multiculturism

london 4.51pm sunny 22.5C tuesday 2018 sunrise 6.28am sunset 7.24pm

i was watching a nature program, about the american wild west, and it was showing a male bison with his harem and saying he could father 50 in that one breeding season; and i was thinking how come nature allows his genes to be in so many kids. and none of the other males get a chance to father any.

with animals the mortality rate is very high, but in part it is due to this very system of one dominant male getting to breed and blocking all the other males. also if that male is overpowered and another takes his place, he will kill off the previous male’s young offsprings  who are still being suckered … just so the females can get pregnant again.

and add to that mortality rate to other causes like disease, or accidents, and very few of those kids will survive. in spite of them  being fathered by the strongest males and hence we might assume they have the strongest genes for survival; .

so that is the difference between animals and humans. with us humans the weakest baby can survive and can grow old enough to breed more and weaken the gene pool; but so far , the weakening of the gene pool  does not seem to matter.

humans have reduced child mortality rate a lot so that many children now survive to adult hood.

humans are the biggest species on earth, by which i mean the most numerous. so we must be doing something right.

at one time, the world subscribed to multi culturalism. but i think people are beginning to see that this idea that the pot will produce a homogenous people does not work out in real life. people will keep to their kind, and their culture. now we are seeing a change in europe. a huge influx of fleeing migrants from africa to europe. by rights europe’s population is stagnant and could do with this influx of fresh blood to add to its work force. but how to manage it so that this potential huge manpower can be harnessed … that is the question.

the romans made slaves, and soldiers, of them. not going to happen in our modern age. or can it? 

the future is here, but it looks like the same

london 9.50am 11.6C cloudybright thursday 2017

i was at the chelsea library yesterday and wanted to borrow a sci fiction novel , but the machine wont let me, saying my library card will expire before the return date, and to go see the desk about it. so i did and the librarian extended the date to 2020. i could see her doing it on the computer screen and it struck me that i have arrived at the future. haha. actually i have seen this date before, when my freedom pass was renewed and the expiry date was 2021. but it did not register in my mind; but now it struck me i have arrived at the future.  

we sci fi fans have always thought of the 2020s as the future. and we are getting to that soon. but when i look around me i dont see any futuristic things , have you? where are the flying cars, or robots, and flying skateboards, or future clothing… everyone looks ordinary wearing clothes that are not much different from the 1920s, people still wear heavy overcoats. though the fashion is for michelin man duvet style jackets now. hardly futuristic, as michelin man has been around for ages. and footwear has become trainers now.

but isn’t it strange that there is nothing futuristic to look at. what is futuristic is the internet, but it is not visual. even the so called updated advertising board in piccadily circus looks like the old one…

it is kind of comforting for people like me, that the future looks very much the past. i dont have to make much adjustment in my life. but perhaps there are others , of the younger generation who lives in houses that are so wired up that they do live like in the future. they can talk to their homes, and call the house for all kinds of things just like how we imagine the future to be like. but i think unless they invent the all purpose robot, things will not look very futuristic. 

added. 11.42am 14.2C brightcloudy i was coming back by bus 2 and saw this cadbury milk tray chocolate box , along with 2 other smaller choc boxes in the metro newspaper box. their plastic seal is still intact. i wonder who left it there, obviously to let people pick it up along with the free paper. i thought this box is more desireable, as it contains a selection of their chocolates.

