Danone - Should it be Damn One?

You must have seen the adverts for Danone products Activia Yogurt.

We buy the fig and date versions and decided to try the peach and vanilla versions also. What we didn't notice was the small text on the wrapper saying 'fat free yogurt with fruit, sugar and sweeteners'

Sweeteners in a so called 'healthy' product? Getting out a magnifying glass to read the 4 point text on the carton I checked to see just what sweetener was being used. In the Peach I found Aspartame and Acesulfame.

Now the Acesulfame is bad enough - it's only suspected of having 'significant doubt' as to its safety but what sort of idiot manufacturing a 'healthy food' includes Aspartame? There are an unbelievable number of complaints that this stuff is suspected of (See http://www.jaydax.co.uk/imho/aspartame.htm)

Now if Damnone (oops sorry - Danone) can make such a blunder what about their other claims?

'Did you know 56% of healthy women report that they experience digestive discomfort from time to time?' - What an astonishing statistic. I wonder where they got it from. I suspect probably out of the air since I'm pretty certain that 100% of people - male or female, would admit to having digestive discomfort at some time in their life.

'Contains the unique live culture BIFIDUS ACTIREGULARIS®' - Now just what does that mean? First 'unique' is defined as being 'the only one of its kind'. Danone - I've news for you - it's a bacteria and there are billions of them! Maybe Danone have a unique strain of this bacteria? Nope - it seems to be Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. animalis, strain DN-173 010 That's a bacteria commonly found in animal bowels and by no means unique. Danone have given it a new (and unofficial) name, BIFIDUS ACTIREGULARIS® and trade marked it. Hey - what a brilliant idea. If we all do that no one will know that this common bacteria is in no way special.

'82% of people with digestive discomfort said they felt better after eating ACTIVIA' - Err - How long after? Would they have felt better after a few hours anyway? Did they attribute feeling better to eating ACTIVIA - you didn't say!

'It tastes fantastic too' - Nope - it used to taste OK but you ruined it by putting artificial sweeteners in, giving it a lingering after taste.

So why did they add this rubbish? Maybe it's one of these reasons:

• Artificial sweeteners are cheaper than sugar so you can make more profit. In fact Aspartame seems to work out as being 1/2000th the cost of the sugar required for equal sweetness
  
• You can claim it's less fattening.
• Less sugar means less tooth decay (We'll just choose to ignore the tooth eating acid in the yogurt and fruit)
• This paticular sweetner has a reputation of producing a craving for more. That means that instead of eating one pot you might eat two. That of course would increase the product's sales. Danone wouldn't do that... would they?

Guess what? Danone just lost another customer for this product.

Postscript

Now for the positive side of Danone's yoghurt. In December my family adopted a kitten found abandoned on a farm. He was such a sweet thing and so friendly we couldn't understand why anyone would abandon him at about 7 weeks old. When we got him home we discovered his awful secret. To put it bluntly his farts smelt awful and he did lots of them!

We wormed him and gave him a kitten diet of 'Science Plan'. No improvement. Then I had an idea and gave him about a teaspoon of Danone 'Bifidus Actiregularis®' yoghurt. Displaying a good deal more sense than many humans he wouldn't touch the Aspartame sweetened version but really enjoyed the other versions. His smelly farts quickly disappeared.

So if you have a problem with smelly farts from your pet (or maybe yourself) just add Danone yoghurt to your diet for a while.

BT's Important Messages

A couple of days ago I got a letter from BT marked 'Important documents inside - Not a circular.'
"Must be a bill" I thought and opened it. Sure enough it was a bill from BT Mobile. I looked at the amount due - £0.00
"Wow - that is important" I thought "Better send them a cheque and ask for a receipt."
Just as I was about to write a cheque for 'Zero pounds and no pence,' I saw the bit at the bottom which told me I need take no action since the amount would be collected by direct debit. What a shame - I was really looking forward to getting that receipt.

I didn't think BT could top that 'Important letter' but today I got another one!
This time the 'Important documents inside' told me that I need do nothing to continue to have unlimited evening and weekend calls at no extra cost BUT if I was not happy with this I could cancel the offer by calling 0800 345 7309 and then pay at the normal price of £2.65 per month for my unlimited evening and weekend calls.

Huh! I bet that number gets inundated with people calling to pay extra for those free calls!

