EINSTEIN IS STILL RIGHT – AND IT’S THE ELECTRICIAN’S FAULT

Late last year the scientific world was just about rendered speechless when it was discovered that neutrinos could, apparently, travel faster than light.  Gasp - this surely proved that anything was possible if Einstein could be proved wrong. All sorts of fantastical things could be true and, yes, perhaps we are even being visited by aliens – why even David Icke might be right and we could all be about to become cold blooded….

Sadly for the world’s conspiracy theorists, UFOlogists and mumbo jumbo addicts, Einstein is still to be proven wrong. Nope, those darn neutrinos were not travelling faster than light; it was down to…experimental error, specifically the fibre optic cable attached to a GPS receiver.  How disappointing but I guess that will cost the electrician his job.  

More excitingly though – experimental error was exactly what I predicted in my blog on 27 November ( http://douglaswhitworth.blogspot.com/2011/11/could-ufos-exist-more-exciting-news.html)  How remarkable! Now, I would never suggest that I have any gift for predicting this sort of amazing outcome, however if anyone would like their palms read……

GREEK TRAGEDY

There is a gut-hollowing hopelessness to the predicament of Greece. They are stuck between either staying put in a place where it is almost certainly fatal for them to remain, or of going to an alternative destination that is almost unbearable to contemplate.  Every evening TV screen are filled with a semi-serialised horror show depicting the seemingly inevitable collapse of the world’s oldest democracy amidst scenes of mob chaos and shallow political manoeuvring. Meanwhile a level of austerity is being imposed upon it by Europe’s leaders, who are so obsessed with sustaining their fiction of a united states of Europe, that it is closer to a form of economic vandalism than anything vaguely resembling a solution.

The truth is, for Greece, there is now no solution that is not almost disastrous.

The best analogy I can think of this that Greece is like a critically failing aeroplane with fatal engine and structural problems and the only airports far outside flight range . The pilots (that’s the Greek politicians, unfortunately for the Greek people) have 2 options:

Option 1: Do nothing. This requires that the pilots deny the crisis is as bad as the flashing cockpit dials and the screaming, bulging eyed passengers might otherwise hint at and instead listen to the ranting of the distant air traffic controllers (the Eurozone leaders) telling them that they have to “adopt tough austerity” by jettisoning all their fuel to lighten the load so they can stay up a bit longer (the austerity measures).

Option 2: Believe the evidence in front of their eyes and get their plane out of the sky and on to the ground as quickly as possible - whilst they still have an element of control, whilst the engines are still just stuttering and the brakes might still just work and whilst there is still have a bit of a choice as to where they bring it down.

Option 2 is Greece going for a semi-disorderly default that will see it leave the Euro, adopt a new drachma, and at least hope it can escape partially intact with some longer term prospects for post-crash recovery.

Option 1 is to stay the path they are on and to “see how long they can keep their bird in the sky”. In that case, pity the ordinary Greeks when it does come plunging down in an uncontrolled spiral out of the Eurozone sky.

Its decision time…………

The US Civil War

Last year was the 150^th anniversary of the start of the US Civil war and we visited Shiloh, Gettysburg and Bull Run, scenes of some of the war’s most famous battles.  There is something deeply disturbing about a civil war where a nation turns upon itself, often with terrifying savagery, and so it was with the US Civil war that began in 1861. Yet, it stands part from so many other such wars, not so much for how it was conducted, but how it concluded and how that shaped not just the future of the USA, but arguably the entire world.

 Unlike so many civil wars that leave their bitter legacies and hates to be transmitted down through future generations, occasionally even bubbling to the surface in renewed conflict (the Balkans), the US civil war concluded in a quite remarkable fashion considering the virtual charnel house of death and slaughter it had become, with over 620 000 soldiers dying and untold havoc being wreaked upon the citizens of the affected states.  That this remarkable ending was possible at all was down to President Lincoln’s overwhelming desire, even during the darkest days of the conflict, for national reconciliation (certainly not shared by all those in his own Gov’t). In this Lincoln was fully supported by two key Union generals, namely US Grant, himself a future president, and WT Sherman (who had terrorised Georgia and the Carolinas in 1865 with his march through those states), both of whom who concluded quite dramatically generous surrenders with their southern opponents. In the case of Sherman this was at great political risk to himself when he accepted Confederate General Joe Johnson’s surrender after Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathiser. Such was the bond between Sherman and Johnson that 26 years later Johnson was a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral, one month before his own death.

