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
   

I'm sick of 'Doom and Gloom'

If you listen to the media it's all bad news. The stock market is dropping, the banks are failing, we all need to take swimming lessons because of global warming, petrol (gas) costs a fortune, we are all afraid of pandemics, terrorists will kill us and 6:00am December 22nd 2012 (GMT) is rapidly approaching.

Geez. Hasn't the media ever thought of telling us the good news? I for one am sick of 'doom and gloom'. Lets take a look at some of the things they are not telling us about.

• If the stock market falls - that's a great time to buy! The real reason it's bouncing around is because some people are making a fortune!
• All those bankers getting into a panic. Can you think of a better bunch of people to wish a bit of strife on? (Well - maybe lawyers and politicians?). Lets face it our money is safe provided we all don't listen to the doom and gloom media.
  
• Global warming? Somehow I don't think it will be quite the disaster that some predict. You see there is some great technology rapidly approaching which will turn everything around - more about that later. You just need to be aware that back in 1894 an expert predicted that in fifty years the streets of London would be buried beneath nine feet of horse sh*t.
  Not only can technology come to our rescue but are we actually being told the truth? At the moment it's 'fashionable' to talk about global warming but did you know these indisputable facts?
• Sea level is rising - at the same rate as it has been for the last 60,000 years.
• Ice cores do not show a link between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature
• Some glaciers are melting - others, just as many, are advancing
• No matter how big an area of sea ice is which breaks off and melts - it won't affect sea level at all.
  
• London and Venice are sinking - that's why they have problems with flooding
• The vast majority of temperature measuring stations are in cities which are getting warmer because the cities are growing
• The first global warming predictions for the future were out by an overestimate of 300% - that's not even a good guess! Anyone who supports using a computer model this inaccurate is crazy!
  
  Don't believe this? Try watching the video below or reading Michael Crichton's book 'State of Fear
  '
  
  


• Gas prices? In the US they were complaining about $4.00 a gallon. Here in the UK we pay more than twice that. The good news is that we don't live in Sierra Leone where gas rapidly approached $20.00 per gallon. More good news is that the price of oil has dropped 40% in the last 3 months. If you are still furious about it then move to Venezuela where you can buy it for just $0.17 per gallon.
• Health? Have you been watching the astonishing developments in medicine? Looks like we may soon prevent cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart attacks and lots of others including the common cold.
• Terrorists? Guess what - the problem is being blown out of all proportion. You are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than by a terrorist. Far more sensible things to worry about are heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, flu and pneumonia, kidney disease, septicemia, suicide, liver disease, hypertension, Parkinson's disease and drowning in that order. According to the statistics I found the risk of terrorists killing you appears at number 80 on the list of possible deaths at a 1 in 9,300,000 chance. Just to put it in perspective you have a 1 in 4,297,630 chance of being killed by legal execution.
• That 6:00am GMT time on 21st Dec 2012 marks the end of the Mayan Calender. (the Mayans were on Central time, 6 hours behind us Brits). Hey - the calendar hanging on my wall ends on 4th Jan 2009 but that doesn't mean there won't be a 5th Jan!

Now what about those technology advancements I mentioned?

• The Large Hadron Collider, is complete and though there are a few technical problems to iron out (and a few repairs to do), looks to give us lots of advancements in physics. It might be possible to produce mini black holes (singularities) which any Trekkie will tell you are used in the power source of Romulan spaceships. Now I know that's science fiction but in theory a mini black hole could be a tremendous source of energy. Its not a matter of 'will' it happen - its a matter of 'when'.
  
• It begins to look like nuclear fusion experiments will soon produce more energy than they put in. When that happens - and it will - then cheap almost unlimited power will be available. It won't produce huge quantities of deadly radioactive by-products and will wipe out at a stroke much of our carbon emissions.
• Cheap electricity will offer car manufactures an incentive to produce electric vehicles.
• New technology such as the free piston engine which could out perform fuel cells, offers a better, simpler and cheaper way of producing power for vehicles. Couple that with a car like the Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (or EREV), Chevy Volt and you'll have a vehicle which can run on any fuel including pollution free hydrogen, ethanol and gasoline but most of the time will run on stored cheap electricity. Again wiping out much of our carbon emissions.
  
• In the last few weeks we have heard of cures for cancer using carbon nano tubes, drugs such as Abiraterone and radioactive scorpion venom, treatment for Alzheimer's disease using anti-inflammatory drugs, Parkinson's disease being slowed by the use of vitamins and flu vaccines being more effective and quicker by inhalation.
• Even more dramatic is the effect genetic research will have on us. Its a matter of time before the death gene is figured out and a virus is used to fix it. How about living a productive life for 200 years! Now I know that that will cause population problems but it will also give us the incentive to move outwards from our planet and secure the future of the human race. I for one don't want to sit and be a target waiting for the next comet to wipe out humanity.
  
• Have you noticed how the power requirement of electrical equipment is dropping? It's not just things like computers and TVs; its even heavy duty items like heaters and air conditioners. The trick is to make them more efficient and better insulated. Technology is doing just that.
• We all moan about the price of oil and that's inevitable as this limited resource is used up for heating and as a fuel for transport. Unfortunately that's the last thing we should be using it for. In the future it will be needed as a feedstock for making plastics and other chemicals. Burning oil, natural gas and coal as a fuel makes the price of plastics and chemicals higher than it should be. In the future we can look forward to cheaper products because our energy will come from cheap, pollution free power sources leaving the oil and natural gas to be used for chemical feedstocks. Think what that will do to the world economy!
  

So there we have it. Doom and gloom? Not in my future.

BT Anywhere Broadband?

A catalogue of delivery failures.

Since I moved house to an area without cable broadband I've been using Virgin Media 'Up to 8 MB' adsl broadband - or in this case it was 'broadbad'. Despite repeated calls to their technical support my connection speed steadily dropped. It started at 1.7MB in April but when it finally sunk to just 107 bytes per second (yes that's right not even kilobytes) I had had enough. I finally got through to a tech support guy who admitted that they couldn't provide me with the 2MB download speed they had first offered me and that although they had plans to improve things at my local exchange - Hexham, they wouldn't be able to do so for several months.

Part of the problem was my distance from the exchange - 4.7 kilometres; part of the problem is obviously my line which hisses, crackles and is very quiet. The rest of the problem was Virgin's contention ratio and their reluctance to get anything done about my line. Although I was just six months into a one year contract I negotiated a penalty free MAC code from Virgin and contacted BT to join their Anywhere broadband service.

Now why BT Anywhere? Well I had several reasons:

• I wanted an 'unlimited' service
• I liked the idea of being able to connect anywhere without further charges
• I liked the idea of a second Internet phone with it's own number which allowed my family to make up to three simultaneous phone calls at the same time
  
• I wanted a faster wireless N router with a better range that would go through the three foot thick stone walls of my house
  
• I needed a new mobile phone to replace my aging Motorola V3 and O2 XDA Exec brick
• I liked BT's mobile price structure. The total cost would be less than my Virgin broadband and T-mobile contract
• I reasoned I would have a better chance of a BT Broadband engineer doing something about my awful line quality if I was a BT customer

Although not rated as the 'best' ISP (That honour belongs to Zen Internet), BT offered the most in my particular area.

I contacted BT by phone to order BT Anywhere Broadband and quickly got through to a very helpful lady called Virginia and discussed my requirements.

