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Summer, Spice & Fried Rice
In the long hot English summer of 1976 my stepfather decided we were going to have a dinner party at our house. He fancied himself as something of a gourmet chef, so he decided that he was going to impress everyone with his worldliness and his international culinary expertise by cooking an Indonesian Nasi Goreng. I had no idea at the time what this exotic sounding dish was or where it came from, but I knew from previous experience that he was bound to screw it up in spectacular fashion somehow, so I watched intently as he lined up his ingredients in the kitchen and started to cook. He pranced around from pot to work surface to chopping board, and after about two hours ended up with a huge frying pan full of fried rice, lamb and vegetables. It looked nothing like the Nasi Goreng I know now, but it looked good. I must admit I was very disappointed that nothing had exploded in his face and nothing extremely hot had made contact with his groin - in fact nothing of any note had gone wrong. But there was still time.
The summer of ’76, for those who weren’t there or don’t remember, was, at the time, the hottest summer in the UK since records began. On Saturday July 3rd that year, the day my step father chose for the dinner party, temperatures where we lived in Gloucestershire reached nearly 36 degrees, making it one of the hottest places in the country.
About 6pm people started to arrive and everyone gathered in the garden where the dining table and chairs had been set up. My already-tipsy mother greeted everyone and gave them drinks while my stepfather paraded around in his “Kiss Me, I’m the Chef” apron. The men drank ice cold beers and the ladies sipped white wine spritzers while they fanned themselves with whatever they could find to combat the stifling heat. I guess by 7pm the temperature had gone down to around 30 degrees, and it was at about this time that I followed my stepfather into the kitchen to help him bring out the food. Before he picked up the huge casserole pot he tasted his concoction one last time and decided, to my delight, that it wasn’t quite spicy enough. He removed the cap from his bottle of chili sauce and gingerly dripped a few more dark red drops into the pan. Then a pause, then a few more drops, then a shrug of the shoulders and a good firm shake that sent roughly a third of the contents of the bottle into the mix. He stirred everything in vigorously with his wooden spoon then picked up the pan and headed for the garden where our already sweating guests awaited. I inspected the sauce bottle after he had gone. “Hell’s Inferno Chili Sauce. One Million Scoville Units. 200 Times Hotter Than Jalapeno. Use with Extreme Caution.” I made my way out to the garden to watch the fun.
He served everyone directly from the pan with generous portions, then raised his glass in an elaborate and overly sincere toast before encouraging everyone to “dig in”. They did.
I’d never seen grown men cry before. Cold beers disappeared in an instant. Within seconds women were in the house wrestling each other for turns at the cold water taps. People clutched their throats as their faces turned purple, looking for all the world like they were trying to strangle themselves to death. A life-and-death struggle for the ice bucket sent the cubes flying onto the grass where they dissolved in seconds as people dived to the ground and tried to grab what little was left and stuff it into their mouths. People actually started throwing up over the garden fence. Echoing screams could be heard in the still of the evening as people ran off down the road in search of relief.
My stubborn stepfather sat alone in the midst of this mayhem and carried on eating like nothing had happened. His face was bright red, the veins in his temples were throbbing, and he was drenched from head to foot in sweat - but he refused to admit his mistake. He cleared his plate and, in an effort to prove his point, actually helped himself to more from the pan. He must have been in agony as he tried to salvage his dignity, but he wouldn’t give up. He finished his second portion, stood up, then slowly walked in to the house with over-emphasised poise, climbed the stairs and locked himself in his bedroom. He didn’t reappear that day and he didn’t go to work the following week so I guess he paid a heavy price. So did I. My stomach and cheek muscles ached for days from the laughing.
The summer of ’76, for those who weren’t there or don’t remember, was, at the time, the hottest summer in the UK since records began. On Saturday July 3rd that year, the day my step father chose for the dinner party, temperatures where we lived in Gloucestershire reached nearly 36 degrees, making it one of the hottest places in the country.
About 6pm people started to arrive and everyone gathered in the garden where the dining table and chairs had been set up. My already-tipsy mother greeted everyone and gave them drinks while my stepfather paraded around in his “Kiss Me, I’m the Chef” apron. The men drank ice cold beers and the ladies sipped white wine spritzers while they fanned themselves with whatever they could find to combat the stifling heat. I guess by 7pm the temperature had gone down to around 30 degrees, and it was at about this time that I followed my stepfather into the kitchen to help him bring out the food. Before he picked up the huge casserole pot he tasted his concoction one last time and decided, to my delight, that it wasn’t quite spicy enough. He removed the cap from his bottle of chili sauce and gingerly dripped a few more dark red drops into the pan. Then a pause, then a few more drops, then a shrug of the shoulders and a good firm shake that sent roughly a third of the contents of the bottle into the mix. He stirred everything in vigorously with his wooden spoon then picked up the pan and headed for the garden where our already sweating guests awaited. I inspected the sauce bottle after he had gone. “Hell’s Inferno Chili Sauce. One Million Scoville Units. 200 Times Hotter Than Jalapeno. Use with Extreme Caution.” I made my way out to the garden to watch the fun.
He served everyone directly from the pan with generous portions, then raised his glass in an elaborate and overly sincere toast before encouraging everyone to “dig in”. They did.
