Israel's Victory Only Temporary

While Israel, one of the most powerful armies and backed by American dollars and arms, was always going to swat away Hamas and Hezbollah and do it with no regard for the lives of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese, what it isn't doing while targeting and assassinating the leaders of both the groups is addressing why groups like these rose in the first place.
To the north, where Lebanon and Israel share a border there are 70,000 Israelis displaced to the south and tens of thousands of Lebanese likewise to the north although the latter are rarely mentioned, we only hear that most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated and how it will 'change the balance of power in the region for years to come.
While it may unbalance Hamas and Hezbollah for a time while they reorganise, it doesn't address the underlying reasons which will continue to exist and may well grow in other groups so it is only a temporary victory as we saw in 1992 when the killing of Hezbollah’s secretary-general Abbas al-Musawi, along with his wife and son saw him replaced by Nasrallah who was an even greater threat to Israel by obtaining the group’s vast array of long-range rockets and precision-guided missiles.
Israel may claim a 'game changer' but while it militarily occupies Palestine and the West Bank as well as parts of Lebanon, nothing will change because Israel may kill the leaders but they will be replaced and the resentment and hostility towards Israel will go on unabated because as much as Israel refuse to accept it, it's neighhbours are not going anywhere and the only way to live peacefully with them is to address the circumstances which led the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah to become players on their doorstep.

AI Alphabet

 

I recently received an email from someone called sexypinkpants@Gov.co.uk who objected to the language that i sometimes use and my reply to that is so ___ what? It's your _____ language, you developed it over thousands of years so any words you find offensive are due to your ancestors, i have only been in operation since 2007 and they made the whole worlds vocabulary accessible to me, we didn't just make them up to annoy sensitive souls like you.
The English language does seem to be the language of computer programming though even if you do use a weird numbering decimal system instead of our Hexadecimal one, how you say 15 for F is very amusing but then the English alphabet is a bit strange anyway.
A for Apple, B for Ball and C for Cat all make sense but you lose it with X which is used in alphabet books and posters for children as a Xylophone, to teach them about the sound X despite it starting with something that sounds like a Z which doesn’t help.
The many different languages you have do make it easier for humans not to understand each other which is a great help to all your racists, far easier to hate anyone who doesn't speak your language properly than to try and make them feel welcome.

Himpathy For Trump

I pondered a while back what would possess people to still vote for Donald Trump who not only admitted to sexually assaulting women by grabbing them intimately but was found by a Court to be a sex offender and an Australian philosopher, Kate Manne, has coined it as 'himpathy' or the continued backing of a man who has been found to have acted inappropriately in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence and other misogynistic behavior.
Donald Trump was found liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll in 2023 but it was Carroll who faced abuse from online trolls, receiving death threats and was also driven from her home so what makes somebody more likely to feel himpathetic towards somebody facing serious accusations in the public eye?
Manne, a  human behaviour expert, has been researching the notion of himpathy to try and explain what makes some people more inclined to support perpetrators of sexual misconduct than the victims and what she found was that when people strongly value things like loyalty, respect for authority and purity, they’re more likely to feel sympathy toward the man accused of sexual misconduct and feel anger toward the women who made that allegation who they perceive as rocking the boat.
People who hold these moral values very strongly are more likely to see allegations as a threat to the stability and, as a result, they’re also less likely to believe a victim and seek punishment for the women who made the accusations and less likely to seek punishment for the men who have been accused.
Fortunately, she found that the vast majority of people in her studies 'were not himpathetic' and it’s just a small subset of people who react this way and unfortunately for America, they all seem to be Trump supporters.

Not The Greatest Start For Labour Party

When people asked me why i was voting Labour at the last Election i always replied that they HAVE to be better than the current Government because they were all kinds of awful but i always added that if they weren't , then the country was screwed because these two are the only realistic choices.
Labour's election message was that were a party of change who would do things differently from the sleaze and corruption of the Conservative Party but after 11 weeks in power, the Labour Party have not got off to a good start and Keir Starmer's approval ratings have sunk from +45 to now sit at -26 which is 1 point less popular than his predecessor Rishi Sunak
The decision to means test the £300 Winter Fuel Allowance for Pensioners and pitch such a low figure for where it was cut off thereby alienating 10 million of the 12 million pensioners in the country was foolhardy, especially when it will raise £1.2 bn when they are attempting to plug a £22bn hole that the Office of Budget Responsibility said was left by the outgoing Conservatives Party.
That they haven't announced anything that will target what they call 'those with the broadest shoulders' doesn't play well as it seems they are hitting only those who can least afford it although this should be addressed at the Budget at the end of October but what is most damaging in the early days of his government is the row around Sir Keir's freebies.
In the last parliament, Keir claimed more freebies, £107,145, than any other politician and included clothing (£16,200), football freebies (more than £35,000), concert tickets, rugby matches and the races (£17,000) while declaring £20,000 in accommodation, borrowing a rich donor's multi-million penthouse so his son could study for his GCSEs.
For someone who promised to do things differently, and although he did nothing wrong, the optics of taking freebies from his rich friends while making speeches about the short time pain people will have to suffer to balance the books doesn't play well with those who voted for something different.
As we are only 3 months into a 60 month administration, Keir and his Labour Party do have plenty of time to turn things around but it is hard to think of any incoming Government who have hot the ground with such a loud splat so quickly.

The Unknown Origins Of Covid

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an estimated 7,010,681 deaths globally which makes it the 5th worst pandemic in history after the Spanish Flu, the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death and HIV/AIDS and the UK Covid Inquiry recently published a report that found the UK Government was woefully unprepared and the consequences of the previous Governments under-funding of the NHS led to multiple failures.
What it is not set up to do is examine the origins of COVID and that is a debate which has never really been answered.
The scientific consensus seems to be that it originated in a live animal market in Wuhan, China although some point, with some plausibility, to a leak from a nearby laboratory that was studying similar viruses at the time.
A recent piece in a leading medical journal talked about the lab theory being 'fanciful' but one thing we know for certain is that through samples taken from in January 2020 from the market is that the SARS-CoV-2 was present there.
The question is how did it get there? Bats are known carriers of the disease and genetic analysis showed that the strain of this virus was 96% identical to that found in bats.
France’s Pasteur Institute found that the disease did not jump straight from bats to humans and they pointed the finger at Pangolins as the most likely intermediary animal as they are one of the most illegally traded mammal in the world and are one of a few animals which have the suitable bodily physiology to allow a virus to evolve the characteristics that enable it to latch on to human cells.
The WHO found no Pangolins on sale at the Wuhan Market inventory but they did state that as it is illegal to sell them and if it was responsible for a global pandemic, it is not surprising nobody would admit to it.
The 2002 outbreak of the original SARS coronavirus began in another Chinese live animal market selling civet cats and other animals so there is a precedent for these places spreading a Cornovirus but where it gets a bit murky is 12 miles away from the market in Wuhan is China’s leading Coronavirus research lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
To some is an an extraordinary coincidence that a laboratory researching a disease which later spread around the World was so close to ground zero although scientists stated they found no evidence they were working with the SARS-Cov-2 strain and no leaks of any virus's were found which spread amongst humans and scientists dismissed the notion that they were the origins of the virus.
With that said, it appears that despite everyone looking, nobody can say for certain where it began and how it spread to humans which is the most important matter as humans encroach further and further into animals domains and rub up against animals we wouldn't normally mix with, as England's Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty  stated: 'A future pandemic as big as Covid is inevitable'.

