Rebuttal of a rebuttal

I came across this article which tries to answer why the 'refugees' heading in Europe's direction are mostly men. What an absolutely terrible article, even from a left wing point of view, and I say this as a former leftwing Marxist,

• 'Women and children are often left in the refugee camps in neighboring countries while the men decide to leave the camps in order to take the risky and often deadly trip to Europe by boat. According to statistics, the split between men and women in refugee camps is almost fifty/fifty.'

In other words, the men, like the women and children, have already been granted refugee status in neighbouring countries. Whether neighbouring countries is good enough for them is another matter.  They should stay with their women, rather than come to Europe.  This means that there is a gender imbalance of those 'refugees' who come to Europe and these are men who come from a culture where women are seen as inferior.  There is evidence already of sexual assaults of women who try to make this journey.  Also women in Germany are asked to cover up in order not to provoke these male refugees into commiting rape.  In that case, why let these males in in the first place?

• 'Another reason is that a lot of women and children die on their way to Europe.'

Why can't these men do more to protect women on these voyages?

• 'Families that travel together in a big group have a harder time with the logistics, simply because it’s hard to look after multiple people. Often the groups get stuck in countries on the way, don’t have enough energy for everyone to continue.'

This completely destroys the argument about people fleeing war and persecution. If men are fleeing war and persecution, when why should women and children be forced to stay and continue facing this war and persecution, regardless of whether they have the 'energy' or not.

• 'don’t have enough energy for everyone to continue or decide to stay in the first place where they feel safe'.

 The authour already mentioned that the women and children have found refuge in neighbouring countries.  So why aren't neighbouring countries good enough for the men?

• 'Last but not least: No one would send their daughter to do this trip by herself. No one. The risks for a girl travelling by herself on a dangerous route such as from Syria to Europe, are too high. Along the coastline, criminal gangs are reportedly charging Syrian families tens of thousands of dollars to transport them to Greece. According to the UN, women and children are at an extremely high risk of sexual abuse, violence and exploitation on the route from a war zone to a safe zone. Much more so than men. Sending your young daughter instead of son is basically guaranteeing exploitation and abuse. No sane parent would do that.'

If women and children fleeing war are at risk of sexual abuse, what about women and children in Europe who are now at greater risk of sexual abuse due to the arrival of men who do not respect women's boundaries?

A complete nonsense of an article.

Pirates update - found all my lost relatives

I managed to find all 4 of my character's capture relatives on Sid Meier's pirates last night, so now I can concentrate for finding Montabalan and dealing with him. However time is running out as my character's age is now 37 years old and the adventure automatically stops when he reaches 47.  So far I have not found any clues as to Mr Montabalan's whereabouts as no CPU characters have been willing to sell me any clues.  I will keep you posted on the progress.

Finding lost treasure

I have restarted the adventure on Sid Meier's Pirates again, and this time I will make a concerted effort  to achieve the primary goals, that is to rescue all my character's relatives from captivity and take revenge on the real antagonist, Mr Montalbalan.  This meant I spent less time capturing ships and cities and more time searching for clues.  As a side goal, I have been looking for the lost treasure of the historical pirates which is a slightly easier task.  Early on, I went to the port of Trinidad and I was told I would not be welcome so I captured it by beating the local commander to a duel since there were less than 100 soldiers defending. Achieving the main goal is quite a challenge as the clues only come from mysterious stranger in the tavern and the evil Baron Raimundo.

Found an uncle and a lost inca city

Back to my pirates game and I managed to find a lost Inca city and freed my character's uncle, who looked a little worse for wear.

Dealing with the housing crisis the wrong way

I admit I used to be an avid Guardian reader and believer, but since 9/11 when the cultural Marxists have taken over, it has ceased to become a newspaper in the proper definition, rather it has because a loudspeaker for its hard left, eco-nonsense, anti-semitic views. One particular example is this. Yes, I know there is a housing problem in the UK and yes, there are people fleeing war, persecution etc from Syria, Afghanistan and so on.  In this article, Dawn Foster suggests that we should build on the green belt.  As someone who loves the outdoors, I say this is a crazy article even by Guardian standards. She goes on to mention that there are 635,000 empty homes in the UK.  Whether that is true or not, there are questions about this

• Are those homes in a habitable condition?
• Can they still be homes now? That is, have they been converted to industrial or commercial use?
• Where are those homes situated? Are they in areas of high or low employment?

