Space, the final frontier. And it shall remain that way

I’ve always been interested in Science, and specifically, the ability to travel into space, to travel to far away locations, different planets, different worlds. Whilst for now this may only be a dream, after giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that, apart from the interest in space travel generally, what’s the point? Sure, if the world gets overcrowded then we may need to find places for people to live elsewhere, but apart from that, seriously, what is the point?

Artists impression of a city world

We’d use a chemical engine to propel ourselves into orbit, that alone would cost millions and from there we’d then have to navigate to our destination, which would have to be objects near to us, and when I say near I mean objects where it won’t take millions of generations to get to. The Moon, Mars, Venus and perhaps asteroids are the most viable options here. Apart from the Moon, these places would take years to complete whole missions to them. And what would we gain from this?

Real life image of the surface of Mars.
Next Holiday destination?

Mars, a cold place to be all year around

If there’s life and Mars, it would be a great piece of knowledge, despite the fact it would be single-cell. It would then be known that there could be intelligent life elsewhere. But then what? It’s not like we can contact any of these aliens if they existed, not to mention we wouldn’t even know where to start to locate any.

Up for a bit of probing?

So what else would be useful, recourses? No, because we used so much getting there in the first place, it would just be a waste. Even if it was, say, Helium 3 (see previous post) then we’d still need fuel to take off and deliver it back to Earth. Is it really worth it? Building stations on these worlds is possible, given years of delivery and building in the hostile environments. But the process would cost trillions, not even joking. What government is willing to pay that?

Bases on Mars? Maybe, but we're a long way off

Science would never get that kind of funding, even in a second Cold War. The emptiness of space is just that, empty, there’s nothing for so many miles that until we can figure out a way to transport ourselves around with ease we won’t be leaving our humble planet any time soon. But that’s delving into the world of Science Fiction.

Oil and its impending doom

The Pipelines of International conflict

This is something that’s been bugging me for a long time. Our energy sources have been controlled by the oil companies for a long time since the 1940’s when electricity had begun to be distributed across the country. Understandably, they could provide energy easily and relatively cheaply back then. Therefore, the oil business became big, they had, and still do have, a large influence over the governments. This is due to the fact that should the oil, natural gas and other fossil fuel sources be shut off by the companies, or even just limited by them, countries affected will have no or limited access to electricity – setting them back to the stone age. Mass power cuts for large amounts of time would be common; shops and schools wouldn’t be able to open because of health and safety risks, roads would be unlit, the internet would be inaccessible and all sources of media would be shut off. How any modern country would be able to cope with this is questionable. So, behind the scenes the big oil companies hold a lot of power over governments. Where governments are in charge of natural resources supplies, such as Russia and its control over the gas pipeline that runs through Northern Europe, about 80% of it all, we’ve already seen the devastation this can cause, when Russia decided to demonstrate its renewed power back in 2006. It shut off the pipeline, causing a lot of trouble for Ukraine for the 4 days. Our need for electricity means that any large sources of it hold a lot of power in the world.


This also means that it is difficult for our government to instate renewable and nuclear fuel sources, in case they cause unrest in the oil companies. If they did not hold such a sway, no doubt we have switched to using nuclear as our main fuel source 10 years ago, before oil prices stared rising at such an alarming rate. Nuclear fuel is a hell of a lot more energy efficient then oil is. 1kg of Uranium would power a 100W bulb for 182 years, whereas 1kg of crude oil powers that same bulb for 42 days. The only reason we have not seen a switchover yet, is because of the power the oil companies have, a proper switch would take several years – long enough to cause a problem to any country if their oil supply was limited. Also, nuclear power plants are very expensive to build, and a country not devoted to preparing for the future will not bother to build many plants. When I mean prepare for the future, I mean it in the sense that oil supplies are running out, and unless we find a new pocket in the artic, we will most likely have run out by 2030.  Imagine if there was a war over the last of the oil, every country depends on it, all the world superpowers would be involved, and by 2030, this would most likely be an all-out war between the USA, China and Russia; with the smaller countries siding with these three superpowers. It doesn’t bear thinking about. This is why it is so necessary to prepare for the future, something a lot of countries seem to be currently not to bothered about. A lot of people argue about global warming being the reason to cut down on our electricity use, but as harmful as the effects of producing electricity may be, the most likely reason our governments want to cut down on the use is to prolong this potential war as long as possible. We are likely to see this war long before the harmful effects of global warming come in. So here is my argument, why not kill two birds with one stone? By switching to nuclear and to some extent renewables, as inefficient as they are, not only could we avoid the potential effects of global warming, if it is indeed happening, and avoid this catastrophic war. I may sound like Mr Pessimistic here, but to me, this is a large issue.