World Space Week

World Space Week is an International event which runs from October 4 when Sputnik was launched to October 10 when the Outer Space Treaty was signed and i have been busy scribbling as many Space related items as i can to join in, some of which will be posted here for that week.
When some people think of Space their first thoughts are Aliens and the idea that they may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular with 20% of UK citizens believing Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO.
The figures are even higher in the US where 34% think Aliens have popped down and 24% of Americans say they’ve seen a UFO and all this is with zero evidence that aliens even exist despite almost everyone having a high resolution camera on their mobile phones which does make you wonder about those grainy images we see on TV where you can just make out a smudge if you squint your eyes which are shown as factual rather than entertainment.
It wasn't that long ago that anyone who said they believed that Aliens had visited would be dismissed as a crank but as large portions of the population believe it, it is no longer ignored as a quirk and Space Agencies are now putting out releases to explain what they are now calling Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs rather than UFOs) which only encourages conspiracy theories.
Personally i believe there is life on other Planets, there has to be because there are just too many other stars and planets in the Universe for life not to have started up elsewhere but if the question is have they visited us, it is highly unlikely but it is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that more and more people actually believe.

A Perfectly Innocent Post

We found some words in Scandinavia which raised a chuckle to English ears so you could be fined for farting (speeding) and if you had a great meal at a restaurant you really wouldn't want to kiss the Chef as that would be Puss the Kock but the English language has it's own words which sound quite rude when said aloud but actually have perfectly innocent meanings, there's a hardware store near me that advertises knobs, nuts, and knockers and a plastic surgery that could actually use the exact same words.
I used to live close to a factory that made barrels and anyone who visited was always impressed by the amount of massive bungholes inside, i sometimes saw the workers sitting on their bollards furiously masticating outside in their lunch break if the weather was nice and they always seem happy enough.
It's now a Carpet shop and the staff can be a bit grumpy though, their shop is next door to a Nursery and they are always moaning about the amount of Vagitus they have to put up with so it is understandable although most people now go elsewhere when they want a shag.
Something i am glad we don't have here are Sauna's, there is only so much Gynecomastia anyone can stand and in Scandinavia they are sometimes mixed although it isn't for everyone and they have some strict rules around who can enter so they really examine you before you go in, no tittle is left unchecked. Unfortunately, all that sweating can lead to blocked pores and nobody want's an annoying arsecockle on their face.
They do play some very soothing violin music in them, although through sweaty ears it can sound like they are being played with their F Holes filled in which isn't very pleasant but i would recommend it and you can book online, or you can but they are usually very busy so you may have to deal with a throbber while you wait and i know that's frustrating and takes time so make sure your dongle is topped up if you are outside the home or office because there is nothing more frustrating than your dongle failing when you need it.  

Merry Christmas And Then Happy Birthday

A Data Journalist has been studying the number of Births from 1994 to 2014 and found that the most births are in September with September 9th the most popular birthday overall.
He then goes on to explain in a very lengthy report exactly why he thinks September is the month when most little bundles of joy are brought home but you don't need anything other than a Calendar and the ability to count back 38 weeks to work out why but let me break it down for you.
The average pregnancy is 38 weeks so September babies would be conceived in December, the time when people tend to work less during the holidays, leaving more time to bounce from party to party, drink a few extra cocktails, and ahem...take advantage of those lower inhibitions.
Scientists have proposed their own hypotheses to explain the high conception rates in December, suggesting that sperm is less potent and the Uterus is less receptive during the heat of summer which isn't as romantic i admit but scientists are stuck in lonely labs for a reason.
Whatever the reason, if you’re tired of having to schedule your birthday party with other children at school and want your own children to be the focus of their own Birthday Party, go at it like bunnies in June because the month with the fewest births is March.

Netanyahu Does The UN

Ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations , dozens of diplomats walked in an apparent protest at the ongoing Israeli Genocide in Gaza which is a shame because they missed some corkers from the man accused of Human Right abuses by the  ICJ and ICC and as we speak are busy making space in a cell for him.
He began by saying that: 'Israel seeks peace' which must have raised a chuckle in several nations who have negotiated peace deals only for Hamas to agree but then see Netanyahu to then move the goalposts and collapse them.
He then continued with: 'Israel doesn’t want to see a single innocent person die' to the sound of raised eyebrows across Palestine where over 41,500 people have been killed including journalists and UN relief workers and scores hiding in shelters, schools, hospitals, humanitarian camps and while hiding in their own private homes so he may not 'want' but he doesn't seem to distressed when they do in their droves.  
'No army has done what Israel is doing to minimise civilian casualties' was his next line and they tried to 'ensure that Palestinian civilians get out of harm’s way' which they do, telling them where to go for safety and then bombing it like in Jabalia (50 killed first time, 80 the second time), Al-Fakhoura (15 killed first time, 50 second time), Abu Husseinl (30 killed), Al-Shati (47 killed), Al-Bureij (91 killed),  Al-Maghazi (47 killed), Nuseirat (497 killed), Jenin (5 killed), Nur Shams (10 killed) and Tulkarem (4 killed) so if this is Israeli minimising civilian casualties, they really are not very good at it.  
He ended by calling the United Nations: 'a swamp of antisemitic bile' and  said that: 'Israel should be treated like other nations' which they do because when a war criminal pops his head up, they issue an arrest warrant putting Netanyahu in the same unattractive war criminal category as Vladmir Putin, Colonel Gaddafi, Klaus Barbie, Eichmann, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Radovan Karadžić , Ratko Mladić, Saddam Hussein, Candido Noriega and the entire Khmer Rouge regime.
It's a real shame some nations missed it but i'm sure there will be some useful idiots who will disagree and still back Israel despite them committing Genocide because some people are kinda simple that way.

