Karma Pays A Visit To Trumps America

Call it Karma that shortly after Donald Trump pulled America out of the Paris Climate Agreement citing Climate Change to be a conspiracy dreamt up by the Chinese, Texans being are told to clamber up on their roofs and wait for rescue from floods as Mother Nature flings a catastrophic hurricane at his country.
'This event is unprecedented and all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced. Follow orders from officials to ensure safety' tweeted the National Weather Service and the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, said conditions were: 'bad and growing worse' and damage was in the billions of dollars.
Of course one devastating hurricane does not show proof of Climate Change, a warming climate would actually make hurricanes less likely as there is less extremes, but when you do get them they are catastrophic because as any schoolkid paying attention will tell you, warm air holds more water and more water means more rainfall and more rainfall means people being told to climb up onto
their roofs as flood water rises.
This may not prove Climate Change but as Mother Nature takes what's there and ramps it up, this is exactly what Climate Change looks like and as America is a regular recipient of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, they may have to get used to horrific scenes like these and worse for decades to come.
It is only unfortunate that one of the direct victims is not on top of the White House waving his little hands waiting to be rescued because as his nations sinks, he will be the driest person in the country.

Killer Robot, Android or Cyborg?

Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics' has long been held up as the golden rules that would stop robots overthrowing us humans and keeping some us in cages for their amusement but nobody seems to have told the military as they steam ahead creating killer robots which has resulted in over 100 of the world's top robotics experts asking the United Nations to ban them.
The Russian's have recently revealed the Kalashnikov's neural net combat module which can make its own targeting judgements without any human control and if the Russians are doing it, you can bet your Cyberdyne Systems series T-800 Model 101 Terminator doll the rest of the World's military are at it also. 
Good that the top robotic experts have our backs as Asimov's three laws all depend on a human programmer defining what a human is so far too easy to get around so better we don't rely on them but the world of artificial intelligence and robotics is moving so fast that it isn't only robots that we should be wary of, but also androids, cyborgs and bionics which until last week i thought was all the same thing so boy would i have been embarrassed if something came back from the future to eliminate my son before he become a saviour against machines in a post-apocalyptic future and i called it a robot. 
According to the nerds at Tech Republic.com, a Robot is a machine designed to perform a task while an Android is a robot which is designed to mimic human behaviour and appearance while a cyborg is an organism which has synthetic hardware which interacts directly with the brain and Bionic is an organism which has mechanical or robotic hardware designed to augment or enhance the human body.
All very useless if you are being pursued by a heavily armed part organic, part synthetic life-form but no need to make them even more angry by getting their classification wrong.

Not Treating Man-Flu

Poor hubby hasn't been very well for the past week but luckily we are inundated with health facts so we have been able to work out how to treat that awful case of man-flu.
Self-diagnosis on the internet is better than going to the Doctor's surgery because the internet tells us that the Doc's is the main place that viruses and colds end up, all those ill people coughing and sneezing in the waiting room apparently.
We won't be using those bottles of hand sanitiser either, the internet again explains that squirting dollops of the stuff  on your hands not only creates wrinkles because it dries out the skin but it also contains chemicals which can be very harmful if used frequently.
We have been told on numerous occasions that taking Antibiotics is helping to create resistant bacteria so lots of rest and water it is then only not the filtered or bottled kind which the bottled water companies filter out minerals that we need to be healthy when they purify their water.
I could give him painkillers but apparently some are not only addictive but can cause the onset of dementia and anti-histamine's are not much better as prolonged use can lead to a significantly higher risk for developing Alzheimer’s.
Maybe some healthy eating will ease his pain but off the menu come fish as some types of fish contain mercury, which can cause serious issues if ingested and we can cross off Margarine as it is full of trans fats, the worst of all fats so we are told.
Maybe a bit of exercise then but jogging is bad for the joints and swimming causes strain on the heart.
Oh well, just leaving him to lay on the sofa whinging about not feeling well it is then.

Take You Where?

Imagine you are sat in your garden one summer evening enjoying a Pimms and lemonade when over the trees and into your garden looms an interstellar spaceship and from it's bowels, a light shines from which a strange form is gradually lowered down and you find yourself face to face with an alien.
'I am an ambassador for Clor the Mighty of the 8th Grand Galactic Intra Demarcate' says the alien 'who would make it known to the natives of this world, that they are to be put on trial at the Sovereign Earthly Nations Court of Justice for crimes against the Universe so take me to your leader'.
'Blimey' you may say and wish that there was some sort of protocol for when aliens turn up unexpected and demand to be taken to our leader. 
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society have been pondering the same thing and they think that World governments should be preparing a co-ordinated action plan in case alien crafts land on Earth.
They think the responsibility of acting on behalf of Earth should fall to the United Nations and a branch set up for 'supra-Earth affairs' to establish protocol structures.
The discussion is still on-going so no decision yet of who exactly the leader is that we should be directing them to but if they are holding an anal probe then there are a few World leaders you could direct them to as long as they promise not to bring them back afterwards.

