Mars: Life's Ancestral Home?

You may be forgiven for believing the title of this article is a little strange and perhaps misleading, but seeing as within the next few decades mankind could be sending a manned mission to Mars, these are the sort of profound questions we could very well find ourselves confronted with.

So you may well be wondering how Mars could be the ancestral home for life here on Earth. Well, it's a theory and nothing more, but it does have some evidence backing the case, and that's more than enough to pique some interest and write about.

Over the last few years, the data collected by NASA's Mars Rovers has continued to shed light on the conditions that were present on the red planet before it became a desert. The years old hypothesis that Mars was once a wet and warm environment have proven correct. All evidence seems to be pointing towards the idea that Mars once had a water cycle that was almost identical to Earth's, where rain water formed Glaciers, glaciers formed rivers, and rivers flowed back into great oceans.

Liquid water is of course one of the biggest give ways that life may have existed on Mars at some point in the past, but it is not the only scrap of evidence that supports the theory. Within the dry Martian landscape where great rivers and lakes once existed, the Martian rovers have discovered that within the ancient clay lies complex minerals such as magnesium and boron that are essential for the building of RNA and DNA. Through the rover's on board lab it also appears as though the water had a neutral PH balance, and this most likely provided a habitable environment for basic microbes.

The one flaw in the idea of life originating on Mars though is that it would have had to have evolved there very quickly. It is thought that Mars' atmosphere was lost quite rapidly due to the planet's small size. Being smaller its internal temperature cooled quickly, causing the loss of its liquid magma core. This loss of a free-flowing inner core meant that the Martian magnetosphere was severely impaired, exposing it's atmosphere to the full onslaught of the solar winds. Over many years, solar winds have stripped the planet of it's atmosphere and thus, the water that was once abundant on the surface was lost to space. There are also other theories about how the Martian magnetosphere was lost, such as a quick succession of asteroid strikes, rock absorption of gases or a combination of all of these scenarios.

So despite evidence suggesting that conditions were at the very least possibly favourable to life's development, what connects life on Earth with that of Mars, and how could Mars be our ancestral home?
The answer lies with a theory called 'Panspermia'. Whilst the name sounds like it something to do with pornography, it's actually a theory suggesting that life is seeded throughout the cosmos by basically pigging backing on space rock and icy comets to new destinations. Whilst this theory has very little concrete evidence, many in the Scientific community, even well known ones like Stephen Hawkings believe that it could be a viable answer. What is most titillating is that there are actually some signs that the theory has some traction.

The possible evidence for life beginning on Mars comes from an meteorite known lovingly as ALH84001. Found in Antarctica in 1984, it's content still remains a hot subject among scientists and the public alike. The reason for the interest comes from small 'fossils' which were found embedded in the rock which resemble basic lifeforms. When you consider that this rock has reportedly come from Mars from over 15 million years ago (the rock having been formed 4 billion years ago during the Martian's wet period) it is certainly interesting to consider the possibility that life throughout the universe is abundant, and bizarrely mobile.


This alone however is not even the most interesting aspect of this potential smoking gun. There has been a study which has worked out that approximately one billion tons of Martian rock has arrived here on Earth since the two planets formed, and out of those, many will have reached their destination between the two planets within twelve months. With a journey time of one year, it is not completely 'out there' to suggest some basic extremophile lifeform could survive the journey to plop into a warm Earth ocean.

To add even more credibility to the theory, the meteorite sample from ALH84001 was found to have not heated internally during entry into Earth's atmosphere. As the rock became super-heated externally, the metallic components in the rock actually created a mini-magnetosphere effect which shielded the rest of the rock inside from the intense heat. If an extremophile organism was present inside a Martian meteorite then it is quite conceivable that it could survive the relatively short journey from Mars to either begin life or perhaps even diversify basic microbes here on Earth.

The microbe 'fossils' found in the Mars meteorite.

In the study it suggests that rocks coming from Mars to Earth may have been a regular occurrence over the solar systems history (Earth rocks making a Mars bound journey would have been much more difficult due to Earth's greater gravitation influence.) We also have to accept that Mars would have formed and cooled sufficiently for life to start much quicker than Earth will have, giving life a bit more time to get ready to make the journey here, adding yet another logical point to this idea.

