Saturday
Someone is tampering with our weather. I suspect George Bush. He is protesting his innocence over global warming, a sure sign of culpability. Climate change, that's the problem. Warmer winters perhaps, but more changeable weather and wet and windy days in summer. Is the world really that stupid? Probably.
Cold, even March-like weather here today. I'm moaning because I am wearing shorts, just because it is now summer, and my white legs need exposure. I'm just glad they are long shorts.
Irresponsible?
Feeling in an irresponsible mood today, perhaps because it is Friday, and I have invited some friends to share a meal this evening, and so the tastebuds are beginning to ooze in anticipation. Roast lamb, that has been marinating for two days in a somewhat Mexican marinade. They'll never realise it's Mexican by the time it's on the table with couscous, roast peppers, potatoes, cabbage (for greenery). There's some rhubarb in the garden, so something must be possible.
My second cousin gave birth, to a baby boy, her third. I've written suggesting we form a family pact, as my daughter has three daughters (as some readers may recall) contract together - that'll keep our fortunes in the family, and help to form our next dynasty. How fortunes are made.
One of these days.
Increasingly the Internet is being used as a research tool. It is a perfect medium, as papers, discussions and ideas can be displayed, and left to fester until they stimulate another mind into action. There are dangers, not always appreciated by those who enter the occasional word in the Google search box.
The choice of word is very important, and it best to take some time to think about that, and then to try a variety of words and phrases. All search engines have their own systems, and it is also worthwhile to look at the way it enables advanced searches.
Most importantly you must realise that the Internet is unsupervised. Anyone can put anything on your screen. You must exercise discretion and assess the failure of each contribution to see how it fits into the jigsaw of knowledge. This is not a tabloid newspaper, where you know the facts have been distorted to meet the wishes of the paper's owner (although not everyone understands that).
The increasing use of open source is allowing bias to be removed. One great example is at www.wikipedia.com, an online dictionary that has been created by contributions from many thousands of people. Anyone can add material to the site, and change anything put there by someone else. The task is to hone and perfect each section using our combined intelligence. It is a great resource, and should be one of the first places you start any search. It is better than search engines, more refined than search directories, it is a fund of knowledge. Use it, contribute to it.
Congestion
Britain's roads are congested with traffic. It is slowing down the progress of all our lives. Recently the government has put forward some ideas for discussion, which fail to really address the root causes.
We have too many people living in this small land. We do not need more people. Those that are here should be given more freedom to organise their own lives, pay less taxes, do more productive work.
Ipso facto we have too many vehicles for our crowded roads. Go to France, with same number of people but twice the usable land area and it is comfortable.
Our vehicles pollute, because we insist on using fossils fuels and do little to develop alternatives, even though they are available.
Our approach to travel is wrong: cars are penis extendsions, that offer all the comforts of home, and the only TV programme that deals with transport on British TV extols the virtues of expensive, fast, raunchy vehicles and sneers at eco-friendly runabouts.
Most people travel no more than 5 miles in each journey.
Those are some of the problems, but what solutions can be found?
Pollution and congestion can be alleviated by insisting that only environmentally-friendly non-polluting at point of travel vehicles should be allowed in urban centres. And those vehicles should not be capable of fast acceleration or of travelling at more than 30 mph.
Inter-city transport links should be improved, leading to car parks on the outskirts of every town where public transport or transfer to eco-cars takes place. I see no reason why we should not develop vehicles that are in two parts, one containing an engine to push us along at speed over long distances, the other having a battery pack or hydogen-fuelled engine (perhaps) for urban use.
The other advantage of us all using more than one vehicle is the boost to the economy that could bring. Building works for the new car-parks, building and servicing of the new urban vehicles, and adding computer control to all these vehicles so that they are incapable of exceeding speed limits, and will take avoidance action when close to another vehicle or a person. Perhaps we should wear identity disks that will apply the brakes to any vehicle that gets too close.
Money will not solve the problem, it will just create an unjust divisive society. We need initiative and thinking beyond our present restrictive practices.