Well Mr Nigel Stagg, Managing Director of BT's Customer Service, I bet you win the prize for the year's most pointless letter - Unless my readers out there know of a worse 'Important documents inside' letter.

Aaagh! Spam!

Just 27 minutes into 2009 I got sent my first spam e-mail of the year - from someone signing herself as Beverly and who suggested I go to her website for 'all kinds of medicines'.
It was quickly followed by more and by the end of the day I had 131 spam e-mails in my 'Junk' folder. Now that's a record! Not because of what you think - it's a record because that was the fewest spam e-mails I've had for a very long time! On average I get just under 500 spam e-mails a day.

Now at this point I have to point out that my e-mail filters will automatically delete any message which comes from someone I don't know and which contains certain words such as Viagra, tobacco, degree, bank, 'you have won', or which claim to have been sent from me to myself. The spam mail I'm talking about slipped through the filters.

Looking back at the January 1st spams I find:
40 spams offering me medications - mostly Viagra or slimming pills
29 offering to enlarge my penis
22 offering to sell me a (mostly fake) watch
14 offering me a (fake) degree or diploma
6 offering software
5 inviting me to gamble
4 invitations to online dating services
2 messages attempting to get me to check my password details at a bank account
1 each of messages offering clothes, mobile phone games and fake jobs
1 lottery winner prize
1 invitation to sponsor the next international tennis match
1 botnet test
1 offer to increase my breast size (and it was addressed to 'John'!)
and a spam from Sony about Playstation games (I distinctly remember un-ticking that box 'Do you want to receive...')

Now let's take a closer look at these:

First there must be a great many STUPID people out there on Internet! Now I know from my own experience that there are really two species of 'man' on this planet. Homo Sapiens (That's Latin for thinking or wise man) and just 'Homo'; but really! You have to be a total moron to believe that you can get a better deal buying prescription medicines from a spammer than through your doctor and a pharmacy. Haven't the people who fall for this heard of fake, dangerous drugs and credit card fraud?

How about the 'penile enlargement' ones? Would you honestly trust your member to a doctor promoted by spam? How about trusting it to someone who is not a doctor? Get real folks and for your information after a great deal of research I can tell you that the average size of a fully erect penis is 5¼ inches.(about 40% are now saying 'Phew'; 20% are going for a tape measure; 5% are thinking 'I'm deformed' and those suffering from a diphallic condition - go look it up - are wondering 'which one').

How about those watches? Yeah right - you expect to buy a Rolex for $5.00 or a Cartier for $6.00. IT'S FAKE! Not only that but it looks fake! If you want one - buy it at your local street market where you can see what you are buying and... offer less. It often works (which is more than can be guaranteed by the one you buy through spam).

Fake degrees. Do they actually work? Is any employer really daft enough to employ someone on the basis of a certificate from a university they have never heard about? If you really want a fancy bit of paper - design and print it yourself - that's even cheaper.

How about that software? If you want a full copy of MS Office for $12 and expect to buy it on-line I've got news for you - It's a pirate! If you're going to get a pirate copy of software you might as well go the full hog and get it free from Internet instead. If piracy worries you - it should - then get Open Office from www.openoffice.org which is MS Office compatible and free!

Dating sites? There are lots of chat sites on the net which are free, so why bother to pay for the ones that are not free?

Gambling? You really want to trust a site promoted by spam with your credit card numbers? You really think you will honestly win?

As for anyone who falls for the bank phishing scams - well someone so stupid does not deserve to have money! Just remember - Banks NEVER ask you to check your details online. They ALLWAYS suggest you type in their URL rather than follow a link and GOOD up-to-date browsers will warn you if that link is bogus.

Mr 'buy my games/ringtones' obviously hopes you are not aware of all the free games available or the free software (audacity) which allows you to make your own ringtones. He hopes you'll give him that crucial credit card number so he can take regular small amounts from it before you remember to cancel it or even worse - educate you about identity theft the hard way.

As for the rest - I buy my clothes where I can try them on; have lost faith in the $200 for 3 hours work a week; don't mind if the guy who tells me to claim my lottery win keeps it himself; find tennis boring and definitely don't want bigger breasts!