Bizarrely, scientists have however now begun to look into the Martian dryness as a sign that life may have started there. Confused? In short, certain elements in the cocktail of ingredients needed to create life actually need dry conditions to form. Although Mars was generally a wet planet in its early conception, there were large parts of dry desert too, and this is where many of those fundamental elements could have been cooked up. There is evidence to suggest that those elements could not have existed here on Earth early on and that basically, life started on Earth before it should have done.

In 2013, many newspapers and news outlets ran the story about the possibility of Mars being our ancestral home (have a read of the BBC and National Geographic ones,) but this still doesn't explain where the life on Mars first came from. We've merely set the clock back a few hundred million years.
There are two other interesting things to consider which loop back to this Panspermia idea. Firstly is the discovery of sugar in space, with news reports back in 2012 reporting that they were abundant around young sun-like stars, it may indicate that life may simply be a normal component in a solar systems creation (sugar is a major building block in RNA.) Secondly, there is an idea which was ripped off from a theory originally applied to technology; 'Moore's Law'. It was suggested last year that by working backwards in complexity, assuming life should follow a predictable evolution process, that life ought to be ten billion years old. All things considered however, it is interesting that science is now beginning to take the idea of life being seeded here as a serious concept.

In conclusion then, we may all very well have Martian ancestors, who came here on the back of a meteorite after a violent explosion on the red planets surface. At the moment, although there are no ways to prove these theories, it does resonate with a certain degree of logic that life would act on a cosmic scale in much the same way that life does here on Earth. If you look at Antartica for an example, the coastline now has areas of grass growing where explorers have stepped on land without checking their shoes for attached grass seeds. If it can happen in Antartica, it can happen again. 

In fact it would not be at all surprising to me if extremophile organism's exist out there on comets etc, with their entire purpose being simply to find other planetary bodies to deposit life onto. We're still awaiting the proper results to come back from the comet lander which has now fortunately come back to life, so with some luck these ideas will become more relevant in time. 

You have to admit, there is an almost endearing feeling behind the prospect of all life sharing the universe - and when we do find ET, it may be quite disconcerting to realise our similarities far outstrip our differences.

Libya: International Pillage

This is the first part in what is hopefully to become a set of three or four articles about why the world's geopolitics are in such a mess. Admittedly, this I'm only going back as far as the fall of Gaddafi. To fully appreciate the full demise of the World into economic slavery you would have to go back centuries, but given that I haven't got six years to write a full and comprehensive re-write of popular history this will have to do.
I am also painfully aware that there may not be much time to write this for reasons that may become clear towards the end of the set of associated blog posts over the coming weeks. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that by writing this that the mere act of doing so may bring about a change in the world's zeitgeist.

In any case, the reason why I've decided to write this is because the mainstream news point-blank refuses to do proper investigative journalism on the most important issues. One of the greatest geo-political problems, which I'm sure you'll agree, are the Islamist uprisings that have happened across the Middle East. The Libyan crisis was certainly not necessarily the starting point of ISIS and islamic militancy, but it was the first glimpse into the problems which were to come.

Do you remember how the consortium of British, French and American air forces were called in to impose a no-fly zone in order to stop the nasty Gaddafi from killing innocent civilians?

Sounds all very noble doesn't it. The image portrayed of us in the media, of riding in on silvery flying steeds firing laser guided bombs of justice, is not only wrong though, its an insult to every free thinking person on the globe.
I'll try and explain why, but bare in mind that this is very in depth. I'm not asking you to believe me on all of this, but I do ask that you check out the claims yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Everyone seems to accept that originally, the reason why the civil war in Libya began was because of protesters against Gaddafi's rule were being killed or brutalised by the Libyan armed forces. Now I don't dispute that there probably was genuine protests which saw innocents being killed or injured, but one thing that is clear is that it didn't take long for these 'protesters' to become well armed. I remember it quite well, (although worryingly it was quite a few years ago now!) one week the BBC et al were discussing how civilians were being murdered by Gaddafi's regime, the next week we saw videos of Toyota Hilux trucks with heavy weapons welded on their flatbeds parading through towns and engaging in full combat with the Libyan state. One of the reasons for the rapid military ability of those 'rebels' is attributed to Qatar who are said to have funded the initial uprising, supplied weapons for the 'rebels' and later, was even prepared to do business with local leaders who were selling crude oil before the war was even over. 

