that #ff thang #2 He Who Licketh the Skip

I’ve never had to point a firearm at someone and make the decision to pull the trigger. I hope I never will. My Granddad did. It was a decision taken, not out of anger, or fear (though he was afraid) but from duty and the instinct to live. ‘Here be man’s most monstrous’ he’d write in margins. It was horror that he could not find words to express, at first. He awoke screaming for the rest of his life and never spoke of the war if he could avoid it. Granddad died before anyone knew what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was. My Granddad was a hero.

I’m posting this a bit earlier than Friday to meet the real (not one of the squidgier variety) deadline for this week’s Weekly Blog Club. It’s such a great initiative aimed at encouraging people (especially in public & 3rd Sector) to write. Each week, there are suggested topics for any writers who are struggling to come up with something to write about, one of last week’s topics was Hero’s and it reminded me I should post this one. Anyway, I highly recommend checking them out on Twitter and visiting the site, they always have a lot of great content from some really brilliant writers.

My mate Skip’s a hero.

He’s seen darkness far worse than anything Granddad saw, but took the same action and lives with a similar consequence.

SkipLicker, to use his own description,  Is:

King of the Stickmen. Hardcore Troll. Carried a rifle once, then got shot at… Fuck off and be offended somewhere else

It’s the Hardcore Troll bit that gets some of my followers hot under the collar and not in the groovy, post-watershed way. To them, Skip’s just a Troll and Trolls are bad. mmkay? There is only one other person* I am warned about more for following and talking to on Twitter than Skip.

I like Skip, I have from the first time I read one of his blogs and chatted to him. I take people as I finds them and Skip has always been lovely to me. More than this though, Skip has a lot of very interesting things to say about a lot of different things. He is a fantastic writer with a voice that swings, often disarmingly, from sneering, acidic wit to warmth and empathy.

I’m most interested in his thoughts on war. You see, Skip’s writing a book about his experiences and, just as I think she’d approve of my granddad’s journals, I think Mary O’Hare would approve of Skip’s portrayal of war…

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, it probably means you haven’t read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. You should rectify that situation immediately, it truly is a brilliant book. Vonnegut was writing a War book too – an anti-war book in fact, as perfectly pointless as an ‘anti-glacier’ book – he was reminiscing with an old war buddy, when the man’s wife interrupted:

“You were just babies then!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“I — I don’t know,” I said.
“Well I know,” she said. “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn’t want her babies or anybody else’s babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. – Slaughterhouse 5 – Chapter 1

I think we can be certain that wars are not even party encouraged by books or films but, just in case, Skip’s writing will have no role for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. Read this: Words in a Skip: Hang em’ High and this: Words in a skip: Holes and Me

Quite recently, Skip has been a voice of reason in the growing cycles of online ‘outrages’  following trolling and is amongst a group of interesting folk asking important questions about Freedom of Speech. One of the few things that the Left and Right of UK politics seem to agree on is the need for freedom of speech applied to some and not others. You can threaten to blow up an airport and get away with it, but don’t dare threaten an Olympic Diver…

Skip thinks you should be able to say anything you want and he’s right, I think. That is how Freedom of Speech works? I’m asking, not telling. Either everything is okay to say, or nothing is. Read this:  Words in a Skip: Frankie Says Relax and this: Words in a Skip: Sticks and Stones.

Skip suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That didn’t come from nowhere, it came from the things he saw and did at war and the things done to him in preparation for war. Skip is not alone, there are likely huge numbers of troops returning from war with mental scars invisible to the naked eye, but that are as debilitating as lost limbs. Read more of my thoughts on War and the armed forces

So there we have it, follow my mate Skip…but not literally, that probably won’t end well.

*The dubious honour of ‘Person I am warned most about on Twitter’ goes to Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero), Editor-in-Chief at The Kernal. I like him too, he’s a brilliant writer with an acerbic tongue and yes, if you’re going to tell me about the horrible things he’s said…I know. He’s said a lot of things that I find pretty awful, but I suspect a lot of them he has said because he likes to shock and, besides, he’s always been sweet with me, as I said before, I takes ’em as I finds them. Also rumour has it that he is a great deal nicer in real life than how he sometimes chooses to present himself in print.

You Know the score: If you don’t like these Thoughts, stick around, I’ve got plenty of others.

America, vote Mitt Romney (if you want endless war and fiery death).

This week, I remembered that there is a wealth of difference between UK and US politics.