She mentions that Oxford has problems recruiting teachers due to high rent?  Why are there high rents?  And why are so many teachers needed?  Its all to do with supply and demand.  Demand comes from population growth and the source of this population growth is migration.

Why stop at building on the green belt? Why not build on river meadows? Why not build on arable and pastoral land? Why not build on the renaming wild spaces in the UK.  The UK should be looking to control its population growth, not looking to keep building and letting people in.

Unreported effects of global warming

As mentioned in a previous post, activities on the Sun affect the Earth's climate, not only that but the Earth's orbit around the sun is actually more like an ellipse rather than a perfect circle.  This is because other planets (notably Jupiter and Saturn), comets and asteroids pull on the Earth with their own gravity.  This means that there are periods where the Earth gets closer or further away from the sun.  This too has an effect on climate.  We hear a lot of negative effects about climate change such as rising sea levels, loss of polar ice caps etc.  However, there are more positive effects as shown here.

Rising sea levels means more liquid water to evaporate and fall back down again as rain.  Also more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means more food for plants. This means higher crop yields.  I remember watching a natural history DVD which said that plants can lose 90% of its water through the sames pores in the leaves which it breathes the carbon dioxide.  More carbon dioxide means less pores need to be open and then less water will be lost. All this unfortunately is lost in the climate change debate.

Paperboy

Back in the mid-80's the Tories were in power, Labour was unelectable, Apple only made computers, you can only make calls at payphones while you were out and there was  one arcade game that everyone wanted to play at the amusement arcade - Paperboy. I remember many weekends at the amusements place next to Mumbles pier in Swansea spending my time and 10p pieces playing this and trying to make it to the end of the round. Now I play Paperboy on my PSP as part of the Midway Arcade Treasures game disk for the PSP.  It is a very true recreation of the 80s classic with the block pixel graphics and the old enemies are back, such as the drunk, the two men fighting, a swarm of bees, a breakdancer and a skateboarder. So far the longest I lasted was until Wednesday, one thing that mystified me was why the burglar kept trying to break in at the side window when it would be much more discreet trying it at the back.  Oh well.

Corbyn's shadow cabinet

Now that Jeremy Corbyn has named is shadow cabinet, there were very few surprises. Apart from leadership rival Andy Burnham, every one is on the hard left.  There are a new faces (Lisa Nandy) but then there are the old dinosaurs in Diane "whities divide and rule" Abbott and IRA fan John McDonnel as shadow chancellor.  I cannot see how this lot will help Labour win back to those swing voters in the marginals who deserted to the Tories in the last election.  Corbyn is turning a party that should be trying to win elections into a six form Sociology debating class. Bit sad as I think the Tories need a strong opposition to hold them to account. Apart from Cameron and the Tories, the big winner from all this is UKIP, who I think will challenge Labour very hard in its heartland. 

Quantum non-locality

I've just finished reading the chapters on classical computers in John Gribbin's Quantum Cat's book, which is quite interesting in itself as it gave a good biography on Alan Turing and Johann Von Neuman. It would have been interesting had Turing lived a bit longer.  Now I am on the chapter to do with quantum mechanics/physics itself.  Some of the stuff here, I have already come across before except for quantum non-locality.  This is where the actions two quantum matter (electrons, light photons etc) can influence each other as if the two items had the ability to communicate to each other.  Even though the concepts are quite well presented by Gribbin I had to do some background research to fully understand it and it is absolutely fascinating.