• Yes I could get BT Anywhere in my area and would be able to get 512KB download speed
• Yes a new smartphone was included in the price and I could upgrade it to an even better one the HTCs710 for an extra charge of £29.99
• The smartphone included 50 minutes talk time and 50 texts, unlimited GSM Internet access or it could be used unlimited on the wireless network, unlimited BT FON system or 500 minutes on the BT Openzone network
• A wireless N modem/router was included which 'could give up to twice the range of my existing wireless G router
  
• An Internet phone was included, the BT Hub phone, which would have it's own number and offer Skype style calling to the USA (1.25p/min to both landlines and cell phones) etc
• For the first three months it would be £23.99 then £29.99 thereafter, an 18 month contract.

I decided to go ahead and ordered the HTCs710 phone. I was told the broadband would be activated on 7th October and the equipment would be with me by 6th October. (Delivery promise 1)

I was very impressed when at 2:00pm the next day a large box was delivered by a BT courier!
great service I thought and sat down to open it.

Inside was a large packing list telling me what I should have and there my problems started.
I got:

1. The BT home hub
2. A sim chip for the mobile phone
3. an HTCs620 mobile phone
4. No Hub phone

'Great, they've sent me the wrong phone and not sent me the Hub phone' I thought and rang them up.

The person I got through to was very apologetic and said the wrong phone had been ordered and for some unexplainable reason the Hub phone had not been put on the order list. She would have the wrong phone picked up by the person who delivered the missing bits and it would be with me by the 6th October. (Delivery promise 2)

I waited in all that week, expecting a fast delivery as before but nothing arrived. On 6th October I checked my order progress and had it confirmed by their website that my equipment would be delivered by 7:00pm

7:00pm came and went with no delivery so I got back on the phone. They were very sorry but my order did not show on the system. They said they had corrected this and my missing phones would be with me tomorrow. (Delivery promise 3)

On 7th October at 2:00pm my Virgin Media connection stopped working and I connected up the BT Hub and followed the instructions to install it. The installation CD didn't work, telling me my password was wrong, but I was able to manually enter the information provided to set the new connection up. The connection was a bit flaky at first but the documentation warned me that this would be the case for the first 24 hours and that connection speed would gradually improve over the first 10 days.

7:00pm again came with no delivery of phones although I did get an e-mail telling me it would be with me by 7:00pm. I got back on the phone and after waiting in a call queue for 45 minutes was told their system was down and could I call back the next day?

8th October 9:00am I called again and after queueing for 30 minutes was told that there was no delivery scheduled for my address. Would I like to speak to the BT Anywhere team? I did and after explaining the problem yet again I was told that there was a delivery scheduled and it would be with me by 7:00pm today. (Delivery promise 4). On the positive side my adsl speed rose from an average of 233KB/s to almost the 512KB/s promised. (I really miss the 20MB Cable connection I had in Essex)

7:00pm came and went with no phones delivered. I got back on the phone thanking my lucky stars that unlike Virgin, BT don't charge for calling them. This time I spoke to Robert Wilson who told me for some reason the order had not gone through and that he had re-ordered it for delivery/collection on Friday 10th Oct. (Delivery promise 5).

Friday morning I contacted the BT delivery section and checked that they had indeed a delivery scheduled for my address; 'Yes it will be with you by 7:00pm today'.

7:00pm - still no phones! I called BT yet again and after being on hold 15 min and cut off twice I spoke to Kelsey in Dundee who told me there was now a message on the system that if I called back I should be told that the delivery would not be today. I asked Kelsey if BT had not thought of using the phone to tell me that instead of having me waiting around all day to find it out the hard way! Perhaps BT had the name wrong and it should be called 'BT Nowhere'? Again Kelsey was very apologetic and assured me that the order was in the pipeline and would definitely be with me on Saturday - yes the courier did work weekends. (Delivery promise 6)

You guessed it - 7:00pm came and went on Saturday and still no phones.

So that's six broken promises BT. Guess who's going to get a flea in their ear come Monday? I suspect the saga will continue.

Update 13th Oct
I rang BT (0800 0322 111) and spoke to 'Jan'. She checked and found no order was showing on their system - again. She was very apologetic and told me she would get the Hub phone sent to me. This time she gave me an order number and a delivery date of 16th Oct. (Delivery promise 7) She then passed me on to Chris of the BT Anywhere sales team who looked into the problem. It seems the last order had a delivery date of 10th September rather than October and this confused their system. Chris ordered the correct mobile phone for me and promised I would receive it tomorrow, 14th Oct. (Delivery promise 8) He also arranged a bag for the return of the wrong mobile and gave me order references for both. He checked and confirmed the order number that Jan had given me was on the system and confirmed the delivery date. Best of all he told me there would be no extra charge of £29.99 for the upgrade to the HTCs710 phone.

Full marks to BT for polite sales team and promises but I'll reserve judgement as to whether they are capable of keeping them. I wonder if anyone else has had 8 or more delivery promises from BT?

Update 14th Oct 2008
Finally, after all this time BT delivered my missing mobile phone. Full marks to Chris for being the first to keep a promise.
Update 16th Oct 2008
Jan delivered too. Finally I have the complete package. I'm happy with it and my download speed has improved greatly. It's just a shame it took so many phone calls to get everything in place. At least, however, the phone calls are to an 0800 phone number and free, unlike those made to Virgin Media.
Update March 10 2009
Well I'm still happy with BT Anywhere broadband BUT BT dropped yet another one!
I gave them a PAC code to transfer my old phone number from T-Mobile. I know they used it because I started getting mobile phone bills with the number on them. After a while however the number changed and T-Mobile reclaimed the number. That meant they started billing me for it again and since I'd cancelled the direct debit for it, I built up a £30 bill before they bothered to write to me and complain it hadn't been paid. Naturally I pointed out that the service had been cancelled back in September 2008 and the number transferred to BT.
"Oh - so you did" said the guy from T-Mobile. "But BT never confirmed they had taken the number over so it went back to us. Now if you just pay..."
"Not a chance" said I "Take it up with BT."

On My Cat

OK - I admit it. The picture is a fake.

The anvil is made of papier mache.

Now if I just wait here - maybe...

Now I know you guys are moving but you won't forget me will you?

...or me!

"Internet Explorer has stopped working" - again!

A while ago I was getting this message "Internet Explorer has stopped working" whenever I used Internet Explorer. It often happened when I was using the program but always happened whenever I closed the program - something I found irritating since it made closing IE a two click operation. Firefox 3 is my default browser but since I check web pages in several different browsers to make sure they work properly and this was beginning to annoy me.

At first I thought it was merely a bug in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 which I was testing. I researched the problem on Internet looking for a cure but nothing I did seemed to stop the problem.

'Oh well' I thought. 'Time to un-install IE8 Beta 1'. I did and fired up IE7 to test it. It seemed fine until I closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working" A little more research was needed.

I disabled all plugins. A number of them have been pointed at as the cause of the problem including Omnipage (which I don't have), Yahoo and Skype (which I did have). I still got "Internet Explorer has stopped working" every time I closed IE (version 7 now).

I reset IE using the 'Advanced' options - Open Control Panel > Internet Options > Advanced (tab) > under " Reset Internet Explorer settings, click "Reset". I opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

I cleared all cookies, opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

I deleted the cache, browser history and cookies again, opened IE, closed it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working".

