Super yachts or super typhoon?

UN are begging for $301m in aid for the people of the philippines affected by the super-typhoon.

The worlds 100 richest people in 2012 sat on $240 bn.

If the worlds 100 richest gave the un $301 mn in aid it would (worst case scenario) cost them 9 days worth of interest.

But when it comes down to it, why should something like a little disaster in the world set them back 9 days worth of interest (when they're not in the slightest bit affected) and there are super yachts to buy?

Pop over to the international federation of red cross and red crescent societies to see what you can do.

Start Trek continues

No this isn't about the eye-blinding lens-flaring of the last two films, but a fan made continuation of the original series, apparently with cbs's blessing.  It's a testament to the dedication, talent and willingness of people to see their dreams unfold.

This is a fan continuation of the original series, with apollo making a re-appearance.  The crew is the same crew but naturally played by all new actors, including the son (chris doohan) of scotty (james doohan) playing the role of... scotty!  Michael forest reprises his original star trek role of apollo, with marina sirtis off next generations as the voice of the computer! Priceless.

Only 1 webisode's been made so far, but they're hoping to raise $100,00 by the 6th November to produce another 3 webisodes.  To date (24th October at 13:03 hrs UT) they have raised $68,858, so only another $31,142 to go.  So if you're a lover of all things trek, or sci-fi or just wish to poke one in the eye of the executives who cancel everything, go over to their kickstarter page and pledge: anything from $1 all the way up to $3,000 - which gives you:

"THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE SULU: Personal set tour guided by Grant Imahara ...  This is a standalone level and does not include any other level in combination. Backers will be included on our special backer page on the Star Trek Continues website. We will thank backers at this level in the credits of the episodes supported by this Kickstarter..."

But to re-wet your appetite for hopefully more, and if you're one of the few who haven't seen it yet, the following link will take you to their youtube channel so once more we can: boldly go where we've boldly been with a boldness no previous trek has bowled over!

But if you're too lazy to head over...

I understand... happiness

I understand the need (in a different parallel universe of course) to find and create profligate amounts of time to be happy; believe me there's nothing more i would find happier than, for however brief the moment, been on a platform watching the whole planet been sucked into a ravenous black-hole.

Knowing my luck however, the platform would be on the facing side, as the planet was gripped in the death-throes of the beasts itsy-bitsy maw.

So, you might wonder, what's prompted this interlude of “fun”? It was a comment (which i'm still pondering whether to allow) I received on a post to do with “hfo and unprofessional ethics” . As i'm commenting on it I suppose it'd be rude not to – saying that "it is the time to be happy." Which is wonderful if that's what they really want. I can only assume they'd failed to read any other post apart from that one entry, and so missed the realisation that I'm happiest wallowing in the miserableness which surrounds me like a pack of killer whales spying a seal, obliviously basking on an ice-floe, thank you very much. Weight goes up pants tighten, weight goes down pants fit, an easy equation to jog through life by, especially considering that one day none of it will matter.

If you do wish to visit the site the unknown person mentioned, it is called www.nerdfitness.com. It will make you like yourself, it will make you enjoy you're couch potato lifestyle with some exercising and nutrition, enabling you to become a truly productive member of society (what on earth for?), so if that's your bag, then please do head over. On the other hand, if you wish to endure depressing, lip-curdling rubbish, there's no need to go any further. Indeed, have a stroll through the archives and see if there's anything which has you reaching for the close-tab icon, or preferably have you rip the telephone cable from the wall socket to strangle next doors cat with, which has plopped one deposit too many on your prize now-shrivelled hydrangeas!

Oh I nearly forgot, paris – p1

Ah paris!  That wonderful city of romance (yuk), good food (what's wrong with eating dust), cheeses galore (which naturally have me running screaming to the loo), and very rude parisians.  Why on earth would anyone wish to travel there except to swan around or clamber to the top of the eiffel tower, simply to get their tits out?

On this occasion i was invited by a friend whom i hadn't seen in years.  And with the fine people at eurostar offering fantastic return deals at £59, it seemed churlish not to grasp the opportunity – if just to get away from the silly madness flying under the bloody tourettes purported big society banner – a headless environment where people run around wishing that their headlessness is firmly kept away from the glare of exposure, but it certainly sounds chummily nice.