Harking Back To A Better Time Musically

I was too young for the Sex Pistols and Ramones in the 70s but was perfectly placed age-wise in the late 80s and early 90s for Guns 'n' Roses and Nirvana who continue to be celebrated on the chests of teenagers today in the form of t-shirts. 
I regularly see T-shirt's of all four the previously mentioned bands who were doing their thing long before most of the wearers were even born which leads me to think that either these four in particular had such a profound effect on music that almost 40 years later in the case of the Pistols that they are still being listened to or that with the bands around today, the kids just don't have an equivalent.
I come down on the side of the latter because as a teenager i was one of so many teenagers who would sit in a garage with a guitar, practising the riffs from Blitzkreig Bop or Sweet Child o' Mine so who would teenagers try to emulate from the charts today?
Nobody i venture which is why even if they were too young to have experienced the band, decades later Nirvana, Guns 'n' Roses, The Sex Pistol's and The Ramones are still more of a household name as there are no bands or artists around today with the musical impact whose name will be sported on the t-shirts of kids 30 years from now.
I would also throw into the ring the fact that all four of these bands had huge characters with as front-men and today's bands don't, more likely to give a hotel room a bit of a going over with the vacuum then trash it.
The truth is we just don't make rock superstars anymore. The superstars of today, the ones who are sold as personalities, are carefully controlled Simon Cowell type identi-kit pop stars dishing out the standard ballads or cover versions. 
Punk came along to replace bands like ABBA and dislodge Disco and Grunge booted aside the Stock, Aitken and Waterman puppets such as Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue so we can only hope that in the pipeline is something to rudely push aside the Adele's, Rhianna's and Little Mix's of the current pop world who will be long forgotten and not appearing on the chest of anyone in 2047.

General Lee And The Nazi's

Being away on my holidays, i haven't been following the Charlottesville protests and its aftermath very closely but from what i have seen, a bunch of extreme right wingers were protesting over the removal of a statue of an old pro-slavery General and another group of anti-racists and anti-fascists, who have been labelled as left wing for some reason, clashed and one deranged right winger drove his car into the protesters and killed a female.
Trump, a man so stupid you wouldn't trust him to face the right way on the toilet, sent out a tweet refusing to condemn the right wingers and even equated the anti-fascist protesters with the likes of the KKK and the Nazi flag wavers.
In the resulting furor over his refusal to condemn the people dishing out Nazi salutes, he did the old trick of throwing a dead cat onto the table in the shape of a sacked Steve Bannon to change the conversation away from his support for his base of right wing racists.
Trump, a fan of Adolf Hitler according to his ex-wife who revealed he was an avid reader of the Nazi leader and kept a book of his speeches next to their bed, has been widely condemned by most people who made the point that if you find yourself on the side of fascist Nazi's, you are probably on the wrong side.  
To me, General Lee was the name of the car in The Dukes of Hazard but he was also a General in the American Civil War who fought to maintain slavery so you may ask who would want a statue of a nasty old racist in their city anyway but that is an ongoing discussion over statues of hideous men who in the cold light of the 21st Century are seen in a very different light from previous generations.
The problem with having statues, especially of military personnel, is that the person involved is celebrated for the slaughter, or in the case of Lee the violent subjugation, of other people.
If we are going to celebrate anyone with a likeness in our towns and cities, it should be people who are genuine heroes who have helped mankind, not conquered, enslaved or killed as many as possible of them.
A good guide is if the people who want to keep the statue are chanting Nazi slogans, draping themselves in Swastika's and are driving their cars into groups of people, then the statue is probably not of someone who should be celebrated.

Look At The £3bn New Shooty Thing

Look everyone at the new shiny ship we have built.
No don't look at the £3 billion bill, just wave your little British flags and puff your chest out with pride that we may be skint and not have a money tree to fund the wages of police or nurses and have food-banks, cutbacks, closing facilities for the old, a criminally-underfunded NHS, social deprivation, high levels of homelessness and the highest levels of child-poverty in Europe but can still take billions from our dwindling tax coffers and spend it on a piece of massive military kit.
Rule Britannia and Britannia rules the waves and all that and a huge British aircraft carrier coming to an oil rich Muslim country soon (or as soon as we get our hands on some aircraft).