On one site I found the suggestion that I make IE the default browser and then go through the install and uninstall routine for IE8 beta 1 again before reseting Firefox as the default again. I tried it and got ... "Internet Explorer has stopped working"

Then Internet Explorer beta 2 came out. I installed it and for a while success! I could open and close IE without seeing "Internet Explorer has stopped working". The success was short lived however I soon got "Internet Explorer has stopped working" not only when I closed IE but also at times when IE was not even loaded - probably the latter being caused by EditPlus, the text editor I use often which uses the IE engine to display web pages being worked on.

I'm still looking for a reliable cure. At the moment I've disabled IE's 'Protected Mode' - Thats done in Control panel > Internet Options > Security tab > uncheck 'Enable Protected Mode'. It causes IE to display a warning when using it, but there's an option when you click it to not repeat the warning. It's also something I wouldn't want to do unless you have an up-to-date anti-malware program. I use Kaspersky Internet Security which gets updated hourly.

For the moment I get no "Internet Explorer has stopped working" error messages but then I've been here before. I'll let you know what happens.

My war against the rabbits

This morning at 5:00am I was out in the garden, dressed only in a bathrobe, wielding a large stick and for half an hour I chased a rabbit with murder in my heart!

The little B*##~% got away!

It all started when we moved to a new house out in the country. There was a lot to do in the house but outside - the garden could only be described as a disaster area. It was a wilderness of weeds, grass, stone, wire a ramshackle shed/greenhouse and a mound of bricks. There were rabbits everywhere.

I suppose that's what comes of living on a hill between a derelict railway line(at the left of the picture) and a main road (on the right) with a forest on the other side of the rail bed. The soil contains a lot of ash from the steam trains which used to run here and in the trees surrounding us on both sides there are rabbit warrens.

At first we thought they were cute. They had been undisturbed for a while and didn't seem too concerned by our presence. They just kept about 10 yards away and kept on nibbling. When we came home in the car there were usually four or five running along the drive (the old rail bed) in front of us.

For a while they didn't annoy us. We were too busy working on fixing up the house inside to bother with the garden. It was April - warm and wet this year - the grass was growing fast but I didn't have to mow the lawn, the rabbits did that for us. Eventually we just had to do something about that garden. It was obvious that with so many rabbits around vegetables were out of the question so we mowed the lawn, used some of the bricks to make a path and planted a few flowers. The flowers were promptly eaten.

"Oh well" we thought, "once we can let the cats out they'll chase the rabbits off and we can just plant stuff the rabbits won't eat for now." A little research on Internet soon told us however that rabbits are a gardeners WORST enemy but that they wouldn't eat daffodils, forget-me-nots or roses. Daffodils and forget-me-nots abounded in the garden already so we bought some roses and planted those. By morning there were just the stems left. Rabbits WILL eat roses!

"Oh there are lots of things they won't eat" said a guy in our local garden centre. "Its just that no one is quite sure just what they don't like. We have chicken wire that keeps them out though."
"They won't eat marigolds" said a customer at the checkout. We bought chicken wire, marigolds and some begonias which we thought we could protect.

Back home we planted the marigolds and started work on surrounding the garden with a 'rabbit proof' fence. It was obvious that this would take some time so we built a cage with some old wire we found to surround the begonias. The next morning we discovered that rabbits do not like marigolds - in fact they hate them so much they bite the flowers off and drop them so that they don't produce seed and spread further.

I used more of the bricks to build a section of wall on the side next to the road and used corrugated iron sheets too. On the railway line side we repaired the fence already there and used more bricks dug down into the ground to stop the rabbits digging under it. Next to the house and at the far end of the garden we completed a new fence and two gates across the paths. "That should do it." we thought after we blocked up the rabbit holes with bricks and finally let our two cats loose.

It was at this point that we discovered that rabbits can get through 50mm chicken wire!
Three of them got in; one escaped through the wire and two were caught alive when they chose to hide behind our garden table stacked on edge at the side of the fence. We used our cat box as a cage for them and started experimenting to see just what they would eat.

We bought 20mm rabbit wire, split the rolls down the middle and put it on top of our existing fence near the ground to keep out those young ones which could get through the 50mm wire. We reasoned that we didn't need the full height wire since the little ones couldn't reach the 50mm section at the top and the bigger ones which could would be too big to get through it. This time we thought we had done it.

Next morning the garden was still full of rabbits which disappeared under the garden shed when we chased them. They had dug a tunnel under it from the warren by the side of the road. I surrounded the shed base with a brick wall sealing them off.

Next morning at 5:00am our son woke me up to tell me there was squealing downstairs. It turned out that one of our cats had caught a rabbit and brought it into the house to play with. It was still alive but only just. I cleaned up the blood from the living room carpet and gave it the coupe de grasse.

The rabbit population started to drop. Our cats killed at least three that we know of, a family of weasels moved into our neighbourhood and a fox can be heard barking at night (much to the annoyance of the local gamekeeper who is rearing pheasants in our wood).

For a few days we thought we had them beaten. The grass on our lawn started to grow and dandelions started to appear. It seems dandelions are a rabbit favourite. Our experiments with the ones we captured seemed to show that they will eat just about anything if they are hungry enough unless the plant is poisonous e.g. foxgloves. Some plants they obviously don't like but will nibble at and drop. Some plants - like marigolds, they won't eat but do their best to destroy. We found a booklet 'Gardening With The Enemy' by Janet Thompson which was some help which has a list of rabbit resistant plants. It's list isn't perfect though since we found some plants they rate as 'rabbit safe' get eaten by ours and others they bite and spit out. We felt confident enough to buy over a hundred pounds worth of plants and plant out the sweet peas we knew they love above all other plants.

And that brings me to this morning when I got up to go to the bathroom and looked out of the window to see a rabbit eating the sweet peas ...aaaggghhh! The worst of it is that I can't find where it got in and it couldn't get out easily until it escaped over the remains of the brick pile.

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If this post has proved of interest to you would you do me a favour in return? Download a FREE copy of the book I co-author - a romantic technothriller called 'A Vested Interest'. Even if you don't read it it will help our ratings. You can get it at http://smarturl.it/avi and if you want to read it, you can use a phone, a tablet, a computer or even a Kindle.

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The great plastic bag con.

Just recently the Prime Minister was in the news talking about introducing legislation to reduce single use plastic bags (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7101075.stm). Now I may be a cynic but I suspect he's more interested in the tax other countries have introduced on plastic bags rather than any real green motive.
Ireland has introduced such a tax and now charges 15 cents per bag. In the UK the tax would probably be 10p.

Now, admittedly the Irish tax has slashed the number of plastic bags used dramatically - by 277 million says the Irish government, but it's also raised 2½ million pounds in tax. In the UK if a similar pattern was followed it would raise 70 million pounds in tax. Now this is a drop in the ocean as far as UK tax is concerned - it would cost each of us in the UK just over £1.00 per year and would save 8.4 billion plastic bags each year! That would probably make our environment a lot tidier. But would it actually be much use as a way of combatting global warming?

Let's work it out:
On average each of us in the UK uses 150 bags each per year.
Each one weighs 8 grams - that's 1.2 Kg of plastic which if burnt would produce 3.7Kg of carbon dioxide.
Now that's not quite a true figure because a) CO2 is produced in the manufacturing process and transport of the bags b) many of the bags are disposed of in landfills where they do not decompose but instead remove carbon from our environment.
Let's take a worst case scenario and assume that all the bags are incinerated and that an equal amount of CO2 is produced in the bag manufacture. That would mean each of us is producing 7.5Kg of CO2 each year by just using plastic bags.

