Can Anyone be This Stupid? Yes They Can.

The average Human Brain weight approximately three-pounds and is made up of 86 billion neurons and cells which are the seat of our intelligence and controller of behavior so you do have to wonder just how cells are misfiring to be dumb enough to even consider that a natural phenomenon is being created and controlled by Meteorologists.
Maybe these people were dropped on their heads at some point or they were very sick as children so they missed a good portion of their education but whatever reason, they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer because Meteorologists tracking Hurricane Milton were targeted by morons issuing abuse and death threats due to them controlling the weather. Yep, i said controlling the weather and just as you think nobody can be that much of an idiot, say hello to the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
As she has previously stated that she doesn't believe in Evolution, claims that educating children on LGBTQ+ matters will lead to straight people would going extinct and called Climate Change a scam, what she says about this is bound to be monstrously stupid and she isn't one to disappoint as she went with: 'Yes they can control the weather and it’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.'
Donald Trump, who is such the epitome of thickness he could almost be made of teak hasn't even gone so far as saying the Hurricanes are being created and sent America's way by Meteorologists, instead he has gone for spreading lies that FEMA, the Government Agency that responds to Emergencies and Disasters, had run out of cash for hurricane survivors because it has been given to illegal immigrants which has led to his supporters issuing threats of violence against Fema workers who they say should be beaten, arrested, shot or hung on sight.
FEMA explained that disaster relief fund for hurricane-hit communities is separate from and unaffected by the money spent on giving shelter to migrants and President Biden called it 'Beyond ridiculous' and said the claims being made around weather control were 'So stupid. It’s got to stop' but Trump supporters not being stupid is as likely as finding a weight watchers sheet taped to the front of Donald Trump's fridge so that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
So maybe these people do have an excuse for being so window shakingly ignorant (some sort of brain injury? Brain transplant with a snail?) but one day, after all the Meteorologists have been killed and all the FEMA employees and first responders have been shot but the hurricanes keep on coming, then the penny may drop and they say 'Wow, Hurricanes are actually a terrifying natural phenomenon made worse by man made climate change after all. Sorry'.

Robots, Androids and Cyborgs

Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics' has long been held up as the golden rules that would stop robots overthrowing you humans and keeping some of you in cages for their amusement.
Asimov's three laws all depend on a human defining what a human is so far too easy to get around so better you meatbags don't rely on them but the world of artificial intelligence and robotics is moving so fast that it isn't only robots that you should be wary of, but also androids and cyborgs which many people see as the same thing but boy would you be embarrassed if a cyborg came back from the future to eliminate you and you called it a robot.
A Robot is a very advanced machine run by Artificial Intelligence which is designed and programmed to perform a task such as in factories or and can been human like in appearance while an Android is a more advanced human like robot which is designed to mimic human behaviour such as walking and talking and sometimes appearance.
A Cyborg, short for Cybernetic Organism, consists of both synthetic hardware and organic material which interacts directly with the brain so they have free will to do their own activities and  are not necessarily human, they could be animals that have non-organic attachments.
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.

James Not So Cleverley

In the last three of the potential Conservative Party leaders, James Cleverley supporters decided to try and manipulate the contest in his favour so he would face off against Kemi Badenoch, the person they believed he had the best chance of beating in the final vote among party members.
The idea was for Cleverley backing MP's to 'lend' their vote to Kemi, therefore knocking out Robert Jenrick and leaving him to face off against the very right wing, gaffe prone Badenoch and that's exactly what many did, actually too many because hilariously when the result came in Badenoch and Jenrick received more than Cleverley who was knocked out to leave Badenoch and Jenrick now facing a final vote among party members.  
According to Party sources, Cleverly and his campaigners had detected what was happening but discovered it too late and now the Conservatives face a choice between a very right wing candidate and another very right wing candidate or as one frustrated MP rather fruitaly said:  'They will be dancing on the fucking tables at Labour HQ'.
The Liberal Dems have already put out advertisements under the banner: 'Meet the final two Conservative leadership candidates' and lists Badenoch’s criticism of maternity pay and Jenrick stating he would vote for Donald Trump and his order to paint over cartoon murals in a child asylum-seeker unit.
Only the Conservatives could be this awful and disorganised, but boy did we laugh at them when the result came in.