But this remarkably sane, far-sighted approach was matched by key figures in the South, who took their lead from their iconic hero, General Lee. The scourge of many Northern armies in war, at the critical moment it was Lee who, against the wishes of the Confederate President (Davis), prevented his  Army of Northern Virginia leading the South into years of guerrilla warfare, which could have had devastating implications for the future unity of the entire USA. Instead he matched Lincoln’s desire for reconciliation in deed, both in the manner of the surrender and the peaceful disarming of his army (and with it any real Southern prospect of a continuing guerrilla struggle) and thereafter by personal example in how he then lived out the few remaining years of his life.

Such dramatically reconciled endings to wars of great savagery are very rare. That it happened as it did, now looking back 150 years, conceals from us just how improbable such a scenario was at the time, and how it all turned on the enlightened outlooks and actions of such a frighteningly small handful of individuals. This is even more remarkable given that the most important figure in all this, Lincoln, was assassinated before all the Southern armies had even surrendered, which left the hopes for a reconciled peace hanging by the barest of threads in the chaotic, febrile atmosphere of the last few weeks of the war in 1865.

This is not to deny there was terrible post war hardship in the South and great mourning across the entire country for the loss of life. Likewise, Southern resentment at the wars’ outcome even today is not completely absent. Yet, within a few decades, the US was fighting as a single, united nation in the 1^st World War, and thereafter in the 2^nd World War, where such involvement was ultimately pivotal to the future of a free western Europe. Thereafter the USA went on to become the world’s most powerful country and one of its greatest democracies. Had the South won, or, more likely, been able to force a bitter, resentful truce, a deeply wounded, highly polarised nation and a dramatically weakened country split in two would probably have emerged, unable to realise its potential or wield the strength it does today. This would inevitably have affected its involvement, even its participation, in both world wars. Conceivably, it could have meant an Imperial Japan dominating Asia today, no D-Day invasion and the Iron Curtain quite probably being drawn across Europe along the coast of France.

Perhaps, nearly 150 years on, we are yet to appreciate the impact that the civil war in America had on the world in which we find ourselves today and the lives we lead within in it.

  Visit civil war photo gallery

Three Kim's for the price of one.....

Amid a torrent of tears that was a bizarre as it was chilling, last month the next Kim-in-Line took over in North Korea. Kim Jong-un succeeds his father, Kim Jong-Il, who in turn succeeded his own father, Kim ll-sung, in a sort of succession of Stalinist like Royalty. For the long suffering people of what’s euphemistically called the Hermit Kingdom, this must be like some recurring nightmare.  

And a recurring nightmare it is. Like some twisted Hotel California, it seems that although the Kims check out from time to time, they never leave. Take Granddad Kim (let’s call him Kim 1). Notwithstanding his status, whilst alive, as a fire-breathing, godless Stalinist, it seems there was a bit of a change of heart after the cessation of his more basic bodily functions. As his last breath faded away, a niche was miraculously found for him in the rather overcrowded market of the afterlife.

In life Kim 1 studiously followed the job description of “Really Mad Dictator” to the letter and beyond. He was President of the Republic, as well as simultaneously Chairman and General Secretary of the inevitable (Korean) Workers’ Party. Even Uncle Joe Stalin allowed another minion to take the ceremonial role of President. Not Kim 1. He was the megalomaniac generalissimo’s generalissimo.  It seems though that his megalomania exists beyond the grave, for he is now even designated in North Korea’s constitution as their “Eternal President” beaming down upon his starved and impoverished people like some distant, benevolent god from huge posters all over Pyong Yang.

He was succeeded by Kim Jung Ill (Number 2), who has also now of late departed this life.  Kim 2 apparently suffered a heart attack due to physical and mental over-work, the Korean News Agency dutifully informed the world. He was, we are told, on his train, travelling to offer "field guidance" to workers, when he died. The mind boggles, but I guess those workers will get over the disappointment given time ….

Kim 2’s status in the great beyond is still to be clarified – no one can be too sure what will happen to him, it’s all a bit tricky because his Dad’s already secured the top job – perhaps Kim 1 will magnanimously allowed him observer status from his constitutional perch in the afterlife. All this would of course be silly farce if it weren’t for the fact that Kims 1 and 2 were brutal monsters who after their grim terms as life presidents could still be used for propaganda purposes in times of national emergency. Such is the level of madness and indoctrination in North Korean propoganda. 

This is especially dangerous given that, as its neighbours are so acutely aware, North Korea “has the nuclear bomb”. The only shaky consolation is that it doesn’t yet appear to have sufficiently reliable missile capability to launch it with a more than even chance it won’t fall back on top of them. Relying on a sort of national nuclear embarrassment is hardly the greatest deterrent for those its its shadow.

