Posts filed under 'General'
Having trouble with my internet connection and it’s making me even more anti-technology, my brain is tuned to problem solve, specifically in engineering although the older I get the more I can use the same thought strategies in a more lateral way and I see more and more flaws other things such as peoples’ live’s, society in general, politics, religions, capitalism, communism, even science. The problem relating to my internet is I have little control over it, I’m relying on a third party, I used to use packet radio many years ago before the internet which was a basic internet system used amongst Amateur Radio enthusiasts, the great thing about it was there was no necessity for a third party, you could connect directly with whoever you wanted to file share with or chat to (providing you had a suitable set up), there ‘were’ bulletin board systems (BBS) and nodes where you could share information with other parts of the world but generally they were local and operated by other Radio Amateurs that you were either friendly with or knew somebody who was. My beef with modern day communications is that it is getting far too complicated and with that comes fragility, the system is becoming vulnerable to a myriad of potentially disabling influences.
Solar Activity/Magneto Fluctuations:
Solar flares create huge electro-magnetic pulses that penetrate the Earth’s ionosphere, these propagations can induce power surges into electrical transmission systems such as our national grid large enough to severely damage sub station transformers (such conditions caused a massive black-out in the US some years ago). The same thing applies to any large cable network, telecoms for instance, although fibre optic cables will be immune in such a case any sensitive electronics could be susceptible and many telecoms system are still largely copper cable.
Satellites:
Our reliance on satellites adds to the situation, not only is there an ever increasing amount of space junk floating around that could easily destroy a satellite in a collision (nothing really floats in space, it’s all moving at several thousands of miles an hour!) but radiation from solar flares could also easily annihilate it’s electronics.
Weather:
Kind of obvious, flooding, high winds, extreme high/low temperatures; not only directly but anything that might paralyse essential maintenance services.
Cyber Attack:
Cyber Warfare is already happening, China especially are targeting Western infrastructures and may possibly already have a method of disabling key areas of our communications system.
Terrorism:
Terrorist organisations could target communications networks in order to gain notoriety or interfere with emergency operations.
Pandemic:
The whole of civilisation could crumble on this one, but nationally it becomes even more acute. Consider 10% of the workforce across the board are off sick, that includes managers, supervisors, delivery drivers (in particular tankers to deliver fuel) farmers, police, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, air traffic control and the administration staff that do the shed load of paperwork involved with all of it, and also engineers servicing & maintaining all this technological marvelry including the communications network. At first 10% doesn’t sound a lot and we could easily cope for a week or two, but how about a month, or even six? And what if the working populous off sick was fifteen percent, or twenty?
Political Red Tape:
Health and Safety, Political Correctness, ethnic integration over skills based employment all pose a threat for reasons that defy logic.
Economic Decline:
All this stuff costs a fortune to keep running let alone improve, so with dwindling resources companies will inevitably struggle to provide an effective service
In time I believe we will be protecting ourselves from the expense and the possibility of being cut off by abandoning third party utility providers for a simpler solution. What that will be who knows, maybe there’s a niche there?
So I can’t solve my internet problem, because it’s not my problem.
Ironically as I’ve been typing this, Orange, who provide my mobile phone service, have barred my phone!
March 10th, 2010
China becomes world’s biggest exporter
• Germany overtaken in list of top trading nations
• Chinese economy on track to grow by 9.5% in 2010
“China completed a resurgent 2009 with a huge rise in exports establishing China as the world’s biggest exporter, ahead of Germany, for the first time. The juggernaut Chinese economy also revealed record monthly imports of crude oil and a vast renewed appetite for iron ore and copper.
Trade in December, according to figures from China’s customs office, showed a massive 17.7% year-on-year jump in exports, dramatically outpacing a forecast for 4% growth. The huge increase came after 13 months of decline.
Crude oil imports averaged more than 5m barrels a day for a month for the first time in December, up by more than a fifth from November, as the country sucked in raw materials at a faster pace than expected.
Imports jumped by 56%, pushing China’s overall trade surplus in the month down by 4% from November instead of the expected 3% increase.
While some experts said much of the increase was due to seasonal factors and quirks in commodities markets, it appears that the strength of demand from China is signalling a further rise in global trade during 2010.
