Tag: In the News

IRA Plonkers.

Posted on by Neal Asher

So, we have the ‘Continuity IRA’ and the ‘Real IRA’. You know, if they weren’t killing people this would almost be funny. Doesn’t all this remind you of something out of The Life of Brain

BRIAN: Are you the Judean People’s Front?
REG: Fuck off!
BRIAN: What?
REG: Judean People’s Front. We’re the People’s Front of Judea! Judean People’s Front. Cawk.
FRANCIS: Wankers.
BRIAN: Can I… join your group?
REG: No. Piss off.

Isn’t it a shame that some people’s existence only relates to the past, and never the future.

Red Wine and Cigarettes

Posted on by Neal Asher

Now I know why I enjoy both of them together!

For the study, Chao’s group collected data on 84,170 men who participated in the California Men’s Health Study. Among these men, the researchers identified 210 cases of lung cancer. The researchers found that there was, on average, a 2 percent lower risk of lung cancer associated with each glass of red wine consumed per month. The greatest reduction was among men who smoked and drank one to two glasses of red wine a day. These men lowered their risk for lung cancer by 60 percent, Chao’s group found.Of course this won’t be publicised by nanny government or its lickspittle BBC. And it definitely won’t be something temperance politicians in Scotland will be talking about.

Philip Pullman Article in Full.

Posted on by Neal Asher
Since the Times Online article has disappeared and the Google cache one is unavailable, here it is in full:

Malevolent Voices that Destroy our Freedoms
Philip Pullman
Times Online
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:19 UTC

Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness – the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation – after all we have an Established Church – or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don’t know who you are

You’re mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasizes about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

Philip Pullman will deliver a keynote speech at the Convention on Modern Liberty at the Institute of Education in London tomorrow

Philip Pullman Article

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to Phil Edwards for pointing this out to me on boingboing, the original article at The Times Online. Here we have Philip Pullman talking about how our freedoms are being destroyed:

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today. We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness – the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
Go and read the whole thing.

Stem Cell Gamble

Posted on by Neal Asher

Damn, I’ve only just read this. I didn’t realize this stuff was so advanced. But then I should have guessed we’d be seeing treatments like this off the radar in countries where medical advances aren’t burdened by leaden bureaucracy and HSE minded jobsworths. This is fucking brilliant!

A year on, he has regained strength in his legs, back and stomach, can control his upper body movements and walk with parallel bars.

His circulation has improved, hairs have started growing on his legs for the first time in 20 years and his hope now is that soon he will be able to walk unaided.

I did a short piece once for Nature Magazine, in which I had a character walking into a museum to gaze at a wheelchair in a glass case with a plaque detailing when such archaic devices were last used. Seems this has every chance of being a reality within my lifetime. Excellent!

Hey, That White Stuff is Snow!

Posted on by Neal Asher

So, we get a few days of snow, in some places lying a foot deep but in most places sitting under the six inch range, but it’s noticable how TV reporters won’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. I saw one reporter the other night walking across a churchyard through six inches of snow and, since the stuff was barely up to her ankles, can only assume she’s one of those who has a problem with decimalization. That would be six centimetres dear.
One would think, by the news, that the home counties have become an extension of Hurricane Alley, during an earthquake, and probably with a Biblical plague or two on the way. All this freaky weather is causing ‘traffic chaos’ as cars fail to negotiate a bit of snow turned to slush by gritting lorries; schools have been closed and many people aren’t turning up for work; London buses weren’t operating and, apparently, it’s been snowing underground since the tube closed down.
It seems that our society is now completely geared to cater for the lowest common denominator: the prat in his car who has failed to comprehend that ice is slippery so crashes and snarls up the road, or little ADHD Jasmina who’s fall in the playground will result in her bloated scrounging mummy suing the school, and that this is then taken advantage of by those perpetually looking for an excuse for a day off work.
We are warned, should we need to brave these terrible conditions, that we should load up our cars with hot drinks, warm clothing and a selection of igloo-building tools. With the complicity of the hysterical media, it appears the people of this country have been nannied into a permanent state of infantilism. I’m guessing that we won’t be turning out any Shackletons in the near future.

Stem Cells.

