Observations on the world and its inhabitants
Who has not had a bad night’s sleep? Sometimes it is a single restless night. Sometimes sleep is repeatedly broken, shortened or delayed. The next day can feel very different: concentration slips, memory is less reliable, patience shortens and even simple decisions seem to require more effort. That familiar experience raises larger questions. Humans devote ...
Three hours into the Artemis 2 mission, the four bravest people on the planet found themselves staring at an amber fault light on a $30 million toilet. While NASA’s PR machine was busy broadcasting high-definition feeds of Earth’s crescent, mission specialist Christina Koch was reportedly being promoted to “Space Plumber” to deal with a “controller ...
I’m not going into why Authors may want to use AI. It’s big business out there. And no – it’s not about letting AI write books! FFS. But wait – it’s not only authors who may be interested in running an AI locally on their computers. AI can present tools for many use case scenarios. ...
The first two years are a transformation from a creature of pure reflex to a person with a distinct will and a growing sense of the world. While we track these milestones in categories, they do not happen in isolation. A baby does not just learn to crawl; they learn to crawl because they have ...
If you ask the next 100 people you meet what’s the risk of a nuke going off, expect the answer to be (with a smirk), “Calm down. No nuke is going to set off. Everybody knows that once nukes fly it’s the end of the world. Nobody wants that. So the risk , it’s very ...
Aspirin exists in the modern mind as a simple household remedy, yet its lineage as a biological intervention spans thousands of years, beginning with ancient willow bark preparations. The scientific understanding of the compound underwent a massive transition in 1971 with the discovery of its specific enzymatic pathways—a breakthrough that eventually merited a Nobel Prize. ...
From Lunar Headlines to the “Wetware” Crisis It began with a simple question, one that many of us have been asking as we approach the new year of 2026: Is NASA actually going back to the Moon? The surface-level answer is a resounding yes. As of today, New Year’s Eve 2025, the Artemis II rocket ...
If you follow health and nutrition news, you’ve probably experienced the same punctuated process of discovery that many of us have. One moment, you’re reading about the impressive antioxidant properties of Thymoquinone, a potent compound found in black cumin seed oil. The next, you’re learning about the heart health benefits of Resveratrol from red grapes, ...
🧠 Welcome to the Dopamine Desert In the spirit of reputational cartography and ensemble storytelling, I present a diagnostic artefact so rich in irony it could be prescribed as a laxative. This post is not a scientific treatise—though it may contain traces of serotonin. You have a roast of modern pharmacology, and a cautionary tale ...
Alan Turing’s 1950 proposal was not an attempt to define intelligence in abstract terms. Instead, it offered a pragmatic approach to recognising intelligence through conversational indistinguishability. The central question posed was whether a machine that could converse indistinguishably from a human should be considered intelligent. This reframing allowed Turing to sidestep metaphysical debates and focus ...
Well, the things and people I come across, and have to deal with – I tell you. This anecdote follows on from the side-splitting: The Great Cabbage Conspiracy: Why water is useless! Let’s get into this one. “Right,” I began, trying to sound helpful, “what exactly is wrong with your knee, then? Is it, you ...
Well you (meaning me) live and learn. I made an assumption over 40-odd years that petrol was a particular molecular compound. It turns out from my investigation that it is a mixture of compounds. Ahhh.. so somebody will be wondering, “Why the devil is he researching that, now? Has he not got anything better to ...
Wow!! It’s such an amazing tool – beating back ChatGPT hands down – that I had to try it out on some conundrums I faced in the past. Note that on opening this post, a video starts playing automatically at 11:11 min and stops automatically about 6 mins later. To not have the video start ...
“What!” you exclaim. 😂 I’ll explain. I read from internet sources that it’s not a good idea to keep eggs in trays on fridge doors. The warning is about the temperature of eggs fluctuating and going too high, so that they aren’t cooled enough to prolong shelf life. In fact some sources say it’s dangerous. ...
This does not mean ‘sex’ – just in case. So, words like ‘sleeping’ do not mean having a shag! I don’t care who’s ‘sleeping’ with who(m). Sleep stands as one of the most time-consuming biological imperatives in human existence, second only to breathing in its demand for dedicated hours. The average adult spends approximately one-quarter ...