Picture the scene…

The leader of the main opposition party takes the stage for his keynote at the party conference and promises the party faithful that, if he is elected Prime Minister, there will be:

• More war;
• Less global stability;
• Abortion will be made illegal; and
• An isolationist approach to trade and imports/exports

There’s no way that would happen and, if it did, there is little hope that politician would ever be anything other than in opposition. Mitt Romney may be the next President of the United States and that’s the basis of his election campaign.

Watch Romney’s speech from the Republican Party Convention:

I found the moronic chanting of “U-S-A” an interesting touch.

Seriously America, you can’t honestly think this guy’s a viable alternative to Barack Obama. Mitt Romney strikes me as a rather venomous man, but here’s what his vague speech seemed to promise if he wins:

• Romney will have America back to being seen as bully of the world in no time. Obama has said sorry once too often for Mitt’s liking, there’ll be no more apologising and Romney has a plan to create some awesome new situations to not be sorry for.
• You’ll be going to war with Iran over their ‘nuclear weapons programme;’
• You’ll be going to war with Syria…reason will be found at a later date;
• Relations will be deliberately be soured with Russia by adopting a much less flexible approach with the Kremlin. Obama has been too soft there, apparently;
• Not content with pissing off Russia, Romney also has a bone to pick with China whose loan of $1 Trillion now basically underpins the US economy;
• He will save the State of Israel from the ‘wheels of the bus’ that he is certain President Obama has thrown them under; and
• When not busy antagonising other superpowers and bombing small, Muslim countries back into the stone age, Mitt is committed to the criminalisation of abortion in the US, because all life is sacred…well all life except for the lives of those people in aforementioned countries that he will flatten.

It goes on, but it’s not all bad…in between all the war and infringements on basic human rights and freedoms, Uncle Mitt’s going to create a lot of jobs. He doesn’t really state how, exactly, these jobs will be created, but create them he will.

There was a single moment of praise for Obama, for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden…there is a cheer and chanting… Please. Don’t. Let. Them. Win

Political satire must be difficult in the US! I sat through a lot of the Republican Party speeches not entirely convinced that I wasn’t in fact watching a heavy-handed political satire. Mitt Romney strikes me as little more than a very sinister parody, but this is no joke, he might win in November’s US Election. That misguidedly dangerous fool might be the next President,

America doesn’t need Mitt Romney and the world certainly doesn’t need Mitt Romney.

Think of it like this, a vote for:

Probably leads to a future that looks like this:

So yeah, vote Mitt Romney: vote for the destruction of the environment, for religious intolerance, and for worldwide belligerence with massive helpings of war and death…

Alternatively, use your common sense, say no to the Republican morons. Vote for Barack Obama in the November 6th Elections. He’s not Mitt Romney!

Mexico: Lands of the Maya

As some of you may know (I think I may have mentioned it once…or twice, maybe) I have recently been on holiday to Mexico, which involved visiting a number of the Mayan sites. Thought I’d share some of my favourite pictures from the trip

Here’s Tulum’s Temple of the Wind:

Here is the El Castillo monument at Tulum which is believed to have been an efficient Day/Night Beacon for Mayan boats returning with precious goods that would help them avoid the treacherous reefs:

Here is the sea-facing side of El Castillo. Day and night, Mayan boats could use the angle of light through the windows to ensure safe passage through the reefs below:

Below is the temple of Frescoes, Tulum, which is adorned with a variety of carvings and contains, within, a ground floor and second floor gallery believed to have been used for celestial observation:

Here’s me stood in front of probably the most recognisable of all the Mayan Pyramids, El Castillo at the site of Chichen Itza:

The Castle, or Temple of Kukulkan, is remarkable in that it it aligned perfectly (or entirely accidentally) that twice a year, during the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, an optical illusion of a serpent descending the north staircase is seen for an hour between 4-5 pm local time. There is much argument amongst archaeologists as to whether this was an intentional effect created by the original temple builders or a quirk of fate. Considering we know the Mayans had a reasonable astronomical knowledge it’s hard to imagine this was an accidental feature of the construction. I was there during the equinox and this is the best picture I have of the ‘Snake’ made up of a series of linked isosceles triangles of light:

There is another feature of The Temple of Kukulkan pyramid that is far less controversial and that is the thought that the Mayans put into acoustics of the Pyramid. If you stand at the bottom of the North Stair case and clap, the sound that is returned is similar to that of the Quetzal bird, which was sacred to the Maya. It is largely accepted that this was an intentional design feature of the pyramid as similar acoustic awareness has been noted at other Mayan sites in Mexico; the Mayan’s liked their temples to tweet. The Mayans wewre doing something thousands of years ago that we have only learnt to do in the last few decades, encode sound into stone, and they didn’t have computer simulations, just trial and eror! Here is a fascinating report from the Acoustical Society of America on the Acoustic phenomena at Chichen Itza, which include the voice of any speaking from the top of the pyramid being amplified and made possible to be heard from some distance away. You can find a number of recordings of the Quetzal Bird Echo online, but unfortunately none quite compare to hearing it in person.