I'm not going to fall for any of these but it just takes one in a million to buy from a spammer to make it worth his/her while and as a result I get about 175,000 spam e-mails in my inbox each year. Now at say half a second to check each that means I spend a full day of my time deleting the stuff each year. Since I value my time as wasted if I don't make £27 per hour that means spam is currently costing me £648 per year! I OBJECT!

The first spam e-mail was sent on 2nd May 1978 by a guy called Gary Thuerk working for DEC. It was sent to 393 users of Arpanet (the forerunner of Internet). Since then spam has grown a little. more than 90% of all e-mail traffic is spam! It uses our bandwidth, slowing down our connection and costs us all money.

Now as of June 2008 there were 1.46 billion Internet users in the world and if just one in a thousand has the same level of spam and charges a tenth of my price for their time then that means spammers are stealing £94,000,000 ($138,000,000 US) from us per year! This is a MAJOR crime!

So what happens when a spammer is caught? Well here in the UK you could be fined £5,000 but the greatest fine so far has been nowhere near that!

Now what sort of punishment would be sensible for stealing £94 million and annoying 1.46 billion people? How about we bring back hanging for it?

NPower doesn't listen!

(Addresses and names have been changed to protect NPower's victims)

When I moved in April 2008 I kept the existing electricity supply - even though I knew it wasn't the cheapest in my area. NPower. I arranged to pay bills monthly by direct debit. After a while I got my first bill and also a bill for a Mr D Maylor with the same address. Mine was in credit since the amount I paid monthly was more than I needed to pay. I returned Mr Maylor's bill marked 'Not known at this address'.
A couple of days later Mr Maylor's bill was sent back to me. I went to my neighbours to see if they knew the Maylors - they had never heard of them.

I sent the bill back again; an inconvenience since there isn't a postbox within 2 miles of my house.

Then the 'Red' bill came for Mr Maylor. I rang NPower and told them he didn't live at my address. It was at this point that I noticed they had my address down as Trackside House rather than Trackside Cottage and that Mr Maylor's bill was addressed to Trackside Cottage. I asked them to correct this.

Three months later I got a new set of bills from NPower for Mr Maylor. Again I returned them and promptly had them sent back to me rather than to NPower.
This time I opened them and discovered Mr Maylor hadn't been paying his bill - not surprising since they had been sending it to me - and owed over £200. Again I rang NPower and explained yet again that Mr Maylor didn't live at my address and that I was paying my own bill and had no intention of paying someone else's.

'Could you tell me the meter number on your meter' the guy at Customer Services said? I got the stepladders and read off the number on the meter. It wasn't the same as on Mr Maylor's bill and, surprise surprise, it was the number of the meter on my bill.

'I don't understand it' the guy said. 'We've been sending bills to Mr Maylor at that address for the last eight years and they have always been paid!'

'Well it isn't going to be paid by me' I said, 'and I'd thank you to get the correct address on these bills so that they don't come to me in future.' I also told him that there were eight houses which shared my postcode and only mine had the name Trackside Cottage and there was no Trackside House.

The phone call took 25 minutes and then I was assured everything would be sorted out.

Today, two months later two more letters were delivered to Mr Maylor at my address. I was about to throw them away but then I noticed the large orange sticker which said:
DISCONNECTION NOTICE GAS/ELECTRICITY
The occupier of this property must act on the contents of this envelope
METERPLUS

I opened the letter and found that Mr Maylor had still not paid his bill and was being warned that NPower was going to disconnect him if he didn't pay immediately.

I opened the second large brown envelope and discovered inside yet another envelope with large disconnection sticker. Opening this I found this:

We called again today to try and resolve the unpaid account, (strange - nobody had rung the doorbell and I hadn't gone out), but were unable to contact you.
IT IS NOW OUR INTENTION TO APPLY FOR A WARRANT OF ENTRY TO THE MAGISTRATE'S COURT

The letter went on to explain that if I wasn't in they would break in, disconnect the meter, then if necessary secure the house by replacing locks. I could then collect the new keys from their team valley office - just 30 miles away. I would be liable for all costs which could be £150 or more

'Wonderful' I thought. 'NPower is going to break in, disconnect me for a bill I don't own and then lock me out of my own house making me travel 60 miles to collect keys'. I got back on the phone.

25 minutes later I was assured that everything would be sorted out. Time to get in a stock of candles I think.

16th Jan 2009 - Two months later and NPower is still getting it wrong!