Parallel traders in Hong Kong

Whilst we hear daily reports of the migrant/'refugee' crisis that is affecting the West, there is a similar but not quite the same problem here in Hong Kong.  In Hong Kong there is no goods tax similar to VAT, compared to the mainland, which is quite substantial.  Also questions arise in the mainland as to the quality of the goods for sale and to whether the products are genuine or fake.  So there is no surprise that lots of mainlanders make day trips to HK to buy daily goods such as groceries, detergents, cosmetics, electronics, nappies etc.  This has led to parallel trading where mainlanders come to HK to buy retails goods, take them back and sell them on for profit.  The result of this is that businesses in Sheung Shui, Fanling, Yuen Long and Tai Po - the north districts - or districts closest to the mainland border, get alot of business.  The negative side of this is that prices are pushed up for locals and indeed, locals experience shortages.  We know that prices are dependent on supply and demand.  This has led to anti-mainland sentiment and indeed anti-parallel trader protests.  I saw some of this myself the other day when we went on a visit to some friends in Shenzhen.  Once our train stopped at Tai Po, lots of mainlanders came on with their shopping, some were clearly parallel traders. 
Although this pales in significance to what the Europeans are going through, it does show how freedom of travel can have positive and negative effects on any community.

sid meier's pirates - another update

After much trial and error, set backs and reloads I managed to free one of my character's capture relatives on Sid Meier's pirates. The character with the clues is a Baron Raimundo and I have to keep looking for his ship, attack it and if I win he will give me another look on the map.  I managed to find all the clues and searched an area and then found the character's sister.  Now I have 7 more relatives to find before I am forced to retire.  Also I have found another lost city - Aztec - and defeated all but one of the historical pirates, only Captain Kid is at large.  The Spanish now have a 19,000 gold coin bounty on my head.  To deal with this I have captured several Spanish ports along the north coast of South America for the English, thereby changing history.  It seems that it is not worth capturing ships anymore, if I wanted my character to make lots of money, the trick to capture ports using the turn based land battle, find lost cities or find lost treasure deposited by the historical pirates.
I will post more later.

Jeremy Corbyn is unclear

..... about the need to kill a British jihadi with a RAF drone strike. Jez, maybe its because he has joined a group that is at war with the British people and which has promised terrorist attacks on British soil.  Does that help, Jez?  Lest we forget, the people already killed by IS in Syria and Iraq already, I would not lose sleep over his death.

The refugee crisis

Even living out here in HK, one cannot avoid the refugee crisis that is happening in the Europe and the UK in particular.
From truck stowaways, cross channel swimmers and drowned toddlers, this has been the headline news on CCTV, Phoenix TV and TVB here in HK. There are many harrowing stories and but if you see through the emotional photos and footage a few facts need to be made clear.

Refugee or not.

Assuming they are all refugees fleeing persecution, why haven't they all sought refuge in first safe destination. Why do they have to seek refuge in certain European countries?  Also apart from a few tragic examples, most of these refugees are young men, if governments persecute people then they would persecute men and women, young and old.  Could it be to do the fact that the UK and Germany have a good social security structure?

 

Crisis due to western intervention

Germany has opened up its doors to these refugees from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea, but Germany has not been involved in any of these conflicts.  The UK was involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and now partially in Syria.  Other countries have been heavily involved in the Syrian conflict including Iran and Russia(both on the Assad side), the Gulf states, Saudia Arabia and Turkey (on the side of ISIS).  So far these countries have failed to take in any refugees.  The other form of western intervention has been British muslim teenagers going to Syria to join IS, apparently without their parent's knowledge!  Surely Iran and Russia should open their borders.  This argument does look very thin.

 

Isn't the UK in austerity.
We keep hearing that the UK is in austerity, but the left wants the UK to let these 'refugees' in, so how can the British taxpayer pay for all this when the UK is already in tough economic times?  Suddenly we regard to foreigners, austerity is ignored.

20g John Lowe soft tip darts review update

Here is a follow up review of my John Lowe soft tip darts after 30 legs of 501.

Patrick Moore: the sky at night

I am still reading Gribbin's quantum computing book, but today I have bought the Kindle version of
The sky at night: questions from across the universe,written by the late Sir Patrick Moore.  Like the previous book, it is another question and answer book, which answers questions posed by BBC Sky at night viewers from over the years.  I have only just started reading it and one thing he mentioned was that it is perfectly reasonable to look at the stars using binoculars, instead of a telescope. He does explain alot of the scientific concepts quite well without delving to much into physics and chemistry jargon.