Allies were keen to bomb,  despite civilian casualties which they often also inflicted.

Allies were keen to bomb,
 despite civilian casualties which
they often also inflicted.

In fact, Qatar have been funding Islamist's all over the region for reasons unknown (although we can certain have our suspicions.) This started with Libya, but also spread to include support for Syrian 'rebels' too, and presumably also those operating in ISIS now. But more on that in a minute. Just to give you some kind of insight into the workings going on here, Qatar has even admitted that in actual fact, it had sent it's own military personnel into Libya to assist the Islamist's in capturing Tripoli. 

At this point you're probably thinking, "hey, why did the rest of the world sit idle whilst Qatar destabilised an entire region". This is real question. America in actual fact is a major ally of Qatar and whilst it's hard to believe, America houses it's U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center in the country. Interestingly, even as far back as 2012, there were alarm calls that a lot of the weapons going to rebels in Libya from Qatar were falling into the hands of Islamists. In fact, despite this concern, America still approved Qatar sending US made weapons into the region. Read here if you don't believe me. Ironically, Gaddafi himself even claimed that those rebels he was fighting were terrorists. The claim originally was met with laughter in our main media, but as we later found out, the guy was right!
Even more mind blowing is the fact that despite Qatar's obvious influence in inflaming the situation in the middle east, just last year in 2014 the US signed an $11bn arms deal with the gulf state.
So whats going on here?!
I don't have all the answers. I mean so far, ( and nor am I going to) I've not said anything which has not come out of the media. The main point though is that these news stories come and they go. They are forgotten very quickly, and very rarely is it that the general public get to really scrutinize long-term news trends in a way that reveals a true agenda. The evidence is there, clear as day, it's not hidden, but the way in which it is reported in broken chunks fails to educate a busy public into truly understanding about what is at stake.

So in Libya's case, violent protests broke out which turned into armed conflict, armed indirectly by the United States and it's key allies. Why? Well Libya was not an Islamist state. It was a relatively free society by the Arab world's standards. Women were educated and held property. There was state healthcare for example. Whilst I certainly don't think he is the model leader for a free society, I think we can all agree that he was certainly the only kind of leader that is capable of keeping a nation in that region from falling into mayhem. Like it has.

The real reason one assumes is really rather simple. Money. In 2007, Tony Blair attended a special envoy to meet Gaddafi in a yurt, in the middle of the desert to do a business deal. In that business meeting there were a few things worthy of note:

• BP was to be granted drilling rights to oil wells off the coast of Libya. BP themselves stated that it was "BP's single biggest exploration commitment" and "a welcome return to the country for BP after more than 30 years".

• Blair introduced Gaddafi to US bankers, and got an investment plan underway with Goldman Sachs. Within 12 months, following the financial crash, 98% of the investment fund Libya had deposited had been "lost".

• Libya was to give up all NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons to peacekeepers, in return British special forces were to train the Libyan Army, and it also seems that as an added sweetener deal, Libya would become the UK's terrorist interrogation service.

Following the financial crash where Gaddafi's investments moneys 'disappeared' it was clear that there was a change in tact from Libya's leader. He obviously realised in hindsight that he'd done a deal with the devil and gotten himself bitten, so in retaliation for this act of financial sabotage, Gaddafi campaigned for a new currency across the African continent named the Gold Dinar, and the rejection of US dollar for trade. By the way, Libya had a lot of gold pre-invasion. Some estimates had the stockpile of the precious metal as up to $6bn worth. Which is a huge amount if you consider the size of the country and its population.
Without going into the details of why, the short explanation is that if a gold backed currency had taken off across Africa (and there were a few nations that were quite keen on the idea) then it would have damaged the World's dollar backed economy, and badly too. The proxy US led invasion then was nothing more than the US protecting it's own interests, at the same time as making a mint in military deals, re-contruction works (like Iraq was) and as it seems, they must have begun purchasing the oil off of 'rebels' and the newly formed puppet Government for a fraction of what the original agreements were.
So these essentially are the reasons why the Anglo-Franc alliance bombarded Libyan forces and assisted in an Islamist overthrow. And by the way, despite the 'no boots on the ground' assertion by our leaders, our own special forces teams were all over Libya like a rash directing and providing reconnaissance for Allied bomber aircraft. (You know, they had to make sure that their weapons investment was going to pay off.) It meant bigger profits for corporate interests in that region, but has had absolutely no pay off for those living in the region.