I’d never seen grown men cry before. Cold beers disappeared in an instant. Within seconds women were in the house wrestling each other for turns at the cold water taps. People clutched their throats as their faces turned purple, looking for all the world like they were trying to strangle themselves to death. A life-and-death struggle for the ice bucket sent the cubes flying onto the grass where they dissolved in seconds as people dived to the ground and tried to grab what little was left and stuff it into their mouths. People actually started throwing up over the garden fence. Echoing screams could be heard in the still of the evening as people ran off down the road in search of relief.
My stubborn stepfather sat alone in the midst of this mayhem and carried on eating like nothing had happened. His face was bright red, the veins in his temples were throbbing, and he was drenched from head to foot in sweat - but he refused to admit his mistake. He cleared his plate and, in an effort to prove his point, actually helped himself to more from the pan. He must have been in agony as he tried to salvage his dignity, but he wouldn’t give up. He finished his second portion, stood up, then slowly walked in to the house with over-emphasised poise, climbed the stairs and locked himself in his bedroom. He didn’t reappear that day and he didn’t go to work the following week so I guess he paid a heavy price. So did I. My stomach and cheek muscles ached for days from the laughing.
The Day the Pope Came To Town
The Philippines is the largest Catholic country in Asia, so when Pope John Paul II visited the country in January 1995 hundreds of thousands of people descended on Ninoy Aquino International Airport to greet him. Understandably, the hysteria and excitement surpassed anything the most famous of rock bands might have expected, and the police estimated that around 3.5 to 4 million people turned out on to the streets of Manila to catch a glimpse of His Holiness as he made his way into the city.
At the time I was the Editor-in-Chief of Expat Newspaper in Manila and, like every other Editor-in-Chief in the city, I had sent one of my reporters and a photographer to the airport to cover the story. The rest of the country had taken the day off so I did the same, and just after lunch I got into my car and headed off to meet some fellow atheists for a very non-pious beer drinking session at one of our favourite hotels in Makati. Of course the traffic was chaotic beyond belief and every intersection seemed to be in a state of total gridlock as the superbly disciplined and very polite Filipino drivers gave way to each other and patiently waited their turn (ahem). Very soon my patience was running low and I was worried about missing my share of the beer, so I decided to allow myself to take some liberties with the traffic laws. As I passed through a red light behind four other cars that had done the same thing, a traffic cop leaped out into the road and waved for me to stop. I decided to ignore him and carried on across the ten yards of open road in front of me, before stopping behind the other outlaws who had jumped the red light in front of me. At that moment I realised that ignoring him had not been such a good idea considering the heavy traffic, so I looked in my rear view mirror and, sure enough, there he was sauntering up behind me, using his best John Wayne walk, sporting mirror Raybans, baseball cap and all. He flipped the cover off his ticket pad as he walked and reached towards his breast pocket for a pen. It became all too clear that valuable beer drinking time was about to be wasted. I searched my mind quickly for an excuse. Then I got it; I reached into the glove box, grabbed my press pass and hung it quickly round my neck as he tapped on the window. I opened the window and pretended I was pleased to see him.
“I’m sorry officer” I said, holding up my pass for his inspection. “I am a journalist and I’m on my way to the airport to cover the Pope’s arrival but this traffic is making me late!” He leaned down and inspected the pass. Then he took off his Raybans and and inspected it more closely. He looked at the picture then looked up at me, then repeated the same neck exercise several times. Eventually he gestured for me to give him the pass, told me to pull my vehicle over to the side of the road and walked back to the intersection to consult with his colleagues. I waited in my car, trying to calculate how much my transgression of the law might cost me and wondering if my excuse might actually work and get me off with nothing more than a warning. After all, he hadn’t even asked to see my driver’s license – which was a good thing because I didn’t have one.
A few minutes later, to my utter disbelief, the cop and one of his colleagues pulled up next to my car on motorbikes. He leaned towards my window. “Follow us, sir” he said as he handed me my pass, “we will escort you to the airport.” My jaw slowly dropped as they positioned themselves in front of my car and waited for me to follow them. Oh no! But I had no choice. They had no blue lights or sirens but they blew their horns and motioned with their arms for the traffic in front of us to give way, and the drivers dutifully and miraculously moved to the left and right to let us through, like the Red Sea parting before Moses. I followed them to the airport, swearing nervously all the way, and when we got there they found me a place to park in the staff car park. I got out of the car quickly, intending to say thanks and make good my escape as soon as they were gone – but no such luck. They walked me to a staff entrance where several police and security guards were stationed, and the policeman who had stopped me spoke secretively to the oldest guy with the most ribbons on his chest and the most gold braid on the peak of his baseball cap. The older guy looked at me suspiciously over the cop’s shoulder.
