacuum.
So, to that end, how would you all feel about YOU being the judges. When the time comes I can set up a poll here from PollDaddy and all of you reading this can decide. In fact, I'm going to do one now.
Incidentally, since the number of people reading this blog had about doubled over the last year, how about some more additions to 'Who Reads My Books?' As before, I want a short biog plus a photograph or two.
So, to that end, how would you all feel about YOU being the judges. When the time comes I can set up a poll here from PollDaddy and all of you reading this can decide. In fact, I'm going to do one now.
Incidentally, since the number of people reading this blog had about doubled over the last year, how about some more additions to 'Who Reads My Books?' As before, I want a short biog plus a photograph or two.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Book Marks Competition
Right, the book marks competition is on. I want someone to design me book marks, using Jon Sullivan cover pictures and ensuring my blog address appears on them. The top three best designs get signed copies of any of my books they don't have (though not a specific version of said book and excluding the ones they've won if first or second). The top two get the spatterjay series, whilst the winner also gets the Cormac series (both of these with the new covers).
Incidentally, I'll be printing up and using the winners versions to hand over to book shops or people who might turn up at any signing I might do, so if you have a problem with that, don't send anything.
You can email your efforts to me at ndotasheratvirgindotnet put a link in comments here or go find me on FaceBook, which isn't difficult. And just to show you what you're up against, here's some first from Andy Plumbly and second from Brent Wise.
Incidentally, I'll be printing up and using the winners versions to hand over to book shops or people who might turn up at any signing I might do, so if you have a problem with that, don't send anything.
You can email your efforts to me at ndotasheratvirgindotnet put a link in comments here or go find me on FaceBook, which isn't difficult. And just to show you what you're up against, here's some first from Andy Plumbly and second from Brent Wise.
Have fun!
Waterstones
I should have taken a few pictures in Waterstones Chelmsford when I went there (two shops) since it's gratifying to see how much shelf space I'm taking up. But for now, Simon Swainson sent me this picture taken in Waterstones in Brighton:
Very nice.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Writing Update
You might think, what with the quantity of stuff I’ve been sticking up on this blog lately, that I haven’t been working hard enough on my next book. That’s not the case. The more lengthy and considered blogs here (some might call them ill-considered) I draft in a paper journal in the evening, when I’ve finished work, and take very little time typing up the next morning. The shorter ones I just do in a few minutes.
So, after having to stop writing Zero Point while in Crete to look at some copy editing on The Departure, then having to do the same again back here, I had to read through the entire thing again to get myself back on track. The book is now at 94,301words and, in the story, some serious shit is heading towards the fan.
Other news? Jon Sullivan is continuing to replace all my old covers, but at present is working on something a bit different for The Departure. Hopefully, this year, I’ll be popping in to London for a meeting with Julie Crisp and co and getting to meet this guy. I must make a selection of covers I want as prints and get him to bring them along.
Ah, incidentally, if you want to buy posters of those cover pictures, head over to Jon Sullivan Art and talk to the guy. I would like every one of them as prints but, despite being a step up on the property front, I don’t have enough walls to hang them on.
Right, I’ve done my 2,000 words today, and I’ve stopped to play for a little while, but now it's time to get back to it and start planning out some future scenes (shock horror!). Mmmm, did you know that an Alcubierre space-time bubble will produce massive tidal forces at the periphery of ? I thought not.
So, after having to stop writing Zero Point while in Crete to look at some copy editing on The Departure, then having to do the same again back here, I had to read through the entire thing again to get myself back on track. The book is now at 94,301words and, in the story, some serious shit is heading towards the fan.
Other news? Jon Sullivan is continuing to replace all my old covers, but at present is working on something a bit different for The Departure. Hopefully, this year, I’ll be popping in to London for a meeting with Julie Crisp and co and getting to meet this guy. I must make a selection of covers I want as prints and get him to bring them along.
Ah, incidentally, if you want to buy posters of those cover pictures, head over to Jon Sullivan Art and talk to the guy. I would like every one of them as prints but, despite being a step up on the property front, I don’t have enough walls to hang them on.
Right, I’ve done my 2,000 words today, and I’ve stopped to play for a little while, but now it's time to get back to it and start planning out some future scenes (shock horror!). Mmmm, did you know that an Alcubierre space-time bubble will produce massive tidal forces at the periphery of ? I thought not.
Urbanites Can Survive on Smog.
Feeling in the need of reading a bit more science I picked up a copy of New Scientist (as mentioned in a previous post). It was slightly off-putting for me seeing the front cover picture of a ‘green’ city and the title ‘Urban Utopia – why the city is greener than the country’ but I persevered. I even decided to swallow bile and try reading the main ‘Escape to the City Story’. Perhaps I was being unfair, perhaps I’m too biased, perhaps I need to read more of this sort of stuff to get a more balanced view.