The legacy of our intervention in Libya is that:

• Taking Gaddafi out of the equation has caused such a power vacuum that now, even the leaders appointed by Allied interventionists have been ousted by Islamists. As early as a few weeks after the capture of Tripoli, the black Islamist flag was seen flying over a major buildings. Ironically, rather than thank the US for their hand in assisting with an overthrow, the US embassy was attacked, and a number of US diplomats were killed in the process.

• The corporate rape of Libya has bankrupted the Libyan people and left only anarchy in its wake. The general population in Libya has in no way benefited from the expulsion of Gaddafi. 

• The likely case that the golden nest egg Libya had been sitting on has been raided. News reports stated back during the intervention, that in order to pay for staff during the war, Gaddafi was forced to use 20% of the gold reserves. I suspect that this was just the initial take home from the 'liberators'. I've tried to look for figures of gold stocks in Libya today but to no avail, but my bet is that it's non-existent now.

• The 'rebel' fighters who had been operating in Libya later left to go and fight in Syria, and have in many cases had a direct hand in creating ISIS. Even in an official capacity, the new Government of Libya, only a few weeks old at this point, was doing arms deals with Syrian insurgents. In actual fact, even the US started doing it openly, with Qatar once again offering military services.

• With things so bad in the region due to deliberate destabilisation, thousands of refugees are attempting to claim asylum within the European Union, although this is a separate issue which I'll cover later.

And this brings us to the last point. The reason why Allied forces have not stamped out the more extreme elements within Libya's Government to bring about stability is because the situation at the moment favours destabilisation.  

Libyan rebels seem very organised for a bunch of  armed yokels

I hope you've learnt a bit about how the situation with the Libyan war and the refugee crisis has come about. I haven't revealed any secret information, all I've done is try to place all the jigsaw pieces together in a way that makes it easier to see the trends. I'll probably cover Syria and Isis next, and hopefully get on to Russia and China.

Got a comment to say? Then say it below! Thanks for your time reading, I do appreciate it.

The Father Sol

Have you ever considered why celebrations in today's post-modern society are dated the way they are? I suspect a sizable chunk of the population never have, which is a shame because if people did, they'd probably realise that despite appearances, humanity has hardly changed at all for thousands of years.

The title of this post may seem a little odd to you, what on Earth do I mean exactly by Father Sol? Well I should probably at this stage point out that I'm a Pagan. Before you jump to conclusions, that doesn't mean I sacrifice peoples pets to Satan, nor do I wear tie-dye and live in a camper van. You probably wouldn't notice anything abnormal about me as a person other than maybe the fact that I really can't be bothered to follow fashion and dress like a guy twenty years older. I don't even adhere to or acknowledge many of the Pagan holidays that I should do, but regardless, let me explain the Father Sol... thing.

To me it appears as no coincidence that Father's Day in most of the World happens to fall on the third Sunday of June every year. The reason for this, is that it happens to coincide roughly with the summer solstice which has a literally huge symbolic connotation.

In the vast majority of cultures, the Sun is seen to have a masculine quality whilst the Earth and the Moon are said to have feminine ones. With the exclusion of some Germanic tribes, this was certainly the general consensus across pagan Europe. In most lore, the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night generally represents the Sun God when he is in the prime of his life. He shines brightly and the fruits of his fertility have successfully gotten spring through fruition, and life is now up and running, but from now on his power wanes until he begins his death and annual return around the winter solstice (which, being Christmas I'm sure you'll appreciate the apparent significance of this symbology.)