The Temple of a Thousand Warriors which is flanked by huge pillars that once held up an elaborate roof system.

Strong links have been drawn between the architecture of the Temple of a Thousand Warriors and the Toltec site of Tulu, which is to the north of Mexico City. Unfortunately for those who would have the Toltecs as invaders of Chichen Itza, there is evidence that puts the date of the building of the Temple of a Thousand Warriors before the date of it’s counterpart at Tulu. Debate rages on this topic and it is one of the many mysteries that remain about who influenced the Maya.

When it comes to the Maya, there are always surprises, even at sites that we have known about for centuries, such as Chichen Itza. Below is a 2009 excavation trench next to El Castillo that discovered another, much older, Mayan Pyramid buried beneath the Plateau. It is speculated that more still are hidden underground and in surrounding jungle areas:

Although we know quite a lot about Mayans, by comparison with some of their older neighbouring cultures such as the Olmec, speculation (ludicrous and otherwise) remains rife. It wasn’t that the Mayans did not keep records of their history, beliefs and customs, in fact they kept wonderfully extensive records on Amate Bark Paper, which was far more durable that the papyrus paper used by the ancient Egyptians to record their legacy but, however durable it was, it was not immune to fire and this is where most of the Mayan codices met their demise. We have the Spanish Conquistadors, who conquered much of Central America in the 16th Century, and one particular Franciscan priest to thank for much of the speculation that endures today about the Mayan’s history.

The priest was Diego De Landa, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of the Yucatan Peninsula and it was under his brutal rule that a huge number of atrocities were carried out against the Maya (all in the name of religion of course). For me, Del Lando’s worst crime (from his vast list!) came on July 12th 1562 when, having collected up a large amount of Mayan books and religious images, burnt everything. His justification was that it was the writings of the devil who his imaginary friend had told him were bad. In one day history was robbed of the one chance to fully understand the Mayan History and culture in their own words. All that remains is one good quality codice held in Dresden and 3 poorer quality codices held elsewhere in the world, but that’s it and so attention has turned to the stones and pyramids left behind by the Mayans, which has led to a lot of  the interesting interpretations and misconceptions/lies.

As an aside, De Landa’s second worst crime is the reason it’s rare to see pictures of 2 sides of the El Castille Pyramid at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza. Here’s what it looks like:

Here is a picture of the first Roman Catholic church in the Mexican Yucatan:

It was built with stones stripped from nearby Chichen Itza. Our guide wryly told us that if anything happens on December 21st 2012 it would only be fitting for the churches, built using desecrated stones from the Mayan temples, be the first to go.

Extraterrestrial Life: Chicken or Pork?

Last week I learned something new about myself: if aliens visit Earth, I’ll almost certainly be considering eating one! I’m okay with this fact  but, rest assured, this is not a post about eating Aliens (it’s Chicken or Pork guys, the universal constant for exotic foodstuffs), this is a post about whether any visiting aliens are likely to fancy take-out human!

I posted about the likelihood of Humanity dying on planet Earth (we’re going to die here!) inspired by a post from @thinkingfox. This is my response to his most recent post on attempting to contact intelligent Alien life on the new exoplanets discovered by the Keplar Space Telescope, it’s well worth reading (Thinkingfox: Just because you could). Rob ends his post with a warning that just because we can send out these messages to other planets doesn’t necessarily mean that we should and wonders are we running the risk of attracting the unwanted attention of a spacefaring galactic bully intent on making Humanity their bitch. I’m not so sure and I’d like to explain why…

A lot of this post is going to run around reasonable speculation from the Drake equation, my favourite equation if I had to  pick one, which was developed by Frank Drake in 1961. If you have not come across this Equation before here it is:

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

It states that:

N = The number of civilizations in The Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.