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its unusual to get this happening… free chocolates on the bus. haha. and another surprise, i thought the box is rather deep and wondered if it has a double tray , and sure enough it has. two trays of assorted chocolates. isn’t it great! 

afraid the top tray has two chocs missing, i ate them, before i thought of looking underneath that tray …

added. 17.11.17 i thought i shall find out how much it costs normally, and was looking all over the box trying to find how heavy it was, it was 360g,googling it i found it normally costs £3, but guess what , i saw the expiry date it was 13.3.17… so that is the reason why it is free. haha. but i am glad that person decided to let us have it, rather than throw it away in the bins. even though expired, it tastes good. 

predicting the future

london 10.20am 14.4C cloudybright monday 2017

last night i was watching electric dreams, on tv, a series of adaptations of philip k dick’s short stories. he was the author of the story that blade runner is based on as well as many other film adaptations. i was thinking it is a very depressing future he is writing about. he seems to like talking about artificial intelligence, as many of his stories involve robots of advance intelligence going wrong.

i have noticed i have become rather disturbed about the future from seeing all these doom laden films, which makes me realise they are not good for me. and this happens to me even though i am not a film fan, and hardly watch films. how much more must it affect someone whose hobby is watching films and  is immersed in it. 

but just this morning i got a feed from my wordpress reader, showing up this article. about future predictions and how they would destroy jobs by replacing them with robots. and he is saying it wont happen that easily… something i suspect myself but based on just my gut feeling, but he has used more logic to support his thesis. it makes me feel much better about the future. 

one thing he said did strike me as am astute observation of these futuristic films…. he said in all those futuristic films , they only introduce one thing new… like for eg he said in bicentennial man, only the man- like robot , played by robin williams was new, everything else the actors did , was like it is happening today…for eg, reading a newspaper!! even now i dont read the newspaper for my news, i go online, and this is me, who is very slow when it comes to keeping up with the technology. so i can well imagine a future where no one reads the papers anymore.  

the scene in the arnold swartzenegger film total recall, where he was shown watching a wall size tv screen and getting his news from there is more likely. 

and the article goes on to  say that is not what is going to happen in real life. long before we have such a man- like robot, we would have various stages of machines that will creep up on us, so that if we finally have robots indistinguishable from humans we would long ago have familiarised ourselves with them, and not consider them unusual and/ or fear them.

another article in the guardian,  that same wordpress reader features it which shows how some of the inventors of all this digital inventions we are getting are wary of it enough to ban their kids from using it too much. the article is saying technology is taking over our minds, changing it. it seems to me future generations will have their minds changed and most probably changed to accept technology and machines helping them more and more in their lives, so that the idea of machines taking over their lives , and making it much easier , would be a common place and not a source of anxiety… and they would most probably laugh at us now being so afraid of robots taking over the world and killing people. 

what i find more disturbing though is that gps has become such a pervading force all over our modern world, so much so that a lot of our modern conveniences rely on it. it is all made possible by satellites placed strategically in space to relay the data … and that i think is the danger. it would be easy for some phenomenon, perhaps a solar flare to put them out of action, and where will we be then? if all our modern life depands on gps to function?

added. i read a few days ago that prof thaler had won the nobel prize in economics. at that time, i did not think much of it, as i have no idea what he does. but this article says he is the founder of nudge economics. what makes us spend, or chose one thing over another… 

 

future wages and the economy. how will it go

london 10.47am 11C cloudy wednesday 2017

1.14pm 13C sunny/

it started cloudy but now it seems to have cleared, and it is sunny blue sky. very nice, though i am inside the flat and dont intend to set out again. was out earlier to run an errand at the post office and that is it. took the bus there and took the bus back. no queues at the post office. this one is a small side branch and i have noticed that by 12.30pm its empty. so i go in and quickly see a cashier and get out and cross the road to the bus stop opposite just in time to catch the c10 coming the other way and so take it back to my flat. 

added. 5.36pm, 15C, i just had a lovely nap of 2-3hrs. so feeling rather refreshed now. bright sunshine outside reflected off the block of flats opposite my lounge window. sky is dark with rain clouds, though.

well, i find myself browsing the news, and reading snippets of it, and noting those that interest me. this one about the wage growth having slipped below the rate of inflation for the first time since 2014; not rising as quickly or as much as inflation seems typical. it is only 0.1% below. i would have thought that is not really significant since inflation has been very low before and only now rises to above 2%. but then what will they have anything to do if they don’t start shouting when the figures jerk one way or the other.

 they give this warning whilst admitting 

It said unemployment had fallen to its lowest level in a decade – down 45,000 in the three months to February to 1.56 million – with the jobless rate remaining at 4.7% and a record number of job vacancies on offer.

