Jim Stewart's Blog

Had an interesting discussion today. A two car family with a one car electric charging point.

It reminded me that many people think that switching to electric cars is just about them making a choice. But it isn’t. And it isn’t just about charging points, it is about the infrastructure behind them.

For example there are enough petrol stations near Wembley to fill 10-20 thousand cars. But are there enough cables to supply power to the Wembley car park?

There are other areas of life where we think we see ourselves as islands. The taking of the vaccine is an obvious one.

I was reading recently about “preppers” – people preparing for an apocalyptic disaster. Apparently many look at storing at least couple of weeks supply. There was an interesting article in Metro on 1st Jan 2020 that included a mention of prepping for a pandemic. Quite fascinating. I was taught to expect to need six weeks food as a minimum for a pandemic that got out of control. Thankfully this one has not got out of control, although we have still to see what happens in the USA – the jury is still out there.

But what that means to me is that even those “preppers” are really not able to act as an island for very long (okay one or two might be properly prepared, but not many).

How often do we think of other when we make decisions?

I checked the donations to the fund providing access to vaccines for 92 low and middle income countries. The UK donation still stands out as special, it is around a third of the total raised.

On top of that the UK vaccine will be provided at cost for the duration of the pandemic. That is probably somewhere around £5 per person. The US vaccine costs around £30 per person.

There are a lot of things wrong with the UK, but sometimes it is worth recognising that we might just be showing the world how to do things right in important areas.

I remember Prince Charles talked to his trees. Research now shows that trees talk to each other. Well, communicate, not talk. Apparently there are links between trees underground, and they have been shown to pass chemicals to each other through them. So think twice before cutting a branch off a tree – you could get a forest angry.

I remember Ian Botham being done for smoking cannabis. The argument in his favour was that him smoking in his house didn’t affect anybody else. I always remember thinking – if that really was true then he would never have been arrested, because nobody would have known.

Truth is we are connected just like the trees, and what we do affects our communities. I’m not sure what chemicals the trees pass between them and what effect it has, but they say it has an effect. I’m not sure what you are communicating with your community or the effect, or how I am communicating and the effect. But one thing we can do is to be aware of the signals we are getting and respond positively to them.

For some reason today felt like Friday. I expect I’ll be disappointed tomorrow.

In the old days we used to talk about “surfing the web”. Today we Google the web. Quite interesting change that has crept up on us. To explain it I need to explain why the web is not the internet.

The internet came first – before the web. Think of the internet as the TV in your living room. The web is just one of the TV stations and was not the first. Email, for example, is another channel (although many people now use a web based access to email – but ignore that).

There were other stations (protocols) like TELNET that allowed you to operate remote computers and FTP that allowed you to transfer files between computers – all by using command lines (no mice in those days – just text on a screen).

If you wanted to find things you could use FTP to log in to one computer at a time to see what was there. It was pretty much like prospecting – digging for gold in different computers. Then there were systems like WAIS and Gopher that allowed you to search multiple locations.

I can remember I used to have to post the things I was looking for to a mainframe somewhere and it would send me back a list of the files that were relevant after a few hours or days. But it was much more like a library system – you could search the catalogue.

Along came the web. And the web was a little different because every document on the web could like to any other document. When people wrote pages they would include loads of links to other pages that they thought were relevant.

So surfing starts – you look up one page, it has an interesting link – you follow that – it has an interesting link – you follow that. You are following an information wave, sometimes you could follow it for hours, sometimes it would disappear – you were surfing the information wave.

Today we go to one or two search engines on a browser and type in what we are looking for and they tell us where to find it. One thing I have spotted is that there are fewer and fewer cross references in documents (links). We now rely on those search engines to find the things we want. And always remember they get paid money to give preference to some items.

The nearest we have to surfing is social media. And it too is aimed at taking money from us.

Take away the search engines and could you use the internet to find information? How much do we depend on search engines and social media to learn about our world, and to what extent are they being paid to manage our information gathering?

Could you find the web page of the part of government responsible for transport without a search engine?

There are other solutions – maybe I should charge people money to teach them….

In those disaster movies where the world population is decimated where small communities set themselves up – there always seems to be somebody that has a baby.

Well, we are just about 9 months in to the main lockdown for the pandemic. It will be interesting seeing what the effect will be on the birthrate. Unfortunately there will be a delay before we get the data – just like the virus data it takes a while to be published.