R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

(Source: SETI Institute HQ)

Put very simply, this means that there are a lot of potential for life in our galaxy, The Milky Way, and that’s before we start looking at the billions of other galaxies that make up the Universe. So ET is most likely out there and NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is, every day, helping prove some elements of Drake’s Equation correct in terms of the planets it is finding orbiting parent stars in the life-important Goldilocks zone. Giving both sides of the argument, there are problems with the Drake Equation, there’s one huge and obvious problem immediately apparent: if drake is correct, our galaxy is teaming with life both intelligent and otherwise, the intelligent life should be leaving traces that we can detect with existing technology, but we haven’t. This problem is called the Fermi Paradox which states there is an apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

This is a fun area of science, you get to have an opinion that could conceivably be correct! Even the best scientific attempts at predicting what alien life looks like (or how it will behave) is little more than guesswork, extrapolations based on how evolution has worked for humanity on Earth. This obviously comes with the risk of assuming that that this is the only way for sentient life to evolve in the universe…it may not be. Anyway before I tell you what I think, here’s a round-up of the different theories.

Evil ET

One theory, popular in the public consciousness, that runs through science fiction and is supported by some scientists,  states that although ET may look slightly different to humans, it will be carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, bipedal and suffer from all the character flaws that we see in our own species. ET will be violent and destructive, covetous and driven by nothing more than a need for conquest. To ET, humanity will either be a threat to be destroyed, food to be eaten or slaves to be abducted. Earth will be nothing more than a source of valuable resources to be mercilessly stripped. The Guardian ran an article recently that carried the idea that ET might even look identical to us (Guardian: Scientists claim, aliens visiting earth will be just like us!)

Don’t judge me by your own low standards 

For some scientists extrapolations based on how humans have evolved are just not satisfying enough, the unique conditions on earth have created humanity but this doesn’t have to be the only conditions to successfully create sentient life. No one knows for sure if sentient life requires a carbon-based genetic make-up, could Silicon work just as well for complex lifeforms? It’s an open question, we just do not know for sure, but we do know some deep, hydrothermal-vent dwelling worms are silicon-based. It’s not just silicon either, there are a number of other elements that have been suggested as theoretically viable for producing complex biochemistries.

This article based on an interview with Professor Sasselov is a great read (BBC: Searching for the Origins of life and our future)

Technological life

We spend a lot of our time as a species pre-occupied with the notion of looking for organic extraterrestrial life, whether that looks like us or not, but space and more specifically traversing space is pretty lethal to organic life. In order to be able to achieve the feat of interstellar travel the flimsy, organic frame must be protected by some pretty advanced technology and, even with this protection the organic nature of pilots remain the weakest link in the whole operation. We know this for a fact and yet we still expect ET, when we find them, to be organic lifeforms. What if, like us, they have had more success building probes to send into space? What if they have mastered nano-robotics, capable of building ever more complex versions of themselves without reference to their human creators. Long after the organic, builder race had died out, their sentient technological legacy would have the galaxy as their playground. Shouldn’t the search for life be hunting for artificial intelligence near sources of resources such life would require? Some scientists think so: BBC: Alien Hunters should look for Artificial Intelligence

Space is pretty vast, but so is time

In my last post I reminded you how big space is and how its vast size is one of the reasons our species will die here on Earth. Space is massive, but so is time, here are some scary numbers:

• The best current estimate of the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.13 billion years old;
• In 2007, The Milky Way, our galaxy, was estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old;
• The Solar System is an estimated 4.6 billion years old;
• Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago;
• 50 years ago, Yuri Gagarin was the first member of the human species to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.

Think carefully on these numbers, for many these are the answer to the Fermi Paradox. It’s not a question of sentient life being unique to our Earth, there could have been life elsewhere at some point in the past, but as the saying goes: on a long enough timeline everything’s life expectancy becomes zero. For me, if you add the vastness of space to the vastness of time, our likelihood of detecting alien life approaches zero!

And finally…a unique earth, floating alone in space

This theory is not massively popular, but quite interesting. It suggests that the conditions on Earth are unique in allowing the evolution of sentient life. This theory is not predicted or answered by Drake and if is correct then the Fermi Paradox has its answer and we truly are alone in the universe: BBC: Life on earth – is our planet unique.

What I think

I’m not too worried about people broadcasting messages at planets identified by Kepler as having the potential for life-sustaining conditions. It’s not that I think there isn’t life in the galaxy, one of those targetted planets may hold an intelligent, organic species of extraterrestrials, but I’m just not worried about them invading.