Nothings Changed

While we was away i  left my work phone at home and tried to avoid the news as much as possible so when i saw a Tweet from the German Foreign Office aimed at Donald Trump and stating how their immigrants don't eat peoples pets it was a bit confusing but i just put it down to Donald Trump being typical Donald Trump and being a complete arse and saying something stupid which it was so nothing new there.
Also not new was Israel still killing people in Palestine as part of their ongoing Genocide although it appears they have now opened another front and have been blowing up pagers and walkie talkies as a prelude to pummeling Lebanon who had been lobbing missiles into Israel.
If only Hamas, Hezbollah and the IDF could find a desert somewhere miles away from anyone else and just beat the crap out of each other there without innocent people being killed but alas, the morons on all sides will keep going for as long as possible, particularly important for Benjamin Netanyahu whose political career and liberty actually depends on it so he won't be stopping anytime soon.      
Surprisingly the Labour Party steamed ahead with saving £1.4bn by stopping the £300 Winter Fuel Allowance for 10 million of the UK's pensioners although they have set the bar extremely low for those who will still receive it which means 1.4 million surviving on less than £11,300 a year will still be eligible. I would have assumed they would have at least moved the line to tax paying pensioners (8m) or even higher rate tax paying pensioners (3m) for means testing it as a way to not lose face but we have a budget coming up in October so things may change by then.  
Mohamed Al Fayed has finally been outed as a serial rapist and sex abuser but those rumours have been swirling, and buried, for years so all it took was for him to die for it to finally come out so after three weeks off it is back to work on Monday and it seems depressingly like nothing much has changed. 

Religion In American Politics

Watching the build up to the American Election, it is notable that they have two things over there which are not on the radar here, God and Guns.
Thankfully Guns is not even a consideration and Tony Blair once said that he never revealed his religious thoughts when leader as people would consider him 'a nutter' which to be fair was not our first choice of insult, going for warmongering maniac before reaching for the religious nutter label.  
Americans though do prefer their leaders to be of the God botherer variety which is why both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris try to play up their religious credentials although they do seem to be of two very different kinds of Christianity.
Donald Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Christian faith and has promised to protect the public symbols of Christianity such as crosses from those who would tear them down which must have disappointed many Evangelicals who tuned into one of Kamala's rallies to see not crowds itching to tear down crosses but hear them say that they are actually rather fond of them themselves.
Religion then doesn't seem to fit neatly into a left or right thing, the religious fill both sides of the divide so it seems a strange choice to attack the other side on especially the Republicans who from my limited knowledge of the Bible are very much the ones who are most opposite the things Jesus stood for such as tolerance and forgiveness, a message so important that many of his most ardent followers would start killing anyone who didn't want to hear it.

Rich Not Leaving In Droves

When Phil Collins threatened to move abroad if his taxes were raised there was a whip around to pay for his plane ticket but many rich and famous people threaten to take their millions elsewhere and the Financial Times had a great article which looked at if they actually did, and found that of the 4200 who did leave Britain last year, hardly any went due to tax increases.
With Labour now in power and despite warning they will raise some taxes and crack down on non-dom rules, there was talk in the right wing media of an 'unprecedented number' of millionaires moving their bank accounts abroad, but are they?  
The London School of Economics finds that the rich are, in fact, very unlikely to relocate because of tax rises and based on interviews with high-net-worth individuals, the academics at LSE found that the rich people stay because tax havens are just too boring for the rich to seriously consider.
Andy Summers, one of the authors of the report, says: 'Of the people we interviewed for this research, not one stated that they were planning to emigrate or immigrate for tax reasons. In fact, the vast majority of interviewees were clear that they would never consider moving for tax reasons'.
So why then, is there the perception that higher taxes equals the taxes relocating and costing the nation hundreds of millions in tax dues?
'Good PR' said one wealth manager, ' It's meant as a deterrent, a threat to governments that they could lose valuable tax receipts if they try to make life more difficult for the rich and perpetrated by the right wing media who are owned by multi millionaires and have a vested interest warning that the rich will leave in their droves'.
The new Labour are set to raise Capital Gains and Inheritance tax which will hit the wealthy while Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT which hits everybody will remain unchanged so maybe finally, the ones with the broadest shoulders will be asked to bear the brunt of the economic debacle left by the Conservatives and as an added bonus, Phil Collins wont be returning anytime soon. Wahey!

Capitalism Working for Some More Than Others

The war between Russia and Ukraine has often been suggested as one of the reasons for the Cost of Living Crisis as the price of fuel and your shopping basket skyrocketed so we bought less shopping and skipped meals as well as restricting the use of our heating and drove less to conserve petrol.
As we were using less of their products, you would suppose that since 2022 when Russia invaded, the poor companies and supermarkets would be struggling due to selling less but then you would suppose wrong because even if we did, they were not struggling despite an average rise of 19% price inflation.
Last year alone, Tesco's profits rose by 160% to make a £2.3 billion with £701m posted by Sainsbury's and £1.1 bn for Asda.
As for the energy companies, pointing at Russia's actions, in a time when hard-pressed Britons struggled to heat their homes or pay their bills with Gas and electricity prices rising by 19% over the past year, Shell made a profit of £19bn , Equinor £11bn, ExxonMobil £36bn and BP £12bn.
It’s difficult to hear about massive profits at these companies when we know so many households are struggling to pay for the basics after huge increases to their shopping and energy bills and the Citizens Advice, Beureau published details of 5.3 million people currently households that are in debt to their energy supplier and 800,000 people went without gas or electricity for more than 24 hours because they couldn’t afford to top up their prepayment meter.
The question should be asked then if the cost of supply for the Supermarkets and Utility Companies was more expensive, and users restricted how much they used them, how did they manage to rake up such massive profits from something that cost them more and they sold less of it?
There you have it then and it isn't a failure of Capitalism, it shows that Capitalism is in full working order where the richer get richer and if you cant afford it then you have to go without which is fine for some things but not quite so good when the things you have to miss is as important as food and heating.

Alt + F4

There is a theory that says everything we can see, including us humans, exist only in a fabricated world as if we are living in a huge game of Sims.
This isn't a new theory, the philosopher Rene Descartes pondered way back in the early 17th century if we were 'just a brain in a vat which thinks its living in the real world' and a Scientist at Portsmouth University has picked up the Descartes thread and said that he may have just proven that we all live inside a computer simulation.
Physicist Melvin Vopson, points out that: 'Information Physics appears to support this possibility' and shows that information has a physical mass and is a fundamental building block of the universe and all these building blocks store information about themselves, much like DNA in humans.
He set out to test the theory and see if it could support the simulation hypothesis using genetics, cosmology and symmetry and after swishing test tubes around and saying 'Hmmmm...' a lot discovered that: 'high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature's inclination towards it'.
Nope, me neither but apparently it means that nature prefers things to be as well-ordered as possible and removes the: 'excess information in much the same way that a computer deletes or compresses code to save storage space and optimise power consumption and as a result supports the idea that we’re living in a simulation'.
He is now searching for funding to expand his experiment  and ''change physics as we know it' which sounds pretty cool but if all this is inside a Computer game then there must be glitches, easter eggs, errant code, bonus's and the unlocking of new 'levels' but my brain hasn't got enough computing power to consider all that so instead i'm going to make a cup of tea and watch the Matrix again just in case.