Being a crabby traveller i find airports, and the so called "stassi" security measures  they contain for our benefit, nothing less than a sad sop.  If they were serious about security each person would be stripped down to their nothings and forced to wear some kind of disposable (but recyclable) garment.  The passenger would then, naturally, be reunited with all their rubbish belongings on the other side, once the plane had safely skidded to a halt. No make-up, no perfumes, no books, nor any reading. To take it to its flying extreme, if everyone was simply tranquillised upon boarding, a third of the unnecessary weight could be dispensed with and airlines could cram even more people on the planes.  We travellers, on the other hand, would arrive feeling refreshed if a little dozy.

Indeed why not ban hand-luggage from the cabin altogether and dump everyone’s crap in the hold?  A dreadful chore i know; but, just imagine not having to worry about that strange foreign-looking person sitting two rows down, who's just started to sweat uncontrollably!

No, travelling for me and I suspect for many of you too, involves far more hours wasted that could be spent contentedly tucked happily away in bed.  Failing that, checking over the luggage for the umpteenth time before been quietly confident pants hadn't been forgotten.  Even spending more time at the destination - despite the final nights bout of food poisoning, all before making that fateful return trip back in a nice new maglev carriage or popping on a pad and been beamed away.

When it comes to security, it always makes me ponder on the considerable number of passenger journeys taking place around the globe day by day, year upon year, who meet with a fate no worse than a greyhound discovering that the tasty morsel its chasing after to devour and fill its half starving stomach, is nothing more significant than insubstantial fluff. Yet there's more fear surrounding the act of flying than any other type of activity - bar sticking your head in a nuclear reactor, or playing russian roulette with a meth'd out crack head. Even dying by bungee jumping nowadays makes you into a sports martyr and garners you the respect you failed to garner whilst been alive.

Looking through the league tables of probability, you have less chance of dying from a bizarre kind of plane malfunction: whether caused by material fatigue, or some successful pants bomber managing to actually do the plane in (at roughly 0.000.014%), than you have of dying in the uk in a car accident which trots in somewhere around the region of 0.013%. Even the chance of been struck by lightning somewhere on the globe pops in at a measly 0.000.34%, which means you have a far greater chance of dying horribly from having your number called by a lightning bolt from the ledger in the sky, coming to you in the form of a plane incident.
But, put another way, more people die from falling birds, choking on a peanut or been hit in the head by a golf ball than dying sitting in seat 17A of an aeroplane.  Sadly, before you get too carried away, there's more chance of you dying in a plane incident than chance of you winning the euromillions lottery jackpot, which is stuck way down the league of improbables at 0.000.000.86%.

Don't get me wrong, we're all (with 100% certainty) going to kick the bucket, pop our clogs, give back our birthday suits, feed the worms, be dust in the clouds... the only random variable is simply that of timing.

Of course security hawks will tell you that the amount of money spent on making us queue like sheep in a pen, or protestors been kettled has all been worth it, which in 2011 apparently reached the grand sum of $19.1bn and could top $45.13bn by 2018, according to security director news from research conducted by frost & sullivans 'global airport security market assessment' report.

Imagine that, $19.1bn in one year poured in to help ensure the safety of passengers and the security of flights.  So it's good that all the money terminally spent stuffing all the security holes and hence the tide of  terrorist menaces, that would otherwise cause that side of the fatality figures to er, explode, met with unqualified success. Apart from the few individuals who managed to get on-board aeroplanes with false passports or no passports at all.  Such as the 12 year old boy in 2006 who managed to evade the heightened measures and boarded a plane at gatwick for lisbon, who was described by cnn in one of their less hysterical notorious moments as the “uk terror boy”; or the 11 year old boy who in 2012 managed to get on a manchester to italy flight, but by then this grievous feral terror plot was described in far less hysterical terms - and they were the first three search results which appeared from my query.

Incidents which no doubt happened decades before the billions were sequestrated or spent, it's just that we haven't realised it yet. On the other side, the manufacturers will claim just how fantastic and improved the security and designs of the new aeroplanes are, thus ensuring their ongoing improvements are suitably noticed by those signing the contracts on the one side of the fence. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the necessity of prying through all your emails viewed as required reading by the spying brigade, occupying the other side of the fence.

Yet when you look at how full of holes and shoddy the security at most airports around the world are, it's more a question of how come the terrorists have failed to pull of more spectaculars than the relative few they have actually achieved?