Suddenly he was in front of me. “What is your name sir?” he asked. I told him and he double-checked it on my press pass. Luckily I passed that little test and he was convinced. “Come with me sir,” he said, and started off towards the staff entrance. When we got there he nodded at the security guards and motioned for them to let me go through. “My man will stay with you sir” he said, and indicated for a policeman standing next to him to go with me. Next thing I knew my escort and I were in the back of the airport with hundreds of members of airport staff, looking out of a huge window at the vast expanse of tarmac upon which Pope John Paul II would shortly set foot. I was well and truly screwed. It was then that I realised I didn’t even have a pen or a scrap of paper to write on, not to mention a camera. I looked studiously out of the window while pulling my best “seriously interested reporter” face, hoping that my personal policeman would eventually get bored and disappear. Thankfully, after about half an hour he said “Excuse me sir, I must go for my break now.” I gave him a suitably disappointed look then graciously granted him permission to leave my presence. As soon as he was out of sight I walked quickly to the exit (which luckily was nowhere near the entrance where medals and gold braid still lurked) and headed for the car park. Thankfully getting out of the airport was much easier than getting in, and I arrived at the hotel to meet my friends just as the Pope was kissing the ground at the bottom of the aircraft steps. Many millions of people would have loved to have had the chance to be that close to Pope John Paul II – but I chose San Miguel.
A few days later I found out about the “Bojinka” plot, a plan devised by Moslem extremists to blow up the Pope that day, utilising one of their faithful dressed as a priest to get an explosive device into the airport. The plot was only discovered because the terrorists’ flat mysteriously caught fire and the bomb making paraphernalia was discovered. How different that whole day could have been for everyone.
At the time I was the Editor-in-Chief of Expat Newspaper in Manila and, like every other Editor-in-Chief in the city, I had sent one of my reporters and a photographer to the airport to cover the story. The rest of the country had taken the day off so I did the same, and just after lunch I got into my car and headed off to meet some fellow atheists for a very non-pious beer drinking session at one of our favourite hotels in Makati. Of course the traffic was chaotic beyond belief and every intersection seemed to be in a state of total gridlock as the superbly disciplined and very polite Filipino drivers gave way to each other and patiently waited their turn (ahem). Very soon my patience was running low and I was worried about missing my share of the beer, so I decided to allow myself to take some liberties with the traffic laws. As I passed through a red light behind four other cars that had done the same thing, a traffic cop leaped out into the road and waved for me to stop. I decided to ignore him and carried on across the ten yards of open road in front of me, before stopping behind the other outlaws who had jumped the red light in front of me. At that moment I realised that ignoring him had not been such a good idea considering the heavy traffic, so I looked in my rear view mirror and, sure enough, there he was sauntering up behind me, using his best John Wayne walk, sporting mirror Raybans, baseball cap and all. He flipped the cover off his ticket pad as he walked and reached towards his breast pocket for a pen. It became all too clear that valuable beer drinking time was about to be wasted. I searched my mind quickly for an excuse. Then I got it; I reached into the glove box, grabbed my press pass and hung it quickly round my neck as he tapped on the window. I opened the window and pretended I was pleased to see him.
“I’m sorry officer” I said, holding up my pass for his inspection. “I am a journalist and I’m on my way to the airport to cover the Pope’s arrival but this traffic is making me late!” He leaned down and inspected the pass. Then he took off his Raybans and and inspected it more closely. He looked at the picture then looked up at me, then repeated the same neck exercise several times. Eventually he gestured for me to give him the pass, told me to pull my vehicle over to the side of the road and walked back to the intersection to consult with his colleagues. I waited in my car, trying to calculate how much my transgression of the law might cost me and wondering if my excuse might actually work and get me off with nothing more than a warning. After all, he hadn’t even asked to see my driver’s license – which was a good thing because I didn’t have one.
A few minutes later, to my utter disbelief, the cop and one of his colleagues pulled up next to my car on motorbikes. He leaned towards my window. “Follow us, sir” he said as he handed me my pass, “we will escort you to the airport.” My jaw slowly dropped as they positioned themselves in front of my car and waited for me to follow them. Oh no! But I had no choice. They had no blue lights or sirens but they blew their horns and motioned with their arms for the traffic in front of us to give way, and the drivers dutifully and miraculously moved to the left and right to let us through, like the Red Sea parting before Moses. I followed them to the airport, swearing nervously all the way, and when we got there they found me a place to park in the staff car park. I got out of the car quickly, intending to say thanks and make good my escape as soon as they were gone – but no such luck. They walked me to a staff entrance where several police and security guards were stationed, and the policeman who had stopped me spoke secretively to the oldest guy with the most ribbons on his chest and the most gold braid on the peak of his baseball cap. The older guy looked at me suspiciously over the cop’s shoulder.
Suddenly he was in front of me. “What is your name sir?” he asked. I told him and he double-checked it on my press pass. Luckily I passed that little test and he was convinced. “Come with me sir,” he said, and started off towards the staff entrance. When we got there he nodded at the security guards and motioned for them to let me go through. “My man will stay with you sir” he said, and indicated for a policeman standing next to him to go with me. Next thing I knew my escort and I were in the back of the airport with hundreds of members of airport staff, looking out of a huge window at the vast expanse of tarmac upon which Pope John Paul II would shortly set foot. I was well and truly screwed. It was then that I realised I didn’t even have a pen or a scrap of paper to write on, not to mention a camera. I looked studiously out of the window while pulling my best “seriously interested reporter” face, hoping that my personal policeman would eventually get bored and disappear. Thankfully, after about half an hour he said “Excuse me sir, I must go for my break now.” I gave him a suitably disappointed look then graciously granted him permission to leave my presence. As soon as he was out of sight I walked quickly to the exit (which luckily was nowhere near the entrance where medals and gold braid still lurked) and headed for the car park. Thankfully getting out of the airport was much easier than getting in, and I arrived at the hotel to meet my friends just as the Pope was kissing the ground at the bottom of the aircraft steps. Many millions of people would have loved to have had the chance to be that close to Pope John Paul II – but I chose San Miguel.
