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.

The Word Of God You Say?

More than eight hundred times the Bible uses the phrase: 'The LORD says …' so we are on pretty safe ground to assume that the believers consider the book to be the word of God but a quick look at the timeline shows that it is more the word of whoever decided it was the word of God.
The early Christians were actually a offshoot of the Jewish faith but as their movement gained followers, they thought that they could 'break away' and form their own separate religion and began making changes from the Jewish text to differentiate themselves and began circulating stories about Jesus, many of which were borrowed from other religions at the time by enthusiastic followers but nothing was written down until around 150ad when Marcion of Sinope puts in an appearance.
He set about gathering together all the stories going around about Jesus and his gang and chose the stories he liked and rejected or edited the ones which he never and put them all together to create the first Bible, or Testament.
By the 2nd Century, the Christian Church was beginning to get itself in order and wasn't keen on all the stories Marcion chose which were mostly of a 'Feel God's wrath' type so decided to keep most of them but create a 'New Testament' which showed their Gods more cuddly side and set about picking which stories to include in its new edition.
The Bishop of Antioch, Serapion, was pivotal in choosing what went into the New Testament and after weeding out texts that did not align with his idea of the newfound concepts of God, they settled on four anonymous texts to which were assigned the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and edited them to fit their new peaceful and loving God.
By the 3rd Century, Clement of Alexandria thought their Holy book was looking a bit thin so added a few more Gospels and Tertullian and Origen chipped in a few more .
By the 4th Century, the New Testament was coming together but there was disagreements over whether the Book of Revelations should be included with its prophesy of Apocalypse and all manner of things the bishop of Alexandria, Dionysus, called 'barbarous'  but was finally included by the synods of Hippo and Carthage at the end of the Century where it was decided that this with its 27 Books was now the final edit and nobody may add or take away from it.
They also threw in the decision that anyone owning anything else was 'heretical' and would be arrested but some versions still omitted some stories and put in their own until 692ad when the Holy Sees of Constantinople and Antioch told them to fall into line and by the way OUR version is the only one you can use.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther  tried to get some chapters removed as they had 'nothing of the nature of the Gospel about them' but the Catholic Church at the The Ecumenical Council of Trent in 1546 stamped all over the idea saying the 27 books in the New testament were going to stay and anyone who doesn't like it could always be excommunicated.
Not bad then for a book which started out as a collection of made up stories about other Gods and other deities with their own Christian God copied and pasted in as a replacement and then heavily edited to show him in the best possible light but no so much the Word of God, more the Word of whoever had editing privileges that particular day.

Hey Donald, Leave Our Songs Alone

I remember Donald Trump being told to get his chubby little hands off songs by several musicians when he ran for President in 2016 and he has the same problem again this year with an array of musicians coming out and demanding he stop playing their songs at his rally's.
Abba have now joined Celine Dion, Beyonce, Phil Collins and the family of Isaac Hayes and Sinead O'Connor in telling Trump to not play their songs but the most unfortunate is the Smiths because they had a song titled 'Your The One For Me Fatty' which would have been prefect for the crowd to sing as he waddled onto the stage but alas, not anymore.    
Last time out the musicians included Adele, Neil Young, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N' Roses, Luciano Pavarotti, Nickelback, Ozzy Osbourne, Prince, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and The White Stripes and even the Village people told him to stop using their songs in his bid for the White House, Michael Stipe of REM went with: 'Go f*** yourselves you sad, attention-grabbing, power-hungry little men. Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign' which certainly put across his objection.
The right wing has always been short on musical talent, the left, like the devil, always had the best tunes so it shouldn't be any surprise that the Trump campaign is only attracting singers who are wearing boots and a cowboy hat but in America songs from 1928 and before are now out of Copyright and can be used so maybe he should take a look at the choices but i think i found the perfect one for him.
A 1890 song by LM Luse called Orange, i would go with that one.

Not Looking Back in Anger

I was not that much of an Oasis fan even at their height, i preferred Pulp out of the small group of Britpop bands at the time but the Oasis songs were okay (Don't Look Back in Anger , The Importance of Being Idle, Wonderwall ) but the brothers were a couple of morons and that doesn't seemed to have changed much in the intervening years and after years of between Liam and Noel Gallagher has ended with the inevitable: Oasis on a Noels 'Pay-A-£20m-Divorce Settlement Tour'.
Usually i try my hardest to separate the total douchebags from their music but i have a real problem with the Gallagher brothers and mainly because i don't think they were good enough for their music to outweigh their big fat stupid gobs.
They were pretty popular at the time amongst the 'lads', with Blur and Pulp aiming towards the more intelligent end of the Britpop market and Oasis going for the beer swilling yobs type which is another reason i'm not overly keen, that sort of behaviour was moronic at the time and now the fans will be middle aged and it is an even worse look but each to their own, i imagine their are bands and music i like they don't so that's fair.
Easy to say then that i won't be spending £75 to go watch them in concert but there does seem to be a  dearth of British bands around now so i can honestly say they are the biggest band in the UK at the moment and good luck to them.  

2024 Paralympics

I'm going to miss most of the Paralympics in Paris this year as more than 4,000 athletes representing more than 150 nations compete across 22 sports and participating will be a Refugee team.
Russia and Belarus are banned although you will still find a couple dozen Russian and Belarusian athletes competing as neutral athletes and if they win any medals then the song that plays will be an instrumental anthem written for the Games.
Athletes who can’t compete for their own country due to political reasons may participate as part of the Refugee Olympic Team which contains 36 athletes representing 'the world’s displaced population' and include participants from Iran, South Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia and Cuba.
A question i asked at the Olympics was if a member of the Refugee team win gold then what anthem will they have the (i assume) Olympic flag raised to and apparently it would be the Olympic Hymn which i didn't even know existed until about 10 minutes ago.
Anyway, i have the same bet with my Australian colleague regarding who will finish higher up the league table and we can assume China will top it as they ended the last one with more than double the British tally in second place but i am confident that i will be winning back the money i lost when Australia finished above us at the Olympics.

Answering The Hermit Priest

 
In 2004, Johannes Schwarz became a Priest in Lichtenstein and in 2014 he found a small hut in the Alps and gave up all the trappings of 21st Century life and stayed there and remains there today 'raising his mind to God'.
Living as hermit and feeding himself with the vegetables he grows in the small garden outside his hut, he has spent 8 years meditating on those timeless questions, 'What is the meaning of life' and 'what is our purpose here on Earth'.
Now i can help him here but as an atheist i will therefore not be going down the flowery God route but the meaning of life is to go from the cradle to the grave being the best possible person that you can be, to do the best you can for yourself and others and when your life ends, knowing that during your allotted time on the Earth you made other peoples lives better for you being in them.  
As for our purpose, we are merely animals amongst many on the planet such as dogs and cats (albeit more intelligent) and their purpose is the same as ours, to keep our species going by having children and caring and nurturing them to adulthood where they can continue the circle of life.
There you go then Johannes, both explained and i didn't need to climb a mountain and ask the Universe for the questions so wave goodbye to your cucumber and marrows and come back to Civilisation
because i am no biologist but living alone thousands of feet up the side of a mountain isn't going to help with keeping the human race going.