New Atheism

Apparently there is a thing called 'New Atheism' which is a movement which not only dismissed religion, but mocks, criticizes and challenges it.
Whether I am a New Atheist or just a run of the mill Atheist I don't really know because I will tolerate it but will challenge it if somebody tries to ram it down or stops me in the street to hand me a leaflet or ask if I pray or if I have accepted Jesus as seems to happen from time to time as i make my way around the Town Centre.
I have yet to see an Atheist stop someone in the street to push their beliefs on them or knock on someones door to discuss Atheism si i can only assume that the religious have got their rosary beads in a knot because Atheists are not content to just ignore them anymore and are challenging them.
I assume this makes me a New Atheist then because i stick to my belief that you can do what you want but if you try to persuade ,me or stop m,e or try and force your belief on me i will mock, criticize and challenge you about it.
If you want to ask me why I don't believe in a God then you had better be prepared for me to answer with why do you believe in it?
If you want to point to everything around you as proof of a God made Universe then you had better be prepared for me to point out the mountains of evidence which proves it isn't.  
If you want to push the Bible on me as some sort of manual to live by you had better be prepared for me to point out the bits which guides you to kill homosexuals, witches and plenty of other innocent folk.
I am happy to ignore Religious folk, as i have said many times it brings comfort to people and I understand that but if there is a New Atheism that challenges your notions then good, hopefully you will wake up to the fact that its all a load of nonsense if only you stopped to look at it rationally.

Poor Penguins

I will let other blogs with more understanding of what the Tariffs imposed by Donald Trump means although from what I am hearing it is stiffing Americans who will now have to pay more for things while the things they export will be boycotted by everyone else as is already happening but what they hey, that's for them to debate but i was amused to hear that the brains behind Liberation Day sought to impose tariffs on places which not only don't export anything to them but has no humans living there anyway.  
Not sure what the Penguins and Seals of the Australian Island Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic thought of Trump imposing 10% tariffs on them but the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, called them 'a bit strange'.
The orange faced plank also said that Europe doesn't buy American Beef and Chicken which is true because us Europeans don't much like the taste of Chlorine in our Chicken or steroids in our beef so both practices are banned this side of the Ocean.
Interesting that Russia was exempt but Ukraine wasn't but every news outlet is mulling over that so i'm just going to leave them to it and just hope that the Seal and Penguins can find another outlet for their goods...whatever that is.

You Could Be Mine (For £96,546)

How much are you worth? Obviously priceless is the correct answer but in 2013 the Royal Society of Chemistry worked out how much it would cost to build a human from scratch using all the constituent elements and it came out to £96,546.79 for materials alone.
Apparently all the chemicals needed to make a human body could be bought in a hardware store but before you turn up in B&Q with a shopping list and a plan to build your own person, what would you actually need?   
Sugar and spice and everything nice for a girl and frogs and snails and puppy dog tails for a boy you might think if that rhyme is to be believed but the RSC calculations include fifty-nine elements with Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium and Phosphorus accounting for 99.1% of what makes us so that would be the best aisles to visit first but what goes into the other 0.9%?
In the shopping trolley would need to go a few atoms of Molybdenum, Vanadium, Manganese, Cesium, Zirconium, Arsenic, Uranium Tin and Copper and twenty atoms of cobalt and thirty of Chromium which means you now have the material for your self made human.   
After taking it home and spreading out the materials on your kitchen side, the problem you got now is how to actually make the human from all those bits because you won't just be chucking it all it a bowl and giving it a good mix and unfortunately you won't find the answer on the Internet and even if you have the telephone number of the cleverest Scientists on the Planet, they won't be much help because nobody yet knows how to make a single living cell from scratch, let alone the 50 trillion human cells needed for an average sized human.
Hopefully you have kept the receipt.

56 Today!

Today is the end of my 55th trip around the Sun and the start of my 56th and the latest meeting of the 01/04 Club which consists of Me, Chris, Phil, Susan, David and Beth meeting up in the same coffee house, sing Happy Birthday to each other over a couple of lattes and a bit of Birthday Cake, shoot the breeze and then go back to our lives and agree to meet up next year.
It's kind of macabre but as i have made it through 55 still alive, I have lived longer than people such as Henry VIII, Tammy Wynette, Francis Drake, Bill Haley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Del Shannon, Johnny Ramone and Steve Strange who all died in their 55th year so now my next goal is to navigate the next 12 months and be able to list Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, Beethoven, Sinead O' Connor, Linda McCartney and Rik Mayall who will forever be 56.
If you happen to be in the South Western side of the Country today and pass a cafe this afternoon and you hear the strains of 'Happy Birthday' and see a group of people slurping latte's and laughing raucously, pop over and say hi and if you are also celebrating a birthday today, pull up a chair.

Welcome Sir Killalot

Seems like hardly a day goes by without someone mentioning the words Artificial Intelligence and there was a scientist on the radio this morning claiming  that within our lifetimes we’ll be fitted with brain-enhancing microchips which will 'wake up' with us every morning which puts an image in my head of hearing and seeing the Microsoft Windows start-up screen in your head instead of the alarm clock.
The scientist was full of the benefits of Artificial Intelligence and was quite excited about the integration of machines and humans (Cyborgs?) and was quick to dismiss fears that robots will soon be out-thinking humans and experiencing emotions and in no way will our new metal chums be using us as squishy playthings as we will ultimately still be in control of them.
So for him no oppressing us with powerful laser eyes or giant metal claws and I think he may have a point because every computer I have ever owned has either crashed when I have tried to run more than two programs at the same time or stopped to tell me i need to download a driver, the one I downloaded three times already that morning.
Obviously the solution to make sure the Robots don't get too big for their boots and take over is to get the new robots to run on the Windows Operating Systems but then when you think of some of the people currently running the World, being lauded over by Sir Killalot and Wheelosaurus from Robot Wars and their army of USB 2.0 Stormtroopers may not be so bad after all.