A few days later I found out about the “Bojinka” plot, a plan devised by Moslem extremists to blow up the Pope that day, utilising one of their faithful dressed as a priest to get an explosive device into the airport. The plot was only discovered because the terrorists’ flat mysteriously caught fire and the bomb making paraphernalia was discovered. How different that whole day could have been for everyone.
Are You Mr. Magoo Too?
As I slide at break-neck speed down the slippery slope of life, I can’t help but notice that things are starting to change. For instance there are pills and creams in my bathroom cabinet now. Vitamins, skin creams, herbs. Even emergency gout medicine. All undeniable signs of my increasing seniority, along with the grunting noise I have started to make every time I get into or out of a chair.
The most inconvenient of all the ageing signs so far though is that my once perfect eyesight now requires correction by a pair of minus 0.75 glasses. I didn’t realise I needed glasses at all until someone remarked that it was amazing that I didn’t yet wear them considering my age. In response I jokingly threw on a pair belonging to a friend and was suddenly amazed when I saw that the whole world is not actually slightly blurred after arm’s length. Of course I actually knew that, but I guess my eyes had been getting worse so slowly that I got used to the slight blurriness and accepted it as normal.
I have been wearing my “spectacles” for about five years now and I just can’t get used to it. I need to take them off to read and put them on again to see anything further away, and I manage to lose them at some point in the process almost every time. They seem to move around the house at will and pop up in places I don’t remember going , and when I finally find them they always need cleaning. People say I should get “bi-focals” so I don’t need to take them off all the time, but I will resist doing so until my dying breath because that sounds like something a senior citizen would have worn in 17th century England along with a codpiece and a ruff.
Having now experienced driving with my glasses, I can’t believe that I am still alive after so many years of driving without them and, perhaps more importantly, that I haven’t killed anyone else either (not that I know about anyway). There should definitely be mandatory annual eye tests for every person over 40 who wants to drive. How many people are driving around just like I was, unaware of what they can’t see? There are definitely millions of unsuspecting invisible pedestrians all over the world in great peril from an omnipresent Mr. Magoo, especially at night.
But the most annoying part comes when I ride my motorbike. I have lost count of how many times I have walked up to the bike, taken off my glasses and placed them on the seat, put on my helmet, and then forgotten all about the glasses before swinging my leg over the bike and crashing down on them ass first. I am now on my eighth pair, and I think I will be well into double digits before I meet the great optometrist in the sky.
The most inconvenient of all the ageing signs so far though is that my once perfect eyesight now requires correction by a pair of minus 0.75 glasses. I didn’t realise I needed glasses at all until someone remarked that it was amazing that I didn’t yet wear them considering my age. In response I jokingly threw on a pair belonging to a friend and was suddenly amazed when I saw that the whole world is not actually slightly blurred after arm’s length. Of course I actually knew that, but I guess my eyes had been getting worse so slowly that I got used to the slight blurriness and accepted it as normal.
I have been wearing my “spectacles” for about five years now and I just can’t get used to it. I need to take them off to read and put them on again to see anything further away, and I manage to lose them at some point in the process almost every time. They seem to move around the house at will and pop up in places I don’t remember going , and when I finally find them they always need cleaning. People say I should get “bi-focals” so I don’t need to take them off all the time, but I will resist doing so until my dying breath because that sounds like something a senior citizen would have worn in 17th century England along with a codpiece and a ruff.
Having now experienced driving with my glasses, I can’t believe that I am still alive after so many years of driving without them and, perhaps more importantly, that I haven’t killed anyone else either (not that I know about anyway). There should definitely be mandatory annual eye tests for every person over 40 who wants to drive. How many people are driving around just like I was, unaware of what they can’t see? There are definitely millions of unsuspecting invisible pedestrians all over the world in great peril from an omnipresent Mr. Magoo, especially at night.
But the most annoying part comes when I ride my motorbike. I have lost count of how many times I have walked up to the bike, taken off my glasses and placed them on the seat, put on my helmet, and then forgotten all about the glasses before swinging my leg over the bike and crashing down on them ass first. I am now on my eighth pair, and I think I will be well into double digits before I meet the great optometrist in the sky.
Is There Anything Out There?
When I was 18 years old I was riding a motorbike through heavy summer holiday traffic in the centre of Gloucester in England with a friend riding pillion behind me. While we were waiting in a long queue of cars, I looked up absent-mindedly towards the clear blue sky above me, and there, perfectly still in the bright sunshine, was a shiny cigar shaped object. I tapped my friend's leg and asked him if he could see it, but as I did so the traffic moved so I put the bike in gear and moved forward a few feet. When we stopped I looked up again, but the object had disappeared. I asked my friend if he had seen it and he confirmed that he had, then told me that while he was looking at it, the object had suddenly shot off to the right at amazing speed and then completely disappeared. (Cue spooky music.) UFO? Or optical illusion?