If we think about it, it is of no greater coincidence that Father's Day should be celebrated more or less on the summer solstice than Christmas should be celebrated on the winter solstice.

But how do we know that the ancient societies saw the Sun as the male force of all nature? 

Believe it or not, its really not that difficult to piece together. One big clue is at the famous Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. At around midsummer, sunrise casts a long shadow from a carefully placed outlaying stone to directly inside the henge itself. Its symbol is self apparent. The Sun Father's shadow becomes a representation of a phallice which fertilizes the Earth Goddess (so it becomes apparent that perhaps the henge itself represents a womb.)

The diagram above shows the shadow cast at midsummer
sunrise towards the centre of the henge.

So, is there something behind it? If you're thinking that "oh, this is merely an ancient tradition that keeps having its meaning changed" I have some news for you. Maybe our ancient ancestors knew more than they were letting on to. As with most ancient wisdom which science is now only beginning to accept as reality, the Sun really does have a fertility element to it.

Just yesterday, news reports were posted accepting that women exposed to more sunshine are more likely to conceive children, similarly, older reports from a number of years ago concluded that sunshine also increases men's testosterone levels, obviously also aiding their fertility too. So, like many things ancient religious symbols and so on do not necessarily have to be out of date or tribal nonsense. 

In any case, it's my first Father's Day as a Daddy tomorrow, and as I'm also reaching late twenties at the end of this month, this Father's Day holds extra special meaning for me. And I intend to spend it doing like any proper man should. Drinking good quality beer and eating BBQ!

Have a good one all!

 

Footprint of Lies?

 This is just a short one as I don't want to go into too much detail about something 'conspiracy theorists' have gone on about for over forty years. Regardless, I still think this is a fairly interesting apparent coincidence.

I was tempted to name this blog post "Did America just shit themselves", but gathered that that kind of title would just give me grief from overly patriotic Americans. So, did America just shit themselves? Metaphorically? Collectively?

The reason why I ask is that Russia has been looking for any way to dig up dirt on America or the West in general with the ongoing dispute over Ukraine. Seemingly, Putin has seen fit to return to an age of cold war-esque dick waving over now antique space programmes, and has called into question NASA's handling of important parts of their moon-landings.

Just to clarify, (as this is something which I had initially thought before re-reading the news story,) Russia hasn't necessarily said that they think the manned journey to the moon was faked, but that they wanted an investigation into the whereabouts of the original film recordings and fragments of sample moon rock taken back to Earth. Apparently much of the original equipment and so on was "destroyed to save costs".

Orbiter images show evidence for moon landings being real.

Now I don't want to get into the details of how and why the moon landings may be faked, let google be your guide in that respect, but I will say one thing. Who on Earth would throw away anything that was involved in mankind's most triumphant achievement? It just seems wholly inconceivable that anyone would chuck any of it away, let alone original recordings from the missions. I would argue that those trinkets and objects are so culturally relevant to all of humanity, that any destruction of any part equates to iconoclasm. So it is for this reason, that makes me consider that maybe the moon landings were faked after all.

Another article came out at around the same time this week though which has said that essentially, because of meteor showers, the footprints left by Neil Armstrong and others would slowly disappear under a layer of dust. Now don't get me wrong, I don't know the kind of timescale one would expect for this to happen. If this article had come out at any other time, I would have paid it no attention whatsoever, but the timing of this news story is rather, well, convenient!

This is all unlikely though. China and India have both photographed the Moon in high resolution a few years back, and seems to have verified the moon landing sites. 

I don't actually believe they were faked as I do think it would take more resources to keep it secret than it would just to do the thing in the first place, but there is always that niggle of doubt. And I don't want it to be faked either. For mankind to learn that our greatest achievement so far was a mere political ruse would likely harm our collective psyche. 

If it isn't faked, then as Russia has already said, we do need to find out what has happened to 'missing tapes' and moon rock fragments etc. They belong to us all.

Finally, even if the landings were faked, I don't think we should be addressing the issue. In special cases like this, ignorance really is bliss. If we stop looking up at the stars, if we stop dreaming, then our humanity is lost - finding a lie as big as this might open up a whole new level of apathy.