But, back to the story of succession. Kim 2 was succeeded by Kim Jong-un with what now must qualify as genetically inherited “despotism”. Kim 3 looks like a particularly bad tempered cherub, with his weirdly round and expressionless chubby face. Unknown and seemingly unknowable, it’s hard not to believe he is the next blank canvas of terror to be stretched across his impoverished nation. In the impenetrable world of North Korean politics it’s impossible to predict what will happen next, save for the fact that the misery and pain of the citizens of what is, not so much a Hermit Kingdom, but one huge merciless Gulag, will continue with the 3^rd Kim.

We are not to blame (and someone else must pay...)

Don’t you just hear this all the time? We seem to live in a society where the individual is never at fault but everything keeps going wrong and it’s always someone else who is to blame (and who should therefore “pay”).

We Don’t Want No (self-funded) Education..

A few months ago tens of thousands of students marched through London, demanding free education and voicing their fury at the Government’s withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance. Opposition politicians induced in their heavily jowled complexions a hue redolent of deep indignation and lowered normally shrill tones to expound at length upon the terrible long term damage to society of the loss of such academic essentials  as Classical Greek studies etc. As ever, all proportion immediately absented itself from rational debate, although not quite as quickly as cold rationality. Woolly academics knotted their eyebrows and intoned with near mortal seriousness that this was the modern day equivalent of the barbarians sacking Rome. It would not do – the government must recant and reinstate what it had just withdrawn.

The problem with this of course, is that Governments don’t pay for anything. They don’t have any money – its “ours”, so to speak. They are not income generating, just a reasonably inefficient distribution network for the incomes of others.  It squeezes taxes out of those who can pay and then uses the proceeds to run the country. But that doesn’t stop a lot of people seeming to think its sitting on a great hoard of loot, like Smaug, Tolkien’s evil dragon from Middle Earth. There is no loot – Mother Hubbard’s cupboards are bare.

Pensions – we won’t pay!

It’s the same with pensions. We don’t want to pay for the pensions needed to sustain us for the ever extending lengths of life we are busy living. Or, more correctly, we “want someone else to pay”; anyone but us because, you see, it’s not our fault we are living too long and saving too little. Generally speaking, most people appear quite positive about the likely year of their demise gradually receding into the future (see last blog). Given the fury about Pensions though, you could be mistaken for believing quite a lot of folk are rather annoyed about this inconvenient longevity now being foisted so unfairly upon them. “We didn’t plan on living longer – it’s not our fault – somebody else must pay”. Who? Those planning to die sooner, or perhaps our kids and tax payers of the future?

Past generations of governments have also been adept at concealing behind a curtain of lies the ever growing pension liability elephant-in-the-room. It has been a gross dereliction of responsibility. Now that elephant has burst through its rice paper curtain, trumpeting its hunger in the form of a financial black hole of billions of pounds. Now we will all pay to fill that hole, one way of the other.

It’s the Bankers Fault – We Won’t Pay for Their Crisis

This is quite a popular refrain. They should put a tune to it and release as the iTunes free download of the week. It would do very well. Unfortunately it’s not quite as good as it sounds.

Who would deny bankers are a wretched lot and certainly, much of the 2008 banking crisis can be laid at their doors (those that are still open of course). Some of those banks are gone (Lehman’s), some are propped up with public money (RBS) and some are so numbingly deeply in debit that only Central Banks will lend to them (the unhappily named zombie banks of the Eurozone).

But bankers can’t be blamed for individual debt. For far too long too many people have lived unaffordable lifestyles as a personal choice. People are in hock up to the eyes and higher. For instance we have had years of mad house price that fuelled a debt based buying binge on the assumption our properties would just keep getting worth more and more. Our bits of land and lumps of mortar were being accorded values that, with a little semi-sober reflection, were simply crazy. Many are now in the trap of negative equity with debts that they cannot repay as wages stagnate and unemployment soars.

So, when exactly does personal responsibility kick in? Or perhaps that went out with the high street when internet shopping changed the status quo for ever. Virtual shopping, virtual goods, virtual money (and credit has always been just that) and virtual responsibility, or perhaps it was also outsourced to the Far East, and we just never noticed it had gone, like so much else.