There are two different thoughts in my mind – one is the locked in the house together the other is the fear of bringing a child into the world. Oh – and there is also the isolation might reduce the surprise packages.

On my walk tonight I saw a portable generator and fuel tank being delivered next to the local telephone exchange. I’m not sure if it was for the exchange or for a Christmas fair. But it started me to thinking about the disaster movies where power fails.

It struck me that as a population we have still leaned heavily on being told what to do and having our needs provided by government. We have had a steady supply of food and water, we have had electricity, we have had communication.

Just think for one minute how much we rely on having electricity. Without electricity petrol stations stop, shops stop. gas supply stops, water supply stops, communication stops. So play a game – plan how you will live for a week without electricity. Do you have a battery powered radio (hint – some mobile phones have them built in)?

Now as you think about it try thinking about all those plans to reduce your power consumption to go greener and save the planet. And then think about the rest of the world turning out like you. We really need to start making cleaner electricity quickly.

I saw the article today about Roald Dahl’s family apologising for his anti-Semitic views. For some reason it doesn’t sit right with me.

I’ve never really like his writing, I’m not sure why, so I am not trying to say he was a nice guy. But he was what he was. He apparently admitted to being anti-Semitic in a newspaper interview. By all accounts he never changed his mind.

What value is their apology? Can my third cousin twice removed make an apology for me? By all means they should say he was wrong, but an apology suggests something I don’t think they have the right to do. It is a bit like the Mormon church suggesting you can be baptised for your ancestors.

I think my disquiet is the same as that of the Campaign against anti-Semitism. Surely it is more important to change what we do today than to apologise for something somebody else did yesterday?

A couple of days ago Microsoft offered me a picture of Ometepe for my start screen. It reminded me of the time earlier this year when I visited the island.

It has been a bit of a Nicaragua week really – quite a few events.

I was glad to be able to sit in on a discussion about the current situation in the country. Here we all are suffering from the pandemic – but what came over was that the effects of the pandemic in Nicaragua was not as significant – and certainly not as significant as the effects of the weather.

There were a lot of details talked about, but one story grabbed my attention. In one community a number of farmers had lost their crops. When the other farmers heard about it they arranged to share their products. Then the village heard about another village that had lost all their production – so they arranged to share their food with them.

These are farmers that, until recently, were unable to grow enough food to feed themselves. They have next to nothing. The poorest in this country have more than the farmers. But the farmers still shared what they had.

Compared to those farmers I felt that the things I “need” were maybe closer to greed. Hearing about the way those farmers were living gave me hope for society.

Struck me today that there are some interesting changes coming up that will open up some new business opportunities.

There is obviously the cold transport and freezer business for the new vaccines. There are all sorts of opportunities there from the dry ice production to the transport vehicles (think small vans with really cold storage compartments).

But then think about Christmas -we might want to get together but not be quite as together, so how about two way radios so granny can sit in the next room and chat to you? Maybe not.

But there is one business that offers to be a big money maker – recycling of perspex screens.

Anybody with any ideas? I reckon we could do some nice artwork on acrylic.

Part of what got me thinking was the number of businesses closing down. I get the impression that we will need to have a more flexible approach to employment. I am guessing that we might even see a move from finance to manufacture. Quite a challenge trying to work out where we will be.

Some people will be horrified by the idea of an unknown future – they like their life – they have a path ahead of them that is mapped out – seeing the map being torn up terrifies them.

Some will welcome the confusion – they love the idea of flying by the seat of their pants.

We humans keep brainstorming options and plans,
but God’s purpose prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

I see Taskmaster has moved to Channel 4. It’s an interesting format. It essentially gets people to do challenges that makes them look a bit silly followed by some demeaning comments on their performance. It pretty much fits the definition of bullying.

It got me thinking about some other comedy programmes that are on – another example being “Have I got News”. I remember it used to be clever analysis of politics, but recently it seems little more than “He’s an idiot we are clever”.

When did humour become so much about making others look dumb. It seems to be the flavour of the month to ridicule others, to have superiority.

I think we see a little bit of that with the “we are the greatest” vaccine competition, but maybe it is only a symptom of where we are as a society.

Time to be kind?

Summary of where we are and where we need to be. http://www.un.org/webcast/1362235914001/B1J3DDQJf_default/index.html?videoId=6213596409001