Which is fairly deep...

Generation 'Z'

This post may seem like a bit of a cliche joke. A play on words. To be honest I'd be half tempted to call it a joke myself except there is a worrying degree of truth in what I'm about to write.

Did you ever stop to wonder why so many films and TV programmes have been made about apocalyptic events recently? Its bizarre when you think about it. For decades the general view of the future was optimistic, you only have to watch films like 2001:Space Odyssey or listen to music like David Bowie to hear that the space programmes had really ushered in a new hope for humanity. Science fiction within thirty years though went from dreaming about vast cities on other worlds to going on over and over again about the end of this World.

There has to be a reason for all these disaster movies though, right? Is it that they simply sell well, or is there an underlying reason for it? Conditioning perhaps? I don't think that it is in anyway a coincidence that at a time of massive social and economic unease, let alone the threat of war breaking out between the West and Russia/China that these films and programmes have become common. Whilst simultaneously putting dread into the minds of the masses, it also deflects away the issues away as being part fantasy. Its like a mass media pacifier.

I'm not one to get overly paranoid. I don't trust everything I read, and neither should you, but I do frequently consider one thing. Our entire way of life could change at a moments notice. There are multiple reasons for this which I won't go into right now because each deserves its own post, but say civilization did end right now, what do you think survival rates would be?

To ponder that lets just first consider the average person living in the modern world right now. Can they read a paper map effectively? Can they a start fire with limited resources? Do they know where to find food when the supermarkets run dry? Do they know how to make stagnated water drinkable? Unfortunately there are a large percentage of people who do not know enough of these basics to ever be able to function if there was a breakdown of power and food supplies. This isn't including those who would succumb to illness and death due to a lack of antibiotics and long-term medication.

If for arguments sake the Earth was hit by some sort of EMP it would not take long for anarchy to ensue, especially in city centres. Here's something interesting to consider though. All those metropolitan arseholes who'd have a mental breakdown if the power went out longer than ten minutes would literally become the walking dead. They'd wander like a hoarde of the well known zombies for food and water until they exhausted the supplies in inner-cities. Eventually most city dwellers would die. (Probably after descending into cannibalism.) If you question whether civil unrest would occur then you need only look at the 'Black Friday Sales' scenes. If people are prepared to physically fight over something as unimportant as flat screen televisions, just imagine what they'd do for that last tin of beans on the supermarket shelf. 

And this only supports my point. People today of all ages do not know enough about the real world to be able to function outside of the civilization that has been built around them. Its a folly to become too reliant upon technology though. This reliance is only going to get worse though. 

The last few decades have had this weird generational categorisation. If you were born in the 70's you belong to Generation X. If, like me, you were born in the mid-80's or 90's you belong to the Generation Y. So far the generalisations applied to these two groups seem to be fairly correct. It worries me then that the next generation, my daughters generation, will be dubbed 'Generation Z'. 

Yes yes, I'm kind of half joking about the next generation becoming zombies. Kinda. I'm not saying they are being called Generation Z because anyone thinks they'll become zombies, but.... they might. Allow me to explain.

Most adults today already have an addiction at some level to technology. I'll hold my hands up and say sometimes I can't put my phone down either, but the up and coming 'wearables' as they've been dubbed are becoming a real concern to me. Here is why:

A company called Thync and another called Melomind are actively developing mind altering technology that supposedly chills you out (or supposedly also provides 'energy'.) Aside from the fact that you'd look like an actual wanker wearing one in the street, it draws all kinds of questions as to the safety of these devices.

They work by essentially putting small amounts of power through electrodes that stimulate neurons in your brain. Two issues here right from the start. Firstly, as its marketed as a 'leisure device' it bypasses health safety checks, not that health testing can always be trusted anyway. Secondly, obviously no long term research has been put into these to ascertain whether they would become addictive or not. 