If you are not old enough to remember the Unidentified Flying Object or “UFO” hysteria of the post war years you have most probably heard about it. The “Roswell Incident” in 1947, concerning the alleged crash of an alien space craft in the desert near Roswell in New Mexico, plus later numerous blurry images of cigar-shaped objects hovering over various remote parts of the world, and then occasional very shaky moving pictures of mysterious groups of lights flitting about in impossible ways in the night sky, all added up to convince many people that there were highly technologically advanced aliens lurking behind every cloud ready to invade the earth.
In my opinion, it is no coincidence that this hysteria began almost immediately after the Second World War. The citizens of earth had just been convinced beyond any doubt that there were evil creatures here on the same planet that would like to conquer and control them so, at the time, the “bogeyman” from another planet was not as ridiculous a concept as one might imagine. Add to this the amazing technological advancements made during the war, and you can understand why the average man would need little convincing that things beyond his wildest imagination might be possible. There were now machines that could see into the darkest of nights and detect incoming enemy aircraft, flying machines with no propellers that were traveling faster than anyone believed possible, and a single bomb that could wipe out an entire city. Out of this world.
Also take into account the fact that the victorious Allies had forcibly recruited most of Hitler’s surviving scientists and engineers to work for them and share their knowledge and research. All these great brains, at the time probably the greatest in the world, were shipped to the US and allowed to continue their work, only this time it was for the benefit of the winning side. It is not hard to imagine then, with the threat of Russia and what turned out to be the Cold War approaching, that these German genuises would have been put to work in the greatest secrecy in the most remote locations, testing new forms of flying machine and all kinds of fiendish new weaponry. When the average man occasionally caught an unexpected glimpse of this amazing and seemingly impossible technology, it is understandable that his mind might leap to conclusions that would require the involvement of unearthly beings.
Another technology that came on in leaps and bounds during the war was photography. The crucial need to record and convey clear visual information in war time had made movie and still cameras far more capable, accurate and reliable than they had ever been before, and after the war the companies whose research and development had effectively been paid for by the warring governments could now supply high quality cameras to the man in the street at reasonable prices. Before the war, the art of photography was mostly confined to wealthy explorers and philanthropic documentary makers. After the war it became far more accessible to the general population.
So now there were all kinds of new-fangled flying machines and weapons in the skies over remote parts of the US, and thousands of new fangled fancy cameras on the ground in the hands of a paranoid generation. Put the two together, add a dash of money-hungry Hollywood and a pinch of sensation-seeking media, and you have UFO hysteria. Then of course take into account the ability of unscrupulous attention seekers to manipulate images and fabricate stories and “personal accounts” and you have the “UFO” as a plausible part of every day life. Thousands of books were written on the subject and films and TV series proliferated. Some authors went to great lengths to “prove” that aliens were in fact on earth long before us, and some even showed us “evidence” of their existence in remote parts of south America and elsewhere in the world. All in all, the whole concept of the UFO took on a life of its own, and the term “UFO” itself became a synonym for “alien space ship”, when all it really means is “unidentified flying object” - literally anything that flies that the observer can’t identify.
So is there life on other planets? In 1961, Frank Drake, at the time a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and later Founder of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, put forward the Drake Equation. It’s a complicated equation and unintelligible to the average layman, but Drake says it gives the probable number of planets in our galaxy which harbour intelligent life forms which might be trying to communicate with other planets. When Drake plugged in his estimates of the values for each element of the equation, he came up with the answer ten. TEN planets in our galaxy alone capable of supporting life intelligent enough to be trying to communicate with other planets at any given time. Independent current estimates using the latest figures from NASA and other qualified sources place the number at 2.3. Of course a pessimist could stuff a zero in for any one of the assumptive elements of the equation and thereby produce another zero at the end. Some of the learned in these matters say the equation is purely hypothetical and complete nonsense.
Then there is the Fermi paradox which, simply stated, argues “If they do exist, then why aren’t we seeing any solid evidence of it?” This is particularly relevant in these modern times, now that tens of millions of snap-happy people all over the world have video and still cameras in their pockets 24 hours a day. How come back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when there were relatively few cameras around, we regularly saw mysterious grainy images of UFOs from all over the world? Now we see hardly any, when we should logically be seeing thousands of high resolution pictures of our alien friends and their craft every day – if they exist. But then, as one of my favourite expressions goes, and completely contrary to the Fermi paradox, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Having said all that, I personally believe there must be life on other planets. However I do not believe we will ever be lucky enough to connect with it. As far as we know the universe is constantly expanding and therefore infinite, so there must surely be other life out there somewhere (in fact logic dictates that in a truly infinite universe there are truly infinite possibilities so there must be a planet out there somewhere, inhabited solely by cello playing monkeys). But how far away are these life-forms, and will they still exist by the time we hear about them? Will we exist by the time the news of their existence reaches us? Will they communicate in a format we can comprehend? How do we know we they are not communicating with us right now in a format we can't recognise? Maybe the positions of the stars are trying to tell us something..
If you don’t believe that there is life on at least one of the other estimated 50 billion planets in our galaxy, or on one of the estimated 35 trillion planets in the observable universe, then you should be against convicting people of crimes using DNA evidence. The odds are not good enough for you. And if you don’t believe there is life on any of the infinite number of planets that must exist in the entire and constantly expanding infinite universe, then you should probably get your head examined. Or maybe I should.