Now, let's compare that with other things.
An average motorist in the UK uses 1143 litres of fuel per year and produces 2700Kg of CO2 from it. By reducing his car use by just 0.3% (3/1000ths) each year Mr Average would save his 7.5Kg of CO2
If we all bought 0.3% more local products rather than foreign imports we could save ten times as much CO2 (from transport production of CO2) as we would use with plastic bags.
If we each used 900 fewer sheets of paper each year then that would save the same amount of CO2 as we use in plastic bags - That's equivalent to a magazine per month, two books less per year or just ten fewer newspapers. (Before you say it using recycled paper actually produces more CO2 since there are extra processing costs)

In fact we could produce less CO2 than we use in plastic bags by:

• fitting a single low wattage bulb as a replacement
• turning down the thermostat by just 0.3 degrees (wouldn't it be nice if thermostats were that accurate?)
• fitting an extra 1cm of loft insulation (of course you can't buy insulation that thin so you'll save much more than this)
  
• switching the TV off at night rather than leaving it on standby
• recycling glass bottles
• recycling aluminium cans
• unplugging your mobile phone charger when not using it
• fixing a sheet of aluminium foil to the wall behind your radiators (use Blue-tac).

There are lots of other ways - try a search for 'reducing greenhouse gasses' (Watch out for that misleading 'recycle paper' though)

Now what does this mean.

• Putting a tax on plastic bags and pretending to be 'green' is foolish. It's easy to say, makes the government a little extra cash and achieves very little other than tidying the environment.
• Shops like the idea. Those plastic bags cost them about 2p each. I find it interesting that firms like Tesco offer a 'green point' worth 1p every time you reuse a large bag which holds at least twice the amount you put in single use bags. (2 x 2p = 4p, less 1p for a green point = 3 p extra profit)
  
• There are far more effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases and almost all of them save you money.
  

Having said all that - Lets get rid of the bags but only because of the litter problem they create not because of the greenhouse problem.

Goji Berries - I'm convinced

Article updated 2017

For the last twelve years my family has been eating dried Goji berries as a regular part of our diet after reading the many claims about them being beneficial to health. About a year ago we stopped using them for three weeks and quickly went back to using them. Apart from the fact that we like their taste here's what we found compared with the claim made for them:

Claim: It improves sexual libido (OK I thought you might want this first!)
I find: Yes - it's true! Gentlemen - feed your wife goji berries. But be warned you'll need to eat them yourself to keep up with her.

Claim: It improves circulation
I find: Also true. My wife had always suffered from cold hands and feet - but not when she ate goji berries. When we stopped for three weeks her cold hands returned.

Claim: It is beneficial for prostate problems.
I find: Very sure about this one. After blood tests showed a higher than normal PSA count I underwent a prostate examination (that's another blog) and the verdict was - no sign of prostate cancer and why did my doctor ask for the test? As you get older prostate glands tend to enlarge causing difficulty urinating. Eating a handful of dried goji berries per day will greatly relieve this. DO get your doctor to get this checked out though.

Claim: They reduce cholesterol levels.
I find: Another one I can't confirm but - in those blood tests my cholesterol level was found to be lower than normal. Stop panicking about cholesterol though. In the last year or so research has indicated it's not as bad as previously made out. Google it.

Claim: They reduce joint problems.
I find: True. My wife had problems with her wrists, she has apparently bones which are too flexible and which bend slightly and bruise becoming painful. Since starting to eat goji berries the problem has been much reduced. I used to get periodic stiff necks. Not a trace of them since starting to take goji berries.

Claim: They improve eyesight.
I find: I think it's true. Both of us have stopped wearing glasses to read. When we stopped taking goji berries we had to use glasses again.

Claim: They improve the skin and make you look younger.
I find: Hmm. Can't be sure about this one but then we both signed the Peter Pan pledge years ago. I retired a while back and people kept saying ' Retire? Surely you are not old enough'.

Claim: They reduce inflammation more effectively than aspirin.
I find: Certainly true for joint problems but not quite as instant. Having said that the only headache I've had in the last years was during the three week period when we stopped taking them.

Claim: They promote a general feeling of well being.
I find: I feel just fine but then I always did and can't honestly say I've noticed any difference. My wife however is convinced she feels better when taking them.

Now for the bits we've found out that as far as we can tell isn't recorded about the berries.

1. They are very easy to grow yourself. Put three of the dried berries in a small pot of damp compost. Seedlings will grow within 3 weeks. Once they are 10cm tall transfer them to a bigger pot. They like practically any soil, shade or sunshine. You'll need to protect them from slugs - they love the leaves. Berries can start forming in the second year but you won't get a decent crop for several years. You'll need to protect them from birds and rabbits who also love them. We have ours where we grow roses and mixed in with hawthorn hedges.
2. The berries taste great eaten fresh or can be dried for storage. We have a hot air drier which works well. You are not supposed to pick the berries by hand because they are very easily damaged (like ripe blackberries).
3. Check your local chinese supermarket for a cheaper source of the dried berries, failing that try Holland and Barret or even Tesco as a source. Tesco is an expensive source however. If you live in South East England, especially Suffolk look out for them growing in roadside hedges. You can also buy organic Tibetan goji berries online at https://buywholefoodsonline.co.uk
4. Buy plain yoghurt and add dried goji berries. Leave overnight or for 2-3 hours. The berries will re-hydrate and taste delicious with the yoghurt. Some people may like to liquidise or chop the berries in the yoghurt before eating it.
5. If you can't wait, add boiling water to dried berries. They will re-hydrate within 10 minutes and you can drink the liquid too.
6. Cats may love the dried berries. They make great treats for those which do.
7. Re-hydrated dried goji berries are a great addition to oatmeal when making flapjack.
8. The young leaves can be used to make a herbal tea.
9. The roots of a goji berry plant can be washed, crushed and work well as an antiseptic for scratches.
10. You can make a goji berry juice from the dried berries. Soak them overnight in the fridge then put them through a cold press juicer. This will remove the numerous seeds (which you can plant). Try adding a little cherry juice concentrate for extra flavour.

Finally - here's a WARNING!

DON'T use goji berries if your doctor has prescribed you with Warfarin. Goji berries are high in vitamin K and that interferes with Warfarin.

All in all goji berries are here to stay in my family. It's just a shame they are so expensive in the shops and as yet, because we moved house, we haven't enough plants to supply all our needs.

Brain teaser

It was Jane's birthday and John heard her say -
"I'm twenty-eight today. Last year I was twenty-nine and in two years I'll be twenty. See?"

Everything Jane said was the truth.

Exactly how old is Jane really today?

Answer at the bottom of Sweet Choice

Big brother wants to watch you (even more) - UK Road Tax Scheme

The UK government has plans to replace the current road tax and petrol duty with a pay as you go road use charge. (If any US readers are about to move on to a different blog - don't - If this goes ahead in the UK, you're next!)

Here is an outline of the key points of the plan (taken from the BBC website):

• Each driver would be charged for every mile of his or her journey.
• Prices would start from as little as 2p a mile on quiet roads outside rush hours.
• The maximum price would be £1.34 a mile on busy motorways like the M25 at peak times.
• Current charges of fuel tax and road tax would be scrapped.
• A pilot scheme covering a region or large conurbation could be operating "within five years".
• If all goes well a nationwide scheme could be rolled out within 10 years.
• A Department for Transport (DFT) feasibility study concluded last year that a national scheme had the potential to cut congestion by about 40% with "only 4% less cars using the roads".
• He (Mr Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport) wants a decision on whether or not road pricing should be implemented "during the course of this parliament".
• Mr Darling said new technology was already being used to "better manage road space" - for example a new system of "traffic management " on the M42.