And fuck it, I'm going to come right out and say these other two points. Brain chemistry works a certain way for a reason. If you are stressed out its because there is an underlying issue in your life that you need to resolve. Patching over it with brain stimulating devices whilst mumbling "just a bit of harmless brain alteration", is likely to have very little positive gain. Lastly, on the point of this ridiculous device, who is to say that years down the line when we've progressed further into the dystopian future hipsters actually seem to want to be bring about, that Google won't somehow hold records on how our brain functions.

I don't like it. At all. Now everything else seems to have gone digital, now even our brains can't be left alone to function as they should do. Its concerning. And obviously, I'm not talking short-term here, but long-term I think we are going to have to reign in technology to allow ourselves as a species to get back some of our normal behavior. This is just the start of wearables too, so Gods know where this will end up in the years to come.

There is also another concern that may be rearing its ugly head soon too. Virtual reality. Speaking as someone who has played computer games for years, I'll be the first to admit that games can seriously mess your head up if you're not careful. Sometimes its possible to get completely sucked into a virtual world, and virtual reality might simply make that worse. My concern is that the pro-longed absence of even seeing the room around you in your peripheral vision whilst playing something might trick your mind into thinking whatever game it is is real. Which is fine, if you're an adult, but we all know there are plenty of retarded parents who think it's acceptable for a seven year old to play Call of Duty fourteen hours a day. And this isn't me being ignorant of technology either, as I myself have had many sleepless nights where the image of Lara Croft's arse or Minecraft blocks have been imprinted in my mind.

Even more worrying than virtual reality though, is augmented reality. This is where the real concern for the future comes in. If smart phones are anything to go by, then if someone found a practical way to overlay a constant information feed over your eyes (like contact lenses) then it would really take off. I think the  only reason Google Glass never took off is because of the impractical nature of the design. Imagine a total reliance on technology where you was not required to remember even basic details like peoples names!

Now don't get me wrong. My phone is glued to my face as much as anyone else, and I love technology - all I'm saying is that even though we are obsessed with it, it's not necessarily healthy. I'm actually quite looking forward to virtual reality goggles for gaming, but I'm wary that it will be applied to too many facets of our daily life.

We are headed for some weird times over the coming decades, and I just hope actual wisdom instead of intelligence prevails in the long run. Everyone has been programmed into this fake reality we see around us - and none of us really appreciate nature for what it could do to us. So let us spare a thought for the new generation. The Z generation. Like the crappy zombie films we're used to, they might become mindless drones that cannot operate without the 'grid', but the silver lining is that every zombie film has survivors. So teach your kids properly, and there will always be hope.

The Objective Objective

My main qualm with the news (I was going to say 'today', but it has always been the case) is that it is not in any way impartial. It's impossible to be. Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one. Unfortunately most people today, and in particular those granted any authority, speak out of their arseholes as they parrot what they are told to think by the echelon of authority directly above them. It seems common sense has long departed the psyche of the modern society and in its place stands a strict and sometimes hilariously ridiculous nanny state.

'Political Correctness' seems to have ingrained itself well and truly within not only the state and its civil servants, but also the media which most of the public look up to for direction and information. Everything in the Western world has been corrupted and taken over by a permeating force of deception. Now, when I say political correctness I do not necessarily mean the outright state and media support of minorities and special interest groups like feminism and the pro-gay brigade. Although that is certainly one aspect of it.

Political correctness is exactly what it says on the tin. Political. We are so used to the term that we forget exactly why such wording must have been coined in the first place. It is, essentially, a set of philosophical and legalese rubbish that has been forced upon the population. The multitudes of left-wing fanatics don't realise that (to borrow a popular term) they are useful idiots. Generally they protest and campaign for the very thing which Governments in fact want to bring in because it ultimately will hurt traditional values and make the public more dependent on the state.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves though. News outlets, like Politics, play a very clever game. People on both the left and the right both believe that there is a bias against their particular persuasion but for different reasons. If you are on the left, you see blatant attacks on those reliant on benefits and so on as an affront to your beliefs. If you're on the right, you see the constant defence of immigration and multiculturalism as an outright bias. Between the two, you have this game of divide and rule among'st the middle and working classes when in actual fact there are many points that they could come together on. Things like how banking actually works for example has a huge overlap of interest between the left and the right. These are unsurprisingly the things which rarely get brought up, nor will we ever get a say on (mainly because the international banks now overwhelmingly own both the media and politics.)