So, this is not someone else’s crisis, where we are the angry but innocent victims of the faults and errors of others. We are the guilty too for we have, as individuals and as a society, been:

·         Voting for and believing lying governments with their lying chancellors who told us they had fashioned a form of socialist nirvana that others would fund (that being those self-same nasty Banks again paying the taxes to which our politicians became addicted); that we would be sustained forever by increasing government spending and the sweat on the brows of others in far off lands, whose cheap goods we devoured without thought;

·         As willing participant in this illusionary state, borrowing and living on credit often so far beyond our means to afford that now we risk losing all. We refused to believe these days could ever come, knowing of course that ultimately they would, as they now have.

The whole of the “crisis” is about much more than the Banks.  It’s about a whole way of life that is foundering because it has not kept pace with the new rising East and because, perhaps, at its most basic, it is unwilling and unprepared to confront the future, which will be very different from the comfortable oh so recent past. And, in response, it has sought to build a great, mighty wall of laws, and rights and trade restrictions all cemented together with petty short-term politicking, all so this great fearful outside can be kept at bay. But, like all walls (save, ironically for China’s Great Wall thus far) it is now crumbling and fast.

It is this East, in the form of China, India and others, that has as its values; a work ethic that for the “west” (and the rest for that matter), is intimidatingly unconstrained; levels of education in key areas (science, engineering, technology) that generates hundreds of thousands of super-skilled,  determined and ambitious graduates every year and a competitive advantage that has streaked ruthlessly away from the “35 hour weekers of the west” comfortably shackled in their working time directives and dreams of early and long retirements that someone else must pay for.

Of course the west can respond to this challenge. It still has enormous wealth, knowledge and ability. To do this however, the West must realise that it’s not the rules of the game that have changed, it’s a whole new ball game, and the other kids are setting the pace.

Future Shock

In 1970 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote his famous book of the above title, which was all about what happens to people overwhelmed by technological change which takes place too quickly for them to cope.  For all that, the world of 1970 now seems as technologically remote from 2011 as 1900 must have seemed in 1970 and even Toffler would probably admit it has changed beyond what he could have imagined.

Increasingly so, it seems as if everything is changing at an ever accelerating rate. The “life-long familiars” of our worlds are vanishing fast and the facets and features of our lives are now morphing into ever more sophisticated versions of themselves, evolving and merging as they simultaneously spread their technological reach out ever further, ever faster. For the first time in human history, we are observers of a technological evolution taking place at hyper-speed. We see more change in a period of 24 months than our recent ancestors would have seen in their whole lifetimes.

Where is it all headed?

The faster it moves the more difficult it becomes to predict – what’s obvious of course is that there is no foreseeable destination; it’s the long “now” that races away from us into the haze of the strange decades ahead. Watching it take place, it’s moving too fast to be controlled. Who would deny we are already on the downhill sprint to near invisible yet all powerful computing; the hardware is busy vanishing into ever smaller versions of itself yet each generation is exponentially more power and versatile than its “parent”.  Soon it will disappear into the very material of our lives, under our skin, our clothes, and every device we own, out of sight yet immensely powerful and permanently awake. And when all these devices and smart programmes are interconnected and communicating 24-7, will that challenge our very concepts of sentience?

How long now before software is developed that can develop smarter versions of its self and thereby become responsible for its own destiny. Such a concept challenges our very preconceptions of our own position in the natural pecking order of “life”.  In 1970 such a statement would have been ridiculous; the stuff of hard science fiction – now we can speculate about whether it might not already be happening. The fiction in science fiction is under threat.

All around us this technological revolution is taking place. It’s not that is good or bad, such terms in themselves seem naively out of place and quaintly redundant – we are cumbersome, static, biological witnesses to another form of evolution, not on the comfortable, glacial speeds of the more natural kind with which we are so familiar, but one that, in the proverbial blinking of a couple of eyes, continuously contorts and twists itself into ever more fantastic technological “miracles” that our grandparents would never have believed possible.

When is a human more than a human?

We laugh at the endless succession of z-list celebs undergoing hilariously bad makeovers. Like the weirdly plump, plaster of Paris like face of Paul McCartney who in some expressionless, pinched way now looks younger than he did in 30 years ago. Or Madonna, like some phantasmagorical nicotine blond harpy who defies time and the aging process thanks to science (and kabala). How old is she now – 40 or 60 – it’s impossible to tell. Yet these attempts to hold back the process of ageing (for millennia the dream of the powerful) represent the first crude steps in what will in pretty short order develop into real life extension technology. Life spans are already increasing (much to the distress of pension fund managers who watch their liabilities soar in parallel) and medical science will only add more years to that tally. What will lifespans be in 200 years? Would you put money on the likelihood that people might not be living for 200, 300 or even more years? The fact is, the longer you live, the longer you’ll stay alive. As Lemmy once said, the secret to long life is not dying.