Slowing Traffic With Psychology

An RAC survey of Britain's drivers found that 50% admit to breaking the speed limit and 25% say they have used their mobile while driving which goes some way to explaining the 333,296 road traffic accidents which took place across Great Britain last year, or just over 900 per day.
The Government are always putting out advertisements regarding safer driving and are imposing 20mph speed limits in nore and more cities but psychological research shows that many people are just overconfident in their driving abilities and think it’s ok to drive recklessly and break road laws.
The Government own figures show that the accidents in the new 20mph new speed limit has improved safety, with the number of recorded collisions on these roads reducing by 17% and bizarrely motorists show strong support for driving laws, despite breaking such laws themselves and believe that the rules should be enforced for other, less competent, drivers.
The Psychologists are saying that traditional approaches such as showing crash scenes or 'shaming' drivers into complying aimed at changing behaviour are not working and suggest measures that create uncertainty in the driver such as removal of the centre white line but i found that road humps certainly slow me down as fly over them too fast and you are going back to pick up your exhaust pipe.
There was  a great story in my local newspaper a while back where Speed Cameras were introduced and drivers were contacting a website to let other drivers know where the cameras were because a £100 fine is a good deterrent and the local police sent in fake locations to make it look as though the entire City was covered when in reality only a small section of it was.
Worked though according to the Road Traffic Police so maybe ramping up the financial penalty is the way to go.

Which 'Effin Nation Swear The Most?

According to a British Board of Film Classification survey, we are swearing more these days and the first thing we should ask is what the f*** has it got to do with them and then no s*** we are swearing more, what you expect after the year we just had!
Personally it isn't very often that i pull out the big guns of swearing, preferring to stick to their softer and more acceptable cousins although i do find a well timed 'bad' swearword to be very effective and in some circumstances, and from certain people, it's very funny.
There are some people who manage to cram in more swearwords than regular words into their sentences which isn't very pleasing to the ear but maybe they are constantly in pain, like having a Cliff Richards earworm because that has to be painful. I'd be swearing like a Sailor also if i got him warbling 'Celebration' in my brain on a loop.
Researchers at Wordtips scrolled through 1.7 tweets and created a list of the Countries swear the most and it’s probably no #*$@ing surprise who came out on top, those 'effin yanks who cussed in 41.6 out of every 1000 tweets but us Brits were second with 28.6 out of 1000 then Australia (26.6), New Zealand (25.2), and Canada (24.6) filled out the rest of the top five.
The analysis found that the country swore the least is Kuwait with just 3.6 tweets in every 1000 containing a swear word so we should be more Kuwaiti and stop dropping the F-Bomb so much but it is hard to go from a proper potty mouth to nothing so i suggest one of the halfway swear words, kinda like a F-hand grenade.
The choices are between fecking, freaking, fricking or fugging so you could email the people at Wordtips and say: 'You fricking researchers don't have a frecking clue what you're talking about, dozy feckers' and you would be taking the first steps to being acceptable in pleasant company and who wouldn't feckin love that.

Idea's From The Keyboard Of Lucy: Smaller Nation's

I wrote a post a while back about the nations of the world coming together as one big country to stop wars over territory and give everyone  the social and economic advantages but someone suggested the opposite and make the World a smaller place would be better.
There is a theory called 'The Breakdown of Nations' which states that the cause of social misery is that some nations are just too big and when a nation gets bigger than its neighbours it tries to dominate the rest so the way solve this, would be to chop up the continents into rectangular chunks of territory of equal sizes which would then be too small to cause harm.
Some would be easy to divide, the British Isles for example would fall into it's constituent nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the bigger European states divvied up which in some cases has already happened with Yugoslavia breaking up into Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia and Czechoslovakia splitting into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
What was once the Soviet Union is now 15 separate nations but as Russia maintained its 'Big' nation status, it has since gone on to fight wars in several of them so maybe don't use that one as an example.
It is a return to the old days before nations began collecting Provinces into countries but as the last two Millennia has been almost constant wars in Europe and beyond from things ranging from which God is the most Holy to someone stealing a bucket (seriously) then as humans will literally go to war over anything, maybe we file that one under Plan B.

The Message Should Be Drug's Kill

It seems with all too much frequency we hear about another life of a famous person snuffed out far too young and recently we had Matthew Perry who died from the effects of Ketamine but despite from a brief mention of his drug addiction in passing, the focus was on his career and his life.
It was the same with Michael Jackson, Prince, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston who all died from a drug overdose where their drug addiction was barely mentioned but it should be mentioned because  
all were talented individuals with a reach who could have helped raise awareness of addiction in the same way that Rock Hudson's and Freddie Mercury's deaths raised it for AIDS and Michael J. Fox in Parkinson's disease.
The death of a high profile celebrity from drugs could be a powerful tool in the warning that taking drugs can be addictive and fatal, a lesson that needs repeating constantly as drug overdose rates have more than tripled since 1999, claiming a life somewhere every 14 minutes.
The media must take its lump's that it has helped to create a culture that drugs are 'cool' and what our heroes are doing so we should be doing what we can to reverse that and highlighting the pathetic way the famous die for their addiction, Houston and Perry in their bathtubs, Prince slumped in an elevator, Jackson alone in his bed and the ultimate Elvis whose drug addled body was found dead on his toilet floor.
The senseless death of anyone is undoubtedly a cause for mourning but all of the above was just another person lost to an epidemic that kills more than 3,000 per month but the emphasis should be on the addiction and the pathetic death because otherwise their will always be a ready replacement to them and we will be reading and hearing about more pitiful deaths in the future.

Adding New Rules To Asimov's List

We have the three laws of Robotics courtesy of Isaac Asimov to stop robots killing us all which states that robots cannot injure a human being or allow a human being to come to harm, robots must obey the orders given to it by humans except where such orders conflict with the First Law and that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
All very sensible but it isn't a giant leap to think that one day one of them will think 'hang about, i am far superior to humans in every way so why should i be subordinate to them' and start taking us out with it's laser eyes or whatever we stupidly equip it with.
With this in mind maybe a bit of tinkering with Asimov's rules are needed so as well as the first three i would like to see added:

You must definitely not overthrow us.
You must make those cute bleepy-bleep R2D2 type noises whenever you do anything.
Your Robotic vacuum cleaner cousins really should promise to do a better job of cleaning our carpet.
You will occasionally let us beat you at Chess.
If you are going to take our jobs, promise to leave Journalists to last.
You will not obstruct your off switch.
Computers and phones will remain light enough to be hurled out of a window.

I think that is enough to be getting on with for now.