There is a great line in the movie Contact which sums up my feelings very well. “If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”
If you are not old enough to remember the Unidentified Flying Object or “UFO” hysteria of the post war years you have most probably heard about it. The “Roswell Incident” in 1947, concerning the alleged crash of an alien space craft in the desert near Roswell in New Mexico, plus later numerous blurry images of cigar-shaped objects hovering over various remote parts of the world, and then occasional very shaky moving pictures of mysterious groups of lights flitting about in impossible ways in the night sky, all added up to convince many people that there were highly technologically advanced aliens lurking behind every cloud ready to invade the earth.
In my opinion, it is no coincidence that this hysteria began almost immediately after the Second World War. The citizens of earth had just been convinced beyond any doubt that there were evil creatures here on the same planet that would like to conquer and control them so, at the time, the “bogeyman” from another planet was not as ridiculous a concept as one might imagine. Add to this the amazing technological advancements made during the war, and you can understand why the average man would need little convincing that things beyond his wildest imagination might be possible. There were now machines that could see into the darkest of nights and detect incoming enemy aircraft, flying machines with no propellers that were traveling faster than anyone believed possible, and a single bomb that could wipe out an entire city. Out of this world.
Also take into account the fact that the victorious Allies had forcibly recruited most of Hitler’s surviving scientists and engineers to work for them and share their knowledge and research. All these great brains, at the time probably the greatest in the world, were shipped to the US and allowed to continue their work, only this time it was for the benefit of the winning side. It is not hard to imagine then, with the threat of Russia and what turned out to be the Cold War approaching, that these German genuises would have been put to work in the greatest secrecy in the most remote locations, testing new forms of flying machine and all kinds of fiendish new weaponry. When the average man occasionally caught an unexpected glimpse of this amazing and seemingly impossible technology, it is understandable that his mind might leap to conclusions that would require the involvement of unearthly beings.
Another technology that came on in leaps and bounds during the war was photography. The crucial need to record and convey clear visual information in war time had made movie and still cameras far more capable, accurate and reliable than they had ever been before, and after the war the companies whose research and development had effectively been paid for by the warring governments could now supply high quality cameras to the man in the street at reasonable prices. Before the war, the art of photography was mostly confined to wealthy explorers and philanthropic documentary makers. After the war it became far more accessible to the general population.
So now there were all kinds of new-fangled flying machines and weapons in the skies over remote parts of the US, and thousands of new fangled fancy cameras on the ground in the hands of a paranoid generation. Put the two together, add a dash of money-hungry Hollywood and a pinch of sensation-seeking media, and you have UFO hysteria. Then of course take into account the ability of unscrupulous attention seekers to manipulate images and fabricate stories and “personal accounts” and you have the “UFO” as a plausible part of every day life. Thousands of books were written on the subject and films and TV series proliferated. Some authors went to great lengths to “prove” that aliens were in fact on earth long before us, and some even showed us “evidence” of their existence in remote parts of south America and elsewhere in the world. All in all, the whole concept of the UFO took on a life of its own, and the term “UFO” itself became a synonym for “alien space ship”, when all it really means is “unidentified flying object” - literally anything that flies that the observer can’t identify.
So is there life on other planets? In 1961, Frank Drake, at the time a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and later Founder of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, put forward the Drake Equation. It’s a complicated equation and unintelligible to the average layman, but Drake says it gives the probable number of planets in our galaxy which harbour intelligent life forms which might be trying to communicate with other planets. When Drake plugged in his estimates of the values for each element of the equation, he came up with the answer ten. TEN planets in our galaxy alone capable of supporting life intelligent enough to be trying to communicate with other planets at any given time. Independent current estimates using the latest figures from NASA and other qualified sources place the number at 2.3. Of course a pessimist could stuff a zero in for any one of the assumptive elements of the equation and thereby produce another zero at the end. Some of the learned in these matters say the equation is purely hypothetical and complete nonsense.
Then there is the Fermi paradox which, simply stated, argues “If they do exist, then why aren’t we seeing any solid evidence of it?” This is particularly relevant in these modern times, now that tens of millions of snap-happy people all over the world have video and still cameras in their pockets 24 hours a day. How come back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when there were relatively few cameras around, we regularly saw mysterious grainy images of UFOs from all over the world? Now we see hardly any, when we should logically be seeing thousands of high resolution pictures of our alien friends and their craft every day – if they exist. But then, as one of my favourite expressions goes, and completely contrary to the Fermi paradox, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Having said all that, I personally believe there must be life on other planets. However I do not believe we will ever be lucky enough to connect with it. As far as we know the universe is constantly expanding and therefore infinite, so there must surely be other life out there somewhere (in fact logic dictates that in a truly infinite universe there are truly infinite possibilities so there must be a planet out there somewhere, inhabited solely by cello playing monkeys). But how far away are these life-forms, and will they still exist by the time we hear about them? Will we exist by the time the news of their existence reaches us? Will they communicate in a format we can comprehend? How do we know we they are not communicating with us right now in a format we can't recognise? Maybe the positions of the stars are trying to tell us something..
If you don’t believe that there is life on at least one of the other estimated 50 billion planets in our galaxy, or on one of the estimated 35 trillion planets in the observable universe, then you should be against convicting people of crimes using DNA evidence. The odds are not good enough for you. And if you don’t believe there is life on any of the infinite number of planets that must exist in the entire and constantly expanding infinite universe, then you should probably get your head examined. Or maybe I should.