The basic contention of the article is of course quite correct: people packed together in cities will use less energy because resources are concentrated. They don’t need private transport, all their turds go in the same sewer, there’s less need to run electricity through miles of wires or water through miles of pipes. The dustbin men won’t burn as much fuel collecting the rubbish etc etc. So far, so bleeding obvious.
But about five paragraphs in we are told that UN reports suggest ‘that in 2008, 50% of the world’s population lived in urban settlements, which together take up just 3% of the Earth’s land area’. Yeah, okay, got that: battery farmed chickens take up less land than free-range ones.
Then, the next paragraph gives us: ‘This mass exodus from the countryside should lift the strain of intensive agriculture from the land, allowing forests to bounce back.’
I am absolutely stunned at the deep stupidity of that statement. Are we to suppose that city dwellers subsist on a more meagre diet than those in the country? Is the contention here that city dwellers can exist on organic carrots and tap water and that this will relieve ‘the strain of intensive agriculture’?
This was another lazy divisive article to display the magazine’s green credentials. A fairly unsurprising product of a BBC ‘science’ researcher who already has a history of producing such trash. There’s also a sinister edge here concerning how much easier it is to deliver ‘services’ to city dwellers, and to deal with their ‘social problems’.
Of course, it’s also so much easier to look after animals when they’re in a zoo.
Note: the next article in the magazine, one titled ‘Nurturing Nature’, explains to us how children raised in cities are more obese than those raised in the country. Go figure.
The basic contention of the article is of course quite correct: people packed together in cities will use less energy because resources are concentrated. They don’t need private transport, all their turds go in the same sewer, there’s less need to run electricity through miles of wires or water through miles of pipes. The dustbin men won’t burn as much fuel collecting the rubbish etc etc. So far, so bleeding obvious.
But about five paragraphs in we are told that UN reports suggest ‘that in 2008, 50% of the world’s population lived in urban settlements, which together take up just 3% of the Earth’s land area’. Yeah, okay, got that: battery farmed chickens take up less land than free-range ones.
Then, the next paragraph gives us: ‘This mass exodus from the countryside should lift the strain of intensive agriculture from the land, allowing forests to bounce back.’
I am absolutely stunned at the deep stupidity of that statement. Are we to suppose that city dwellers subsist on a more meagre diet than those in the country? Is the contention here that city dwellers can exist on organic carrots and tap water and that this will relieve ‘the strain of intensive agriculture’?
This was another lazy divisive article to display the magazine’s green credentials. A fairly unsurprising product of a BBC ‘science’ researcher who already has a history of producing such trash. There’s also a sinister edge here concerning how much easier it is to deliver ‘services’ to city dwellers, and to deal with their ‘social problems’.
Of course, it’s also so much easier to look after animals when they’re in a zoo.
Note: the next article in the magazine, one titled ‘Nurturing Nature’, explains to us how children raised in cities are more obese than those raised in the country. Go figure.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Empathy Effect -- Bob Lock
First let me get a disclaimer out of the way. I’ve chatted to Bob Lock over the Internet for years, so you could take this as ‘what his mates say’. However, I didn’t much like his previous book so said nothing about that one at all.
I just have to wonder if Bob first rejected agoraphobic steeplejack and claustrophobic miner to then settle on the most unlikely of heroes: an empathic traffic warden. He stuck this character in the somewhat precarious position of being cling-filmed to one of the supports of Mumbles Pier, then took it from there. This is a short chaotic romp swiftly including a couple of psychopaths, a superdog, kidnapping, murder, paedophiles and dog fighting. My one complaint would be too much dwelling on what I will call ‘the carrot effect’, which is a tad hackneyed (you know what I mean Bob).
I’ll say no more about it other than that I read through it quite rapidly and simply enjoyed it. Maybe some would consider £6.99 for a 135 page book a bit steep, especially when we’re getting 3 for the price of 2 at Waterstones right now. But this is small press, so to be expected. Writing humour is a difficult thing, one of the most difficult, and I'll venture that no one below the age of forty is capable of it. Bob Lock can make us laugh, and that’s a rare and precious thing.
I just have to wonder if Bob first rejected agoraphobic steeplejack and claustrophobic miner to then settle on the most unlikely of heroes: an empathic traffic warden. He stuck this character in the somewhat precarious position of being cling-filmed to one of the supports of Mumbles Pier, then took it from there. This is a short chaotic romp swiftly including a couple of psychopaths, a superdog, kidnapping, murder, paedophiles and dog fighting. My one complaint would be too much dwelling on what I will call ‘the carrot effect’, which is a tad hackneyed (you know what I mean Bob).
