Finished the Penguin. Solid all the way through, best of the year for me.

Jetlag

Maybe we need a thread for ageing and ailments?

Ironically I was trying to open the site to check it's scientific validity but as I am in China it's censored! The good news is BTW is uncensored.

Quote from: David L on November 09, 2024, 10:35:46 AM

Quote from: Nick on November 09, 2024, 10:12:37 AMThat involves a painful process. Surely a short cut is more likely to reap the benefits faster for those not inclined to put the long slog work in?

Quite possibly a dangerous short cut 

Let's see how the stats pan out over time

That involves a painful process. Surely a short cut is more likely to reap the benefits faster for those not inclined to put the long slog work in?

Cameras everywhere.

Currently in Shanghai, not been for a number of years and there has been a massive change. It's like Blade runner. A very high proportion of cars and all scooters are electric, there is an eery silence on the streets as all you hear is tyre noise. buildings lit up at night with all sorts of amazing light displays, cash is a thing of the past, nearly all transactions are via Alipay , a phone app. Bullet trains are cheap and stations very clean, robot room service in hotels. Perhaps best of all is the translation technology, waiters have little machines they can speak into which translates to a screen and also pronounces the sentence, plus google translate etc are also excellent. These things didn't exist until recently and conversation was impossible without the usual pointing and miming. A new age is certainly here to embrace.

But how many has it saved by reducing death by being overweight?

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on October 27, 2024, 02:18:53 PMIf galaxies do exist everywhere in an unending universe, does this rule out the possibility of a big bang? I'd never thought of there being an infinite amount of matter until now. Perhaps matter needs to create its own space. I don't know if this kind of thinking is good or bad for the human mind. I once thought about a number which literally scared me. What if every male reproductive cell from all time, was to singularly penetrate every human ovum which has ever existed, so that every possible variation of a human being could exist? What kind of number would that be? Would it even be able of calculation? I suppose it would be a reasonable equation for a brilliant mathematician. Starting with one male from prehistory, the number of cells he produces since adolescence, times the number of ova the first woman in the  sequence produces in her life time. Add that to woman number two's result, and so on. The only stumbling block might be the determination of when we became actual humans as we know today. Would the number be more than the number of galaxies or planets? Would it be more than the number of atoms in the universe as these are recycled? Answers on a postcard.

Seems to make the God thing look very odd, making all those universes to be worried if somebody was not keeping the sabbath day on a small planet within a single universe.
 

Great stuff, well communicated. Could go the other way into atoms with Rice Krispies.

Had to pop up to get a visa from the Chinese embassy in London today. As I arrived at Paddington I crossed paths with Rory Stewart, told him I enjoyed his podcasts.

Penguin S1 E4.. Cristin Milioti will win many awards for her performance in this episode.

Quote from: David L on October 13, 2024, 03:55:07 PM2025

25th May London Palladium - Blue Öyster Cult

The last few days of May!

Went to see a recording of "I,m sorry I haven't a clue" in Exeter. First time I've been to that sort of thing, very enjoyable to see it live in the flesh and to see how the show is created. Happily I now have witnessed a game of Mornington Crescent with local rules.