Now let's take a look at how this would affect the 'average' driver using an 'average' car (A petrol Vauxhall Astra 1.6).

According to government statistics Mr Average drives 15,872 Km (9,862 miles) per year and pays road tax of £175 ($350) and pays 84.4 pence per litre ($6.39 per US gallon compared with US price average of $2.34!)

Of that 84.4 pence per litre 47.1p is fuel duty and 12.57p is VAT. (in US terms that amounts to taxes of $4.41 per gallon). Minus just the fuel duty petrol (gas) in the UK would cost 29.1p per litre ($2.15 per US gallon).

Mr Average's Astra car uses 1143 litres of petrol per year giving him an average of 8.63 miles per litre (that's 32.7 miles per US gallon). At current fuel costs Mr Average's costs per mile travelled are:

• 7.3 pence per mile for fuel duty
• 1.8 pence per mile for road tax

Total 9.1 pence per mile. (18¢)

If the new scheme were to be adopted then both of these taxes will be removed (I know what you are thinking - yeah right) and be replaced with a charge per mile that you travel.

Now if you live in the country and only travel on minor roads at non-peak times that would cost you 2 pence per mile which represents a saving of 7.1 pence per mile or £700 per year ($1,368). But how many of us drive like that? Most of us work in cities and have to travel there at peak times. Some unfortunates could find themselves paying mostly £1.34 per mile travelled or £12,318 ($24,000) a year worse off!

Just what is meant by 'peak' times and which roads will get the high charges? According to a document I found at the Department for Transport website it means 7:00-10:00am and 4:00pm-7:00pm and no fewer than 89 major roads are probably due for the £1.34 charge. Here's the list I found:
A1; A1(M); A1033; A11; A12; A120; A14; A168; A180; A19; A2; A21; A23; A259; A27; A282; A3; A30; A303; A31; A34; A35; A38; A40; A404; A404(M); A417; A419; A421; A428; A43; A449; A452; A453; A46; A47; A49; A5; A50; A500; A5111; A5117; A52; A55; A556; A56; A57; A590; A595; A6; A616; A628; A63; A64; A66; A66(M); A69; A742; M1; M11; M18; M180; M2; M20; M23; M25; M26; M27; M271; M3; M4; M40; M42; M45; M5; M50; M53; M54; M55; M56; M6; M6 Toll3; M60 via Barton; M60 via Stockport; M62; M65; M66; M67; M69

Now what about the 'gas guzzlers'? According to the plan there won't be any advantage in choosing to use a fuel efficient car over a 'gas guzzler'. Does anyone really expect this to be allowed? It seems to fly in the face of our aims for reducing carbon emissions. Perhaps different charge bands will be introduced for different vehicles? Maybe that £1.34 is for an 'average' vehicle?

How's it going to work? It seems dependant on GPS technology. Now judging from the number of times that GPS loses a signal or puts you on the wrong road, I expect there will be a few problems here! It's going to involve a £200 ($390) 'black box'. Guess who will pay for that! Will it offer any advantages such as the box recommending which road to use? Will we trust it? Will we all take to the back roads and cause new congestion on roads less likely to cope? How long will it take someone to come up with a hack to reduce your charges? If your car is stolen do you get to pay for the miles the thief drives?

What about privacy? The system will record exactly where the car is and exactly what time it travels. Who will be able to access this information? The police could use it to cut car theft but who else will be able to get the information? Now I can't think of a genuine reason why I would object to the police knowing my position but I can't really say I would be comfortable with this! What happens if I inadvertently travel from A to B at slightly more than the speed limit? Would I get an automatic ticket or a warning from the black box to slow down?

All in all the system proposed has some good features but is far too complex, open to abuse, will probably cause an increase in carbon emissions and will be expensive to run. Although I hate the amount of duty w pay, it would be far better to leave the current system in place.

As to the road congestion problem I would like to remind the government that around 1900 there was a serious concern about the amount of horse s*#t on the roads and predictions that by 1920 we would be knee deep in it.

So what can we do? Sit there and take it? For the first time it's now possible to have an effect on the decision. In a stroke of genius (rare in government circles) our government in the UK is allowing us to make our voice heard by signing petitions online. Go to the site - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ and sign it before the Feb 20th deadline. All you need is an e-mail address, house number and postcode. At the time of writing 10pm Friday 16th Feb 2007 no fewer than 1,535,803 people in the UK had done so. Tell all your friends to sign it too!

Don't print this!

I'm always complaining to students about the amount of paper they waste. By the time they print work a few times, use worksheets, exam papers, make paper airplanes and get newsletters they must be well on the way to using the average office worker's 10,000 sheets per year.

Paper is environmentally expensive to produce and most people are not aware of it's effect on the environment.

So lets look at this on a 'per sheet' basis ; (standard copy paper).

• Each sheet weighs about 5 grams
• Just over 15 grams of wood are used to make it.
• For each sheet 5 grams of sludge is produced which has to be disposed of.
• To make each sheet requires 200KJ of energy of which 95KJ are bought in as coal/gas/oil or electricity.
• Each sheet produces 12.9 grams of carbon dioxide during it's manufacture, transport and eventual disposal by decomposition or burning.
• Each sheet used adds 6.1 grams of carbon dioxide to global warming (the remaining 6.8 g is used by the trees grown for the next sheet).
• Each sheet of paper produces 0.06 gram of sulphur dioxide and 0.04 grams of nitrogen dioxide in it's manufacture. Both cause acid rain.
• Each sheet adds a tiny amount of nasties such as dioxin to the environment.
• Recycling means less trees are cut down but does not significantly affect the amount of undesirable gases produced due to it's reprocessing costs.
• White recycled paper adds a disastrous amount of bleach and sludge to the environment. The ONLY sensible way to recycle paper is to use it for unbleached cardboard. Somehow, recycled brown toilet paper just doesn't appeal.

Now since that average office worker is using 10,000 sheets of paper per year this means they are adding:

• 61Kg of CO2 to global warming
• Using enough water to fill a small swimming pool
• producing about 130Kg of acid rain causing gas.
• adding 45 grams of 'nasties' to the environment

Make what you will of this article. Just one thing - don't print it!

Useful websites:Paper Vs plastic bags? http://www.angelfire.com/wi/PaperVsPlastic/
The paper calculator http://www.environmentaldefense.org/papercalculator/

BSE/nvCJD in the news - Friday 8th Dec 2006

nvCJD (variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease) has raised it's ugly head again. Apparently it's been discovered that it can be passed on by blood transfusions. Doctors have no way of detecting it in blood and three people have now been identified as having got the disease from the blood of a nvCJD victim. The worrying thing is that nvCJD has up to a 50 year dormancy period. There is no easy way of detecting just how many people are infected with CJD although it has been discovered to be detectable in the tissue of the tonsils long before symptoms of it appear.

nvCJD is believed to originate from eating beef where the animal had BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathies) or 'Mad Cow Disease'. By 2006 153 deaths had been attributed to eating BSE infected beef or from medical procedures where the infectious agents were passed on.