I recently read in a scientific magazine about a new fuel entirely. Instead of using oil or nuclear fuels to run them, it uses a little known isotope called Helium 3, which is only available on Earth when you dismantle nuclear weapons. However, somewhere where it is abundant is the Moon. And with the second race to the Moon now on, but this time with private companies and new governments involved, it’s only a matter of time before we can start utilising it. To quote the Fo magazine: “But a Shuttle bay filled with the stuff could power the US for a year.” As you can see, a small amount can go a long way, but it’s actually getting the material first that could prove tricky.

Sources: http://sciencefocus.com/feature/health/who-owns-space, Focus Magazine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_disputes This information was collected by me, I by no means own the information on the Focus Magazine site. 
-Side Note- I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, I don't believe in any of that crap, but what I've said above is a rough predication of what I and a few others think will happen if things don't change given the state of the World as of 2011. This doesn't necessarily mean it will come true by any means, these are only words of caution. Also, I apologise if this article wasn't particularly funny and perhaps a bit scary, I've got some interesting topics planned, and no more of this scary shit for the time being.

Girls, and the Horrible Hierarchy of Schools

The Standard System

      In a Boys school, having a girlfriend seems to raise your name in the hierarchy that is a school year. In a state boy’s school in England, Popular Kids, much like in the USA, are usually at the top. Granted, you don’t necessarily have to be sporty to be popular, nor if you’re sporty will you be popular – but it’s more or less the same. Anyway below these demons lies what you may consider the normal kids, ones who aren’t especially smart, sport, rich, whatever. They’re average in every way imaginable, even their heights and weights are ‘normal’. Then there are the smart people - unlike the US they’re not ridiculed at the same level, thank God, but that doesn’t mean they’re not free from the flying fists. Strangely, there seems to be a completely separate group also – the weirdoes and quiet ones. There are people who are either very strange and everyone just avoids them because they scare the shit out of you, and the quiet people also who just never open their mouths for the whole year apart from when they say ‘yes Sir/Ms’ every morning. We all, accidently, tend to just forget their existence.

As expected, the popular kids, despite the fact being in a boy’s school, seem to have phone directory of girls names and numbers. They have the right contacts from their primary school, their contacts have the right contacts and those contacts have the right ones and so on. So, a year into puberty – when girls weren’t so diseased any more, every single popular child, at the age of 13, were at parties, meeting new people; everything a normal person expects to do at the age of 18, when its legal. Within months they had girls bathing in their shadows. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but it’s pretty close. Every other testosterone fuelled teenager was grouchy and aching for the touch of a women, but unfortunately they just weren’t popular enough to know any. Not the quiet kids, they weren’t bothered, they were simply content with their silence. The weird people were happy with chickens. Just to clarify, they’re not retarded, just odd.

Then, all of a sudden, rumours went around. A non-popular kid had a girlfriend. How this possible? Was the rumour a lie? Was she ugly? Was he a hermaphrodite that had snogged a mirror? No, it was all true. Someone, through facebook (I know, still a little nerdy) had met a girl. They’d gone out and well, the rest, as they say, is history. She wasn’t ugly (though to be fair she wasn’t exactly Cheryl Cole) and she wasn’t, surprisingly, a hermaphrodite. The person in question was literally jumping for joy, they’d kissed a girl before anyone else and he wasn’t even popular. Two weeks later it had ended. Granted he was upset, but he had experienced something that none of us normal people would ever experience. His status in the school had risen, albeit briefly, and although he hadn’t quite been at the level of the popular kids, he’d been able to look down his slightly crooked nose at us. The rest of us would be unwillingly patient, and wait years to get our lips on a woman.

As we went up the school years, things changed though, nerds were no longer at the bottom, the hierarchy was no longer a hierarchy – people just existed in separate groups from each other. Now even I know a few girls. Oh how times have changed, but that is a story for another day. Next year in college, there will be girls among us. Now that will be interesting.