I’ll say no more about it other than that I read through it quite rapidly and simply enjoyed it. Maybe some would consider £6.99 for a 135 page book a bit steep, especially when we’re getting 3 for the price of 2 at Waterstones right now. But this is small press, so to be expected. Writing humour is a difficult thing, one of the most difficult, and I'll venture that no one below the age of forty is capable of it. Bob Lock can make us laugh, and that’s a rare and precious thing.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Passchendaele
Spoiler alert! Or, not really, because if you watch this film you’ll be tempted to shoot yourself in the foot in the hope of being invalided out of the whole terrible experience.
There’s a saying that war is endless boredom interspersed with moments of terror. If you were to substitute the word ‘action’ for ‘terror’, that would about describe this film.
It started with and all too brief action sequence during which a small squad of Canadian soldiers attacked a German machine gun nest. This action was sort of okay, but slightly silly. For example I don’t really see an experienced soldier stabbing one of the enemy through the forehead with a bayonet. There’s too much of chance of it sliding off.
After this, our hero wakes up in a hospital in Canada where he is already in love with his morphine-addicted nurse. We then get 80% of the film taken up with an endlessly tedious love story, with subplots involving the nurse’s asthmatic brother, her and his German ancestry etc. The real bad guy here of course is a British immigrant in the role of a recruiting officer – a guy who looks precisely like how the propaganda posters of the time depicted the ‘Hun’.
I sat there smoking, got up to make some tea, drank some tea, scratched my balls, checked the clock. I was holding on in the hope that this would get back to the battle the film was purported to be about. It did get back to the battle, about ten minutes from the end. We got a bit of action, and it was completely spoilt by a rescue scene resembling Jesus plodding his final route to Golgotha. Oh yeah, then we got the death scene that was supposed to leave us sobbing in our cocoa, but by then I was pulling wool balls off my socks.
Bathetic drivel. Don’t watch it.
There’s a saying that war is endless boredom interspersed with moments of terror. If you were to substitute the word ‘action’ for ‘terror’, that would about describe this film.
It started with and all too brief action sequence during which a small squad of Canadian soldiers attacked a German machine gun nest. This action was sort of okay, but slightly silly. For example I don’t really see an experienced soldier stabbing one of the enemy through the forehead with a bayonet. There’s too much of chance of it sliding off.
After this, our hero wakes up in a hospital in Canada where he is already in love with his morphine-addicted nurse. We then get 80% of the film taken up with an endlessly tedious love story, with subplots involving the nurse’s asthmatic brother, her and his German ancestry etc. The real bad guy here of course is a British immigrant in the role of a recruiting officer – a guy who looks precisely like how the propaganda posters of the time depicted the ‘Hun’.
I sat there smoking, got up to make some tea, drank some tea, scratched my balls, checked the clock. I was holding on in the hope that this would get back to the battle the film was purported to be about. It did get back to the battle, about ten minutes from the end. We got a bit of action, and it was completely spoilt by a rescue scene resembling Jesus plodding his final route to Golgotha. Oh yeah, then we got the death scene that was supposed to leave us sobbing in our cocoa, but by then I was pulling wool balls off my socks.
Bathetic drivel. Don’t watch it.
New Scientist Snippet.
A gene linked with sociality and novelty-seeking may make people more liberal in outlook, but only if they had plenty of friends during adolescence. The gene, DRD4-7R makes a dopamine receptor and was identified from DNA samples and a survey of 2547 adolescents.
It’s this kind of dross in New Scientist that sets my teeth gnashing. Admittedly it was taken from ‘The Journal of Politics’ and is little but a snippet, but that it appears in NS tells you something about the underlying mind set.
The words ‘linked with’ immediately remind me of the now famous words of Al Gore in his film when he informed us that ice core data shows a ‘correlation’ between CO2 rises and temperature rises, and then neglected to mention that the ice cores showed CO2 rising approximately 800 years after the temperature rise. How, precisely, is a gene that makes a dopamine receptor ‘linked with sociality and novelty-seeking’?
The next weasel word is ‘may’, as this gene ‘may make people more liberal in outlook’. Now what definition of 'liberal' are we talking about: the adjective in the dictionary, or espousing present day liberal views and politics, which tend to bear no relation to the aforementioned adjective? What exactly is being said here?
Then we get the bit about the necessity for having friends in adolescence for this gene to express its liberalism. Of course the implication here is that if you are ‘liberal’ you are probably sociable, novelty-seeking and not a Billy-no-mates. If you’re not ‘liberal’ you’re probably a sad fuck who had no friends when you were younger.
All this comes from a survey and DNA sampling of 2574 adolescents. So, how many of these adolescents did not have this gene? How many of them really ‘fessed up to having no friends? How did you establish any link at all between this particular scrap of DNA and the traits mentioned? And since when did opinion become science? Karl Popper must be revolving in his grave.