The employment rate of 74.6% was the joint highest since records began in 1971.

i have a feeling most people are glad that there are plenty of jobs for everyone. even with the huge influx of workers from the eu. in fact, you wonder whether the huge influx is the cause of such prosperity and business activity… i was thinking most of these jobs might be in the catering, hospitality trade. and might be prone to swiftly go up and just as swiftly disappear when the wind changes. who knows really.

the £ being so low, must be a factor… just as we can be sure prices of food and goods will go up in the near future. so far the fierce rivalry at the supermarkets have muted it and maybe we might all switch to local produce or buy less of those imported stuff… who knows really .

with so many foreigners here, they will not be affected by the £ dropping, in fact they will feel richer as their money goes further. maybe london wont feel the effects, and the boom continues in london, but other places in uk will feel it.

i must say it is rather interesting to watch all this and see where the wind blows as only time will tell. i would hate to predict what it will be. we are in never -before- gone -through territory here. no one has experienced this before nor can we take another example from another country in the same circumstances, because there are none. 

speaking for myself seeing i am here and can give u my own experience of it i can say it has not really affected me. prices have gone up in some goods that i buy, but since they are all basic foodstuffs, they are low priced anyway so when they go up it is raised by 20p, even though in % terms they have gone up 15%, which sounds alarming.

but i just wonder if i am unique. i sure hope not, and that there are plenty of people like me who dont really get affected much by these flunctuations.  all the experts say the common people will feel the pinch. it seems to be assumed that will happen. are there no one like me, who is on fixed income, who because of our lifestyle just wont be affected much by it all, because we dont buy those expensive imported processed stuff or branded names.

well, i did go out just now. cant say i could have differentiated the feeling of 13C from what it would feel like if it is 12C. haha. just goes to show how ridiculous these feel like temperatures are.

london 2.23C 13C sunny (feel like 12C) tuesday 2017

anyway it was very pleasant, and all that i need to do was within one bus ride , the C10. i just went to the post office, and the library. both near the bus stops.

now i am back at my flat to wait for ian, my friend who i had arranged to meet.

originally we were supposed to meet at the age uk canteen , in their office near russell square gardens in bloomsbury. but it involved 3 changes of buses for me, so even though there are no long walks between the changes, i felt i dont really want to bother. so i emailed him last night to ask if we can change it to him coming to my flat instead.

he finished work at about 1 or 2pm, near angel, it is about the north east corner of central london. might take him some time to cycle to me. anyway i am putting my foot up on the sofa and that is nice. and have rice being cooked now which i shall eat with a warmed up vegetable curry left over from the huge batch that my friend john had cooked before he left for his journey up north.

i also am steaming brocolli that simon bought and which we ignored for so long , it has got brown all over the top. that is the trouble with brocolli, it does not keep well. i have to eat it or have to throw it away and i am too thrifty to throw it away. 

now i got a cup of coffee (instant) by my side and enjoying a short post on my blog.

i borrowed a new book from the library. it is the mandibles – a family 2029-2047 by lionel shriver. it is a futuristic novel about new york and america. would be interesting to read , though i daresay from the few pages i have read that it will be about how awful it is, water rationing, food shortages, no meat, everything very expensive. all quite depressing really, but i guess i shall soldier on and read it. sigh cant really have a fun novel these days. gone are the days of enid blyton and childhood fun , with kids doing adventure with a small a, and just being kids and having fun with a bit of danger , but not too much and not too dangerous , no one gets killed for one thing. 

