Bob’s Blog

We all got on better in the past … February 14, 2006

I was in Spain last week for work and at the weekend made a trip up to visit an old friend living north of Zaragoza. He told me about his village that used to have Muslims and Jews living peacefully alongside Christians for centuries. The Muslims built everything – even the local church (see photo) ! The town (Montalban) was an important centre in the middle ages until – you guessed it – they threw out the Muslims and Jews. Now it’s a small village again.

Finally – an end to SPAM February 6, 2006

The BBC reported this today : paying for e-mails. I for one welcome it.
E-mail charging plan to beat spam

Peak Oil February 5, 2006

This is one of my pet subjects. For students of mathematics, the depletion of an oil well follows a gaussian or bell-shaped distribution. A lot of respected engineers think we are at world peak now, or may have even passed peak. However oil demand keeps growing, and supply is downhill from here on. So, oil is going to get more and more expensive. But oil is not just used for transport. Agriculture (pesticides and fertilizer), and all plastics are by-products of oil, along with lots of other stuff. So make sure you don’t live in a heavily populated area, things are going to get a lot tougher

Have a read of the below, or just Google Peak Oil

Saudi Oil Bombshell

“Offensive” cartoons, organised religion and free speech February 4, 2006

[EDIT] Offensive in inverted commas to suggest the subjective nature of offence.[/EDIT]

This whole thing with the Danish magazine highlights again how a feature of what religion is about is to be intolerant of other people’s beliefs – and I am not for one minute suggesting that Islam is the only religion to do this.

It always amazes me how people can get so worked up over things like this, whilst other issues go unnoticed, like how in most of the world 5% of the population controls 95% of the wealth, especially in the arab world. The arab world could bring us to our knees in a few weeks by turning off the oil taps – but I guess George W would be giving us some more “shock and awe” in that case.

When the ruling class start telling people what they can and can not say, this is the beginning of the end for democracy. Political correctness is another manifestation of this. I say let people say whatever they want – only if they act on their comments should they be punished.

Good joke February 3, 2006

After digging to a depth of 1000 metres last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telphone network a thousand years ago.

Not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug 2000 metres and headlines in the U.K. Papers read: “English scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical fibres, and have concluded that our ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital network a thousand years earliers than the Scots.”

One week later, the Irish newspapers reported the following: “After digging as deep as 5000 metres, Irish scientists have found absolutely nothing. They have concluded that 5000 years ago, our ancestors were already using wireless technology”