Today I received yet another letter from NPower. I didn't read the address on it before I opened it and as a result I now know that The Maylor's are getting very concerned about their account. Apparently they contacted the customer complaints department to find out why they have not been getting bills. They wrote back to the Maylors - at my address saying that they were still working on the problem but they had promised it would be sorted out today and they need do nothing.

Bad news NPower - you're WRONG!

12 June 2009 - NPower sends me the Maylors new bill for £1476.86
The bill arrived addressed to Trackside House with my postcode.
They STILL don't live at my address!
This time I'm notifying NPower's retail CEO, Kevin Miles and drawing the attention of the Times newspaper to this blog.

17 June 2009 - Sucess?
It took a bit of experimentation to find Kevin Miles e-mail address (its kevindotmilesatnpowerdotcom) but finally I got some sort of action from NPower. They sent a guy round to check the meter and find out it's number and to ask my postcode. Maybe that's the end of the story?

19 June 2009 - Maybe not!
NPower sent another guy out to check the meter

17 August 2009 - Definately not!
Since I last updated NPower have sent two more letters to Mr Maylor at my address. Both were returned unopened and suitably marked 'Not known at this address' but it's inconvenient for me to do so since the nearest post box is three miles from my address.

OK That's it for NPower got ditched in favour of EDF Energy effective from 15th Aug and today I posted up to NPower's site the following:
'Npower has consistently, over the last 17 months, sent bills to my address for a Mr & Mrs D Maylor. These bills have been returned to you, and you have been advised on numerous occasions that Mr Maylor has never lived at my address. Despite that, you continue to send bills and even a threat of disconnection to my address and even a complaint to Mr Kevin Miles, Npower's retail CEO, has not stopped them. The meter number on Mr Maylor's bills is not my meter number. His account number is not my account number. This has been checked by your meter reading services, twice.

I will no longer return or respond to correspondence sent to Mr D Maylor, addressed to Trackside House, Hexham, NE46 XXX.
I live three miles away from the nearest post box. It is inconvenient for me to return these. All future letters to Mr Maylor will be destroyed. You should note there is no such address as Trackside House at my postcode. Consulting my neighbours who have lived in the area for many years, they have never heard of Mr D Maylor.'

I also cancelled my direct debit to NPower at my banks website and notified NPower of this and my other reasons for ditching them in favour of EDF. Just to add one final touch of annoyance I discovered that if you take too long using the form at NPower's 'Contact Customer Services' page it logs you out, blanks the form and you get to start again! Now there's an original way of annoying your customers!

Of course I've changed the name of those unfortunate people who haven't been getting their bills and the address but NPower - you know who they are and this is my proof that you've NOT being doing your bit. Since I'm now going to ignore all your letters to the Maylors your next step should be to try and take them to court using my address at which point I will enjoy appearing at the court to tell them just how C*!p you are.

The last sound

Is the world going to end with a bang - or with a whimper? What about that bit in Revelations - The last trump?

The one thing we can assume is that the world will one day 'end' - even if that means waiting around for a few billion years until the sun expands to a red giant and swallows up the earth. But what do people mean when they speak of 'the end of the world'? Let's take a look at some doomsday scenarios.

• Impact events - The impact of a big enough asteroid or comet could create giant tsunamis, global fires, and cause a global winter from the dust it puts in the atmosphere. There is strong evidence that such an impact has occurred several times in the history of the Earth. It is highly probable that such an event was the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The chances are that we would receive little or no warning of such an event. (Sorry Armageddon fans - it just wouldn't be noticed in time for Bruce Willis to go and blow it up). Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.



• Volcanism - Throughout the history of the Earth there have been huge 'supervolcano' volcanic eruptions which involve the outflow of millions of cubic kilometers of ejecta in a short period of time. By comparison the biggest volcanic explosions recorded by history are tiny. The dust and gasses would poison the atmosphere and oceans and bring on a global winter in a way that may cause extinctions. This cause has been proposed for the End Cretaceous, End Permian, End Triassic, and End Jurassic extinctions. There are supervolcanos at Yellowstone in the USA, Indonesia and New Zealand. Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.



• Nuclear war - Apart from the destruction and radiation, a global nuclear war could throw sufficient dust into the atmosphere to cause a nuclear winter which would prevent crops growing for up to two years and bring about mass starvation. Definitely a 'Bang' scenario.