Sid Meier's pirates - a more in depth review

I have been playing this game on my PSP now for a few days and I must admit it has exceeded my expectations.  The character has a finite number of pirating years - 26 in fact - and I have taken him to retirement.  Since then I have restarted again.  During the game play my character has defeated 5 historical pirates, married a governor's daughter, found a Inca city and capture several criminals in the name of the English crown.  The only two things I have not yet achieved is to find a historical pirate's hidden treasure and more importantly free any of his held loved ones.  The main goal is to find his relatives and free them but as with all strategy games of this type, one be distracted by the secondary goals.  In my current adventure, I am the number one pirate in the Spanish main, so I cannot dock at any Spanish held ports.  I can if I want to, try to take the port, with a turn based land battle, but I have not yet tried it.

To be fair to the writers, they have done well because the PSP is not amenable to real time strategy games and there are faults which are obvious such as boats sailing over small islands and coral reefs.

I think alot of background research and thought has been put to its development.

I will post some more later.

quantum computers

I am currently reading John Gribbin's "Quantum computing for cats: from qubits to colossus".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computing-Quantum-Cats-Colossus-Qubits/dp/0593074882

So far a very interesting read.  If these things ever go into the production the possibilities could be endless.

Sid Meier's pirates

I have just started play Sid Meier's Pirates on the Sony PSP.  This is a real time strategy game, which is rare for the PSP, and it includes some action elements as well. 

The background story is that our hero's family has been taken hostage due to financial debt and he has to be serve as a pirate in the 17th century Caribean in order to make his fortune and rescue them. On the way he captures ships in naval battles, defeat opponents in sword fights, trade with locals, dance with governor's daughters and find clues as to the relatives of his loved ones.

The graphics are so-so, the sword fighting depends more on our heroes health and weaponary rather than the player's skills.  The naval battles take a bit more skill and is quite realistic compared to actual naval battles of the era.  One can upgrade the boats and recruit sailors as well. One interesting feature is that once you are at port you have the opportunity to dance with the governor's daughter. In this case you must press the buttons in time with the music rather like a simplified "dance dance revolution" game, but the prompts don't appear to coincide with the music, so you must rely solely on your eyes.  If you do well, you may get clues and hints to find high yielding quarry.

I will post a bit more later when I have played a bit more.

sun spots and global warming

As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, I am reading Patrick Moore's "can you play cricket on Mars and other questions".  It is a thoroughly interesting book, which introduces alot of astronomical concepts in question and answer format. I now know about constellations, supernovas, red dwarves, black dwarves and beetlegeuse.  The section which intrigued me the most was about sunspots. These are results of solar "storms" and are actually cooler than the surrounding area.  Solar flares are linked to them.  Indeed, each sunspot is a pair, one of each polarity.  Like the weather, sunspots come in cycles.  They appear in periods of high solar activity and when they do, they cause a warming effect on the Earth. 

Scientists now know that previous periods of global warming - Roman warm period, Medieval warm period etc coincided with extra solar activity and more sun spots.  And is includes the period we are in now.  When there is low solar activity, we have a global cooling and this was evident in the little ice age a few centuries ago.  We really need to question how much human activity can warm up the planet, or a much better question would be, how does human activity exacerbate this natural cyclical warming by the sun?

Personally I believe that man-made global warming is a hoax or rather a religion. In fact it takes our eyes off other eco problems like pollution and human overpopulation.  But never mind, it gives the far left something to moan about.

My Adrian Mole: the prostrate years review

 

The franchise that I have followed for most of my life has ended. Here is my tribute/review

Sue Townsend RIP.

Feel free to comment.

Thinking of Christmas

Today all the school children of HK go back te skool and as my normal habit I am thinking about Christmas even though it is 28 degrees C. Some things never change.

The Sims on the Sony PSp

I have had the Sims2 on the Sony psp for a while but got bored after a few goes.  I didn't understand the logic behind the game. Tonight I will make another attempt.  I am familiar with strategy games by the way.