In comparison train travel is relatively easy on the experience, the eye and body – if we ignore the tragic instance of the spanish crash on the 26^th July 2013.  The few occasions i've journeyed on the eurostar for example have been relatively quick, easy on the stress levels, but even more importantly (as i discovered on my last journey) if you glower a bit, people tend avoiding talking to you, which is a boon; especially if the trite conversations i had the displeasure of overhearing going on around me were anything at all to go by.

To be somewhat serious, i have always loathed travelling by air which i put down to been an uncontrollable sweater - even when young.  It's the heat of the airports combined with the stifling air, and nothing whatsoever to do with the six bloody mary's i'd have knocked back in less than 30 minutes, just to steady and calm my nerves whilst stopping images from those bloody airplane disaster movies, let alone the disaster of the day from normal news, from crowding out anything else. The travel to and from the airport. The two plus waiting hours before take off, unless you're a diamond/platinum/uber-gold frequent flyer.  The circling, the holding patterns, the person in front deciding to tilt their seat back when you're trying to eat the nutrition-less cardboard passing for regurgitated puke (someone had the temerity to call food), whilst juggling with a cup of burning coffee.  The air-sickness, the drunk, and the person behind you who believes they're setting a new guinness book of records' - as the passenger annoyingly pressing the attendance bell (do they still call them that) more times than any other passenger, ever.

And sadly, I haven't even reached paris yet!

To be continued, before the month's out!

Refs:

http://www.securitydirectornews.com/public-sector/global-airport-security-expenditures-expected-reach-45b-2018

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/16/uk.terror.boy/

http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/pages/2012-12-06-01.aspx

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-481469/Two-million-exhausted-drivers-year-falling-asleep-wheel.html.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike#Epidemiology

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1043775/Champagne-corks-Inflatable-elephants-Too-Viagra--new-book-revealing-unlikely-ways-people-meet-maker.htm

Who'd have thought!

I'm amazed how many people manage to find their way to this little rancid backwater of the interweebs, so i offer a curmudgeonly acknowledgement, whilst briefly wondering what you do for a living, as you you really must have nothing else better to do with your life than browse the web 24 hours a day!

For a while now, i've been succumbing to a maelstrom of inward angst causing me to mentally cook up new methods of despatching neighbours - after enduring 10 weeks (so far) of refurbishment: drilling, tiling, hammering; you would too, or be holidaying away somewhere nice and cool to regain some element of composure if your every waking moment was subject to 100+dB noise.  Did i just say neighbours?  I meant neighbours, shoppers and generally everyone i have the disagreeable misfortune of bumping into.

But even all of that combined with the thoughts of a further eight weeks of the same (this time on the other side) to take place, failed to prick my bubble of miserableness, nor locomate my fingers to swifkey all on their own.

However, somewhere amongst the mossy corners, disturbing thoughts and images caused me to increasingly twitch and cry out; screaming awake in the dead of day with sweat pouring from my orifices and the duvet not attempting to strangling me...  Murray wins wimbledon... bah!  England win at rugby... bah!  The 2012 london olympics finally pays for itself and is making a profit?... bah!  New royal baby?... bah!

What is this country coming to?  It's starting to become covered in a smug over-weaning milieu of joy.

Mark my words, it'll all end in tears; and it will be tears the size of footballs smashing the glass-houses of happiness and jollity to smithereens!

Racist pepsco?

Not that i drink the foul brown stuff produced by this or the other companies.  Well not unless i've just been cola-borded - and even that comment's sloshing with bad taste.

Hopefully, you can see from the video, just see how insidiously stereotypically rude the clip is/was and the justifiable reasoning for them removing it from their site - hence this educational use of it, and an acknowledgement (not that they need it) to the extra free advertising they've garnered from it.

A wee break

There's nothing quite so wonderful as having a wee break from the ongoing need to pop out a stray thought.  To forgo the need to eviscerate boils of angst over the unceasing problems our species creates for itself - regardless of the amount of data available at our fingertips.  Momentarily ignore the monthly record-breaking weather changes and simply sit down, shrug your shoulders, unwind, and relax.  

To whit, i'm in a happy (yes you heard me) holding pattern. It won't last for ever, nothing ever does, but for the past few months i've been oddly content with a meh taking the place of frothing righteousness.