It’s this kind of dross in New Scientist that sets my teeth gnashing. Admittedly it was taken from ‘The Journal of Politics’ and is little but a snippet, but that it appears in NS tells you something about the underlying mind set.
The words ‘linked with’ immediately remind me of the now famous words of Al Gore in his film when he informed us that ice core data shows a ‘correlation’ between CO2 rises and temperature rises, and then neglected to mention that the ice cores showed CO2 rising approximately 800 years after the temperature rise. How, precisely, is a gene that makes a dopamine receptor ‘linked with sociality and novelty-seeking’?
The next weasel word is ‘may’, as this gene ‘may make people more liberal in outlook’. Now what definition of 'liberal' are we talking about: the adjective in the dictionary, or espousing present day liberal views and politics, which tend to bear no relation to the aforementioned adjective? What exactly is being said here?
Then we get the bit about the necessity for having friends in adolescence for this gene to express its liberalism. Of course the implication here is that if you are ‘liberal’ you are probably sociable, novelty-seeking and not a Billy-no-mates. If you’re not ‘liberal’ you’re probably a sad fuck who had no friends when you were younger.
All this comes from a survey and DNA sampling of 2574 adolescents. So, how many of these adolescents did not have this gene? How many of them really ‘fessed up to having no friends? How did you establish any link at all between this particular scrap of DNA and the traits mentioned? And since when did opinion become science? Karl Popper must be revolving in his grave.
Waterstones Chelmsford.
Okay, just to let anyone know who is in the area and might like a signed copy of one of my books, I've signed the stock of them in both branches of Waterstones in Chelmsford.
Art and Stuff
Last year, or early this year, I started an art competition, and there was a website (subminds) displayed down at the side of this blog where people could submit their pictures. Now I'm in the embarrassing position of having thrown a party no one came to. Well, I know for certain that at least one person sent something in so, if you could send me an email Vaude (I think you've got my eddress).
Moving on. Today, we're heading into Chelmsford where I'll be popping into Waterstones there to see if they would like me to sign some of their stock (they usually do). Prior to this, on my excellent new Samsung laser colour printer (more about that in the future) I printed up some of my bookmarks. However, it's noticeable that none of them have the new Jon Sullivan covers on them. I considered sitting down and mucking about designing some more. However, now I'm thinking about doing another competition.
Anyway ... another competition. If you fancy having a crack at designing some bookmarks based on the Jon Sullivan covers (obviously with my blog address on there too), please let me know in the comments section here. Prizes will be maybe signed copies, maybe a Jon Sullivan poster or two -- I'll decide if it turns out that this is a party people will turn up at.
Cannabis Factory
Just posting this here because this is our local town, in fact Caroline used to work nearby this building at one time. I snaffled this from the Essex Police site. But then, this is not as close as the big cannabis greenhouse discovered in our village. Seems to be a common criminal occupation in Essex and, when in a Dengie 100 pub you mustn't ask why you saw an aeroplane landing without lights on a local field. But it's a crying shame that they're destroying all this. They should legalize it and tax it. We need the money.
More than 8000 plants with an estimated street value of £2 million were discovered during a raid on an industrial unit in Heybridge near Maldon on Tuesday, November 9.
Nine purpose built rooms housing 280kg of skunk plants in various stages of growth and a sophisticated set up of lighting and hydropnic equipment were uncovered at a former print works in Hall Road.
Officers estimate the factory will have cost in the region of £250,000 to set up and may have been involved in supplying drugs across the UK and possibly abroad.
The factory also included its own electrical substation which had been illegally linked directly into local mains power supplies.
It is the largest ever discovered in Essex and is thought to be one of the biggest ever uncovered across the UK.
Nine purpose built rooms housing 280kg of skunk plants in various stages of growth and a sophisticated set up of lighting and hydropnic equipment were uncovered at a former print works in Hall Road.
Officers estimate the factory will have cost in the region of £250,000 to set up and may have been involved in supplying drugs across the UK and possibly abroad.
The factory also included its own electrical substation which had been illegally linked directly into local mains power supplies.
It is the largest ever discovered in Essex and is thought to be one of the biggest ever uncovered across the UK.
Friday, November 12, 2010
4.8 Trillion National Debt.
4,800,000,000,000
If you stack £50 notes on top of each other, one after the other, the stack would need to be over 6000 miles high to achieve that amount. If you threw £50 notes out of a window at a rate of one every second, it would take you over 3000 years to reduce that stack to zero. Martin Durkin came out with various neat little analogies during Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story, like, for example, Chancellor Osborne’s spending cuts being the equivalent of trying to empty a full to over-flowing bath, which is still filling from the taps, with an egg cup. He also came out with some plain statements of fact, like, the debt for every man, woman and child in Britain is £77,000, and growing, like, if you sold off every house in Britain that wouldn't pay it.
