Firetop

About two months ago I began researching environmentally friendly cars, looking at the CO2 outputs of hybrids and low emission diesel engines for something cost effective and ‘green’. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius are still quite pricey and some environmentalists actually believe their enormous batteries are in themselves a contradiction to the word ‘green’ - so I was interested in the VW Polo Blue Motion (low emission diesel). I went to the VW website, I read other independent reviews and was impressed with the reported fuel consumption, emissions and road tax free status… but then I tried to test drive one and guess what? I couldn’t. (more…)

An eleven day gap in blogging deserves an apology, so sorry folks - just been incredibly busy juggling all the duties of a Father, Husband, Employee, Business owner… and Halo 3 addict! One evening last week, after some extremely heavy rainful in Crawley, the drive home to Surrey delivered a stunning sunset which lit up the sky with vibrant pinks and reds. I was listening to the super new Armin Van Buren album which seemed to complement the moment perfectly, and as I hit the A24 at Ockley I looked right and saw the most unusual cloud formation. What resembled huge jellyfish (or enormous alien space craft) were floating across the eastern horizon - I drove home extra quickly to take some photographs before the formation vanished. (more…)

On weekdays I typically eat lunch in the car whilst listening to the radio. On London’s LBC at 1pm they have a show dedicated to improving your life (life coaches etc.), which also features the odd ‘green’ environmental tip. Last month one piece of advice was ‘Drive your car with the tank half full - saving fuel and money, whilst cutting emissions to reduce global warming’. I wondered how much of a difference this would really make, so I did a test of 40 litres of petrol versus 20 litres of petrol – discovering that my little 1.1 litre Peugeot will go an extra 40 miles (worth £5.00) on two separate fuel stops, instead of one big one. (more…)

I don’t know about anybody else but we still find watching many of the Freeview channels almost impossible due to a poor digital reception in our area. We’ve tried various different digital boxes over the past few years sadly to no avail. With the 2012 analogue signal close down fast approaching I’m wondering if it will ever get any better, perhaps we’ll have to give up watching television for the Olympics? Another thing I’ve noticed is that all of our tried and tested digital boxes seem to be psychic devices which wait until the most crucial moment of a TV programme before going into a glitching frenzy, causing me to go into fits of hysteria and throw things. (more…)

With all the severe flooding we’ve been having of late in the UK, and tabloid headlines unsurprisingly attributing it all to ‘global warming’, I started looking at the alternating patterns of the Polar Jet Stream in years gone by to see if we really should be worried. The answer? Yes you guessed it… Man is always worried – in June 1974 it reportedly snowed in London because of an unusually low Polar Jet Stream, all around the world weather was very unsettled; drought, severe flooding and tornadoes. What tickled me most was finding an article from Time Magazine’s 1974 archive entitled ‘Another Ice Age’. (more…)

This week I finally managed to find a moment to explore Linden Labs’ ‘Second Life‘ - a virtual world in which you create and clothe an animated character (avatar) before interracting with everybody else and the environment of this virtual world. With $1.5 million spent in ‘real’ money in this economy each day I had high hopes for its appeal. Unfortunately, having created ‘Flash Rehula’ a punk rocker with green hair, I managed to get about 1/4 of the way through the tutorial before I became frustrated at the clunkiness of the movement and slow graphics. Then it got worse; the tutorial kept undoing itself as I completed required tasks, now I’ve given up as the tutorial guide has vanished without trace. (more…)

Hot on the heels of the global warming cause debate, today I discovered Neal Adams’ animations of planetary surface expansion. These animations demonstrate his theory that all the continents of the Earth were once joined in a land mass which covered the entire surface of a much smaller Earth (1/4 of the current size in fact). Water existed in shallow pools over much of the Earth, but it’s only the expansion of the Earth’s size over millions of years, and the subsequent creation of new surfaces, which has caused there to be any oceans. Adams hypothesises that the bottom of the ocean is only between 70 to 180 million years old. He also expands his theory to apply to all planets of the universe, including their moons. If you’re interested in that sort of thing take a look at Neal’s ‘New Model of the Universe‘ online videos; they’ll certainly challenge the geology theories you were taught at school! (more…)

Having spent more than seven years working with Nature - one of the world’s most prestigious science publishers, I’ve been aware for some time of the potential use of stem cells for the development of new medical treatments. With ‘Baby Peskett’ due in early July, my wife and I have been looking at some of the commercial services offering to store cord blood (the source of stem cells) for up to 25 years. The stumbling block is that the umbilical cord blood collection is not something many NHS hospitals will support; in our case East Surrey Hospital has just rejected our request. East Surrey will only collect blood if it is needed ‘for therapeutic reasons’ i.e. the treatment of an existing sibling. (more…)

Today I was pleased to read that March is ‘Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) awareness month’ at Eye (the official journal of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists) - not one that made my calendar - and with such a short snappy name I’m really surprised I’ve not heard of it before along with Comic Relief. However, it made me wonder what else March 2007 was the ‘awareness month of’, possibly some more great ‘Have I got News For You’ fodder…

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Last Thursday I watched a documentary on Channel Four which I found to be the most enlightening programme I’ve seen in quite some time. Controversial in it’s topic for even suggesting that global warming might NOT be manmade, ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ covered just why there is no correlation between CO2 increases in the atmosphere and rises in global temperature, apparently quite the opposite is true (albeit with a lag of a few hundred years due to delayed changes in sea temperatures). (more…)