• Climate change - Rapid changes of climate may be capable of stressing the environment to the point of causing mass extinction. Such a scenario is suggested in the film 'The day after tomorrow'. Whilst such a scenario would greatly inconvenience us, causing mass starvation and making some species to become extinct, ice ages in the past seem to have had little effect on bio-diversity. Extinctions suggested to have this cause include: End Ordovician, End Permian, Late Devonian, and others. This one would be a shivering whimper



• Gamma ray burst - A nearby gamma ray burst caused by a supernova within 6000 light years distance could cause enough radiation on the surface of the Earth to kill most of the larger animals living there and destroy the ozone layer in the process. Insects would probably survive. Astronomers tell us approximately 1 gamma ray burst can be expected every 540 million years. This has been suggested as an explanation for the End Ordovician extinction event. A whimper scenario with a spectacular display in the sky.



• A new disease. It's possible that a new disease could develop, either by natural means or by genetic manipulation. Humanity would have little or no resistance to it and only isolated communities would survive. There have been several natural pandemics in the past but none of them came close to wiping out humanity. They did have a dramatic effect on civilization however. The black death killed from 20 to 80% of the population of towns, 33% overall of the worlds population. Labour became in short supply and it caused the end of the feudal system. A whimper scenario.



• Simulation shutdown. I'm sure you've seen the 'Matrix' films. Science fiction huh? Well maybe not! It's possible that we are living in a simulation. Consider the way in which computers have advanced. It won't be too long before they advance to the point where it would be possible to create a society in simulation (Sims 2 game?). Given a sufficiently advanced technology it would be possible to simulate an entire world in incredible complexity. Think that's unlikely? We could in fact be in such a simulation and not know it. If that were the case then it would be possible for the simulation to be shut down. There's not a lot we could do about it. One second we are 'alive' and the next - off. No sound at all.
  



• Nanotechnology. This is in effect a man made equivalent to a biological plague. Whilst nanotechnology (the creation of microscopic machines) could have enormous potential for good it could also cause a 'grey death' where the nano-machines convert the entire mass of the Earth to more machines. An unlikely scenario? You would only need one of these nanobots to be created to start the process. Another 'whimper' scenario first proposed by Eric Drexler, in his book 'Engines of Creation' and was followed by Michael Chrichton's book 'Prey'.



• Magnetic pole reversal. Geological evidence shows us that the Earth's magnetic poles reverse every 200,000 years on average. The last one was 700,000 years ago so we would seem long overdue for this. When it happens it will have a dramatic effect on the Earth. The main cause for concern is that the Earth's magnetic field which creates the protective Van Allen belts will disappear and Earth will be exposed to very high levels of solar radiation. Some scientists think the magnetic field is already weakening. This would be a 'whimper' event - maybe a good time to invest in sun-screen manufacturer shares.



• Runaway Greenhouse. In this scenario, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reaches a point where more heat is trapped in the atmosphere than can be radiated back out into space. Forest fires would greatly add to the effect. The result is a unstoppable temperature rise over a period of years or tens of years, which would be sufficient to wipe out most forms of life very quickly. Venus, where temperatures at the surface are high enough to melt lead, is affected by this phenomenon. It's possible that the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth's atmosphere could trigger the release of trapped methane stored on the oceans floors causing this effect. This is very uncertain however since it may be that the Earth's oceans will absorb whatever we release. Again a 'whimper' event.



• Superseded by technology. Eventually we will create an artificial intelligence which could replace us as the dominant intelligence on this planet. Something like the scenario on which the Terminator movies are based. The war between it and us would be a bang event. Of course we could carefully program such intelligences with something like the laws of robotics suggested by Isacc Asimov and it could go too far the other way with such intelligences stifling our future development by being over protective - a whimper event.
  



• Global Snowball. The very reverse of the runaway greenhouse. Dust from volcanoes or impact events could cause a winter which freezes the oceans. This increases the amount of heat reflected and the temperature in summer is never enough to melt the ice. A very chilly 'whimper' event where we would desperately try to induce a greenhouse effect to solve it!