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added.9.52pm 12C dry. actually that curry turned out to be lamb curry, with lots of veg. i topped it up with the steam brocolli, very tender after the steaming, and with rice, it was a delicious meal. i seem to like other people’s cooking more than my own . my appetite have not been diminished by my infected foot. i shall take that as a sign that it is healing, and the food is what the body wants to build up cells again.

not much things i want to watch on tv tonight. perhaps they are saving all the good programs for the easter weekend that is this weekend. it will force me to read this book i borrowed. that might be a good thing, as i dont seem to be in the mood for it, but when there is nothing to read, i will just have to take it up and read it and that might draw me into the book if i give it a chance. 

so for 4 days no newspapers for me , as the libraries will all be shut. 

the future?

london 10.46pm 10.9C mild night. sunday 2017

i see this advert on tv about controlling your heating via your phone. and i thought why should u want to do that? it does not seem that necessary or desireable really.

but it seems to be offered as something that everyone would find irresistible. am i the only one who thinks that it is a useless thing?

why not just use the timer and set the periods when you want it to come on? seems so simple really without micromanaging it.

it is the same thing with their offer of a fridge that will order things when it senses you are running low. maybe people can pretend it is a butler, doing all the things that a butler does and so make them think they have a personal service.

like having a washing machine to make you feel you have a human servant able to do your clothes. letting gadgets do those things that humans do, or  used to be the domain for rich people who can hire an army of servants to cater to their every need.

is that what the future is going to be like? maybe, but i think there will be lots of people like me who dont want it and can manage without.

but i think people like me will die out, and so perhaps young people in the future will not even think it unusual when the fridge does order the food and keep it stocked without any human imput at all. most probably it will be full of ready meals. we have seen sci fi films where food is  taken from a dispensing machine, all hot and ready to eat. it is not difficult to envisage such a thing happening now. and an easy leap to incorporate a microwave in a fridge, so that u can simply dial the meal you want and have it served piping hot. 

what will the world be like in 2050.

london 1pm 5.3C cloudy. wednesday 2017

this report of what the world will be like in 2050 gives some surprises. to me anyway. who would have thought indonesia would be number 4. hard to believe right? india to beat usa to be number 2. i wonder whether their huge populations may be the reason for such high growth. china did it first, you can really supercharge your economy when u got 1 billion people in it. but it seems china has run out of steam, in that it is settling down to be like a developed country by 2050. but still so huge it retains its number 1 slot. but remember , its young will be old by 2050 and they will have problems like the west is having now to fund and look after an ageing population.

 whilst india still have a long way to go before its huge population, most of them very young, comes into full fruition. indonesia too have a large population, and very young people mostly. so it looks like those countries with young growing population will fuel the world’s growth in future. or so these soothsayers will have us believe.

but what about the other trend, machines taking over many functions now done by people… might that knock all this assumption of man power on its head and the developed countries like usa will surprise us when it confound all these soothsayers who just extrapolate from gdp growth and assume it will continue in its upward trajectory. technology might turn out to be the joker in the pack.

i wonder if come 2050 indonesia, phillipines, india, may turn out to be centres of age care, and health care for the elderly people in the other developed nations.

one thing though, the us$ will gradually devalue and that means just by currency exchange alone, the socalled E7 economies can leapfrog usa as everything uses the us$ as a benchmark. if that benchmark is moving downwards, isn’t it like trying to chase a moving goal post? of course when 2050 comes if i survive i will be 99 yrs old. haha. i doubt i shall be interested in the world economy haha. that is if i am still alive.

we live in uncertain times now

london 4.30pm 13.5C sunny tuesday 2016

12.3C 6.25pm dusk, dry . just been over the vauxhall bridge to the tesco to buy a chicken. it is still good value £1.99/kg. so it is in the oven now. roast chicken is one of the joys of life. haha. i am roasting carrots too. and i shall have peas with it. i got the frozen peas at the same time as the chicken. quite good price .69p for 900mg.

i saw they were selling cooked roast chickens in the store for £6. they might reduce it by half later on in the evening, but i cannot wait and also by cooking it myself i get a roast chicken for £3, and a bigger chicken too. it is really so easy to roast chicken in your own oven.