BSE was first identified in cattle in the UK around 1986. Once it was established that the probable cause of the disease was that cattle had been fed animal protine to increase milk yields, I and my family stopped eating beef from the UK. I realised that if it could survive the temperature involved in the processing and pass from sheep to cattle then there was a good chance that it would pass to humans also.

It was several years later (1990) that the 'BSE scare' reached a peak and the UK health minister publicly ate a beefburger to calm fears. That didn't reassure me though. Next came a daft idea that 'they' would ban the sale of beef from cattle more than 30 months old and therefore ensure public safety. Now it usually takes longer than that for symptoms of BSE to appear in cattle and this idea means that it was then impossible to detect if the meat was infected or not! A much more sensible idea would have been to ban the sale of meat younger than 30 months and therefore give the disease a chance to develop to the point where it could be detected.

The 30 month rule ended in November 2005 and was replaced by the compulsory testing of slaughtered animals for BSE.

The use of animal protein in cattle food was banned in July 1988. It was expected that the appearance of new cases would gradually stop. When cows born after the 1988 ban started to develop symptoms, it became apparent that BSE could be passed from mother to calf. The UK government body which deals with BSE, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) introduced in May 2006 an 'offspring cull' where the calves of any cow determined to be infected with BSE were to be slaughtered. A great idea, but the regulation does not go far enough. It applies only to calves born in the previous two years, and, as DEFRA itself declares, on average it takes five years for BSE symptoms to appear. It has not been established if BSE can be passed on in this incubation period. A safer, (but much more expensive), policy would have been for all descendants of a BSE infected cow to be slaughtered.

So what exactly is the situation now?
The UK has by far had the greatest number of cases of BSE and it is certain that some infected animals entered the UK food chain. Since nvCJD may remain dormant for very long periods - 20 years and more, so far we may only have seen nvCJD in those people particularly susceptible to it. There may be a huge number of cases about to appear in the next few years. See the chart at the end of this post.

Cases of BSE in the UK are now much better controlled. If the steps are effective then BSE will disappear in the UK. I suspect there will still be some since it's possible that the two year offspring cull is not enough to eradicate it. I personally still won't eat British beef unless I know it's from a purebred 'non-dairy' beef herd such as Aberdeen Angus and preferably one which is 'grass fed'.

The table below, based on latest results for 2005, shows the likelihood you have of finding a BSE infected animal. All countries where a BSE case has been confirmed are shown.

Country	Current odds 1 in:
Portugal	23,529
UK	51,152
Spain	64,286
Ireland	97,101
Austria	110,000
Czech Republic	200,000
Luxembourg	205,000
Poland	300,000
Slovak Republic	350,000
Germany	459,375
Slovenia	500,000
Switzerland	533,333
Japan	657,143
France	677,419
Italy	925,000
Netherlands	1,333,333
Denmark	1,572,000
Belgium	1,700,000
Canada	13,700,000
United States	98,000,000
Liechtenstein	n/a
Falkland Isles	n/a
Oman	n/a
Israel	n/a
Greece	n/a
Finland	n/a

What's more worrying however is the graph showing potential cases of nvCJD which could exist:. People in the UK don't seem to be aware that some countries (e.g. Belgium) will not accept blood donors who lived in the UK during the 1990s.

For more information on BSE try http://www.food.gov.uk/bse/ and http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/
For information on new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease try http://www.cjdfoundation.org/ or http://www.stanford.edu/~siegelr/ajai.html

Unsolicited telemarketing

You're in the middle of watching your favourite TV program and the phone rings - someone wanting to sell you double glazing/insulation/burglar alarm e.t.c. Know the thing?

The easy answer is to just say no and put the phone down but you've probably missed a key part of your program and sit there fuming.

Now my phone number (and that of my mobile) is registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and has been registered for some time. Telephone cold callers are breaking the regulations of the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations 1999 and if they make the call can be fined by the Information commissioner. I don't get nearly as many phone calls as I used to but I still get some. Those I do get are listed as 'private' in caller display so I make a point of getting their details and address before I tell them I'm making a complaint against them.

There are numerous websites which go into detail about how to 'get your own back' on the perpetrators of these nuisance calls (My personal favourite is to ask them to call me back on a premium rate number which keeps them on hold for some time without actually telling them anything). I suspect however that it's a waste of time since these callers are probably well used to this and just move on to the next number.

Here's a few suggestions you might try:

• Ask them to hold for a while, put the phone down after muting it and leave it for about 10min. Don't give them the chance to say 'I'll call back'.
• Tell them you are interested and make an appointment for them to visit the guy up the street who had that noisy party. Ask them to call at 2am when you 'get back from work'.
• Tell them you are just about to get on a plane and ask them to phone you in 3 hours on 0041177 (the Japanese prerecorded weather service)
• always make an appointment for conservatory salesmen to call and give you a quote if you live in an upper floor flat/apartment
• Or you can simply take pity on the poor soul who has such a rotten job and just tell them you're not interested.

Now what about text messages? If you register your mobile number with the TPS (website http://www.tpsonline.org.uk) then you sold not receive advertising SMS messages either. At least that's the theory. I still get them from Bambuubar, a nightclub in Southampton. Now why I would want to travel from London to Southampton to go to a nightclub is a mystery to me! But as a point of principle I would never attend any event publicized by text messages I haven't asked for. Neither would I buy anything.

As far as Bambuubar and I are concerned:

• If they can afford to publicize by sms then they are making too much money.
• If they are sending free sms messages then that's the same as spamming e-mail as far as I'm concerned and I hate spam!
• The place on their website looks too pokey for me.
• If I get another sms I'll complain to the Information Commissioner.
• I suggest you avoid the place since their text messages are so annoying.
• Who the h*** is Tim Westwood from Radio 1 and MTV anyway and does he know Bambuubar seems to be breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations Act of 2003 to advertise him?

Implications of the Relativity Drive

In an article published by New Scientist Magazine issue 2568 (08 September 2006) Justin Mullins explains the work of Roger Shawyer who claims to have developed an engine with no moving parts referred to as the 'Relativity Drive' or 'EM Engine'.

The drive works by bouncing microwaves inside a specially shaped container with one end wider than the other. At the narrow end the microwaves are reflected more and transfer less momentum to the end wall than at the wide end. Since they are moving at about the speed of light they move, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, in their own frame of reference and independently of the container.

The actual article has been copied many times on Internet and has even it's own section now on Wikipedia (where the controversy about the drive is discussed more than the drive itself.)

Many debunk the drive as being the same as 'Roadrunner on a skateboard with a sail propelled by a fan on the skateboard'. Yet it should be testable even at home using some parts from an old microwave, a copper foil container and a sensitive electronic balance. (It might be advisable to do it from a distance if you don't want to cook yourself).

What's more of interest to me are the potential implications of a working device.

Assuming a superconducting container, preferably one working at room temperature, then Shawyer calculates a thrust of 30,000 Newtons per kilowatt of power input may be possible. That's enough for us to do away with the internal combustion engine and also to lift a vehicle off the ground. New Scientist shows a diagram of a wingless plane lifted by relativity drives and moved forward by a hydrogen fueled gas turbine. What, however, is to stop the turbine being replaced by yet another relativity drive and the power being obtained from a fuel cell?

Without the need for wings there would be no ceiling for such a vehicle. Space would be as accessible to the individual as the roads are today. The drives themselves should not cost a fortune - after all there are no moving parts unlike an internal combustion engine. Granted you will need to spend money on creating a sealed environment for the driver and passengers and on collision avoidance systems and navigation since there are no roadsigns in space.

