Brain-Dead?

 

Client – As a matter of interest,  what will you do with my body  afterwards?

Salesman – Do you really want to know?

Client – Yes and no.   I’m interested but don’t want to know the gory details.

Salesman – Well after your brain is removed,  you’re finished with it and there’s no need to keep it.  The important thing is that the surgeons focus on the installing your brain in your new body.

Client – Yes,  I appreciate that,  I just wondered what you did with my old body afterwards?

#Amazon Echo Dot Review #AmazonEcho #EchoDot

Last week,  Amazon launched its new Echo and Echo Dot products in the UK.

The Echo is basically a voice activated control point for either streaming music or for controlling devices in a connected home.

The Echo ( £150) or Echo Dot ( $50) ,  basically do the same things.  They can get information from the internet such as weather or traffic reports, stream music from Amazon, Spotify or TuneIn and interact with the connected devices in your home.

The only difference between the devices is that the Echo has a better speaker    Which for me was unnecessary as my home is already wired for sound and the last thing I need is another stand-alone independent speaker.

As a trial,  I bought one Echo and have had some good fun setting it up with the other devices in my home.

Hello Pluto .. Meanwhile on Planet Earth …

Somewhere out there right now Voyager 2 is closing in on the planet Pluto and has started sending back images better than can be captured by the Hubble Telescope.

The last time the probe passed a planet and sent back some imagery was of Neptune in the late 1980s.

To put that distance in perspective,  currently,  Voyager 2 is 115 million km away from Pluto,  equivalent of the distance from the Sun to Venus,   but it will cover that distance between now and July.

So can you just imagine how far is Pluto from Neptune?

Isn’t it amazing that we can push something that far out to space and communicate with it so remotely?

However this communication is far from ideal as passing a radio signal from Earth at the speed of light takes over 4.5 hours to reach the probe.

Hello Pluto .. wait 5 hours .. yes?

To put that in perspective,light travels at 180,000 miles per second,   the distance from the Sun to Earth is 93 million miles, 146 milllion km.

The light from the sun takes just over 8 minutes to reach Earth,  providing us with life,  food, energy and a healthy tan!

I find that incredible ….

However, meanwhile on planet Earth …

There is a global economic recession.

In the UK,  one of the worlds richest countries is in the tail-end of an economic crisis,  people are suffering,  going hungry,  the demand for food-banks offering free food to the needy is increasing.

Tonight there is a collection at Celtic Park organised by the club to mark the birthday of its founder Brother Walfrid for the people in need.

Does it matter what the people who claim that they need to use these facilities circumstances are?   If some are abusing it?

Do you think that because you pay your taxes excludes you from contributing or donating what you can?

I don’t think so.

“Are there no work-houses?” as the Ghost of Christmas Present quoted back to Mister Scrooge.

The spirit finally reveals to Scrooge two emaciated children, subhuman in appearance and loathsome to behold, clinging to his robes, and names the boy as Ignorance and the girl as Want. The spirit warns Scrooge, “Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased.” The spirit once again quotes Scrooge, who asks if the grotesque children have “no refuge, no resource,” and the spirit retorts with more of Scrooge’s unkind words: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

The fact that we need these places at all is shameful.

So although,  I love science,   love how mankind has moved on beyond its beginnings to view other planets.

I’d like to think that if it was a mission to Pluto was proposed today rather than back in the 70s then it would be shelved in favour of feeding the hungry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32311907

Code Of A Killer

Did you happen to see the fantastic drama-documentary Code Of A Killer on ITV over the past few nights?

It’s a dramatisation which tells the true story of Alec Jeffreys’ discovery of DNA fingerprinting and its first use by Detective David Baker in catching the double murderer Colin Pitchfork for the murder of two schoolgirls, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in 1984.

I enjoy crime thrillers but don’t watch a lot of tv.  This is a fantastic,  informative real life drama and can’t recommend it enough.

Its available on the ITV player without the ads,  which is trims each episode to just over an hour from the broadcast length of 2 hours.

Catch up is the way to watch tv.

Right back to the research,  new job in  Glasgow / Edinburgh starts tomorrow.

Informatica Master Data Management whatever that is!!

 

Train Stories – Beam Me Up Scotty!

One small thing ..

You forget it and it severely impacts your day.

You feel lost and you don’t know what to do with yourself.

You can’t contact your friends,  your family, check your messages.

You can’t check your social media to see what your extended family and friends are doing.

You can’t check twitter,  write a blog,  read the newspapers that you subscribe to.

Then you wonder,  what did we do before we had mobile phones?

Baby We Were Born To Drive!

So … it looks like that old Tory Government of ours are on the way towards foisting driverless cars upon us.

Transport Minister Claire Perry said:

Driverless cars are the future. I want Britain to be at the forefront of this exciting new development, to embrace a technology that could transform our roads and open up a brand new route for global investment.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-lead-development-of-driverless-car-technology

Is that right Claire .. exciting technology?

Exciting for who?