Well, I’m on a roll from the last post on eggs in the microwave. I had mentioned that boiling rice or anything on a stove is not very energy efficient. What a surprise I had! This exploration actually ended up showing that a gas hob uses approximately 2.55 times more actual energy but still cheaper, ...
Within the area of knowledge dissemination, a concerning phenomenon has occupied my mind for many years. It is characterised by the propagation of misleading information cloaked in seemingly plausible rhetoric, often endorsed by individuals perceived as authorities. This phenomenon, is now coined by me as “sophistry-veiled untruths” (SVU). It poses a significant challenge to the ...
The question “If a tree fell in a forest but no one saw or heard it fall, did it fall?” is a philosophical thought experiment that explores the nature of reality and our perception of it. I approach this problem from the angle of logic and reasoning: Based on these logical arguments, some would argue ...
Many are not aware of what happens to whistle blowers in the NHS. This is not going to be a lecture on the topic. What you get are links to Peter Duffy’s books – which you can find and read (or not) at your own cost. Oh yes – what happened to him exemplifies what ...
Calm down – this is not about suicide. Jeez! Recently I came across by accident the BBC iPLAYER Series ‘Earth’. The first episode starts off with events of the Permian Period – the Great Dying – 300 to 252 million years ago. This was news to me! How? Early towards new knowledge When I was ...
No – I’m not struggling to cope. The world struggles to cope with certain types of phenomena. What types are those? Slow burn or insidious [there are online dictionaries if needed] Fast burn: explosive evolutionary path. Those that do not immediately confront the senses. I decided to have (yet another) conversation with ChatGPT. Of late ...
Preamble In 2012 I explored the nature of expertise in an article that was mainly focused on expert witness expertise. A deeper exploration was triggered today when I discovered a statement made by the Care Quality Commission. Scroll down for more. This article will delve deep into the issues of experts and expertise, and prove ...
Dog-bathers are running for cover!! OMG! Like 3 hours of video? “No way!”, I hear them screaming as they zip off like The Roadrunner from Looney Tunes! ?? Or there is the other group who want everything in 5 words. GET LOST NOW! Well the shear stupidity of large systems and people in the above ...
Today I’m proud to have been called a conspiracy theorist. That means I was just about a year early. Well, you looked down the page, and thought “He’s among his own kind – so there!” It is fine. As I’ve said a zillion times before ‘truth and reality are my only friends!‘ Well, when I ...
This is not a tutorial or advice. The infographic below is a broad-brush summary of some of the complex issues that need to be considered when prescribing medications. It is not exhaustive. This is not meant to be used by patients or the lay public to make decisions. It may serve as a template for ...
The words in the title of this post ‘guilty by reason of sanity‘ cannot be found on Google without other words before or after. You can find ‘Not’ in front of the words. What is it It is the title of a book, I’m considering writing. What motivates the title is that on many occasions, ...
Some will be afflicted by the Semmelweis Reflex to immediately reject this post and linked reports. Others will bawl, “I could be run over by a bus – so what?” Well, read this excerpt first if you’re still here – from Nature Journal 17th Aug 2022: Huge volcanic eruptions: time to prepare. Over the next ...
Some will be reaching for Google and dictionaries on this. Some fine examples of Barnum statements, “Humans a not perfect“, or “Everybody makes mistakes – are you perfect?” or “Not everybody is a scientist.” The words seem to hold a truth held dear by ordinary people. But in essence they lack depth by the way ...
Bandwagons of people believe that in order to prevent some terrible event happening, one must be able to predict what is likely to happen. In a social media world, crowd sentiment wins. Thankfully there is a reality beyond the confines of craniums! I will avoid going back into my thoughts on prediction and risk, in ...
I just realised that my last post was on 29th June; almost a month ago. Obviously, something has been going on. Well, I have to be careful not to say too much – lest I be stalked, sent unsolicited materials, or given advice. Many life-changes have been happening. I’ve moved to a remote part of ...