...
He also tells us in simple terms how we got into this position what with politicians buying votes, spending on crap, borrowing from the future to saddle future generations with debt. By politicians, who all agree that monopolies are a bad thing, creating state monopolies, like one of the biggest on Earth, the NHS. And he has a neat counter to the claim that any other option would lead to in-it-for-profit medical organisations. Do we refuse to buy our next car from Toyota, our next flat screen from Samsung or our next loaf of bread from Asda because they are all in it for the profit? Would we instead prefer state-manufactured products like the wonderful stuff produced by the soviets?
Of course, the Keynesians, Guardianistas and other daft socialists would claim, ‘But it’s not that simple!’ It is. You don’t spend what you haven’t got, and you don’t keep borrowing when you’re already heavily in debt. Simples.
Another target is welfare, the dole, how we are paying people to sit on their arses and remain in poverty. Last year the welfare bill was larger than the tax collected, which is unsustainable madness. Durkin tells us that the public sector in Britain is now bigger than the private sector and is a bloated parasite sucking up wealth, killing its host. If this continues the money will die and, really, before we get out of that there will be blood on the streets.
But there’s a way out and it is quite simple. Slash the public sector by half, make welfare a limited net and not a lifetime one, privatize the NHS and get rid of all those non-jobs because, when the figures are totted up, all those state jobs we regard as essential are filled by about 2 million employees, whilst on top of them are 5.5 million bureaucrats. Slash taxes to 20%, flat, nothing else, and paid only by those earning above something like £15,000 a year. Don’t, for example, tax someone on £15,000 then feed the tax back to them in benefits after the pointless bureaucracy created for the purpose has taken its cut. All of this would instigate an almost immediate regeneration, as it did in Hong Kong, the tiger economies and China (which incidentally has a public sector about half the size of Britain’s).
It’s not going to happen, however. Because the public sector is now 53% of the economy, and most of those working in it are not going to be turkeys voting for Christmas. It’s also the case that a large proportion of the population doesn’t have a clue about economics, and have thought processes that end at ‘money from the government’ and cannot stretch to ‘but the government has to get its money from somewhere’. Many don’t realise that every time the government does some ‘quantitative easing’ it’s actually taxing them yet again. Many don't understand that whilst money will never run out, it can soon enough end up being valueless.
I rather think that sitting in our nice warm houses, with our shiny cars outside, with our TVs, computers and mobile phones, with our frequent trips to the supermarket and regular purchases off the Internet, we’re living in a false reality. It’s like one of those disaster movies in which you first see the cast of characters living their daily lives before things turn nasty. The asteroid is drawing closer, the terrorists are finishing the bomb wiring and loading their weapons, the tsunami is just starting to rise over the horizon or, being more relevant and prosaic in our case, the bailiffs are starting up their vans.
I wonder if now is the time to load the loft with canned goods, buy a generator and stock up on diesel, and then inquire of the local hoodies where it might be possible to buy an AK47. I wonder if right now is the time to take out any savings we have and turn them into Krugerrands, before Sterling turns into a poor and slippery substitute for Andrex.
If you stack £50 notes on top of each other, one after the other, the stack would need to be over 6000 miles high to achieve that amount. If you threw £50 notes out of a window at a rate of one every second, it would take you over 3000 years to reduce that stack to zero. Martin Durkin came out with various neat little analogies during Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story, like, for example, Chancellor Osborne’s spending cuts being the equivalent of trying to empty a full to over-flowing bath, which is still filling from the taps, with an egg cup. He also came out with some plain statements of fact, like, the debt for every man, woman and child in Britain is £77,000, and growing, like, if you sold off every house in Britain that wouldn't pay it.
...
He also tells us in simple terms how we got into this position what with politicians buying votes, spending on crap, borrowing from the future to saddle future generations with debt. By politicians, who all agree that monopolies are a bad thing, creating state monopolies, like one of the biggest on Earth, the NHS. And he has a neat counter to the claim that any other option would lead to in-it-for-profit medical organisations. Do we refuse to buy our next car from Toyota, our next flat screen from Samsung or our next loaf of bread from Asda because they are all in it for the profit? Would we instead prefer state-manufactured products like the wonderful stuff produced by the soviets?
Of course, the Keynesians, Guardianistas and other daft socialists would claim, ‘But it’s not that simple!’ It is. You don’t spend what you haven’t got, and you don’t keep borrowing when you’re already heavily in debt. Simples.
Another target is welfare, the dole, how we are paying people to sit on their arses and remain in poverty. Last year the welfare bill was larger than the tax collected, which is unsustainable madness. Durkin tells us that the public sector in Britain is now bigger than the private sector and is a bloated parasite sucking up wealth, killing its host. If this continues the money will die and, really, before we get out of that there will be blood on the streets.