Want to visit Auntie on the other side of the world? Just hop in your relativity drive vehicle climb out of the atmosphere, accelerate (maybe powered by solar energy) and coast like a satellite around the world. It may take you a couple of hours but you won't have to wait for the airline to check you in, seat you, and so on. With the availability of cheap personal transport international borders will become a nonsense so you can forget about passports, visas, immigration control, airport security and all that rubbish. Instead of going for a night out in the local town a UK resident could pop over to Vegas for a few hours.

Terrorism? No airplanes and no reason for it anyway since the world's population would be free to move, live and work wherever they want. That includes the rest of the solar system too! Now that might unsettle governments but ... who cares about govenment. I for one would like to see a little democratic anarchy.

Live near an airport? Your house value is going to rise without those noisy planes. A relativity drive vehicle (shall we say RDV from now on?) will be silent. After a while though house prices in the city will fall as cheap personal transport makes living in the country more feasable.

Privacy in your garden? Hmm - that may be a problem with silent RDVs floating overhead. But then anyone who has seen Google Earth or local.live.com will know that back garden privacy will soon be a thing of the past.

Work for a rail service/shipping firm/airport/road construction? Better start looking for a new job. Motor industry? You are going to be selling and maintaining RDVs instead.

Work in the oil industry? Well there won't be the demand for petrol (gas), diesel or aviation fuel but oil products will still be needed for heating and as raw materials. It might reduce pollution and global warming.

How about space travel? By that I mean travel between the Earth and the Moon and planets. We'll have to overcome the absence of the Van Allen belts protecting us against radiation but the good news is that the Sun is expected to go through a quiet phase for a while making interplanetary travel much simpler. If you want a good field to invest in for the future try space suit manufacture and autopilots.

I'm sure there are lots of other ways the RDV would change our lives and I invite you to add them to this blog.

Well I thought it was funny...

Years ago, to earn extra money for my morgage, I worked nights as a taxi driver in Stockton on Tees. One of the other taxi drivers told me this story:

He was driving, as usual, a little too fast and taking a passenger from Stockton to Billingham. As he approached the traffic lights in Norton near a nightclub he saw the lights start to change so started to brake. At this point he realised to his horror that a previous fare had left a bottle in the car and it had rolled forward under the brake pedal preventing him from pushing it. He was doing about 40mph, the lights were now red, there were cars moving out of the junction across his path and there were nightclub visitors crossing the road to a burger van parked outside the club. The only thing he could do was to reach down and pull the bottle out from under the brake. He did that and as he got back up frantically braked. When he finally could see again he found his taxi stopped six inches from the rear of the burger van. He had gone through the lights at red and missed every car and pedestrian.
"Take me back home." said his passenger.
"What for? you've only just left there."
"I need to change my trousers!"

Richard wasn't a very bright student. When he did his technology exam he got everything on the paper wrong apart from one question. He even got everything on the front page wrong.
Surname - he had written the technology teacher's name. "Well you're Sur aren't you?"
Forename - Dickie
Centre Name (the school name) - Alun
The question he got right? he had answered 'Rat shit'
The actual question was 'Name a type of screwdriver.'

I was supervising an English exam at school. I and the other supervisors were run ragged by pupils asking us for pencils - which the English department had not provided. Eventually we ran out and I asked "What do you need a pencil for anyway?".
It was question 5b which said - 'Draw your conclusions...'

Thrush Hall Farm before it was Throstle Hole Abbey

Until I was eight I lived with my family in Walkergate, Newcastle on Tyne. Then my father followed his brother's footsteps and bought a small farm in the wilds of Northumberland.

My father was very much the 'Mr. Jones' in our street in Newcastle. We had the first car, the first TV, a modern kitchen - we were comfortable. Everyone else tried to keep up with us. Thrush Hall Farm was a bit of a change.

For a start - we had no electricity. It was oil lamps and candles upstairs and Calor gas lights and Tilley lamps downstairs. Our TV sat useless in a corner of 'the sitting room' along with our mains radio and gramophone.

There was no bathroom. We did have a bath - it was underneath a counter top in the scullery. We did have the luxury of running hot and cold water. It was heated by a coal fire in the kitchen. Not for us the luxury of chlorinated mains water. Our water supply ran down the field in a ditch. We had a large settling and storage tank just up the hill from the farm buildings. In wet weather it didn't have time to settle and I remember on occasion a large worm would make it's way into the bath. In dry weather the ditch dried up and we had to use a spring in our fields. That spring never dried up, no matter how dry the summer. Not only did it keep us going but it also served for serveral of our neighbours. Unlike the tap water, which had to be boiled, the spring water was pure and delicious.

Toilet? It was outside. Not for us one that flushed. We had an earth closet in a whitewashed outbuilding. I remember a wooden board with a hole you uncovered. At the side of the building was a stone slab which was removed to rake out the contents. I also remember a healthy population of spiders. One day I moved that slab while my sister was sat there and waved a bunch of nettles inside. My sister shot out of that place in hot pursuit of me. Normally I could outrun her but I was laughing so hard she caught me and pulled out handfuls of my hair.

Cooking was done on a Calor gas hob in the scullery or on the coal fire in big cast iron pots. Baking was done in an oven next to the coal fire. I remember that oven served a lot of purposes, from baking to thawing out semi frozen lambs during frosty springs.

The floors in our farm downstairs were made of stone flags. Slabs of stone about two feet by three. The walls of our farmhouse were over two feet thick. They kept us warm in winter and cool in summer. There were small windows facing south with a window ledge that served as a seat at times. There were no windows facing north west or east other than a tiny one in the scullery and an even smaller one filled with perforated zinc mesh in our walk in 'pantry'. The roof was a bit of a mixture. On one side it was stone slabs pegged onto oak beams with sheepbone pegs, on the other side it was slates. The house was built on a slope so was low enough to easily get onto the roof on the slate side. Between the house and the byre there was a cobbled farmyard.

Fridge? We didn't have one. We kept food cool in the pantry and bought fresh food from the many traveling shops which visited.

There were only two bedrooms so Mam & Dad had one and my sister and I shared the other. If you needed to 'go' there was a chamber pot under the bed.

Winters were something else! We were 1700 Ft up in the Pennine hills in a valley surrounded by open fells. When the wind blew all the snow made it's way into the valley and we were 'snowed in'. We had been warned about this and my mother took care to lay in a stock of tinned and dried food. Once the snow started the traveling shops didn't make it to our farm and we had to rely on our stores. That first year I remember helping my parents to dig snow, and dig, and dig and... The temperature plummeted. We had a thermometer outside and I remember eleven degrees of frost. At night we snuggled under two quilts and lots of blankets. (No central heating.) In the morning it was not unusual to find half an inch of ice on the windows. I learnt to keep my clothes for the next day under the top quilt and to get dressed before I got out of bed.

Our normal footwear was the Wellington boot with thick socks. In winter we learnt to wear two pairs of jeans with the outer pair outside the wellingtons to stop the snow getting inside them.

In winter we had to feed our cattle (kept in the byre) and sheep (outdoors). Feeding the cows was a twice a day job and mucking out I found difficult. My problem was that I wasn't strong enough to wheel the wheelbarrow without the risk of it turning over. When it did it was fill it again. One of our cows we milked, a mild mannered shorthorn cow called Daisy. Mostly my mother did this but both my sister and I learnt it too. The trick is to keep your head close to the side of the cow )so she can't whip you in the eyes with her tail)and avoid her stepping or kicking over the pail (by keeping her occupied with some food). We could only milk her part of the year - for the rest we bought milk from Sarah Clark our neighbour.