Imports of unwrought copper rose by more than a quarter from November to 369,368 tonnes, more than expected, while copper scrap imports jumped an even bigger 46%. Soya bean imports hit a record 4.78m tonnes in the month, with a surge in supplies from the United States and Brazil. Exports of aluminium and finished steel were also up strongly. China’s economy is predicted to grow 9.5% in 2010, topping last year’s expected figure.
The figure will be welcomed by business leaders who argue that China needs to shrug off the effects of the downturn if global trade is to recover. China is widely seen as a key engine of growth, especially as the US economy remains in the doldrums, with rising unemployment and many of its major manufacturing industries still badly hit.
However, the increased consumption of raw materials is likely to fuel criticism that China is failing to meet its environmental obligations. A dash for growth is seen as incompatible with the need to minimise burning fossil fuels and felling rainforests. Open-cast copper mining and soya bean farming on previously protected rainforest, have been top of environmental concerns for several years.
The development research centre of the state council, a leading thinktank, said China’s economy would remain robust as market-driven investment picked up while government-led stimulus spending slowed. It said real estate investment would buoy growth, while inflationary concerns remained mild.
China is understood to have bought oil contracts in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries to secure oil supplies ahead of a boom in manufacturing. US and Brazilian farmers are also understood to be ready to increase supplies of Soya beans as domestic demand from the meat industry, which uses soya beans as a feedstuff, soars to record levels.
Adding to environmental concerns, China’s steel mills undertook a massive production drive in 2009, partly in response to a $585bn government stimulus plan. Disregarding a 60% collapse in the export market, they produced almost half the world’s steel in 2009.”
This is in today’s Guardian, 15 years ago I once said in a conversation about politics that we needed to beware of China in the future, I was laughed at!
January 10th, 2010
I had an interesting post to write as I made a comment about something somebody said tonight that got me thinking, only I forgot the original statement. But the answer was, “This is why I take what religious people have to say with a pinch of salt.” Have you ever been in a conversation where you know the other party is talking crap, but you don’t argue with them through common courtesy, professional interest, or because you actually like the person and don’t want them to think you’re an arse? This deviates a little from my original script, I do listen to religious people, and I do listen to politicians, and I do listen to the right and the left, I read China Today, Aljazeera and Reuters, as well as The Times. But I am on the fence, Iran are dangerous, and having seen Lybia’s Gadaaffi infront of the UN? well what can I say?!!! One of Notradumus’s interpretations were that some mad twat coastal with the Meditteranean will be the first to use a nuclear weapon. Iran (or North Korea) maybe developing their capacity to produce a nuclear arsenal for their own purposes, Iran have quite clearly dictated the eradication of Israel. To be honest, if I was an Israelie, I would be shitting my pants, but who’s to say they wont sell their warheads on to rogue states, if the price is right.
September 28th, 2009
‘Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better – don’t use plasticity shopping bags, turn off your lights, insulate the house, etc – but they won’t make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.’
James Lovelock,
Inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis.
‘At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.’
Ray Kurzweil,
Technological Futurist.
source:www.chrisharrisfutures.blogspot.com
September 2nd, 2009
“Transmission of swine influenza virus from pigs to humans is not common. [No Shit]
When it is transmitted, it does not always cause human influenza; often, [only pig flu] the only sign of infection is the presence of antibodies, detectable only by laboratory tests.[Since when do you have lab tests for common flu?]
When transmission results in influenza in a human, it is called zoonotic (A disease which can be spread from animals to humans) swine flu. [We don’t know the source of every case of flu, do we now]
People who work with pigs, especially people with intense exposures, are at risk of catching swine flu. [No mention of Mexico here]
Only about fifty such transmissions have been recorded since the mid-20th Century, when identification of influenza subtypes became possible. (Eating pork does not pose a risk of infection.) [But snogging a pig?]
Rarely, these strains of swine flu can pass from human to human. In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort. [Sounds like a mother of a hangover to me].”