But there’s a way out and it is quite simple. Slash the public sector by half, make welfare a limited net and not a lifetime one, privatize the NHS and get rid of all those non-jobs because, when the figures are totted up, all those state jobs we regard as essential are filled by about 2 million employees, whilst on top of them are 5.5 million bureaucrats. Slash taxes to 20%, flat, nothing else, and paid only by those earning above something like £15,000 a year. Don’t, for example, tax someone on £15,000 then feed the tax back to them in benefits after the pointless bureaucracy created for the purpose has taken its cut. All of this would instigate an almost immediate regeneration, as it did in Hong Kong, the tiger economies and China (which incidentally has a public sector about half the size of Britain’s).
It’s not going to happen, however. Because the public sector is now 53% of the economy, and most of those working in it are not going to be turkeys voting for Christmas. It’s also the case that a large proportion of the population doesn’t have a clue about economics, and have thought processes that end at ‘money from the government’ and cannot stretch to ‘but the government has to get its money from somewhere’. Many don’t realise that every time the government does some ‘quantitative easing’ it’s actually taxing them yet again. Many don't understand that whilst money will never run out, it can soon enough end up being valueless.
I rather think that sitting in our nice warm houses, with our shiny cars outside, with our TVs, computers and mobile phones, with our frequent trips to the supermarket and regular purchases off the Internet, we’re living in a false reality. It’s like one of those disaster movies in which you first see the cast of characters living their daily lives before things turn nasty. The asteroid is drawing closer, the terrorists are finishing the bomb wiring and loading their weapons, the tsunami is just starting to rise over the horizon or, being more relevant and prosaic in our case, the bailiffs are starting up their vans.
I wonder if now is the time to load the loft with canned goods, buy a generator and stock up on diesel, and then inquire of the local hoodies where it might be possible to buy an AK47. I wonder if right now is the time to take out any savings we have and turn them into Krugerrands, before Sterling turns into a poor and slippery substitute for Andrex.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Black Hole at Centre of Galaxy
I picked up on this quite some time ago but was again reminded of it by this article. It's one of those cases where an SF writer got it right before the astrophysicists proved it. I'm guessing that some of you have read Larry Niven's book? Remember why the Pierson's Puppeteers were moving their entire solar system out of the galaxy?
I was sure I first read about it as a serious scientific theory about six years ago, and this National Geographic article seems to confirm that, whereas I'm fairly sure (correct me if I'm wrong) Niven was writing about this sort of stuff back in the early 70s. Quite likely he took the idea from some speculative articles knocking round at the time, but still...
I was sure I first read about it as a serious scientific theory about six years ago, and this National Geographic article seems to confirm that, whereas I'm fairly sure (correct me if I'm wrong) Niven was writing about this sort of stuff back in the early 70s. Quite likely he took the idea from some speculative articles knocking round at the time, but still...
Reading Science.
Ah, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I must recommence reading and inwardly digesting more science (and a bit less politics). I’ll have to do this by picking and choosing from the Internet because magazines I used to read a decade or so ago, like New Scientist and Scientific American, became highly politicized advocacy platforms
In fact, during yesterday’s trip to Asda and while Caroline was having her hair done, I picked up a copy of the former magazine, popped into the nearby pub, bought a pint of IPA (my first in something like eight months) and sat down to read it. Straight away the cover was off-putting with its depiction of ‘Urban Utopia’ and the connected article the usual exercise in dead horse flogging. Sure, cram people together and they use less energy. Here’s an idea, why not bury the cities underground and assign each human a three metre box to live in. Why not genetically modify humans into rose-blood four-fingered nebbishes so each uses up less resources … if you haven’t read it, get old of T. J. Bass’s Half-Past Human.
However, that being said, there was a lot less environmental hectoring.than there was a decade and a half ago. Maybe I will pick up a few copies of the above mentioned magazines over ensuing months and consider renewing a subscription.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Thinking about Rocks
So, throwing a spacecraft at the Asteroid Belt, with the asteroids on average being a million kilometres apart, your chances of hitting one are not exactly high, which is why the spacecraft we have sent out that way got through unscathed. However, what is an asteroid? From what I can gather they are the objects we can see through our telescopes and have counted. Beyond that the number is estimated and estimations vary widely. I also have to wonder what we can see. I’m guessing that objects the size of a football or a pea aren’t picked up. The chances of something the size of the Pioneer or Voyager craft hitting one of these was probably negligible, but they’d certainly have to be taken into account if you’re presenting a profile 5 kilometres across and travelling at 20,000 kilometres per hour.
Aftermath -- Peter Robinson.