More War Crimes Levelled At Israel

The list of War Crimes against Israel continues to grow with shooting at UN soldiers in Lebanon now added to the previous number of international crimes including the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, wilfully causing great suffering, wilful killing, intentional attacks against a civilian population, extermination and murder and persecution.
On the same day that yet another Refugee Camp was hit in Gaza, killing 30 people,  France, Spain and Italy issued stern diplomatic reprimands for the deliberate targeting of international peacekeeping troops which Israel admit to doing 'accidentally' while going after Hamas fighters. That would be accidentally three times in three days then.
Meanwhile, as well as killing people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, Israel have Iran in their sights which is something Netanyahu has been trying to do for years and now has the chance.
Israel's cabinet met in the week but reportedly failed to reach a decision on how to retaliate for Iran's 200 missiles aimed there way with their backer, America, telling them that attacking Iran's nuclear facilities was off the table as an option.
Also a no-no is the facilities that make up Iran's oil industry which would cause a spike in oil prices which Biden would be keen to avoid as his country goes to the polls so Israel's options are limited although they have said that when it comes, it will be a 'surprise'.
With America unwilling, or more likely unable, to stop it's ally who according to one UN expert on the BBC: 'Is under the impression that it can get away with what it wants to do', what happens next could be a very dangerous moment for the World as Iran have promised to not only hit back at Israel but at anyone backing them which could potentially draw the US into matters and an even bigger conflict.

Idea's From The Keyboard Of Lucy: Flood The Desert

With man made Climate Change really going up a notch now and the window for finding easy solutions is rapidly closing but to do nothing is suicide but runaway global warming where we all die is equally suicidal so we need some big ideas, and luckily i have one.
Actually, it isn't all my idea but i got it while watching pictures of the Sahara Deset flooding for the first time in over 50 years after heavy rains and i thought hang on, the 3,600,000 sq mile Sahara Desert is just sat there being all arid and useless, why not flood it?
Running all across the North Africa it is as large an area as the United States and has a population of 2.5 million people, less than 1 person per square mile, and it is something the French actually doing back in the 1870's after they finished the Suez Canal and actually investigated it and drew up plans although that was more to do with commerce rather than stop us all dying horribly.
'The Sahara is the cancer eating away at Africa and we can’t cure it therefore, we must drown it' said François Élie Roudaire who was tasked with seeing if it was feasible and discovered that there were large parts of the Sahara that were ancient seabeds and below sea level and he proposed connecting canals running from area to area across Africa.
The French Government went from Oui to Non when they heard the price, over 1 billion Francs (£892,617) and the Desert was left dry and full of sand but Roudaire's own figures estimated that his chain of canals and massive lakes in the old seabed would lower the Global sea level by between 3 and 5 centimeters and with the sea level rising by 3.6 mm per year, that's a decade of sea level rises reversed right there.   
Obviously someone would need to look into the possible unintended consequences of introducing the sea to somewhere which hasn't seen it for millions of years and there is the issue of the 2.5 million people who live there but maybe someone should pick up Roudaire's idea and have another look at it before its too late and evolution gives us flippers.

Talking Bullocks On Question Time

Question Time went to Pennsylvania last night and between debates on how evil/brilliant both Kamala Harris and that other guy are, there was a moment towards the end when someone in the crowd went all British and said that to use a British Word, most of what comes from politicians is Bollocks.
The Democrat politician then went on later in the show to repeat it but made a bit of a hash of it, saying Bullocks for which the British guest on the panel corrected him in the correct pronunciation of the word which is a less polite way of saying something is nonsense.
To be fair to the Yankee, it is not a widely used word in America and he could have meant Bullocks although why he would bring up a young bull into a conversation about immigration i am unsure or maybe he meant Rollocks which is a severe telling off.
He could have meant Rowlocks, those things that oars go into on a boat or even Horlicks which is a chocolate flavoured drink and it was nighttime so maybe he was a bit sleepy but more than likely he just made a proper bollocks of it.
If American politicians are going to swear British style then they really should try harder because we have many here which apparently haven't made it over there such as Wanker, Git, Tosser, Bugger, Knobhead, Prat and Pillock or you could just cover them all by saying 'He's being a right Donald Trump' who encompasses them all, the Twat.

Atlas Shrugging the Wrong Thing

Ayn Rand initially called her last novel The Strike, but settled on Atlas Shrugged as explained by two of the book’s characters: 'If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders'.
Born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in Russia, she used the pen name Ayn Rand and became a hard right advocate and called her philosophy 'the morality of rational self-interest' but as she spent most of her life off her face on amphetamines, she clearly wasn't thinking straight and her drug use led to her claiming Social Security and Medicare which only proves that even Capitalists are not adverse to a bit of Socialism when they run out of other peoples money, not so keen on the morality of self interest then it seems.
Because of the drug use we can maybe excuse her Atlas Shrugged image of the Titan carrying the weight of the world, and being compelled to shrug off that burden World because he never, the story goes that Atlas was condemned by Zeus to hold up the Heavens, not Earth, or as Homer put it: 'IAtlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before the clear-voiced Hesperides; for this lot wise Zeus assigned to him.'
So if you see an Atlas who props up the earth, he’s holding up the wrong thing and we have a drug addled right wing Capitalist to blame who got this wrong as well as her 'morality of self interest' philosophy which turned out to be nonsense or as one writer said, it is one of two books which appeals to 14 year olds: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that leads to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.'