Posted on by Neal Asher

I have to say that Obama took a little step upwards in my estimation when I read that he intends to take the religious right handcuffs off the stem cell researchers.
Stem cell research advocates have waited nearly eight years for the policy change President-elect Barack Obama has signaled he’ll make in the early days of his administration: lifting the restrictions imposed by President Bush on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells.
And now it seems the FDA is approving trails for using stem cells to heal spinal cord injuries. A branch of research which is more than promising since the researchers have already used this technique to heal the spines of rats (listen to the animal rights protesters scream). This one has to be the first target to hit because, the moment the first cripple gets out of his wheelchair, it will tune down the loud objections of those ‘moralists’ with a direct line to their invisible friend in the sky.

But this stuff, objections or otherwise, is being pursued all across the world. Just the few I mention here are the tip of the iceberg and only today we hear about stem cell therapy being used on MS sufferers.

Not one of 21 adults with relapsing-remitting MS who had stem cells transplanted from their own bone marrow deteriorated over three years.
We very definitely need this research and it can be seen that moral objections will be falling by the wayside as researchers hack out a path to differentiating adult stem cells for such therapy, which has to be the ultimate goal.

Now, researchers at Northwestern University have found new evidence that hematopoietic stem cells, a type of adult stem cell derived from the bone marrow that gives rise to blood cells, are capable of undergoing more diverse transformations than previously thought and could be transformed into a wide variety of tissue types, not just blood cells.

Damn but it’s weird – every so often I discover my inner optimist.

LED Light.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Over in Crete, and probably at holiday destinations all over the world, you can buy lighters, with LED torches incorporated in them whose intensity is astonishing. You can also buy torches alone that utilize numerous LEDs, and throw out one hell of a beam of light powered by a set of batteries smaller than the collection of LEDs itself. I’ve seen keyrings with these things in, and know that some manufacturers produce them for home lighting. However, they haven’t caught on as yet, because of the ridiculous unit cost. But perhaps they will now:

The researchers have designed a bulb that is three times more energy efficient than today’s best offer and can cut lighting bills by 75 per cent. They are made using Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made substance used in LEDs (light emitting diodes). It is routinely used in bike lights, mobile phones and camera flashes.

But until now the production costs have been too expensive for widespread use in homes and offices – a single bulb would have cost £20. However, the researchers have found a cheaper technique to help manufacture the bulbs and manufacturers have begun work on production prototypes. The first units could hit shelves within two years. Professor Colin Humphrey, head of the centre, said: “This could well be the holy grail in terms of providing our lighting needs for the future.”

The bulbs are 12 times more efficient that conventional tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than compact fluorescent “energy efficient” bulbs. They can burn for 100,000 hours and they illuminate instantly and can be dimmed, unlike energy efficient bulbs. If they were installed in every home and office the bulbs could cut the proportion of UK electricity used for lights from 20 per cent to 5 per cent a year.

Flood Warning

Posted on by Neal Asher

Ach, despite my resolution not to rant so much in here, I’m going to have to have a rant right now. Okay, it’s raining very heavily here today, there are pools across the fields, dikes overflowing and pools spreading across the roads. Because I had a dental appointment this morning I braved these conditions to get there – gosh I’m such a hero.

At the end of Latching High Street there was a fire engine parked off-road pumping out water perhaps to prevent someone’s house turning into an indoor swimming pool, which is fair enough. I drove through about an inch of water and turned right heading towards Maldon whereupon I came upon police vehicles parked around a flood across the road and extending about fifty feet. That they were there I assumed was because there had been some sort of accident, but no, they were turning drivers around, not allowing them to drive through about six inches of water. I thought this ludicrous, but obeyed these officers of the law who were obviously lacking something better to do with their time.

Heading on another route into Maldon I drove through a similar flood, you know, low gear and high revs, just chug through – it’s not going to be a problem unless you’re an idiot. After the dental appointment I avoided the police road block and found myself in a slow moving queue into Latchingdon. What now? Well, it seemed the police or the fire service had blocked off one lane of the road to prevent people driving through about four inches of water.

I despair of this pathetic molly-coddling. Are the British public such wimps and inadequate they must be protected from puddles?