• Solar old age. As the Sun uses up all its hydrogen fuel, helium at it's core will start nuclear fusion causing an increase in solar temperature. The result is a gradual increase in size. This process will continue until, around 5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 100 million miles across - encompassing the entire orbit of the Earth. Life will have been extinguished on our planet long before that. The seas will boil off and all gas will be blown away from the Earth by solar storms. It is estimated that 1 billion years from now, the temperature of the Earth will be similar to present-day Venus making life untenable. Given a billion years this will be a long drawn out 'whimper' where our descendants (if we have any by then) will probably bear little resemblance to us today.



• Alien invasion. Could it be the might be an alien invasion on the lines of 'Independence Day', 'Battlefield Earth' or 'War of the Worlds'. If we were to face a hostile advanced intelligence would we really have any chance against them? Probably a 'Bang' event.



• Uploads. This is an alternative to developing artificial intelligence which supersedes us. It may be that we will develop the ability to transfer our consciousness to a computer by 'uploading our brains'. If that were the case then many would choose this as an alternative to death. Once this is the case human intelligence can evolve at an ever increasing rate as processors become more powerful, faster and storage capacities increase. The upload would be able to redesign itself and eventually uploads would swamp the 'normal' humans. The question here is whether an upload could count as being human? Humanity as we know it today would wither away. A whimper event.
  



• Divine intervention. Most religions suggest that there will come a time when Man's purpose on Earth is achieved and God/the Gods call an end where the good people are separated from the evil ones.
  
  • In the Christian Biblical account of the Last Judgement, the End of the World is preceded by War, Conquest, Pestilence and Famine, the so-called "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and the blowing of seven trumpets.
  • Islam nails the Apocalypse down to a formula in the Qur'an, thanks to prophecies by Muhammad. It's the apocalypse when 'x' amount of famine is multiplied by 'y' amount of drought, divided by the square root of 'z' infidels. (It's any day now, in case you were wondering.) Only Allah will know the exact date however but we can watch out for: Fire, Floods, Pestilence, Wars, Rumors of wars, Strange lights in the skies, The Second Coming, A virgin birth, The birth of the Antichrist, A number of false Christs and/or Messiahs, Cloning, Identifying marks being placed on the population at large, Famine, Earthquakes and The Rapture where true believers will be whisked away to heaven.
  • The Hindus believe that the universe is running a cycle which will culminate in a Cosmic Reboot at the end of the Fourth Age (which we are currently enjoying). Currently the world exists in the Age of Kali, the god of destruction. Kali rules over an age of strife, anger and war on earth, which will end with the destruction of everything to pave the way for a new world. Unlike the Christians and Muslims, the Hindus don't believe this event is coming any time soon.
  • Buddhists believe that the seeds of the ending of the universe are present in the creation of the universe. (Quite in tune with cosmology). The "Buddha of our time", Shakyamuni Buddha, did not say he was the first Buddha. He did speak of the end of illusion which would change how we see the universe. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is predicted that the physical universe will end with earth and air being subsumed into water and fire, and all will dissolve into space. Within this cosmology, the end is predicted to be a long way off in the future as there will be 1,000 Buddhas who appear in this fortunate kalpa (great eon).
  • The Mayans too believed in a cyclic world. Their highly detailed and accurate calendar is a list of days in the Fourth Sun, the current cycle of the world. The calendar simply ends on Dec. 21, 2012 (the winter solstice), and the Mayans did not offer a calendar addendum to specify anything much happening after that.
  • The Jews believe they are God's chosen people and that the Messiah will arrive in the future and gather them into Israel. There will be a general resurrection of the (Jewish?) dead, and the Jerusalem Temple destroyed in 70 CE will be rebuilt. I'm not sure on what Jews believe will happen then or to the rest of the world. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could enlighten me?
  • Zoroastrians believe in a single supreme god Ahura Mazda and an evil spirit Angra Mainyu who opposes. At the end of time there will be a cosmic conflict involving the entire universe.Humanity will be required to choose which to follow. Evil, and the Spirit of Evil, will be completely destroyed at the end of time. Eventually, everything will be purified. Even the occupants of hell will be released.

So lets see - that's 4 'bangs', ten 'whimpers', a 'last trump' and an 'off'. It seems the whimpers have it.

Further reading :

1. Do we live in a computer simulation?.
2. The Future of Humanity
3. Accidents, Malice and "Gray Goo"
4. If Uploads Come First
5. Yellowstone supervolcano