Democracy may be frayed, but...

   Last night I was speaking to my Chinese friend who lives near to me in London. He spoke about how in China, during these riots, the thugs would be shot on sight. This was his basis of an argument as to why the political system in China is better then it is here in the UK. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure the methods of control over riotous parts of a population are how a political system should be judged. If that were true, then the USSR and Nazi Germany are both one of the best countries in the world. Hmm, not too sure about that. 

  He went on to talk about how corrupt our system is. How the government likes to coax us all as the election comes up with pledges designed to appeal to the public, and then go back on their promises later on. Whilst this is true in some ways, one should respect that as a coalition it is difficult for the government to keep true to all their promises when the pre-election promises often become contradictory as a coalition. Whichever way the Government goes on common issues, there will always be people that complain. In China, this complaining is not noted on the same scale, as more often than not, disagreements are put down by the government. Of course, there are no elections, so no pre-election pledges, there is only one president after another but that’s “communism” for you. 

Another issue for us western countries I’ve seen my Chinese friend throw around   is that the problems of a democracy one of the main reasons for our current economic climate. I can see his reason, the governments need to appeal to the population lest they fail to be re-elected; by keeping taxes low, prices low, the economy good, plenty of jobs available and allowing protests to take place in case they missed anything on the "list of public wants, but you can't provide". Unfortunately, maintaining all of this whilst resources such as oil dwindle is difficult, markets change and new powers, both corporate and state, come and go means that sooner or later an economic crash is expected. It doesn't matter what the party in charge at the time is. 

What my friend fails to realise, is that China was affected by the crisis too, but it is highly more privatised then the US or Europe, as well as having plenty of resources in its landmass – like the US did 100 years ago (which is why it is so powerful today) and  this is why China’s economy continues to grow exponentially. Its political system too contributes to this, given that workers are whipped into duty with limited pay. Casual racism aside, sure China is a country on its way to the top, but to be honest, do we really want to live in a world like an average Chinese worker? Sure the economy is good, but general pay is relatively low, living conditions often cramped and as much as we complain about health and safety in the UK, there practically is none in China. Most importantly, with no right to openly protest, it’s basically a big brother state over there. So, if I’m perfectly honest; I’d rather live in a country with a few riots now and then but overall a lot more liberal, then one where the price of no encounter with any social aggression, is our freedom.

I can hear the sirens calling

So this is my first Blog. I've decided that this will be a tool where I can express myself and say whatever I want to say, as many others probably decided when they started theirs. Most Blogs will be copy and pastes from my journal, and likely as not quite short. I guess I'll start with what is foremost on my mind at the moment. The following was written 6 hours ago.      

I find out today that over the past weekend, whilst I’ve been blissfully unaware of the news and enjoying myself in the frivolous parts of life, there has been rioting across London. Starting out in Tottenham over a shooting of some man who’s got the face of a complete idiot, the riots over the past few days have spread from there to Enfield, Brixton, Oxford Circus, Islington, Croydon and only now as I write this I’m hearing reports of mass rioting in Hackney, and soon perhaps even mine own borough, Barnet. Reports are coming in from friends who describe how shops are being boarded, looted and buildings being set on fire all across London. The home secretary is currently meeting with the Metropolitan Police chiefs in an effort to discuss how to deal with the unfolding chaos, and perhaps consider the idea of bringing the Army in. When I went out to get milk at 5pm at the local Off-Licence, I find boards stacked up outside, the shop keepers are preparing for the worst. 

It appears that social networking sites and the internet have been broadcasting what has been happening and encouraging the further increase in violence, I myself have taken literally taken minutes out of my life to see what’s trending on Twitter. Photos, videos have all been broadcasting the horror that is this anarchy. It all seems a bit pointless to me, seriously, at what point so the rioters decide that instead of fighting for their freedom, their lives would be better with a free radio? Well congratulations Mr Bellend, you’ve caused millions of pounds worth of damage to the country you live in during an economic crisis, but at least you have a new DAB Digital Radio to listen to your shitty Rap music. Thanks to these riots, I’m unable to go to Thorpe Park tomorrow with my friends. Typical.