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_flu
May 2nd, 2009
Society could be likened to a machine towards immortality, are we are being administered legal toxic chemicals enabling certain diseases to proliferate thus subsequently providing a platform for practice to eradicate such diseases? Controls on responsible organisations (BBC, The Press etc.) who are left to continuously glorify things such as binge drinking (Chris Moyles comes to mind) and the endless exposure of arseholed celebrities, not to mention the ones who are leniently dealt with by the courts over possession of class A substances, are non-existent and the problem of the relaxed attitude towards things such alcohol or drug* addiction is often left to the intervention of the British public at the receiving end of the media, let’s face it, most of us Brits find it easier to just let it be rather than jump up and down and complain. (* loosely phrased – including any medication)
The bio-chemistry of the liver is highly complex and we still have a lot to learn about how it functions, alcohol remains legal, cheap and in plentiful supply. Before we knew about the myriad of complications created by smoking, it was legal to smoke in public places, cigarette companies had a free run in the advertising sector and smoking was not seen as the anti-social habit that it has become today. This is possibly because there is not much more to be learned from the serious diseases that smoking can cause and proliferate. Anti-ageing creams are another issue, we don’t fully understand how the daily application of billions of nano-particles that can easily skip the barrier of the skin ending up in the bloodstream will affect long term health, but still there are no restrictions on their use. And of course there’s the controversy with mobile phones, it’s a fact that if you bombard living cells, especially in the brain, with high energy electro-magnetic radiation at reasonably high frequencies (900Mhz-1800Mhz in UK phones) it will damage them clearing the way for tumor growth, there are restrictions on the effective radiated power (ERP) of phones however. So it seems apparent that until things are more fully understood we will continue to consume the notion that it’s all under control when in all honesty, a lot of it is highly under-researched and thrown out into the public with government controlled backing, the government who know well enough that it could be a risk but will never know for sure otherwise, so in effect, we are very much a part of the research.
October 7th, 2008
It’s Wednesday, and I’m sitting rather dazed at the thought that there is only two and a half days until the weekend, as we all know time tends to accelerate Monday-Friday so the latter part of the week goes quicker. I was chatting with my daughter Kayleigh yesterday and she mentioned about going to the cinema today with the college, something they do every Wednesday to see one of those odd unheard of matinées as part of their study, yeah right! My reply was, “You only went the other day!” At which point she emphasised ‘that was actually last Wednesday,’ we both agreed that time had flown by the past week and I pondered if it was relevant to many other people. Weekends to me are mostly just a blink of the eye until time seems to hit a wall at 6am on Monday morning and the cycle starts over.
Odd to think that Mondays are usually quite depressing, is this because time is actually going slower? Or do i just perceive time traveling slower because I feel depressed that it’s another 5 days until the weekend (cause or effect). In practice it seems the happier (busier, less bored) you are, the faster time seems to go the or vice versa. The irony is, if your busy and time seems to be traveling faster, you get more done than if you’d had the same amount to do in the same period when time was traveling slower because you were bored. Erm…yeah.
October 1st, 2008
Have you ever heard of the Odd Man Theory? A novel called Andromeda Strain written by Michael Crichton is a story that tells of how a group of scientists with very advanced knowledge of micro biology set up in an underground germ warfare laboratory in a desperate attempt to neutralize an alien microbe captured by a satellite and brought to earth. The microbe is killing people left and right turning the blood to dust and this team is given the task of saving earth from certain death. Amongst this group of scientists is, of all people, a pediatrician! This guy knows nothing about microbes. is not a research scientist and is puzzled by the decision to include him in this intellectual group. Well, as it turns out, guess who discovers the answer to the problem? the pediatrician, a baby doctor!
The fact that this a book of fiction may prompt others to think that this theory is little more than a convenient fabrication for the purpose of entertainment that perhaps it’s not likely in the real world. That would be a mistake. There are a lot of people who are aware of this principle, agree that it does operate but when asked are unable to shed light on its origins. My limited understanding of the underlying principle is that those who are trained within a common paradigm or scientific philosophy think along the same lines. Others who are trained differently, think differently and are thus more likely to come up with novel solutions. The scientific community is rich with examples of how ideas that should not work but actually did, and contradicted accepted thinking. So the “Out of the box” thinking is more likely to occur from the “. . . odd man. . . ” who takes a different perspective and who doesn’t know he’s not supposed to ask certain questions.