As I said in my last post, our love of war is one of the major reasons why we’re stuck on earth; space travel costs a lot of money and resources and so do wars, it’s unlikely any civilisation would manage to maintain such an unhealthy love of war and still make it out of their cosmic backyard. Assume our theoretic aliens have ‘evolved’ beyond the need for war amongst themselves, would they would take it on themselves to wage war with any species they meet on their galactic jaunts? Okay I might be suggesting a higher level of societal evolution for my aliens, lets assume for a minute they do still celebrate periods of peace with a good old-fashioned war. Wars normally start for a reason, if a species is capable of traversing space it’s unlikely they would be threatened by a species incapable of launching manned-trips much beyond the confines of their own atmosphere.  So what about other reasons?

A need for resources or a new home is often cited as a potential for hostile acts against earth by extraterrestrials, but Drake’s Equation puts this theory in some doubt. Our theoretical aliens exist, therefore the Drake Equation is at least partially correct. If we track back a bit we can see that for every planet that produces intelligent life that can be detected there are vastly more planets, just in our galaxy that are capable of sustaining life but do not have any actual life present. You’re the captain of an Alien colony ship and you have two choices of planets: Planet 1 is suitable for your species and is entirely free of any other form of sentient life and Planet 2 is our planet the Earth with it’s current level of population and infrastructure. Which planet do you decide to settle or resource strip from? It’s simple really, maximum reward for minimum effort.

In my humble opinion, if ET comes, there is every likelihood that they will come in peace…of course I could be wrong and, hedging my bets somewhat, can I be the first to welcome our future, evil alien overlords and offer any help I can be with the PR drive to win the hearts and minds of the few remaining members of my species that they haven’t vaporised or eaten…

We’re all going to die here…

Take a look at this picture, beautiful isn’t it! This is our planet, the earth and we’re going to die here. I don’t just mean me and you; we’re definitely going to die here; or our children, they’ll die here too; and their children…it goes on and on, until eventually, and I see no reason for optimism of any other outcome, the whole of humanity will die on this rock we call home.

This is going to be one of two posts inspired by conversations I’ve had on Twitter the last two mornings with @thinkingfox, which were prompted by his two most recent blog posts on humans and space travel. The first post from yesterday was on Cryonics, Generation Ships and the future of Humanity and it’s well worth a read.

He rightly points out that unless we answer the questions around Faster-than-Light Travel or creating Warp Fields capable of bending space/time then huge Generation Ships or Cryonics are the only option we have, as a species, for visiting other worlds and potentially populating them.

It got me thinking about my own scepticisms about the likelihood of humanity ever physically leaving the solar system, which I’d thought I’d summarise in this post. Please note, I’m not a scientist (you’re shocked, right!?!) so the below is based on my love of reading science…up until the point of it needing an equation to explain it…if I’m wrong about any of this, please post me a comment and let me know.

Space is too damn big and we are too damn squishy!

Humans are squishy, really, really squishy. Space is really big and does not like squishy things and it tends to find new and interesting way to kill them. So space travel using conventional propulsion methods is a nightmare; it’s crawlingly slow (relatively speaking), it requires vast amounts of fuel and, perhaps most importantly, your life expectation over long voyages is not exactly high. It’s the reason we haven’t been to Mars, which floats in our cosmic backyard and the reason, by and large, that we abandoned jaunts to the moon.

As you would expect the bright people at NASA explain the issues best: Why interstellar travel is so difficult

We like war

One thing humanity is pretty adept at is the making of war, it’s what we do and we’re good at it, we’ve been doing it for 1000s of years! Wars are okay (Yes the Lefty just said wars were okay): they drive technological innovation, and always have done, as we search for new and interesting ways to commit huge acts of genocide. Unfortunately wars use a lot of three things: Humans, money and resources. Humans, money and resources are all things that if you want to become a space-faring species you need an abundance of. While ever there are wars on Earth it seems massively unlikely there will be the concerted effort to create a means to leave.

So, if you agree with these points, we’ve accepted for the time being that we’re going nowhere fast. What about the future? What about future technology? Well, here’s my understanding of the options and their pitfalls:

Faster-than-Light Travel

Well it’s now at least theoretically possible, thanks to pesky sub-atomic particles managing it (or appearing to). It’s a step in the right direction as previously it was thought impossible by physicists, but don’t get too excited: even if sub-atomic particles can do it, that doesn’t mean we can!

My favourite argument against this was explained to me by a friend: you’d need to know the area of space you plan to travel to very well to avoid re-appearing in normal space in the centre of a star or the like! The same issues exist for so-called Warp field technology, which create fields of infinite mass and as a result, bend space/time meaning a craft can avoid having to breach the light barrier

We can neither produce Warp Fields (despite what tin-hatters say) or travel Faster-than-light and we may never be able to. See the NASA Glenn Research Centre Site for a lowdown on the scientific liklihood of this, their current thinking categorises it as being ‘Speculation’ and therefore not backed by current scientific theory.