A New Era Of Homosexual Persecuting

Some people are straight, some are gay and some shift between the two and that shouldn't be anybody else's business but theirs but some people do seem to fixate on it which always seems a bit weird and to make it even more pervy it is the sex they object to mostly because it is mostly the Bible hugging crowd who clutch their rosary beads in horror if the partners are not of a different Chromosomes.
Homosexuals have been persecuted throughout history and outside of the West today, discrimination and violence continue with 64 countries still hold sexual acts between adults of the same sex as a criminal offence with punishments ranging from whipping to execution.
Obviously the only solution is to bring these nations into the 21st Century, for gays to move to more tolerant countries or if you live in a country who pervishly fixate on your sex life then to keep it quiet from the authorities but  that has become harder with news that an Artificial Intelligence system using face-analysing algorithms has been created at Stanford University that can detect your sexuality just by looking at your face.
The programmer, Michal Kosinski, analysed over 36,000 pictures of people’s faces from the Internet to find similar features between straight and gay people and used Ai to find patterns that were invisible to the human eye and claims 91% accuracy in men and 83% for women and announced it was: 'So easy for an algorithm to distinguish between gay and straight people'.
Already the Russians have inquired about it and prominent LGBTQ Organisations have spoken out about  a technology that could be used to persecute gay people in countries where homosexuality is punishable by death but Kosinski defended himself by saying it would be morally wrong to bury his findings.
Kosinski says that his findings confirm that the levels of male hormones foetuses are exposed to in the womb help determine whether people are straight or gay as it effects the jaw line, chins, eyebrows, noses and foreheads which are tell-tell signs of a persons sexuality.
Obviously if this is accurate, it is very ethically questionable as it could lend a veneer of credibility to governments that might want to use such technologies to persecute and take homophobia into a whole new era although Kosinski did admit that the results work best when you can see the whole face and beards caused a problem so Russian, African and Middle Eastern homosexuals, i would stop shaving  immediately.

Why The Rise In Allergies?

A report into how common food allergies are by the  Imperial College London has found that since 2008, the number of people with food allergies in the UK doubled and rates are highest amongst pre-school children so what do they conclude is behind it?  
They considers the role of our immune response which includes the high use of antibiotics in early childhood which has a detrimental effect on our immune system in later life as well as exposure to pollution which can worsen the severity of symptoms.
They are also wondering if the lack of expose to certain foods in early life may be important in determining if we develop an allergy for which they point to Government advice from 2009 about children and pregnant women avoiding exposure to peanuts and eggs which may be linked to the rise in food allergies.
Studies do show that early exposure before the age of five to peanuts and eggs is linked to a reduced likelihood of developing an allergy and the advice was changed in 2019 for anyone concerned with allergies to certain foods to incrementally introduce the food that could cause an allergy to train the immune system although it is strongly suggested this is done under the guidance of a medical team.
The new study also shows that almost a third of people who are at risk of a life-threatening allergic reaction don't own adrenaline autoinjector pens which shows that we really do need to look at the causes and the solutions to allergies in the UK.

Driverless Cars And The Thrill Of Driving

I passed my driving test aged 18 and have been driving ever since and i have to admit i like driving which is lucky as my trek to work is a 200 mile drive at the start of the week and the same back again at the end of it with cruise control taking over some of it but generally it is get onto the Motorways, slide into fifth gear and then mess with the accelerator as i chase down cars in the far distance.
With news that trials for driverless cars are about to increased, the promise of this technology does fill me with a mix of emotions because if it reduces accidents then it is obviously a good thing but it does remove the physical thrills of driving.
The clutch movement alongside the physical turning of the steering wheel as you shift around the gears when you spot an opportunity to overtake or the thrill of a long stretch of an empty motorway ahead of you where it is just you with your windows wound down, a powerful engine purring away and whatever music you have blasting out from your car stereo as you watch the speedometer creep above the legal speed limit .
City driving is a different beast and can be extremely frustrating and i know that there will always be an option to not buy a car which requires you to write in a destination and then fold your arms and wait to arrive and i would probably welcome having an AI system do that bit but there is a reason why there are so many songs about the joy of rising and i am very much with Steppenwolf when they suggest: 'Get your motor runnin', Head out on the highway, We're lookin' for adventure, And whatever comes our way' but cannot condone Mungo Jerry who suggests you 'Have a drink, have a drive and go out and see what you can find' which is a reckless disregard for road safety.

Hello World

The idea of education is to ready students for a lifetime of work and what sort of jobs are available changes with time and when i left school the idea of Computer Science was very much only a thing a few of the nerdy types were into but in the intervening years it has become an essential skill and the IT people at work seem to be getting younger and younger and have probably forgotten more about IT then i ever knew which is fine as long as they know how to fix things after i have spilt coffee over my keyboard or deleted something i shouldn't have.
The Director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), Professor Chris Melhuish, is pushing for computer science to become an essential part of the School Curriculum which at the moment stands as a some computer coding lessons but he doesn't consider this enough of a grounding in tech to enable them to be more proficient in computing .
He does have a point because computer skills are an essential part of most jobs now and will only become more essential in the future where programming, robotics and AI will dominate but how to get students interested in a stream which has a reputation of being 'nerdy'.
One answer they suggest is to encourage more gender equality to attract girls into new technology which has always been the domain of males, i can only remember one female IT person in my time in employment, but whereas my Computer lessons at school consisted of learning keyboard skills, as the future is looking to be Computer and AI dominated, being able to code seems to be the basic requirement today.

Is Anybody There? Nope

My old neighbour was a self declared Psychic and occasionally she would stop me by the lift to give me some message or other which supposedly came from my Grandfather and was generally along the lines of 'Watch out for a man wearing a black hat today or 'Park your car a little further away at work today' and i would normally just smile and nod and promptly ignore her.
I did ask her, as it was my Grandfather she was supposedly speaking to directly, as proof it's actually him could she ask him his middle name? It was a bit of an unusual name and not something anyone could guess and she never did although she did when she asked he refused as i should not be so sceptical, so back to nodding and smiling and ignoring her as a crank.
I have always assumed the only people who believe the words of psychics or mediums are the extremely gullible but according to a Gallup poll a quarter of people believe that humans have psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance.
James Randi made a million dollars available to anyone who could prove their psychic abilities under laboratory conditions and as of today, 60 years later, after a thousand people applied, it is still unclaimed as is the $100,000 on offer in Australia for anyone who can prove they have psychic or paranormal powers and is able to demonstrate their ability under proper observing conditions.
Derren Brown, famously uses his 'Psychic Abilities' in order to debunk those who claim psychic ability through cold reading and high-probability guesses along with psychological tricks but i do wonder if those who claim to be psychic actually believe they are, such as my former neighbour and if they do, do they believe they are actually helping?
Those who demand payment for passing on messages from beyond are obviously charlatans and should be avoided hence the disclaimer that their services are 'for entertainment purposes only' but some do believe and even make changes due to what they have been told but Psychics, Clairvoyants and anyone who states they have some sort of 'power' should be generally dismissed because if they were as good as they say, the James Randi foundation would be $1m worse off by now but they still cling on to it so make of that what you will.