Prosthetics are another area of amazing progress, no doubt accelerated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The artificial will soon easily catch up and accelerate effortlessly past the biological with its vastly superior evolutionary speeds; it will only be a short while before the paralympians are able to out-compete the purely meat Olympians – Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter is already leading the way in more ways than one. No wonder other athletes object to competing against him. They can see where this is going. Oscar can upgrade his legs.

But that is only half the story. Even today many people think of prosthetics as limbs, hands, hips and the like. Yet, they are becoming ever more sophisticated, replacing ever more human parts, and enhancing others. Silicon chips will soon start assisting the brain. Research is currently being conducted in the area of retinal microchip implantation. Elsewhere Intel researchers say that by the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer. Instead, users will open documents and surf the web using nothing more than brain waves. You could be forgiven for wondering why it would take until 2020.

What we are seeing is that our brains are merging with our technology. Not long no doubt till, a few chips can be strategically inserted to boost specific intellectual facilities and enhance the senses. The potential is almost too vast to understand - the implications tantamount to the rise of a new and increasingly superior life form on earth.  This may seem like some science fiction story – but it’s not and science is already moving in this direction as this is it this kind of enhancement to our intellectual capacities that will enable us to keep pace with the developments of what was once our own technology but which is now set to take on a new and much more equal relationship with us.

So what does that mean for the concept of a human being? Science has the potential to enable someone smarter than a biological human being. This philosophical Rubicon is almost here, now. Will we have begun to evolve into something else?

A Technological Event Horizon

It’s as if we are all headed to an invisible point beyond which we cannot imagine what will happen. In that sense we have already crossed a sort of technological “event horizon” in that such a momentum is building that it’s already too late to stop or slow down. Not that we should, although its technological and high speed, its evolution and you can as much stop and backtrack it as you can reverse engineer a sausage to get back your favourite pig.

The shock of the future is now and its voltage it starting to soar.

The Titanic Sets Sail

So the great Euro farce rolls on. The question the markets all want answered, not unreasonably, is “How will you repay your debts”?

And the answer is (part 1)…

Germany thinks the answer is by sort of… well… doing away with everybody else’s democracy, telling them they will be punished for over borrowing (when very soon no one will lend them money anyway) and introducing centralised fiscal management, by committee, from the loathed and unpopular Brussels.

Then you get 5 feet of French President to sell it to the quivering victims of 10 years of failed Eurozone experimentation to boost his election prospects. This is not a recipe for success.

The huge, great obvious problems remain, almost blissfully undisturbed by all this frantic squabbling. There is a huge lack of productivity (except for Germany and Scandinavia), too much welfare state (which compounds the productivity problem) and living standards that have accelerated with alarming speed, most notably in those countries least able to afford them.

And therein is the problem. Europe is not a single country and one-size-fits-all economic rules don’t work. The solution being applied is not far short of taking a family of 27 shoe shopping and Dad (Germany) saying “well, I’m size 9 so let’s have 27 pairs of size 9 shoes please” and then wondering why no one can walk straight.

And the answer is (part 2)…

It is now almost a foregone conclusion that the Eurozone will collapse unless it transforms itself from an angry and frightened conglomeration of unequal, indebted countries, into a single “legal” state. That means the countries of Europe will become the “provinces” of a Super state, thus enabling full fiscal and political union and control. That will enable the more stabilising distribution of wealth and the application of rules that all are able to follow. But that will mean Germany has to pay for the rest because it is by far the richest and most competitive area. It’s the model that works in the USA and China, and in the UK, where, broadly speaking, London and the south east share their wealth with the rest of the UK. Whether it can be made to work in Europe is a very different matter.

The Great Escape

Cameron has vacated his cabin on the good ship Eurozone, just in time. Given its direction of travel this was always going to be a forgone conclusion. Despite the choking and gasping in the press (and the puerile tweeting of the leader of the opposition), the main players will have known this was all but inevitable. Being stuck on the pier when the Titanic leaves port is no bad place to be. Britain is going to find the going increasingly tough, but it has made a decision that leaves it responsible for its own fate, which right now, would be a better bet than that of the Eurozone, which is still not facing up to the terrifying scale of its problems, instead choosing to force its respective nations into an ugly, undemocratic and increasingly resentful half embrace.  

Europe’s leaders should remember Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free”.

His words, spoken over 150 years ago, in a way are eerily prescient of the situation in which the Eurozone now finds itself.