August 26th, 2008
A very interesting theory has been developed by Mark Changizi a cognitive scientist, about how we interpret the world around us and also could explain certain optical illusions that we all perceive. It’s to do with how long it takes us to process the visual information from our eyes into images processed in the brain (approx 0.1S), this may seem relatively insignificant, but if you are going to catch out that Ozzy batsman instead of receiving a mouthful of broken teeth, it becomes all the more important. It has been declared that evolution has programmed us to instinctively warp the images around us to correct distortions created by movement of ourselves around our environment. So if we are walking along a street for example we will be visualising certain areas one tenth of a second before we actually see them (???), so we are kind of looking into the future! Have a look at this:
The converging lines toward a vanishing point (the spokes) are cues that trick our brains into thinking we are moving forward — as we would in the real world, Since we aren’t actually moving and the figure is static, we misperceive the straight lines as curved. If you imagine the perspective of a door frame as you walked through it, you begin to understand how our perception compensates and why these static parallel lines seem to bulge near the center. Have a look at this one:
In this illusion, looming toward the center leads to the brightness expanding outward, while looming away does the opposite, exactly the same rules at work.
This is however only a theory, but a pretty cool one…
June 3rd, 2008
How old does a child have to be to walk home 4 minutes down the road on her own at 9pm?
Factors:
1. Child’s age, awareness, appearance.
2. Any apprehension on the child’s part.
3. Area. Whether a rough estate, built up area, open country etc.
4. Street lighting, traffic and facilities to cross busy roads.
(Footbridges, Pelican Crossings).
5. Potential areas of opportunity for an attack on route.
6. Statistics of attacks or attempted abductions on young people in the local area.
Attacks:
This is a grey area, a lot of muggings these days are attributed to the victim carrying a device such as an iPod or mobile phone, white headphones are a dead give away to a would-be mugger. Here’s the irony, these things are fashion accessories and are used to display symbols of status by the younger generation much as the reason why some adults (term used loosely) buy Beemers and ridiculously large 4X4’s, so… they are meant to be on display! I’m sure most young teens are well aware of the potential for being mugged in their local area, probably more so than the parents themselves in some cases. There’s a fine line between fashion and reason, it doesn’t take a person with a degree is sociology to understand that walking through a group of drunk teenagers outside the local One-Stop on a Friday evening, wearing a well displayed iPod while texting on an expensive mobile phone is not a particularly wise thing to do, and I’m sure most young people would avoid such a situation whether carrying expensive technology or not. The child’s ability of dealing with such a confrontation is a dodgy one, having possibly never witnessed such a situation before it is difficult to speculate on this. It is more likely the child will co-operate and then leg it rather than freeze in fear or start a fight, the latter ill-considered reaction would be somewhat irrational as the attacker could potentially be forearmed.
Abduction:
Around 56% of child abductions are committed by a person the child is familiar with, nearly half of them are one of the parents, if you are a parent of the child an abduction is only deemed such if the child is taken out of the country. In the case of anyone else it is simply the detention of a child without lawful authority or reasonable excuse. With most stranger attempted child abductions the most common scenario is a male offender attempting to entice a child into a car or physically attempting to drag a child from a public place, older children should be well aware not to get into a car with a stranger and if they were dragged from a public place it’s highly probable there will be witnesses as public places are generally over-looked and offer better lighting, this could dramatically decrease the likelihood of such an attempt. Where might a child be more vulnerable? On a town housing estate notorious for gangs of teens it will be more likely the child be mugged or be involved in an unprovoked attack, in a small country village this would be unlikely, though it would be easier for an abductor to operate in such an area. So, it would appear to be safest in a moderately busy area not generally known its high crime rate. Statistically the average age of abductees is 10 and girls are more prone to abduction than boys.
Why am I asking?
Well I was subjected to a moral confrontation only last week that got blown out of proportion, I let my daughter pop home to collect her things to stay the night, it was well lit, it is a nice area, my daughter is responsible for her years and did not show any signs of trepidation. My daughter returned half hour later with my other daughter who’s 2 years older, this was their mother’s idea. So in retrospect, they could’ve both been kidnapped! I won’t mention the word neurotic…Damn!!!
So there is no definitive answer to the question, but having carefully considered all the above before (on the fly), I would put it at about 13 and a half!
February 23rd, 2008
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