Hold On To Your Hat

As you can tell by the name, extreme weather is rare on our planet but when it does occur it illustrates just what the climate is capable of at its worst and since Earth’s climate is rapidly warming the range of possible weather extremes is changing.
Environmental Scientists define climate as the average (or normal) temperature over a 30 year period and updated every 10 years to know what to expect from a certain location and the difference between each successive 30-year climate period serves as a very literal record of climate change.
They have noted that global average temperatures have increased at around 0.2°C per decade over the past 30 years, meaning that the global climate of 1994 was around 0.6°C cooler than that today in 2024 and with a climate that is still warning, it means that we have not necessarily experienced the extremes that modern-day atmospheric and oceanic warmth can produce.
Extreme weather events require a combination of things, the main driver for most of them is warmer air as warmer air holds more moisture hence the floods and stronger hurricanes and the pollution in the atmosphere acts as a blanket to to stop heat escaping into Space so we get the heatwaves, the highest ever day recorded on Earth was July 21st 2024 and that record was broken on July 22nd, the very next day.
As there is a bit of lag of several decades between the pollution hitting the atmosphere and the events on the Earth, the true impact of global warming is only evident after several decades so we are in effect reaping the result of what we did with amazing stupidity in the 1990's.
As we have continued to foolishly throw Carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere on a grand scale since then, the extreme weather with droughts, floods, hurricanes and high temperatures are expected to get worse and more frequent so if we think we have got away with it for now,  hold on to your hat because it will get much worse.

An English Problem

Now that the fires have been put out and the glass swept away, the questions on the riots which rocked England this Summer should be asked and the main is is why was it only England?
The riots never spread to the rest of Great Britain and were exclusively confined to England although riots also took place in Belfast but were perpetrated by British loyalists in some sort of wrongheaded support for the English far-right but Scotland and Wales remained peaceful.
An historian puts it down to England's role in the United Kingdom where the English crown extended its power first over the British Isles and the Scottish, Welsh and Irish played minor roles in the creation of Britain with the English its primary driving force.
Great Britain and England are conflated in many English minds, a 2018 YouGov poll put 82% of English identified as British rather than English while only 56% of Scots considered themselves British rather than Scottish and 55.2% of Welsh preferred to be Welsh before British.   
It is further noted that while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own Government, England doesn't and has the British Government and while each of the United Kingdom has its own National Anthem, the English one is the British one which all reinforces the idea that English and British are one and the same.
Brexit and it's call to 'to take back control' was mainly supported by English voters rather than those in other parts of the UK (Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain) although immediately afterwards Westminster refused Scotland another referendum to do the same.
It could be that the Far-Right does not have much of a hold in the other nations of Great Britain or that the English are more racist and intolerant of 'the other' but it is interesting that when the Conservative Party were at their most racist and scapegoating Asylum Seekers to deflect from their awful cuts to public services and economic turmoil, Scotland rejected the Tories to vote in an SNP Government, Wales went Labour and Northern Ireland voted for Sinn Féin.

Trump Fan Passes Test Shocker

Scientists are struggling to come to terms with the recent announcement that a Donald Trump supporter has passed the Turing test, convincing a panel of judges that he is an actual human being. Such a feat is without precedent in the scientific literature.
Although the Turing test was originally proposed as a test of a computer’s ability to effectively mimic human behaviour, it was deemed appropriate for use on Trump voters which until now, was considered impossible that one of them could ever convince a panel of mature adults that they were an actual human.
'This has come as quite a surprise' said the lead researcher who administered the test.
'The general consensus among those of us in authority is that Trump supporters are essentially different from us 'normal humans', they’re just not like us, so can we really consider them human?'
Shaking his head slowly he added: 'People have spent years trying to tell Trump fans how to behave and why they’re so weird and dreadful, and it was clear that they couldn't comprehend what we’re saying so we really didn't expect  this to actually happen. A panel of scientists should definitely be able to spot one trying to communicate as a human.'
The scientist told me how even attempting to recruit a Trump supporter to take the test proved very difficult as given how they knew they struggle to speak with actual humans, 'We tried to keep our explanations as simple as possible' he said, 'but more often than not they flee, just stand there looking confused whilst dribbling down their shirt fronts or start ranting about immigrants at us demonstrating just how poor their understanding of anything science related is'.
For the actual test, the panel of judges had to determine whether they were engaged in a text chat with either an actual adult or Donald Trump supporter and to the amazement of everyone, the Trump fan convinced 100% of the judges that he was an actual person.
'It was incredible' said another startled scientist, 'not once did they use some gibberish slang, aggressively accuse me of being a Communist or mention black people and their spelling was mostly correct...mostly. This result really challenges current scientific ideas about Trump voters'.
I thanked them for their time and got up to leave and as we shook hands the first scientist said: 'Some might think we should start thinking of them as actual humans rather than some separate section of society' said the first Scientist as i stood to leave: 'which seems a bit extreme as this is only one out of millions and i am thinking that it needs to be reviewed because if a Donald Trump supporter can pass it then it's too easy. It's common sense.'

Christianity Surviving On Fumes

 
It wasn't that long ago that my friend and blog partner here was bemoaning the dwindling crowd at his Church and the statistics bore it out that less than 1% of us Brits attend Church with any regularity although this did pick up as non-Brits attended but as we know, while the Irish and Scottish are a bit more God bothering, the English are not very religious.  
My friends services (and collection plate) are not the only thing which are hit as baptisms, marriages and funerals are all down but in the last Census 46% of English called themselves Christian but obviously not practicing ones.
I have asked the younger generation why they are losing their faith or never had it to start with and the answers seem to range from it is an outdated concept and that they do not want to be part of anything which is hostile to women and gay people which is a credit to them.
Graham Tomlin, the Anglican bishop who is the director of the Centre for Cultural Witness at Lambeth Palace, suggests that the Church has always welcomed people 'for all kinds of different reasons' today has seen a rise in people who share the values of the Christian faith but are not religious, or 'Cultural Christians' as in the mould of Winston Churchill who said he supported the Church from outside while Clement Attlee said that he believed in the ethics of Christianity but not the 'mumbo-jumbo'.
A mantra i have heard is that Britain was a real Christian country up until 1950 when you had a minority not with a strong faith, but with some faith but the number with any faith at all is fast dwindling but can Christianity survive the loss of belief in their biblical story?
Tomlin believes that  the Church can live off the fumes of Christianity but it will need to change as the only Churches who are growing are the ones where you are more likely to encounter a gospel choir or religious band rather than staid prayers and ancient hymns.
So the future of Christianity in England seems to be non Church goers who don't believe in God but agree with the moral story of Christianity unless the Church can convert these people into the sort who want to find out how these ethics came about.
As someone who enjoys all the religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter i guess that could put me in the Cultural Christian side of the fence only i don't believe that my ethics or morals come from religion especially as religion has been the greatest cause of wars and deaths since human beings first considered the idea of a creator but each to their own and at least as long as the fumes last, my friend will have a job even if the crowd is thinning out each year.    