When it comes to the media, they do a fantastic job of setting up newspapers that fit a niche. If you take the UK as an example, The Express serves UKIP or Eurosceptics. The Daily Mail serves the Tory reader whilst The Mirror traditionally backs Labour. All three can't really be trusted to ever do a true piece of investigative reporting, but obviously what they write and how they write it is done in such a way that it can be marketed to a certain group in society. You only have to look at The Sun newspaper in the last election to know that they couldn't give a toss about morals. In England they backed the Tories whilst simultaneously backing the SNP across the border in Scotland in the Scottish version of the same paper. Divide and conquer tactics.

So rather than gaining insight or educating themselves, the public in actual fact self-indoctrinate by reading and re-reading beliefs and opinions which they already hold. 

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not going to bullshit here and say that this blog is going to be the impartial elixir of truth. Like I said at the start of this post, opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one. Its fairly impossible for the writers own angle from not being apparent in anything that gets written, even when someone does try and write unbiased articles. When newspapers are owned by massive corporations though, that's when you really have to be concerned, and this is probably why blogs such as this have become such a phenomenon. I think the difference with me and this blog is that I don't tend to block myself away in one particular view point. I'm certainly not left, I'm not particularly right-wing either, but I do hate the status quo and the way in which society is currently heading. Its that same old maxim of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, which is probably why so many lose interest in the important issues.

In the past I've campaigned with and supported far-left organisations, I've also supported far-right ones too as I've tried in vain to find a place in the political spectrum. I've never really found one. As paradoxical as it may sound though, I think the experiences its taught me have been invaluable. Rather than stuck arguing the same point over and over, I've been receptive to new information and that has enabled me to gain and process more information. 

Am I going to say that I'm the best read-up person? No. Far from it. Do I get everything right? No. The reason why I'm writing this blog is because over the past I have got enough things right through prediction and so on that I feel I may have something to add to the grand sum of all knowledge. If I educate a few people along the way then that is brilliant and all I'm here to do.

So as the title suggests, my objective is to be objective, I just know it's unobtainable because truth is.. well, its perceived. Its never truly realised by anyone.

So over the coming months and hopefully years, if you think I've said something wrong, tell me. I welcome debate here and if you like what you read here, please remember to share! 

Thanks!

Introduction

I've started blogs before in the past. Quite a few actually. In actual fact I do have this horrible habit of starting blogs I fail to keep going.

My problem has been that in the past I've rarely had the time to keep new articles coming out. Things have changed recently as I've left my awfully shitty job to spend time with my young daughter, and will soon no doubt end up being a stay-at-home Dad. Can't knock it!

I'm also interested in such a huge number of subjects it becomes very difficult to write on say, Anglo-Saxon England one day and then something about the universe the next. Well, it's not difficult, but it gets very hard to market a blog as being something if its all over the place. I expect regular readers of something are probably keen to know the general gist of what they're following, which is why I get frustrated with it. I've never actually had anyone say anything, so it's probably only an issue which exists in my own mind. In fact I know it is.

This time though, I've given up on trying to advertise it as being anything other than just a dumping ground for my own thoughts and theories. I have many topics to cover over the coming weeks, as I sit here at my desk I have around twenty-odd article ideas jotted down I want to get on with and write. 

At the same time I also have a novel I'm writing which, given enough time, I'll eventually finish I'm sure. Its a Science-Fiction based story, to give an synopsis at this point would be fairly pointless however but if I pull it off it should be a real head-fucker. I do also plan on eventually beginning a podcast or perhaps a Vlog in the future depending on how this written blog goes. My voice is far too horrid though, I'll have to sort an emulator out. Or something.

In case you're wondering why its called Binxkast or why my profile is called Binxie, its because I'm generally a private person and I don't like people knowing my shit. If you want to know, Binxie was a nickname bestowed upon me by a three year old which ended up sticking with a few close friends. 

In any case. I shall be writing something of a little more importance - soon! Thank you for the interest, and please follow on Google and Tw@tter!