the papers are full of dire prophecy about brexit. i guess people just dont really know the full extant of what will happen to eu and uk. i suppose a lot of remainers must be lamenting why we want to rock the boat by leaving. they will i think in future come to realise the eu is a sinking boat and we have got out in time.

we were tied to the euro, at least the markets view us that way, and we were over priced. i know, it seems contradictory to say that. you might well angrily say how dare u say that at £1.30 to the euro the £ is overpriced. it is. the uk have been living beyond its means and sooner or later there will be a reckoning.   this devaluation of the £ is a correction that is long overdue. and luckily for us we still have the £, and it can go down and save us that way instead of the other way , to impose austerity and cutting back and balancing the budget. 

the euro i think is overpriced as well, but the markets have not realised it yet. once they realise it is a sinking currency it will drop like a stone. that is my prediction for what it is worth. haha. remember, i might be wrong, and it will all turn out worse than i thought. who knows really. 

ah well, like all those forecasts of a cold dry winter, we shall just have  to see how it pans out , won’t we?

 

 the papers are also warning of a third world war. not i hasten to add because of our brexit, but something about syria and america and russia. i thought they had signed an agreement to work together but it seems it did not work out. but why it should escalate to a world war 3 is something i could not understand. lets hope they realise that neither of them can afford a world war and back down. isis will really be laughing if those two start killing each other, and let isis off the hook.

and then there is all the uncertainty of a trump presidency. or even a clinton one. 

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thomas cubitt, statue, opposite the pimlico library.

our future will be bombarded with ads

london 8.07am 7.8C cloud monday 2016

some interesting stuff in this roundup in overspill. it warns that panasonic smart tv TC-PVT50 series has got a start up banner ad come up whenever u switch the tv on, and also when u change the volume . hmm, we are now finding out that having a smart tv is not that great. haha.

from this post i found out that hdtv was first showcased in ces (consumer electronics show) in 1998. it took me about 16 yrs to get it in my home. 

simon nearly bought a smart tv during the sales in january last year. he thought he bought one, but found out later that it is not a smart tv, ( i think if it were me, i would not have realised, and carried on with it still thinking i got a smart tv, and i think a lot of people may be fooled that way too)and told the company, and they admitted they gave him the wrong model, but the smart tv on the sale that he wanted has sold out, so they asked him if he wants a refund or get a reduced price for the ordinary HD 40″ tv he got. he opt for the reduced price, ( about £60 less, not a lot of difference, which means a lot will opt for a smart tv. it costs about £230 i think after the reduction. )and so we inadvertently got ourselves an ordinary HD tv, instead of a smart one.  

now i think we had the best of both worlds. with it i can see the programs on hi-definition and it really makes a difference in the picture quality.

 the tv works, in that i can get all the channels even when i have switched off my wifi. i have a feeling the smart tv would not work unless u are on the internet all the time. this one is not dependent on the internet to function. it just works via a box that connects the rooftop aerial, and gets the tv signal and converts it to HD. and we can see all the channels . it is only if we want to get iplayer, or see programs that are one hour old, or other programs shown allready, that we need to connect to the internet. or if we want to  pay for netflix, or get subscription channels , neither of which we are interested in. 

i have a feeling that being connected to the internet allows whoever is on the other end,to monitor what u use or see. at one time i read that they can even see you watching the tv, or hear what u say… i wonder what happen to that… did they stop it or are they still secretly doing it?

just monitoring your usage and what u watch is not in itself intrusive, i mean  u dont notice it so in that sense it is not intrusive, but still, it is nice to know that i can switch off the router, and see the tv anonymously.

and now with that panasonic smart tv, they can send u ads too, even when u are not watching any programs. 

but now i am made aware  from this mention that they are putting ads on the tv itself rather than link it to a tv program. it wont be long before the ads pop up within the tv, as an extra to the actual tv program u are watching. they do it when u change the volume, but they can do it when u change channels, or do any adjustment , like change colour , contrast, etc. 