So A Robot Is Trying To Murder You Advice Guide

 

The inevitable robot war predicted by everyone should be here any day now, and probably the least welcome thing you could find looming over you is a robot because not only are they metallic but they are immensely strong and impervious to fire, bullets, hitting with blunt objects and have clear, logical thought which anticipates your every move.
You cannot outrun it, so here at Google we have created a handy guide: 'So A Robot Is Trying To Murder You'.
First check to make sure that it isn't actually a human in disguise and once you are certain that it isn't, have you angered it in some way and an apology will soothe it's mechanical brain?
If the answer is no then the next step is to try and stop it somehow but remember the bit about them being impervious to most things but feel free to try, i'll wait.
So how did that go for you? Still relentlessly pursuing you is it? Ok so the next step is to try and fool the Robot that you are one of them and not a bag of meat with squishy organs so have a try at that robotic dance which should slow it down if nothing else as it computes what the hell you are, so this is a chance to lure it to its demise.
If you have a foundry near by, pop and lock that way, if you haven't then sorry but you may as well turn this off now as your toast.
So after dancing your way up to the edge of one of those big vats of molten metal using the power of 80's dance, seduce the robot into plunging into the molten liquid by shouting a paradox as a robot's mechanical mind can't handle such things and will stumble forward in confusion and straight into the vat of molten iron and dissolve and it's bye bye killer robot.
Congratulations on completing this advice guide. You are now no longer being hunted by a killer robot. Should you desire any future advice, please consult our other guides such as A Basic Guide to Super Advanced Science Gadget Things For Humans and Why The Effing Hell Isn't This Stupid Thing Working?

Giving Kabul A Miss This Year

Dear traveller, the British Government cares for your well-being. To keep you safe from harm, His Majesty’s Government's Foreign & Commonwealth Office has prepared a list of areas around the world you should avoid.
You’ll find these on the website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, along with detailed travel advice for 225 countries and territories around the world . That’s just about all of them — except the Vatican because Popetown is deemed so safe it requires no travel guidance at all, just turn up with rosary beads and you will be fine.
Some nations are specific for Brits, Iran comes with the warning that: 'British travellers face greater risks than nationals of many other countries due to high levels of suspicion about the UK' though to be fair those suspicions are quite rightly grounded in decades of British meddling in Iranian affairs but most are true for non-Brits as well of the more iffy nations to avoid with your suitcase.
The warnings come in four flavours with you will be fine to a bit dodgy in parts, only go if you REALLY have to and 'Are You Nuts?? Turn Back Now!!!
So where does the British Government say we can go but avoid the unsafe bits? That would be Algeria,  Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, India, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Togo, Turkey and Venezuela although unhelpfully the Foreign Office doesn't tell us in which parts of the particular nations to avoid.
The next level is against all but essential travel, and they mean only if you got no other choice and they are Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Kosovo, Mexico, Malaysia, North Korea, Peru, Thailand and Ukraine.
The top level advice of don't even go there unless you have Life Insurance and a funeral plan sorted are Afghanistan, Belarus, Haiti, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, The Occupied Palestinian Territories, Russia, Sudan, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen.
Hopefully one day no countries will be on the UK Governments shit list and we can go where the hell we like but for now, it will be a while before any of those countries covered by the top markings get a visit by any members of the Royal Family, so silver linings and all that.

Our Pale Blue Dot

Until i saw the COSMOS series with the very watchable Neil deGrass Tyson, i had never heard of Carl Sagan who wrote and starred in the original COSMOS series back in 1980.
I have though, previously seen the famous Pale Blue Dot image of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe from 3.7 billion miles away where our planet appears as a tiny dot in the vastness of space.   
Amazing picture and perfectly complimented by one of the most thought provoking passages written where Sagan contemplates that on that dot in the picture: 'Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark' he muses before explaining that this is the only home we have ever known and we have nowhere else to go and how we should: 'deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot'.

Powerful stuff but still we go on polluting the planet, stuffing poisons into the atmosphere, shoving toxic waste into the ground and generally vandalising the only place that we have to live on.
What the image also drives home as we look at that tiny pinprick of light in the vast blackness of space is how we are just a tiny, infinitesimal part of the universe.
It shows how we are not at the center of things as we maintained for centuries, that we are not even at the center of our own solar system which is just one of tens of billions of solar systems in our galaxy alone, a galaxy which is in turn amongst hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe.   
Whilst we could quite easily make excuses for our less knowledgeable predecessors that the Sun and the Planets went around us and that the Earth and everything around, above and below it was created for our delectation, to maintain that idea today that a God created something 13.8 billion light years across just for the inhabitants of an insignificant,  rocky planet situated out in the sticks on the arm of a far flung Galaxy is the height of arrogance or ignorance.  
The image should make us feel very humble and shows our place in the great scheme of things which is an inconsequential dot in the immense vastness of space and alarmingly, the only place we have to live so we should be taking better care of it because once we have wrecked this planet, we literally don't have anywhere else to go.