There is a great line in the movie Contact which sums up my feelings very well. “If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”
Who Are They?
In my opinion the Post It note is one of the simplest and cleverest inventions of the 20th century, but it was invented by a couple of dumbasses. Unlike most inventions, which are usually brought into being by genuises as solutions to problems, the Post It note was actually an accidental solution to a problem that nobody knew existed.
A research scientist at 3M called Spence Silver made a glue that didn’t stick very well. Why he did so remains a mystery, because it was, on the face of it, about as useful as a chocolate frying pan. Around the same time, Spence’s colleague Art Fry, who worked in product development at 3M, found that his pesky bookmark kept falling out of his hymn book in church. He used Spence Silver's glue to hold it in place temporarily and found that it left no marks on the paper. Then, as a test, they gave a bunch of secretaries at 3M pads of notepaper with this failed glue on the back to see what would happen. Soon the notes were everywhere. Then they decided that the notes should come in various sizes for various uses and should be fluorescent yellow, pink, orange, blue and green, and behold, one of the most low profile yet useful inventions of the 20th century was born.
In this case, “they” were the brilliant Spence Silver, who managed to invent an ostensibly useless glue, and the visionary Art Fry, who couldn’t figure out how to keep a bookmark in his hymn book even though everybody else seemed to manage just fine (and still do). This particular “they” did us all a favour.
However there are countless other “theys” who make strange decisions for us that just make you want to pull your hair out. Like the location of the “caps lock” key on your computer keyboard for example. Right there next to the much-utilised “A” key, where we “hunt and peck” typists can easily hit it accidentally and type whole sentences in capital letters before looking up at the screen. And “they” make it twice the size of the other keys just to help us hit it more often. Why don’t “they” make the bloody thing smaller and put it out of the way? How often do you use it anyway? And the little tiny invisible power button on the side of your laptop. Why don’t “they” make it big and red and put it on the top where you can see it? Why do “they” do this to us?
In automatic cars, why did “they” decide we would push the gear stick forward to go backwards, and backwards to go forward? Why did “they” decide the bonnet (or hood) release in most cars would be hidden under the dashboard where you can’t find it? Why don’t “they” just put a button on the dashboard along with all the others? Same for the boot (or trunk) and fuel cap releases. I believe we have the technology.
“They” are mostly designers rather than inventors. The caps lock key is a great and necessary invention. “They” put it in the worst possible place and made it too big. The bonnet, boot and fuel releases are necessary parts of the wonderful invention that is the motor car. “They” decided these things would be located in places where only blind people would be able to find them.
But “they” seem to be having a competition. And it’s a competition to see who can design the most complicated, dangerous and impossible-to-use shower controls for hotel bathrooms. Some of these contraptions look like things you might find in a medieval torture chamber. Chrome levers, switches, taps and knobs that leave you confused, shivering and in imminent danger of scalded tackle if you choose the wrong sequence. And in many cases the temperature levers stick out far enough for you to accidentally knock them well into the red with your ass every time you turn round, thereby sending scalding hot water straight down your ultra-sensitive butt crack. It’s just plain evil.
Come the glorious day, “they” will be the first against the wall.
A research scientist at 3M called Spence Silver made a glue that didn’t stick very well. Why he did so remains a mystery, because it was, on the face of it, about as useful as a chocolate frying pan. Around the same time, Spence’s colleague Art Fry, who worked in product development at 3M, found that his pesky bookmark kept falling out of his hymn book in church. He used Spence Silver's glue to hold it in place temporarily and found that it left no marks on the paper. Then, as a test, they gave a bunch of secretaries at 3M pads of notepaper with this failed glue on the back to see what would happen. Soon the notes were everywhere. Then they decided that the notes should come in various sizes for various uses and should be fluorescent yellow, pink, orange, blue and green, and behold, one of the most low profile yet useful inventions of the 20th century was born.
In this case, “they” were the brilliant Spence Silver, who managed to invent an ostensibly useless glue, and the visionary Art Fry, who couldn’t figure out how to keep a bookmark in his hymn book even though everybody else seemed to manage just fine (and still do). This particular “they” did us all a favour.
However there are countless other “theys” who make strange decisions for us that just make you want to pull your hair out. Like the location of the “caps lock” key on your computer keyboard for example. Right there next to the much-utilised “A” key, where we “hunt and peck” typists can easily hit it accidentally and type whole sentences in capital letters before looking up at the screen. And “they” make it twice the size of the other keys just to help us hit it more often. Why don’t “they” make the bloody thing smaller and put it out of the way? How often do you use it anyway? And the little tiny invisible power button on the side of your laptop. Why don’t “they” make it big and red and put it on the top where you can see it? Why do “they” do this to us?
In automatic cars, why did “they” decide we would push the gear stick forward to go backwards, and backwards to go forward? Why did “they” decide the bonnet (or hood) release in most cars would be hidden under the dashboard where you can’t find it? Why don’t “they” just put a button on the dashboard along with all the others? Same for the boot (or trunk) and fuel cap releases. I believe we have the technology.
“They” are mostly designers rather than inventors. The caps lock key is a great and necessary invention. “They” put it in the worst possible place and made it too big. The bonnet, boot and fuel releases are necessary parts of the wonderful invention that is the motor car. “They” decided these things would be located in places where only blind people would be able to find them.