Another job my father gave me was to bury dead sheep. Our first sheep were old and several died of age. Try burying a sheep in winter when the already stony ground is frozen hard. You do it with a pick, a spade and a shovel.

In spring there was lambing. I learnt to catch the new born lambs with a shepherd's crook and inject it against disease. Lambs are nice, cute and playful. Adult sheep are smelly and frustratingly stupid however. They would jump the stone walls of our farm to get to the much poorer grazing in our neighbours property. As they did so they often caused the ancient dry stone walls to collapse and these needed rebuilding. They say dry stone walling is an art but I learnt it at an early age. I must have been ok at it because my repairs didn't fall down again.

Summer was a different matter. It meant haymaking and we did it the hard way by hand since we did not have a tractor. We got someone to cut the hay and we then used huge wooden rakes to turn the swathes over after drying a few days. If it rained - we did it again. We then raked three rows into one and again let it dry. Next we raked it into small mounds - Kyles. These were then put together into much bigger mounds - Pikes. After the pikes had dried a while they were taken by tractor to the hay barn where it was forked through the narrow door. It was all hard work and my sister and I being only ten and eight years old didn't get me out of it.

Around 1960 electricity finally made it to our valley and at last we could watch tv again. By this time however our TV was too old to pick up the ITV channels that were now being broadcast. We didn't miss it much. We were too busy on the farm. About the same time we did some building work on the farm and at last installed a bathroom with flush toilet and a third bedroom. The scullery was extended in a DIY conversion and joined with the walk in pantry. My father did the work, taking down the wall and installing a thick oak beam to support the bit left. The following morning we came downstairs to find that oak beam bent nearly in a U shape. There turned out to be another 10 feet of two feet thick stone wall above it. It all had to come down. Fortunately this bit wasn't load bearing at the top. To replace the walk in pantry we knocked through to the stable next door and I helped a friend who often helped out on our farm, Dick Phillipson, build a new wall. I remember him sitting astride a beam while I passed him buckets of rubble to fill the gap between the two layers of wall he had built. Suddenly there was a loud rumble, a muttered curse and Dick got very carefully down from his perch. One half of the wall which supported the beam he was sitting on had collapsed and had to be rebuilt.

We also dug out the back of the house and made a new entrance from the yard into the scullery. It used to get filled with snow in winter so eventually we roofed this area over.

Dick usually cut our hay and brought the pikes' in for us. He lived at Nenthead and came over from there on his tractor. He was already old when I first met him but he didn't seem old to me. He was very strong in a wiry way and was one of the few people I knew who had been a lead miner before the mines in the area closed down. His tractor made all the difference to us. My mother was persuaded to drive it. One day I remember her trying to change gear as she brought in a pike. She missed the gear and the tractor started to roll backwards down the hill. She wasn't heavy enough to get enough pressure on the brake and would have ended up back down the hill had one of the prongs of the pike lifter not struck one of the large Scots pine trees which separated two of our hay fields. A few years ago I visited our old farm again, (it's now Throstle Hole Abbey, a Buddhist monastery) and the mark can still be seen in the tree after 40 years.

With the arrival of electricity we bought a deep freeze. I remember seeing it empty apart from the first item we put in it - a packet of fishcakes. One day when Dick arrived my mother took them out to have for lunch. She wasn't quite used to deep freezes though because when she served them they burnt your mouth on the outside and had a chunk of frozen fish in the inside. We still tease her about hot frozen fishcakes. The freezer didn't stay empty long. We had whole pigs, vegetables and fruit in it.

Electricity meant also that my father could start installing central heating. He bought a coal fired boiler, a pump, pipes and radiators and started connecting things up. When he got sick of the job of bashing holes through two foot thick stone walls I took over. I knew nothing about central heating and simply connected everything in series. When we switched it on the radiator in my room was red hot and the one last in line, downstairs in the sitting room, was barely warm. It worked though and made the house warmer. I then read books on central heating and found out what I should have done. Years later I met a guy in a pub in Allendale who talked about what a botch job the central heating was there. I kept quiet.

My mother did most of the work on the farm since my father worked full time as an electrical engineer. She raised cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and at one time goats. She gardened, repaired walls, dipped sheep, milked, lambda, calfed, built animal shelters and cleaned them. In addition she delivered children to the primary school and did a post round. After my parents divorced she sold the farm in 1969 to some Londoners who turned it into a hippy commune. Later it became Throstle Hole Abbey a Soto Zen Buddhist abbey; the name coming from the old name for Thrush Hall.

Distorted Carrots?

OK - so I move to a new house with a massive 150ft garden. Now I don't know a lot about gardening, but I decided it would be worth a try growing vegetables. I got a good crop of potatoes, especially since they were grown from peelings. Peas and beans were great. My sweetcorn, squash, celery, courgettes (zucchini) are delicious. The tomatoes - well, I'm getting sick of them! The cabbage and broccoli are fine now that I've persuaded the caterpillars to go elsewhere.

My carrots though are pathetic. They grow, but I've never seen such distorted efforts.
Now there must be some knowlegeable gardeners out there. What am I doing wrong?
Does Miracle Grow contain testosterone?

TV Adverts (or should that be Advertzzzzzzzz...)

While on holiday I've been watching a bit more TV than usual. As a result I've been exposed to a fair few TV adverts. Now having lived for a while in both the US and Canada I know that we in the UK get a better deal than elsewhere, we don't for instance, get adverts immediately after opening titles or just before the closing credits. But still - some of those adverts are soooo boooring! Others are intensely annoying, and yet more are unbelievably stupid.

So here's my list of adverts that I really hate and those I actually enjoy.

Hate:
The stupid advert which features a football maniac phoning up for a loan whilst his grinning idiot wife videos everything with her video camera instead of snatching his football and throwing it out the window. It's so annoying I mute the sound every time it comes on. Now I know some adverts are designed to be annoying so we remember the name of the company/product but if that's the case here ... Who?

The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) advert featuring children suffering. Isn't this a case of cruelty to children? Maybe some of them are brilliant child actors but that tot in the baby bouncer? Sorry NSPCC I'm NOT going to donate because no amount of money will stop some parents from being cruel and I'm certainly not going to help you pay for more of these adverts!

Like:
The Renault Megan adverts - funny, sexy and almost enough to make me interested in buying a very ugly car!

Boring:

The Elephant insurance adverts - I have enough trouble staying awake in front of TV without them to send me to sleep!

Amusing - but not in the way they plan:

Years ago I was a member of the AA (Automobile Association). I quit and joined the RAC (Royal Automobile Club) after waiting for nearly 3 hours for a patrol to arrive when my car broke down. After watching the AA advert on TV I finally can figure out why it took so long - all their patrol men are off in Scotland making adverts!

Their latest advert says 95% of their members would recommend them. Now maybe they haven't noticed but that means 5% of their members are unhappy and won't be a member after their subscription runs out. Hey AA - you are losing 5% of your members every year!

Talking of unintentionally amusing adverts - remember these from the past?

• 'Nothing acts faster than Anadin' - so take nothing and your headache will get better quicker.


• 'Persil washes whiter' - Than mud?

So what adverts does everyone else like/dislike?