What's going to happen?

... oh no he doesn't! Some journalistic license in this phrase perhaps? The original article is here: http://education.independent.co.uk/higher/article2024763.ece What he actually says is: " There are twice as many men as women with an IQ of 120-plus ." Despite conforming to Dr Irwing's stereotype of IQ test misunderstanders, I would like to rephrase his quote above. "There are twice as many men as women who score over 120 in an IQ test." This later paragraph makes me want to scream. "Girls often do better than boys at school. There has to be some female compensating factor, most importantly the ability to process speech sounds, which means women read faster and more accurately and have an advantage in basic writing tasks. And women work harder than men and are more conscientious so they do things technic-ally correctly. Men are often quite original but deficient in what is technically demanded." So wait a minute, a psychology lecturer at a univers...

Physics. The study of the physical interaction of matter from the very large scale down to the invisbly small. Chemistry. Basically the study of the interaction of atoms with differing numbers of electrons. Biology. That life thing. Psychology. An attempt by an inferior intelligence to understand an often larger brain? Theology. Why bother with all that trouble of investigation, recording, analysis and documentation, when you can make it all up?

I'm absolutely sure its been defined by numerous theologians. And philosophers. But my simplistic, humanistic definition follows. Evil is a collection of unacceptable actions to the point where they are beyond comprehension of those trying to understand motive. Like insisting that women bear to term children to be born as a result of rape in war. Something the last Pope sent aid teams into Yugoslavia to assist. Or another definition. Complete failure to understand the nature of another human being, to the extent that you dismiss them as evil despite the fact they are otherwise loving towards their fellow man, or woman. The Catholic Church is now governed by something that is evil. What more can I say?

spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-115/hires/s115e05801.jpg

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-115/hires/s115e05801.jpg

I guess someone will knock this down as an old argument... but here goes anyway. Forty years of space probes have established that so far there is no sign of a possibility of life on the other planets in our solar system. There's some evidence that conditions on moons of Jupiter and Saturn could be suitable for some form of life - at least that able to survive in extreme conditions in water, as many life forms on Earth do - but not a smidgeon of a hint that any other planet or body in the solar system is likely to support anything as complex as an earthworm, let alone intelligent life. Seems to me there are two possibilities for the evolution of the solar system resulting in the planet with a warm, oxygen-rich atmosphere, carbon cycle, liquid water and everything else essential to our existence. 1) God set the mechanisms or directed the rocks to clump together, or materialised the earth, the other eight or nine planets and the galaxies beyond out of nothing on the first day or; 2)...

Or the tidal wave from the Canaries collapsing; the super-volcano in Yellowstone/Indonesia wherever; perhaps catastrophic global warming, all coastal cities flooded, viable farmland only existing North of the Arctic Circle. When are the numbskull narrow financial interests in the US; the extremist Islamists; the petty squabblers over a few square inches of dried-out dust going to realise? The differences between us are not as thick as the fibres in a piece of fine paper. One way or another we're heading for huge challenges to our comfortable - at least for some in the West - "way of life". We live in an extraordinary time. Our Western dominated technological civilisation spans much less than 0.5% of the time since the retreat of glaciers in the last Ice Age. Our planet may be going through the most benign time in its 4.5 billion year history in terms of natural cycles. And it won't, can't last. The Americans reckon their polluting businesses and ours can't ...

If you read James Lovelock it becomes apparent. There's little point driving your car less, taking the train or avoiding long-haul holidays. Our life-support system has had it. In the next 10, 20 50 years, who knows? But with CO2 emission accelerating in the next few decades and no sign of an effective regime to control our pollution of the planet's mechanisms that make our extraordinary lives possible, who's going yto produce food in the Kent desert? Or provide drinking water to England? If we lived in a test-tube, we'd be careful of the rubbish we carelessly threw into the air we breathe and the water we drink. News. In cosmic terms we live in a very small test-tube.

The excesses of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution are ancient history. China is a country that embraces capitalism as a means to social justice. Extreme millionaires are being created in China, while political dissidents - including those who simply disagree with a particular government decision - are imprisoned indefinitely and made to work as slaves. When are the countries and world bodies that profess to believe in freedom of the individual and human rights going to stand up to the Communist Party of China and tell them that not only do they completely fail to progress to the goals set by Karl Marx, but that they fail to meet any common standards of behaviour in a free country? Google, be ashamed. After all, you don't need the money.

Is it just me? After the bad years of the web bubble, when large fortunes were put up and spent on blue sky projects with no prospect of a revenue stream... once all the hard-working technically-able developers were made to join the dole queue... the software bean counters and project managers once again gained the ascendancy... or did they ever lose it? Speaking in terms the CEO could understand they persuaded the executives that only they could produce value from software development. They had the new (old) magic. And expected the developers to work like slaves. The days of endless conferences and freebies changed to being locked to a terminal producing code the PM and IT Director say is of value to the business. Endless timesheets were completed to match ever-revised project plans. As long as it all kept going fast enough no-one would notice that the plans were free of meaningful content, nor that the development would have happened anyway - only quicker and cheaper - had the PM b...