I'm not going to wibble on about nuclear fusion, I'm just posting a link to an article published on Phy.org yesterday regarding the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US achieving ignition at their facility.
In summary, Ignition is the fusion state, at which point the fusion becomes self-sustaining and potentially outputs more energy than is input. This is a big deal, read the article to find out more follow the link below.
Aside from the post below, all I have done for the last four or five months is write, read, fill in forms and do housework.
I have over a hundred thousand words in one novel, and close
to twelve thousand in another. This is why blogging has fallen by the wayside in
the main. It’s not that I don’t want to write for the blog, after all, there is
so much to talk about at the moment personally and in the wider world. The
issue is time, eyestrain, and the ability to concentrate.
I shall leave this post at this point here and try to elaborate
some more later. The one thing I will announce is that I have a new desk chair.
This is will hopefully assist with writing novels, blog posts, etc, but will
also allow me to make some Metal Earth models I’ve had for close to two years gathering
dust.
Should the west, UK, Europe, Canada, US, Australia open the doors to all Afghans that want to leave Afghanistan? (and other oppressive nations)? Thus, rather than allowing those people to fall to resentment and misery under oppressive regimes, just drain their home nations blood by non-violent means.
Let Darwin do the rest, after all, what with a
preference for male heirs, and minimising education, these medieval cultures
are on the slow road to self eradication anyway.
An Afghan nurse, plumber, architect, shopkeeper,
estate agent, banker is an asset, but not if they are not allowed to leave
their home without a chaperone. It's a waste to leave these people to the
Taliban.
I get the sleeping terrorist worry. But, there are going to
be two likely outcomes from the Taliban takeover. Mass refugees leaving, living
wasted existences on borders elsewhere, or subtle unreported massacres.
I'd love to be wrong. I'd love for the Taliban to
bring stability and peace to the region after what must be close to four
decades of strife since the Russian invasion, never mind the decades of
internal strife prior to that.
This is one of those opportunities if it can be
framed right. Uplift all those who want out and drop them into free societies,
where they can have their cultural identity in the mix of all other cultures, and prevent the likely genocide which will ensue if the Taliban are true to form.
The Taliban will have their Ideological Utopia, and they will invariably murder
their way to it. Why not for the first time in umpteen decades, defuse it? Just
rescue those that don't want to be treated no better than farmyard animals. And
leave the new Afghanistan to the ideologues.
Yes, there could be a counter-insurgency, and if
people want to stay and fight, crack on. But those that don't want to fight,
and just want to live a life, have kids, hobbies, friends, whatever. Just pick
them up and demonstrate why the western way is better in spite of its faults.
And give the miserable religious Luddites their land to fuck up as they will.
And when their infrastructure has crumbled, their intelligentsia has left and
all the weapons they looted at this time are worn out, they can look on the
wider decadent world, and how well it's doing and contemplate rethinking their
thinking.
The alternative if we get involved again is
decades more war, trying to repatriate people back to their native lands from
shitty camps in `nowhere and no prospect' land. And all the while there could be
genius being lost or wasted through living hand to mouth.
Just the existence of
refugees at this juncture of history demonstrate how far we have yet to climb
on the civilisation ladder.
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
I often wonder about the absence of energy. What if black holes aren't hot? What if black holes dissipate heat and are cold and absent of energy? What if absolute zero doesn't exist because as with heat or time or space you can always add a bit on, the same as infinity plus one is still infinity.
I saw this article yesterday and was immediately struck by the fact that these guys have effectively created a definite absence at the periphery, where previously there was blur of bleed over. Straight away you can see how this can totally refine imagery (no pun intended), but beyond that, it opens the door on `what isn't', and where `what isn't' is ... there might be something paradoxical there ... that or I'm talking shit.
Harnessing the Dark Side: Optical Singularities Could Be Used for a Wide Range of Applications
A fascinating article. I wonder (and I'm sure I read something about this in another article) whether being open and welcoming to change, accepting, and enjoying change has something to do with the process?
I see it a lot, people who are stuck in the era they were born, no change is good change, the rose-tinted hindsight glasses go on and they effectively insulate themselves from new external stimuli.
I know we can all be guilty of it, and music is one of the indicators, and it's catered to widely (70s, 80s, 90s stations etc) and thus feeds itself. The whole notion that the visual cortex plays into memory, suggests an emotional `excitement' something new, a challenge first perceived visually. Sound, music has the same attributes but in a different way. It would be interesting to see if further studies find a connection to `new stimuli' regardless of source.
Ok, so this isn’t my usual fare (and hello … I have been absent, it happens, I’m a very busy man all of a sudden). Below is an economist Edi...