But “they” seem to be having a competition. And it’s a competition to see who can design the most complicated, dangerous and impossible-to-use shower controls for hotel bathrooms. Some of these contraptions look like things you might find in a medieval torture chamber. Chrome levers, switches, taps and knobs that leave you confused, shivering and in imminent danger of scalded tackle if you choose the wrong sequence. And in many cases the temperature levers stick out far enough for you to accidentally knock them well into the red with your ass every time you turn round, thereby sending scalding hot water straight down your ultra-sensitive butt crack. It’s just plain evil.
Come the glorious day, “they” will be the first against the wall.
Blind, Bamboozled and Big
For me, travelling is as much about the journey as the destination, and one of the things I enjoy most “en route” is watching other travellers. It amazes me how easily some people get confused. I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen people show their boarding passes to Flight Attendants in the aisle seeking guidance as to the whereabouts of their seats. “Excuse me... 34A please?” If I were the Flight Attendant I would be tempted to say “It’s in row 34, right behind row 33, and seat A is right next to seat B. If you get lost, look at the frickin’ pictures on the overhead lockers.” If the person doesn’t speak English or is blind I understand, but then I have to wonder how they got that far on their own – and if they are on the right plane.
Then there are the unfortunate inexperienced flyers who are completely bamboozled by the cunning and fiendishly clever design of the folding toilet door. They try to slide it, then pull it, then they finally push and fall into the toilet as the door gives way. Hilarious, especially when they get bamboozled again trying to get out and need to be rescued by a Flight Attendant. And what could it possibly mean when that little rectangle on the door turns red and has the universally recognised “no entry” sign on it? Surprisingly, it does not mean “push harder”.
There is one thing that really annoys me about flying though. At check in, we all sweat like drug smugglers when we put our bags on the scales, hoping we won’t incur exorbitant excess baggage charges. But what about heavy passengers? I was once in a check in queue behind a huge Japanese sumo wrestler, who was easily two metres tall and 150kgs. After he waddled away with his boarding pass, I stepped up to the desk for my turn, hoping the girl had seated him somewhere near the centre of the aircraft so we wouldn’t fly round in circles. I put my bag on the scale, waited anxiously, then groaned when the digits stopped at just over 25kgs. After completing what seemed to be a very complicated calculation, the girl behind the desk told me I would have to pay US$100 for the five kilos over the economy class allowance. I looked at her in disbelief, then at the sumo wrestler who was still visible nearby, apparently taking a rest on a step and maintaining his physique with a cheeseburger. The girl knew what I was thinking. “You can take some stuff out of the bag if you like” she said, keen to avoid the argument she knew I was tempted to make. And it’s a reasonable argument.
People are free to make whatever life choices they wish, but to be fair there really should be a total weight allowance for passengers and bags combined, calculated according to a medically determined maximum weight for height such as the generally accepted Body Mass Index. This way, regular size passengers would not be subsidising sumo wrestlers. Either that or everyone gets 50kgs to even things up. In fact, there are some airlines already forcing large passengers to buy two seats, but I guess that’s more about space than weight. Would an Airbus A380 with normal cargo and 500 sumo wrestlers plus baggage onboard actually fly? Or would the tires burst? Anyone?
Then there are the unfortunate inexperienced flyers who are completely bamboozled by the cunning and fiendishly clever design of the folding toilet door. They try to slide it, then pull it, then they finally push and fall into the toilet as the door gives way. Hilarious, especially when they get bamboozled again trying to get out and need to be rescued by a Flight Attendant. And what could it possibly mean when that little rectangle on the door turns red and has the universally recognised “no entry” sign on it? Surprisingly, it does not mean “push harder”.
There is one thing that really annoys me about flying though. At check in, we all sweat like drug smugglers when we put our bags on the scales, hoping we won’t incur exorbitant excess baggage charges. But what about heavy passengers? I was once in a check in queue behind a huge Japanese sumo wrestler, who was easily two metres tall and 150kgs. After he waddled away with his boarding pass, I stepped up to the desk for my turn, hoping the girl had seated him somewhere near the centre of the aircraft so we wouldn’t fly round in circles. I put my bag on the scale, waited anxiously, then groaned when the digits stopped at just over 25kgs. After completing what seemed to be a very complicated calculation, the girl behind the desk told me I would have to pay US$100 for the five kilos over the economy class allowance. I looked at her in disbelief, then at the sumo wrestler who was still visible nearby, apparently taking a rest on a step and maintaining his physique with a cheeseburger. The girl knew what I was thinking. “You can take some stuff out of the bag if you like” she said, keen to avoid the argument she knew I was tempted to make. And it’s a reasonable argument.
People are free to make whatever life choices they wish, but to be fair there really should be a total weight allowance for passengers and bags combined, calculated according to a medically determined maximum weight for height such as the generally accepted Body Mass Index. This way, regular size passengers would not be subsidising sumo wrestlers. Either that or everyone gets 50kgs to even things up. In fact, there are some airlines already forcing large passengers to buy two seats, but I guess that’s more about space than weight. Would an Airbus A380 with normal cargo and 500 sumo wrestlers plus baggage onboard actually fly? Or would the tires burst? Anyone?