Being an incorrigible book snaffler at Macmillan I’ve managed to aquire lots of reading matter and it’s not all SFF, as you may have noticed by many of my past reviews. I do seem to be developing a bit of a detective fiction habit. If I can grab a copy of a new book by Minette Walters I will, also Peter James and Peter Robinson. The Inspector Banks book by the last of these I’ve been reading and enjoying, but only in the same way as with Peter James, that is, I need a bit of a break between books to go away and read something else – detective books, set in the same location with the same characters do get a bit samey, a bit formulaic. That aside, they’re still good and I still enjoy them.
So, I had mixed feelings when I found out that there was to be an ITV production of Peter Robinson’s Aftermath with Stephen Tomkinson as DCI Banks. On the one hand I was really glad to see that it was being done with such a heavyweight actor in the lead role, on the other hand I was pissed off because, being in Crete, I probably wouldn’t get to see it until it was out on DVD.
When we got back here I was happy to discover that Caroline’s father had overcome his previous problems in dealing with a DVD recorder and managed to record the two episodes for us. Last night we sat down and watched them and, what can I say, it was great. It had Morse-like camera work, Tomkinson was excellent in the role of the permanently haunted Banks and all the other production values spot on. Damn but I hope this is a success. If it is we could be seeing the start of something just like Morse, or Frost, or Dalgliesh, or Wexford, because there are enough of Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks books to fill up a couple of feet of shelf space. Fingers crossed.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Printers
I've finally given up on the ink jet printer. These things are fine if you're using them steadily, but if you're living in two countries and therefore leaving your printer alone for seven months, it ain't so good. I tried the technique of sealing the cartridges in a plastic bag, but they've dried up. Time I think to put away the bottles of ink and the syringe, and time to stop having to bleach ink off my fingers.
The best printer I ever had was an Oki monochrome laser, zero problems with it until the image drum reached the end of its long life. But I wanted colour and, last I recollected, colour laser printers were bloody expensive. Not the case now, so I've ordered a Samsung CLP-325 colour laser printer.
The best printer I ever had was an Oki monochrome laser, zero problems with it until the image drum reached the end of its long life. But I wanted colour and, last I recollected, colour laser printers were bloody expensive. Not the case now, so I've ordered a Samsung CLP-325 colour laser printer.
The First World War from Above
After some quite good TV yesterday, including ‘Stand by Me’ which was a faithful adaptation of the excellent Stephen King novella – an uplifting story completely without the supernatural and whose only horror was the kind we all face or will face – and the Antiques Roadshow, we finally got to what we were really looking forward to.
The First World War from Above presented by Fergal Keane ‘examines recently discovered footage and photographs of the conflict. A 48 minute film of the conflict taken by a French airship in the summer of 1919…’. We saw probably ten minutes of that footage and just a few of the photographs, but they were enough. You didn’t need to see a full 48 minutes of towns turned to rubble, and a Moon-like landscape jagged with trenches like cracks in egg-shell. The program was still excellent and still provided a new perspective on that war, for example, German’s giving away the position of their camouflaged barracks by making flower gardens, and paying the price.
The bit that really captured my attention was one aspect of this war I knew nothing about until I read Sebastian Faulks’ book Birdsong: the tunneling war and the planting of mines. During the battle of Messines 19 mines were detonated underneath the Germans. Each of these (I think) consisted of 450 tons of explosive and not only changed the course of the war but the shape of the land. Later pictures showed neat round lakes in the Belgian countryside, surrounded by nice little copses of trees – lakes that are basically graves (like so much of that countryside) but where the only human remains to be found are pieces of bone no bigger than a fingernail.
And on a side note: I now have a better understanding of the destructive power of explosions measured in kilotonnes (since ton and tonne are roughly equivalent). These were about half a kilotonne.
In total 21 mines were laid but two of them were not used, and the British then lost their location. One of them was detonated in 1955 by a lightning strike on a nearby pylon, but wrecking the surrounding area but killing only one cow, whilst the other still hasn’t been found.
As well as the aerial footage, some of the usual black-and-white film was shown in this: the guns firing, the men going over the top and a particular clip of a soldier carrying his wounded comrade out of a trench. All of these were immediately familiar since, before we came back to Britain, our TV viewing over a few days consisted entirely of The Great War. This series was first broadcast in 1964, narrated by Michael Redgrave, and is still well worth watching. Really, if you haven’t seen it, I suggest you do.
Update: I stand corrected. It was a total of 450 tons of explosives distributed to make 19 (or quite possible 21) mines under the German lines. This means they weight in at between 20 and 25 tons each and, as I noted in comments, was enough to shake the teacups in Downing Street. Then again, all of them went off within seconds of each other. Anyway, this brings me to the conclusion that a half kilotonne explosion would be enough to excavate Hanningfield reservoir, not the village duck pond.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Good Reads
While surfing the Internet I just came across this at goodreads. All very gratifying with a star rating about the same as Amazon but divided over more reviews. I seem to weigh in at about four stars generally.