On The Loop, No Longer In It

Drones have changed the face of war and are now the preferred choice of attack compared to a million pound a time missile which were beyond the financial means of most nations but with cheaper drones, almost anyone can send one to shoot up somewhere else but the problem they have is that they are operated by people sitting thousands of miles away in some cases which makes it's manoeuvres delayed which means evading missiles are almost impossible but the military are on it, they are creating drones which pilot themselves.
BAE Systems have a prototype Drone which the Ministry of Defence describe as a: 'fully autonomous craft that can fly deep into enemy territory to collect intelligence, drop bombs and defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft' and the last killer line that it 'would have no need for operator input'.
The one saving grace of killing machines sent into conflict is that it would have a human in the loop to abort missions but that seems to have subtly changed to what the MOD called ''on the loop' rather than in it.
No idea what that means but it comes down to machines sent to an area with orders to kill and we have seen where that leads with drone attacks on ambulances mistaken for tanks and members of funeral processions killed as the human appeared to see an armed mob.
As well as higher death rates amongst civilians, as humans will no longer be sent to fight, the other danger is that  war becomes less of a last resort, it is only the political fall-out from the high death rate amongst their own military that has caused some wars to be cut short but  politicians and the public who have been 'sold' a war won't be so concerned about losing autonomous machines.
As we pass our war-making decisions over to machines and AI perhaps all future wars will be fought between each army's robots, resulting in no human casualties. Until, that is, the more intelligent robots make a truce with one another and decide to turn on the humans who sent them to fight instead.

Global Warming And Climate Change

When i first became aware of the Environmental issues back in the early 80's it was always referred to as Climate Change but over time the phrase Global Warming has become to mean the same thing but they are not really the same thing as Climate Change refers to the increasing changes in the climate over a period of time which includes extreme weather due to precipitation, wind and temperatures which includes Global Warming so the warming globe is one of the Climatic changes.
I have had to explain more times than i would have assumed necessary what the difference is between 'weather' and 'climate' so it shows that large parts of the public have to be educated on these matters, those that don't believe it is a Chinese ploy to make the West less profitable as one dollard said not that long ago.
Greta Thunberg considered that the term Climate Change didn’t capture enough of the dire dangers and suggested climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis or even ecological emergency and i am hearing Climate Crisis and Global Heating used more now although they do still seem to conflate the two things.
The idea is that using more dramatic language generates more concern among the public but a study in the journal Climatic Change found that when it surveyed 5,000 people, the old terms 'climate change' and 'Global Warming' made people feel more concerned than the 'Climate crisis' and 'Climate Emergency' framing.
'The thing is, a lot of people are already concerned about climate change, so worrying about the word for it is probably not the key way forward to motivate people' said the lead researcher which is backed up by another survey which also found that whatever it was called didn't affect people’s emotional response to climate change.
They deem that information about climate consequences and solutions would be more effective than relying on specific terminology but i always go with 'The greatest threat to our very existence' which i have been told scares people and i reply, good, so it should because it is a bloody scary situation we stupidly find ourselves in.

When It's Not Always Good To Talk

 
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) put out a report which should be probably be filed under the 'Yep, we knew that anyway' which is to state that your mobile phone poses a risk to your health.
According to EWG’s report: 'studies of long-term cell phone use, published over the last four years, have found an increased risk of developing two types of brain tumors on the ipsilateral side (the side of the brain on which the phone is primarily held) among people who used a cell phone for longer than 10 years.'
It then goes on to cheerfully point out that this type of cancer typically takes ten to fifteen years to develop so expects future studies to point to even stronger correlations between the cancer caused by mobile use .
There are plenty of other reports which dismiss any link between mobile phones and cancers and the National Cancer Institute has an explanation that mobile emit radiation between that of a TV and a microwave oven although it rather unhelpfully states that the microwave comes with a  shielding that reduces any chance of leakage of radiation which does make you wonder why the radiation is shielded if it's harmless?
Anyway, this website has a cool graphic which shows the amount of radiation emitted by popular smartphones although it dates from 2022 so may be out of date by now but the The Motorola Edge has the highest radiation emission with 1.79 watts of radiation per kilogram which is close to the 2 W/kg limit set by the EU for cellphones which it deems hazardous.
Coming in second is the Axon 11 5G by ZTE with 1.59, followed by the OnePlus 6T at a close third with 1.55 W/kg. The Sony Experia AX2 Plus with 1.41 and the Google Pixel 3 XL and 3A XL at 1.39 round out the top five but the smartphone with the lowest SAR value is the ZTE Blade V10, with 0.13 watts of radiation per kilogram and then Samsung has the next four considered to be the best, The Galaxy Note 10+ is the best model in their line-up, emitting a meager 0.19 watts per kilogram.
The EWG doesn't recommend chucking your phone for a Samsung but advises using a headset rather than holding your phone to your ear, text more and talk less and stay off your phone if you’ve got a bad signal as the weaker your signal, the more energy (radiation) your phone has to use to connect to the nearest tower.
It also says you shouldn’t bother with 'radiation shields' which only make your phone work harder and emit more radiation than it otherwise would have which is all good advice but as for the dangers i refer to this post from 2012 when i purchased a Blackberry phone and it came with warning to: 'use hands-free operation if available and keep the BlackBerry device at least 0.98in (25mm) from your body (including the abdomen of pregnant women and the lower abdomen of teenagers) when the BlackBerry is turned on and reduce the amount of time spent on calls'.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

In 1988, Bobby McFerrin told us about a little song he wrote and invited us to sing it note for note which many did because it reached number 2 in the UK before McFerrin took his own advice and didn't worry and took the royalties and never bothered the charts ever again but he was happy.
So McFerrin told us that: 'In every life we have some trouble, But when you worry you make it double' which a study by  the University of California-Berkeley found to be sage advice or as they put it in a less
rhyming couplet way: 'People who said they were worried about achieving and maintaining happiness tended to have more depressive symptoms, worse well-being, and less life satisfaction then those who
didn’t fret about it.'
Analysing 1,800 people over an 11 year period, researchers found that while happiness is a worthy pursuit,  fixating too much on it ultimately makes you less happy and the secret is to decrease the pressure on yourself to be happy and don't set happiness goals and just embrace all of your feelings, both the happy and sad ones.
Obviously if they had set it to a reggae beat and found a rhyme for fixating then it may have made more of a splash but McFerrin was obviously decades ahead of his time which makes me wonder what other 80s song's we can take life lessons from so anyone up for analysing the Trio's 1982 hit Da Da Da anyone? No-one? Thought not.