Leninism, Stalinism and Trotskyism In A Nutshell

Of the three well known Russian Revolutionaries, Leon Trotsky is probably the least well known apart from the fact that he was name checked in a Strangler song and was killed by an ice pick.
Now that Tony Blair has come out as a former Trotskyite, interest has grown in the man and what he stood for and how it differed from Marxism explained here.
Fact is, Marxism is the idea put forward by Karl Marx of a community (hence the name Communism) which is ruled by the people for the benefit of all while Leninism, Stalinism and Trotskyism are the interpretations of the ways of achieving Marxism. 
A quick review of the Russian Revolution is required so we have Lenin, Stalin and Trotksy at the head of the Bolshevik Party who disposed the Royals and found themselves in charge and wondering what to do next. 
Lenin was the boss and he, Stalin and Trotsky decided what was required in order to achieve Communism would be the need to set up a ruling Party, named the Vanguard, to oversee the installation of Communism and which would then fade away in time to leave the workers in charge.
So far, everybody on the same Marxism page but now comes the difference because Marx said for Communism to succeed, it would need to spread around the capitalist nations of the World but Lenin wanted to ensure Communism was settled in Russia before spreading the ideal out to other countries, this is called Permanent Revolution as in a domino effect where there would always been one country following another into Communism.
Trotsky didn't want to wait and wanted to strike while the iron was hot and spread it far and wide while Stalin wanted to keep it only in Russia and to turn the vanguard party into a permanent Government.
Lenin and Trotsky therefore were together for the Permanent Revolution but Stalin was against the idea but they managed to keep the far more authoritarian Stalin subdued until Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin grabbed power, exiled Trotsky to Kazakhstan and executed almost all of the Party's Trotskyists in what become known as the Great Purges and effectively removed all of Trotsky's influence.
Stalinism took over and to stop Trotsky's continued criticism of Stalin's rule, after several assassination attempts, he succeeded and he died in his Mexican home from a pick axe to the head in 1940.
Trotskyism then is the idea by Leon Trotsky that the Marxist theory should be spread around the World rather than only one state.

UK To Join Another Misguided American Conflict?

In recent history Great Britain has made several wrongheaded decisions to join American Presidents in their military adventures, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are sores that refuse to heal and Britain could easily have stayed out of.
Now that easily the worst US President in living memory is threatening to unleash fire and fury on North Korea, the question to ask is will Britain be joining in the mass slaughter of North Korean's?
Britain, also known as America’s lap dog after Blair's pandering to GW Bush, could formally refuse any call for help in waging war against Kim Jong Un as membership of NATO does not automatically oblige it to participate in a conflict as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which states that an attack on one NATO member is an act of aggression against the entire military alliance,
is limited only to attacks on member states’ territories in North America, Europe and the Atlantic.
Britain itself found this out when Margaret Thatcher attempted to invoke NATO’s collective self-defence provision over the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands.
The US, however, could exercise pressure to ensure Britain’s support in any military confrontation with North Korea as Britain is planning for an extensive trade deal with the US to soften the blow of Brexit and wouldn't want to jeopardise that by not backing America in yet another military adventure.
As Britain has been at America's side at every ill-conceived conflict since 2001, it is likely that Britain will need no pressure and we could be heading towards another misguided American led conflict that we have no business, or need, to be involved in.

Another Problem With Electric Cars

We are starting to see more and more electric cars on our streets but i came across a previous unthought of problem this afternoon while crossing the street, they are silent.
I got to the crossing just as the lights were turning back to amber and there sat a car, i looked at the driver, the driver looked at me and i thought that as his car was not making any noise, he had broken down or stalled at the lights.
Assuming i would have time to cross as he would have to re-start his engine, i stepped out just as he pulled away, silently.
I jumped back, apologised and waited for the next green man to flash but apart from me trying to cross roads, i can see silent cars being an issue, more so for pedestrians, especially visually impaired ones, and cyclists who rely on hearing approaching cars.
With the Government recently announcing that petrol and diesel vehicles are to be consigned to history on British roads by 2040 and the price of buying an electric vehicle tumbling, a tonne of metal travelling silently at 30mph around our streets is already causing problems with a report from the Guide Dogs charity found a 54% increase in pedestrian injuries in accidents involving quiet cars.
The EU have ruled that car builders must incorporate artificial sound generators in their cars by 2021 but 4 years seems quite a way in the future when people are being injured now.
Guess for the next few years when i cross the road i will just have to adhere less to the 'Listen' part of the 'Stop, Look and Listen' mantra we had drummed into us as children.