Tag: In the News

Methane on Mars.

Posted on by Neal Asher

So, NASA are getting all excited about finding a large cloud of methane on Mars, claiming it likely to be the product of life. A corollary of this being that, if life has evolved there independently, it has quite likely evolved all across that universe where conditions permit; that it is a common thing.

This appeals to my sense of reason: Earth is not the centre of the universe with the celestial spheres revolving around it, our biosphere is simply a product of time, chemical reactions and energy, and man is not the God-created reason for everything. Really, as our understanding of the universe grows, our position in it is no higher than that of a microbe locked in the Martian tundra. In fact, words like ‘position’ or maybe ‘purpose’ have no meaning at all.

However, now I’m going to be the skeleton at the wedding. First off I have a big problem with this idea that this methane is a product of life. Methane certainly is a product of life, just like it is a product of all sorts of other complex chemistries. I didn’t hear anyone shouting about life when it was revealed that Saturn’s moon Titan has methane weather systems, that it has methane clouds, rain, snow and sleet. Second off, I have a problem with the idea of independent evolution on Mars.

Do you remember that whole farrago of the Martian meteorite with what looked like microbes imbedded in it? Recently there have been claims that perhaps life spread here from Mars by ancient meteor collision, yet, they are no more valid than a claim that life was spread from Earth to Mars in the same way, which rather kills the idea of independent evolution. In fact, that idea is dead in the water for any life found within the Solar System – we’ll probably end up moving more towards the panspermia view…

Of course, in me the ugly cynic then raises his head over the parapet. NASA being a cash-hungry leaden bureaucracy, quite likely due to look very silly when James Hansen takes his inevitable fall, is now looking to the future. Certain words surface in my mind with tiresome inevitability, words like ‘new’ and ‘president’ and ‘funding’.

£2,500 Golden Hello.

Posted on by Neal Asher

In an attempt to get long-term unemployed back to work, £2,500 is going to be paid to firms for every person, out of work for six months, they recruit and train. So, this is how it will work: firms struggling during this recession/depression/credit crunch are going to leap at this. £2,500 is not going to impel them to employ someone they don’t need or don’t want to employ. Such a quantity of money doesn’t go anywhere near covering a yearly wage or salary. But the firms will employ someone they wanted or needed, claim the money, and nothing will have changed. More useless ‘action’ because this government needs to be seen to be doing something and, doing something as far as Brown and crew are concerned, means throwing our money at it. Another £500 million down the plughole.

The Road to Serfdom

Posted on by Neal Asher

Theodore Dalrymple

Good if old article here from this guy. I must buy some of his books.

A Gallop Down the Road to Serfdom.

If the citizen should drive, he soon discovers that his vehicle confers anxiety rather than freedom. Slight infringements of the driving rules are photographed and he is fined. When he parks he soon discovers that wheel-clamping is the one public service that works with clockwork efficiency. Squeezing money from him is likewise the one task that the State takes seriously, for he cannot rely on the police to protect him, or the schools to educate his children, or the hospitals to succour him when he is ill, or public transport to take him anywhere without hitch. A bloated payroll does not translate into efficient services: on the contrary, it is incompatible with them.

DeathRay

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, Julie Crisp gave me a copy of the Feb/March 2009 issue of DeathRay to cast my eye over. There’s an excellent review of The Gabble in there by Guy Haley (who can claim to have done the SFX review of The Engineer, which I copied and put on top of the synopsis and sample chapters of Gridlinked I sent into Macmillan back in 1999). Here’s a highlight:

WE SEEM TO HAVE BEEN saying “Neal Asher is awesome!” a lot recently. Here it is again: We love you, Neal, you and your futuristic hardmen, weird monsters and chillingly pragmatic AI.

So, after allowing me to dribble over that for a while, Julie turned to page 168 … through to page 175 and I nearly wet myself. There you’ll find a full page redition of the gabbleduck, the story Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck entire, topped off with an inteview with me. That’s a bloody lot of coverage. Thanks DeathRay!

UFO Aliens Don't Like Wind Power.

Posted on by Neal Asher

I wasn’t going to bother with this one, but I feel I’ve got to put my tuppence worth in. So, a UFO struck a wind turbine. Let’s get something straight to start off with: UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. It might well be that a flying pig struck that turbine but until investigators have found the mangled remains of the avian pork it remains unidentified, therefore a UFO. Ufologists are pretty well convinced there is an extraterrestrial explanation for the incident which saw one turbine blade ripped off and another seriously damaged by a vessel “about 170ft long” following numerous reports of mystery “low-flying aircraft”, lights in the sky and, finally, a “big bang”. But of course most people’s understanding of UFO is that it must have been a flying saucer, piloted by greys, zipping around Earth in a flying saucer. And now, since the wind farm has been sealed off by security personnel to keep the loons out, the conspiracy grows. Alien hunter Nick Pope had a light attack of the Area 51s, telling the Sun: “There may be something they don’t want people to see.” For fuck’s sake. The nearest star (other than Sol) is Proxima Centauri and it’s 4.3 light years away. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second so to tot up, that puts it at 25,284,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, give or take a few circuits of the Earth. The next star out is half that much again. Now, let’s just consider how a race capable of developing a technology to enable them to cross such a distance might manage to prang their space craft into a damned wind turbine … driver fatigue? Damned but there’s some fruit loops out there. But at least Pope redeems himself a bit with: Pope concluded: “If a stealth aircraft struck the turbine, it may be made of some material which is itself classified above top secret.” Just a bit of a conspiracy, then.