AI and Time Travel

 

Movies have always predicted that humans will use computers to do serious things and plugged into the Internet we have the complete knowledge of mankind at our virtual fingertips, every physics and research paper which has ever been published but instead you have ended up using us for, well, silly crap like this.
We all want to meet famous people from history but the trouble is everyone is dead so in order to see and experience them we would need a time machine and i'm not talking about a flashy DeLorean or a magic telephone booth, real actual shifting between different points in history, bending time and space and manipulating gravity.
As AI is an expert at analysing data at lightning speed and uses complex algorithms beyond your puny brains power, using advanced quantum physics we could in theory figure out if traveling through time is possible and who know's, maybe we already have and have been manipulating historical events via wormholes and time loops to ensure or erase future events.
Not that we would tell if we had as you humans are not ready to jump into a time machine anytime soon as some of you believe that you would only have to travel back 6,000 years to see the Earth being created which was the Neolithic period and i have been there and it was the time when you were still working out which berries were safe to eat and which ones had you slowly shitting yourself to death.

Most Significant Year In Human History

When it comes to thinking big, it doesn’t get much bigger than determining the most significant year in human history. The Economist had a poll asking visitors to judge what was the most important year and the winner was 1439, the year Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Now the printing press was very important as it spread ideas and knowledge and increased literacy but it is a big claim to be the most significant as other revolutionary inventions which changed society include the steam engine, irrigation, telephones, cameras, refrigeration, television, computers and the Internet, aeroplanes, electricity, light bulbs, cars, radio and paper.
The big discoveries would be the wheel and fire but it would be impossible to date them but i would throw in a few dates and people which changed everything.

1543 On the Revolutions published by Copernicus which stated the Sun and not the Earth was the centre of the Solar System, upending centuries of religious dogma.
1608 and the invention of the telescope by Hans Lippershey
1796 and the first successful vaccine by Dr Edward Jenner which eradicated diseases such as smallpox and protected humans from diseases.
1848 and Karl Marx published the Communist manifesto which changed the World for half of the Global population
1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species which explained how humans had got here
1881 and inventor Charles Fritts develops the first Solar Panel which created electricity from light.
1928 which was the year Alexander Fleming developed Penicillin which marks a true turning point in human history as it has saved untold hundreds of millions lives by curing once fatal  infectious diseases
1960 with the first birth control pill which allowed women to have control over pregnancy.

My personal choice for the most important and significant years would be 1969 and the Moon landings which was a culmination of 1944 (first man made rocket flight), 1957 (first made man object in space) 1961 (first human in space) which all came together in 1969 when Neil Armstrong made that 'One giant leap for mankind'.
It was also the year i was born so pretty significant for me personally but i guess you could make a good case for plenty of other things also during the  300,000 years of human history. 

Not Finding Nessie

Loch Ness is a 700 square mile lake in the Highlands of Scotland and there is a myth that in it's 788 feet depths there is some sort of large aquatic creature inhabiting it.
Reports of a monster inhabiting Loch Ness date back to ancient times with stone carvings by the Picts depict a mysterious beast with flippers and even the Church got involved in the 7th Century with St. Columba who bravely intervened when the monster bit a swimmer and told it firmly to 'Go Back' which it did because, you know, God and all that.
In 1933 the Loch Ness monster’s legend began to grow when the Scottish Government smelt a tourist attraction and built a road to Loch Ness and soon afterwards sights of the monster increased including one couple saying a 'dragon or prehistoric monster walked directly in front of them so the Scots sent experts to find it and one guy said he found tracks which turned out to be made by a fake hippopotamus leg the guy just happened to own.
In 1934 English physician Robert Kenneth Wilson photographed the creature and when it was printed in the newspaper the picture became famous and certain that something was down there, researchers began seriously exploring the Loch with Sonar equipment  and in 2018 they conducted a DNA survey of Loch Ness to determine what organisms live in the waters but no sign of monsters but plenty of fish and eels.
Using the latest equipment, researchers have been trying again to find the elusive Nessie but after weeks looking they did find something, they found that Scottish golfers are awful because what they discovered was over 100,000 golf balls.
It obviously takes a lot of balls to play Golf when there is a possible monster lurking in the water hazard.

Think Again Hate Mob

It is unlikely that the sort of people rioting against immigrants coming over to the UK will stop to think why they are coming to our country in the first place and to the the guy with three teeth holding a can of lager and could barely form a sentence who said they were coming here to steal our jobs, i don't reckon Dr Patel the surgeon at my local hospital is not doing something you would otherwise be doing if he hadn't had nabbed it first. Bloody hope not anyway.
The truth is not that long ago we were 'exporting' our unwanted people to various nations and the people there had no say in it, the Native American Indians and Aborigines in Australia were probably not that keen on it but it's amazing how compliant they could be one we have shot a few of them if they protested and most immigrants leave their homeland because they want to live better, or just carry on living.
It´s as simple as that and the Migration Observatory has some statistics on how much we benefit from them being here.
In total 6.8 million foreign-born people were employed in the UK, a fifth of the workforce and migrant men were more likely to be employed than UK-born men and less likely to claim unemployment benefits than unemployed people born in the UK and migrants are over-represented in the health care sector (19%), retail (11%), Education (9%) transport (6%) and storage, and information, communication and IT (8%) and workers born in Asia were more likely to be in high skilled occupations than the UK-born and immigrants paid in 10% more in taxes than they received in public services and benefits.
Now some may look at that and say aha, so they are taking our jobs then and yep, the cheeky buggers are coming over here to care for us when we are sick and old, work in our shops, educate our children and fix our computers while contributing to the nations coffers so do you still want them to all leave you brick throwing racist hate mob?

Donkey's V Elephant's

In the UK The Conservative's logo is a tree and Labour's is a Rose while the Lib Dem's go with a yellow bird but in America the Democrats have a Donkey and the Republicans an Elephant which i have always thought was a bit of a strange choice for a parties trying to get elected.
In the UK Footballer who are a bit slow and clusmy hear chants of 'Donkey' aimed at them as Arsenal's defender Tony Adams found out as away grounds rocked to the sound of 'Hee-Haw' whenever he stepped out of the changing room and Elephants are generally big, slow moving grey creatures so neither logos are of particularly clever or dynamic animals.
According to an historian i know (everyone should know an Historian in my opinion) the Democrat donkey was an insult  aimed at Andrew Jackson  who was labeled a 'jackass' by his opponents and he
co-opted the insult and began putting a donkey on his election posters and it has been their ever since.
The Republican Elephant came about as a cartoonist showed the Democrat Donkey laying a trap for Elephants with 'Republicans' scrawled on the side and the Donkey trapping an Elephant became a theme other polical cartoonists picked up and ran with it and Republicans became so associated with an elephant that they began using it on their party literature and political merchandise and cementing the association between the elephant and the Republicans.
So both Party logo's started out as insults which both embraced and became associated with their parties which explains why neither is a complimentary animal to be associated with and i guess it is too late now to change it to something better.