all this so called smart tv , or smart gadgets means that u will be bombarded with ads wherever u have them. so u will have your fridge or toaster suddenly yelling at u in loud volume and splashy colour what the latest thing to buy. haha. 

but of course, you can escape all that if u dont buy smart gadgets. but i envisage a future when anything u can get free, or is offered free, will come with a caveat, that u have to watch the ads.right now we are allready getting a taste of it… our tv is full of ads in between the actual program. only the bbc is immune to it, but if they dont get any increased funding from the tv license, they may well be let loose  to advertise. 

 

letting go

london

so much of the news is so saddening, isn’t it? i dont like to add to the sad mood by writing about loss, in fact i think i shall change my title into something else. i shall call it letting go instead. i went to a gay travel exhibition held at heaven, the night club in charing cross.

right from the start there was the loss of that old venue. it has been a long time since i went there, but i saw the main dance hall, now made into the exhibition space, and it looks so small.

i know its floor had been raised so that the vast big space that i used to know and had such many happy memories of dancing in, with the revolving ceiling lights that made it so enchanting then; has now become a small space, but in the bright lights there it brought back again to me how small that space was.

the gay travel exhibition is trying to get us interested in organised travel. so there was a gay cruise company showing there.

and a vienna competition to go there during the next eurosong contest. u have to pin a beard onto last year’s winner , conchitta, whilst being blindfolded. haha.

my effort was not too bad and i was entered into the draw. not that i am that keen on going to vienna. travel to me nowadays just means a lot of hassle. i know, i have lost the sense of wonder that travelling abroad used to fill me.

i shall consider it not as a loss, but as letting go of it. though it might not exactly console anyone if they love to travel and cannot do so now;  but to me it is easy to let that go, as i dont want to travel anymore.

on the way back on the bus, i switched on my mobile to find that it cannot find a signal, saying my sim registration cannot be found. oh dear, it looks like i have lost my mobile number, and it is such a good number too. it seems by not topping up, it must have run out of money and now it is gone, i cannot get back on again to top up. sigh, such a bother that i have lost that number, but i guess i shall have to let it go.

it is easy to buy another sim card, but the number may not be so easy to remember, not that people bother to remember their mobile numbers as it is easy to save the number when u call or text someone for them to save it on their phone.

it is my fault really, for not topping up when it ran low, just to keep that number. ah well, lesson learned haha. 

after the heaven visit, i went to chinatown, didnt find any bargains so was going to the bus stop in trafalgar square and passed this big hole in the ground surrounded by the shell facade of  portland stone, preserved as a front for what they will be building inside it.

the other side of this construction fronts leicester square. i suppose the city fathers must be aware that these old buildings dont suit modern requirements so gave planning permission to gut them whilst keeping the facade intact. it is a good compromise i suppose. there is the danger of preserving old buildings irregardless of how unsuitable they are for modern uses.

on another subject…something that is not lost. one thing that might cheer you up if u like nostalgia. it is this. i was looking at an advert for sofas, and was struck at how old fashioned it looked. ever thought about this strange anomaly? have a look at the website john lewis furniture.

john lewis is a modern store and yet those armchairs and sofas look so granny like. i suppose they must be comfortable and nothing for a 100 yrs have made modernity design more comfortable sofas.  that might explain why the design has been frozen in time.

there has been nothing  lost there, but maybe we could do with something more futuristic and cutting edge whilst still being comfortable.

maybe it is a lost wish, as our bodies have not changed at all so it is very unlikely we shall find a radical change of design… something else that will be more comfortable.

i think we can bet on it that this design for sofas and armchairs may still be around another 100 or 200 yrs away.

but perhaps i can find it in my heart to be a bit happier that this thing dont change. but somehow it does not really make me happier. here is one thing that i would like a more modern look, just so i can believe i am living in the 21st century.

somethings can still look familiar to someone from the past who time- travels to the future.