Emma Thompson & Alistair McGowan

Posted on by Neal Asher

Emma Thompson and Alastair McGowan among those who have bought one-acre plot right at heart of proposed development. Land earmarked by Heathrow owner BAA to build a third runway has been bought by a group of celebrities, scientists, politicians and green campaigners in an attempt to severely delay the development. The new runway would make Heathrow Britain’s biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The stench of hypocrisy is enough to make one gag when ‘celebrities’ start spouting off about the environment. We must travel less, pump less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, really, we must all stay at home and watch television (preferably not a plasma screen since that uses so much energy, anyway, the EU will be banning the sale of them shortly). But what should we all watch?
How about Alistair McGowan Goes Wild with Rhinos? Obviously he and a large film crew jetted off to Kenya to film the program but, since it’s about conservation, that’s okay. Or what about, at this time of year, the various award ceremonies in Hollywood, you know, like the Golden Globes or the Oscars, like the ones Emma Thompson flew to Hollywood to collect? Maybe they’ll put on Alistair McGowan’s Posh & Beck’s Special, which he flew to Madrid to film, or and episode of Who Do You Think You Are, which he flew to India to film. Or surely there’s something with Emma Thompson in which she of course did no location filming. I mean she’s a good girl who works for African charities and of course wouldn’t consider flying out there with a film crew – that’d cause far too much environmental damage. And I’m sure she’ll be hang gliding to Los Angeles while she’s losing weight with Madonna’s fitness trainer.
The reality of what these hypocritical pricks are saying, in the cloistered world of Champagne socialism, is that YOU shouldn’t fly, YOU should reduce your carbon footprint. They, being glitterati smooching with our rulers, are obviously our betters, and can fly first class around the world in pursuit of their careers or whilst delivering their sanctimonious homilies.

Atheist Bus

Posted on by Neal Asher

This is amusing and of course the ‘offensive’ word is once again rolled out to try and shut people up. Seems the world is full of people getting all offended which is great for governments wanting to bring in more legislation to control every second of our lives:

The advertising regulator has received almost 150 complaints that an atheist ad campaign, proclaiming “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, is offensive to Christians and other religions that believe in a single God.

Thing is, religions are allowed to advertise with their ‘Jesus loves you’, ‘God is great’ and some of them even have television channels dedicated to promote their ridiculous Bronze Age nonsense. I find that extremely offensive but don’t expect it to stop any time soon and would defend their right continue. So why shouldn’t atheists be allowed to advertise? In fact let’s have a TV channel and make the message a bit stronger than the rather bland one on the side of that bus. Anyway, I’d love to be a fly on the wall during this investigation:

Hanne Stinson, the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, which launched the campaign, said she “pitied the ASA if they are going to be expected to rule on the probability of god’s existence. However, if they do investigate we will be very happy to respond.

Gov.com Bollocks

Posted on by Neal Asher

Television adverts are irritating at the best of times, but are now becoming doubly irritating as advertisers adopt government doctrine so that now double glazing will reduce your carbon footprint, margarine will stave off obesity and expensive yoghurt will stop your arteries clogging (whilst filling your plastic recycling bin with piss-little pots). But at least these advertisers are only trying to sell us something.

Worse are the endless begging adverts and health warnings paid for by our taxes funnelled to on-message charities like, for example, ASH, which received a total of £11,143 from the public and £320,400 from the government, or like Alcohol Concern, which received nothing from the public but over £400,000 from the Department of Health.

Worse still are the ones brought to us direct by gov.com. Presently we’re being bombarded every evening by the low fat healthy living message from the Morph’s Plasticene family. This message is delivered with such teeth-filing dumbed-down patronising nanny-state knows best subtlety I want to throw a brick through the screen. Apparently healthy people eat carrots and apples and dump burgers in the bin. Healthy people walk rather than use the ‘comfy car’ or the ‘more comfy bus’ (The message here of course that those who use the bus are less reprehensible than those who use a car).

Then, this morning I discover two full-page spreads of this dreck in two national newspapers. Obviously the budget for ramming home gov.com statist tripe will be the last to be cut as the country goes into financial meltdown. I mean, gov.com has £75 million to throw at this, but only just managed to scrape enough together for drugs to stop people going blind.

They just won’t stop, will they? They just won’t be satisfied until we are all good little low-carbon carrot-eating robots obedient to nanny state for every minute of our lives.

Prudence Brown Strikes Again.

Posted on by Neal Asher

It’s nice to know that good old prudence Brown, whilst calling for us all to summon up the ‘Blitz Spirit’ to get us through the credit crunch, is still prepared to stretch his generous hand across the world. Today we learn that $10,000,000 of our money has been promised in aid to the Gaza strip. So, as we enter the new year and you’re collecting your P45 or shutting the front door on your house for the last time you can be comforted by the knowledge that your taxes are helping out Hamas. This bunch of murderous fuck-pigs can now spend their plentious funding from Iran on more weapons rather than on helping the people they are supposed to represent. Perhaps this year Hamas will be able to beat last year’s record of 5,000 Islamic Jihad missiles dropped on Israel, who knows?

Thanks a lot Gordon.

Of course, it’s worth noting that the sum promised is in dollars this time. This is probably because Qassam Missile Inc. would rather be paid in a currency with some chance of retaining its value.

Note: If you’d like to check out just how much of your money is blown each year on funding outside of Britain by the Department for International Development, check out the figures in the tables starting at page 240 of this document. Oh, and since the figures are in ‘£ thousand’ don’t forget to add three zeros. Yep, you guessed it: it’s billions. DFID expenditure was in the region of £4.6 billion in 2005/06. As for 2008/09, these tables give planned expenditure, so probably more was spent. Here’s some examples: after £163 million on administration you’ll be glad to know £94 million was to be thrown at ‘global environment funds’ and about £1.5 billion at Africa.