Cryonics

As Thinkingfox points out, the Woolly Bear Caterpillar, featured on Frozen Planet,  can freeze and die in the Winter, only to revive in the Spring and it can do this 13 times. Humans can’t do this, as far as we know, if you freeze a human (and most other complex organisms) what happens is ice crystals tear apart cell membranes, with existing technology, there is nothing we can do to repair the damage to every single cell in the human body, let alone bring people back to life!

If Cryonics worked, it would be a valid option, keeping the population of Earth 2.0 frozen while the ship, using improved but conventional propulsion, makes the long journey to a selected habitable world.

Generation Ships

This is one of the most interesting options as, once we solve the manufacturing issues of building a giant starship in space, it’s a feat that could be achieved in our Grandchildren’s lifetimes. It works like this: fertile and heterosexual couples with diverse and useful specialisms are chosen to be the ships first residents. Each couple must procreate, raise and train those children in their specialism, before submitting to euthanasia the moment they are no longer useful…this process continues, rinse and repeat until eventually, after hundreds of generations, the target planet is reached. Anyone spot any issues here?

For Generation Ships the biggest obstacle is ethics and not technology. The first generation of our ship have freewill, it is their choice to be there, but what about the second generation and those after? They will be born into a world without any choice at all. They will have no choice over their path through life, it’s predefined; no choice over falling in love or procreation, genetic diversity must be maintained at all costs; and no option but to submit to euthanasia once their purpose is served. Consider than Humanity is not too good at dealing with such restrictions on freedoms, so we may have to drug our Generation Shipmates lest Human emotion and resistance to perceived injustices take hold.  These are pretty big issues and that’s before you get onto the issue of only allowing heterosexual couples into the program in the first place!

Oh did I mention the cosmic radiation? No, okay it’s nasty in deep space so there’s a high likelihood everyone would be fried at some point.

You’re definitely going to die here

Life in the universe is precarious, its springing up at all is miraculous and there are then a multitude of natural ways that it can end: Asteroid impacts, viruses, volcanism…the list goes on, for further reading, the Wiki page of Extinction Level Events (ELE) is a must. Then there’s the numerous ways our species could destroy all life on Earth: nuclear warfare, a technological singularity etc. Assuming we avoid all these potential disasters then, eventually, in a around 7.6 billion years, our sun will either die out or become a red giant and entirely consume or make our little planet uninhabitable (accounts seem to vary). So there’s a timescale, we don’t have forever, and if we don’t find a way to leave then our species is definitely going to die here on this rock!

I’ll end with the words of Thinkingfox when I raised some of these issues while we were chatting: Humanity school report = Must try harder.

of course I could be wrong, maybe this is the future for Humanity, courtesy of Babylon 5:

Next time I’ll be discussing why I’m not too worried about a visit from ET (Alien Life: Chicken or Fish?)

What Remembrance Day Means to Me

I remember we always used to go to church on Remembrance Sunday. There would always be a big service of remembrance at our local church and, dressed in our best, the whole family would go. Sometimes there would be service men there, some young some old and whenever there was, my mum would always go over and speak to them.

I was about 8 or 9 when I first overheard exactly what she said to those men. It was beautifully simple: ‘Thank You’. When we got home I asked her, with the innocence of childhood, what she was thanking them for and this is what she said: ‘I thank them because they have made great sacrifices so we can enjoy the things that we enjoy today!’  I was confused and told her we had learned at school that war was terrible. She explained that wars were terrible, but that wars were never started by the people who ended up fighting them (I learned later many, too many, fighting wars were little more than children). She made me promise that, however my opinions of wars might change, my opinion of servicemen and women should not. It was important to her that I ‘should never stop being grateful for the sacrifices they make’. I never have.

Today I’m wearing a Poppy. Today I’m remembering. Today I’m remembering my Granddad and everyone else who has fought, suffered and lost in wars. Today, as always, I am thankful for the sacrifices made by our armed forces.

If you’re reading this, I’d ask you to remember that today your opinion of wars is largely irrelevant. Today is about the people for whom war isn’t simply a subject to be debated philosophically from armchair safety, today is for those brave heros who lived and suffered through wars. Lest we forget!

Well that’s my difficult first post out of the way. Feeling quite good about it. If you’ve read this post and don’t like these thoughts, stick around I have plenty of others.