Strangely Perfect

It’s Just Like Bladerunner, And Not Just the Weather! Tears in Rain Bladerunner, the movie, based on an old Philip K Dick science-fiction story, was made by Ridley Scott from North-East England, someone I’m distantly related to.  Made in 1982, it presents a very grey, wet, bleak future, heavily referencing Scott’s (and my own!) upbringing [...]

I’ve just uploaded this video using different software and process so I don’t know how it’ll appear yet.  However, see if you can spot the kingfisher? It’s a remarkable bird that I’ve been trying to catch on camera for ages. When they’re stationary in trees they’re almost impossible to see. When they fly, they are [...]

Is Nuclear power Safe? Watch how the politicians duck and dive. Watch how they pick and choose which bits of ‘science’ to believe! Last week, smiley Alan Johnson fell out with serious Professor Nutt because the professor said some factual scientific things, things proven by statistics and analysis to have an overwhelming degree of proof.  [...]

This week, I’ve become aware of three excellent initiatives that are focussing people’s energies, creativity, and cash(!) into positive solutions to the global energy crisis.  It just shows what can be done – and these projects are not difficult or hard to creative creatures like ourselves. Big Mirrors in the Desert This is a $400billion [...]

Continuing on From…  What Killed Flight AF 447 Since the search for the ‘black boxes’ of Flight 447 was abandoned a few days ago (20th Aug 2009 – see news item),  only 3 days later, Nature’s On-line version has published reports of the jet things I was going on about in my first article about [...]

Exploring the Simultaneous Nature of Cause & Effect Star Trek: The Next Generation: Finale, Episode – “All Good Things…” I’ve just watched the double episode finale to the TNG Picard series just after the cyclists finished their ascent of Mont Ventoux in this years Tour de France.  It was “All Good Things…”(see link, link & [...]

Atlantic Ocean Floor Profile Following the (as yet unresolved) crash of the Air France airbus on flight AF 447, much has been made about the ocean floor having huge cracks and being very uneven.  Most atlases, online and TV news reports say this and back the statement up with visual imagery of the bathymetry.  See [...]

Sex and Death, Death Sex, Death and Sex, AND the Death of Democracy. I’m yet again struck by the rampant hypocrisy from America.  It’s citizens seem to think that everyone in the world has to follow their peculiar mores and morals to the letter, conveniently forgetting that they won’t abide by their own rules written [...]

What Brought Down the Air France Jet over the Atlantic? Just my tuppence worth.  The best current info on the subject is Wikipedia which has peer reviewed sifting and not a load of speculative ‘maybes’.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF_447 Also, check http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/ for good weather, navigation and aircraft info. Prescript Aside from a bomb, which has never [...]

Humphrey Hawksley in an article on today’s BBC News website has reported the (blindingly obvious, some might say) results of a 25-year American study into the effects of air pollution (specifically vehicle and industrial) on life expectancy. City air pollution ‘shortens life’ Basically, it’s bad! I live next to an A-class road, busy with holiday [...]

Introduction While fishing around for some chords I came across azchords.com – as you do.  They’ve a shedload of Google ads and I accidentally hit the banner ad while trying to get rid of pesky popups (why do sites still do this now?)  I was taken to the website of someone called Kevin Hoeffer and [...]

Computer Shopper Interview with Home Office Dawinderpal Sahota at ‘Computer Shopper’ magazine, part of the Dennis Publishing organisation, has published a fascinating interview that the magazine had with a UK Home Office rep on the subject of the government’s policy towards tackling child abuse websites. ‘Computer Shopper’ gave all questions in advance so that the [...]

Chinese Censorship: As part of the BBCs “take” on the international views on the new, 44th President of the United States, their China correspondent Michael Bristow has reported that his inauguration speech was censored in China. Apparently, the English version on the Xinghua News site is okay, but the Chinese version for the locals has [...]

Many moons ago I read the short story with the above title. Although not one of Pohl’s best works, it has nevertheless left an obviously lasting impression on me. Written in the mid-fifties, it’s a future tale of consumerism gone mad. In the tale, it’s illegal not to consume as much as possible.  The hero [...]