The Departure
Remember my previous post about the Asteroid Belt? Well I've just finished going through the copy edited typescript and my perceived error required and addition of five words, and they weren't really needed.
Really, my screw-up was in the book Zero Point, which I haven't even finished. In The Departure I mention the Asteroid Belt a total of about three times. Now time to get back to some research on a vaguely remembered figure of eight route between Earth and Mars...
Note to self: do not turn into a histrionic writer!
Really, my screw-up was in the book Zero Point, which I haven't even finished. In The Departure I mention the Asteroid Belt a total of about three times. Now time to get back to some research on a vaguely remembered figure of eight route between Earth and Mars...
Note to self: do not turn into a histrionic writer!
VSS Enterprise Completes First Manned Glide Flight
I signed up quite a while ago for news updates from Virgin Galactic, which have been interesting but infrequent. Two I received while in Crete I really should have mentioned here, but a lot of other stuff was going on and I didn’t get round to it. Now I will.
VIRGIN GALACTIC'S SPACESHIPTWO ACHIEVES MAJOR MILESTONE IN ITS PROGRAM TO BECOME WORLD'S FIRST MANNED COMMERCIAL SPACE VEHICLE.
While most of the media of the world concerns itself with a sick economy, various apparently pointless wars, and a mid-term president who seems to be losing his grip, it’s heartening to know that this project is on course and doing well.
VSS Enterprise achieves manned free flight from over 45,000 ft (13,700 metres) and successfully glides to land at Mojave Air and Spaceport.10th October 2010, Mojave, CA. Virgin Galactic, the US company developing the world’s first commercial manned space flight system and tourism business, is delighted to announce the successful completion today of the first piloted free flight of SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Enterprise. The spaceship was released from its mothership at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 metres).
Reading that last bit I can’t help but wonder about reality catching up with fiction, and the way that science fiction can be swiftly put out of date. Isn’t there a scene in one of the Star Trek Films where one of the Enterprise captains (Picard?) shows off a display case full of models of ships called Enterprise? It strikes me that now that display is short one model.
During its first flight the spaceship was piloted by Pete Siebold, assisted by Mike Alsbury as co-pilot. The two main goals of the flight were to carry out a clean release of the spaceship from its mothership and for the pilots to free fly and glide back and land at Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, who was present during the first successful flight, added “This was one of the most exciting days in the whole history of Virgin. For the first time since we seriously began the project in 2004, I watched the world’s first manned commercial spaceship landing on the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port and it was a great moment. Now, the sky is no longer the limit and we will begin the process of pushing beyond to the final frontier of space itself over the next year.”
Good on you Mr Branson, it’s excellent to know that someone with money and power shares the dream. However, bringing things thumping back down to Earth, much as I admire what you’re doing, I’m still comparing that BT broadband offer against what I pay for my Virgin account…
Go check out the Virgin Galactic site.
Go check out the Virgin Galactic site.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Top 10 SFF on Amazon UK for 2010
Obviously I rather like this particular top ten especially when you consider that The Technician didn't come out until August and was a hardback. I am however a little puzzled. Did I sleep through Christmas and the New Year?
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Computer
Ach, it's time to invest in a new computer. The hard drive is making sounds it never made before, it takes forever to turn off, the USB connections are dodgy and Windows XP is playing silly buggers. Any suggestions?
Back in the Land of the Jobsworth
And so, we got up at 5.00AM Greek time, left home at 6.30 to get to Iraklion airport at about 9.00. After the usual waiting around and buggering about a thirty-five minute flight took us to Athens airport where we had to wait around for nearly seven hours for our flight to Heathrow. This was sort of okay, since there were places to eat and drink (though €3.50 for a bottle of coke is outrageous) and we could pop outside the airport for a cigarette.
At Heathrow the numerous No Smoking signs started to, as always, annoy me. Then some officious prick in passport control telling us to remove any covers from our passports annoyed me further. However, the swift arrival of our luggage – first off the conveyor – allowed me to calm down. It wasn’t till we were heading out to catch our cab that my ire started to rise again. There’s not only No Smoking inside the airport, but outside too, even in the multistory parking area.
Now we wouldn’t want any second-hand cigarette smoke there to spoil the aroma of the exhaust fumes from the endless queues of taxis and buses filing across in front of Arrivals, or of the fumes from the cars cramming through the car park, not to mention the fumes from the one plane every ten minutes that takes off from Heathrow, would we?
No Smoking in the taxi too, yeah, okay, it’s not my car. But and those stickers everywhere and a big ‘Thank You For Not Smoking’ plastered across the dashboard?
Fuck off.
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