Tonight Derren Brown, well known entertainer and the ultimate dinner party guest (I guess he never has to buy his own food), will tonight attempt to predict the UK’s Wednesday Lottery draw numbers on a special Channel 4 (C4) programme. This should be interesting and I think it is possible for him to do it particularly since reading his book “Tricks of the Mind”. He may not actually predict the numbers but it is well within his capabilities to convince us that he has. That said we know that the lottery balls are picked at random and each ball has the same chance to be drawn as any other so it is easy to fall into the gamblers trap of believing that since say a 9 hasn’t been drawn in a while that it is due next or that there is some “system” can can be applied to predict the numbers. So it will be interesting to see what happens, perhaps we can all work it out and make the lottery useless as we could all win the jackpot every week ! Myself, I have only won a maximum of about £40 but like an idiot I play it every week. If anyone out there has a “System” to predict the lottery numbers then let me know.

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From New Scientist Magazine Online at http://www.newscientist.com

While we argue about the virtues of modelling of climate change, the ice is melting and we are running close to a tipping point where thawing permafrost releases vast amounts of trapped Co2 and Methane which could accelerate Global Warming. But even if we could agree this is going to happen, what could we do about it? This also comes at a time when the UN has been warned that it has underestimated the cost of the impact of Global Warming by a factor of 3 or more http://bit.ly/2Rxe59. If we could agree and we knew what to do about it, could we afford to fix it? Each week it seems that Scientists are painting bleaker pictures of our future and catastrophes caused by Global Warming seem nearer. We have to act now, time for talk is over.

“Runaway warming of the Arctic threatens to spread climate havoc across the globe in the coming decades, according to a new study by the environment group WWF. But has the process already begun? Climate scientists meeting at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, where the report was launched today, are in two minds.

Some reckon the WWF report may understate future events. The report’s author, climate adviser Martin Sommerkorn, reckons 90 per cent of the Arctic’s surface permafrost could be lost by 2100. But Jerry Meehl of the US government’s National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado, told the conference that unless humans curb their greenhouse gas emissions “there will be zero permafrost by 2100″. “

Full Article here: http://bit.ly/gS9gR

This article in New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com really interested me. There have been many attempts to predict future events using all manner of means including crowd modelling and computer simulations. This is one system that seems to work, at least for financial markets, which is modelled on the very complex physics of atomic systems. I was wondering if the same principles and techniques could be applied to other areas of every day life and perhaps combined with crowd behaviour to predict trends or future events. Anyway as I look into this more have a look at an short version of the article below.

“WITH 20/20 hindsight, financial crashes seem inevitable, yet we never see them coming. Now a team of physicists and financiers have bucked the trend by successfully predicting a steep fall in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Their model, which employs concepts from the physics of complex atomic systems, was developed by Didier Sornette of the Financial Crisis Observatory in Zurich, Switzerland, and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. The idea is that if a plot of the logarithm of the market’s value over time deviates upwards from a straight line, it’s a clear warning that people are investing simply because the market is rising rather than paying heed to the intrinsic worth of companies. By projecting the trend, the team can predict when growth will become unsustainable and the market will crash.

Sornette, Zhou and colleagues predicted that the market index would fall. The index duly began to slide on 4 August, falling almost 20 per cent in the subsequent two weeks.

Anyone hoping to exploit the model for profit should think twice. “If enough investors take action based on our predictions, the evolution of prices will probably be affected,” says Zhou.(www.arxiv.org/abs/0907.1827)”

Full article here http://bit.ly/13IVUR

The future of music and film distribution seems to be in the headlines almost every day. Music consumers and fans are being hit with massive fines for illegal downloading music and sharing it across peer to peer music sites and governments are introducing draconian measures to cut off abusers/users from the Internet, obviously a fate worse than death for many. Just this week a very popular site called Pirate Bay was shut down even though a movement spawned from it and its supporters had won a seat in the European Union parliament.

The question is are we trying to service the consumer, protect the artists interests or those of the music and film industry as a whole and what are the consequences for the future of music and film ?

The industry argues that every song or film copied and illegally downloaded is lost revenue amounting to billions of dollars and is damaging artists old and new. But is that really true?

I would say no as it is clear that new bands are gaining popularity through the Internet before they are taken up by music companies and old bands are being rejuvenated by file sharing and have allowed a new generation to experience their music for free and then create demand for a come back live tour and renewed CD sales. The recent death of Michael Jackson is a case in point, all his songs can be downloaded for free on the Internet but sales of his CD’s have rocketed since his death.

On the basis that the consumer is always right and that they usually do things that they feel are their right to do, can the industry fight against this trend and expect to win in the long term?

I would say no here also. If I buy a book and I read it I can pass that book on to a friend so that they can also read it. But if I copy the book and then give it away, not sell it, to hundreds of people then clearly this might deny some revenue to the publisher and author. However, that presumes that everyone I gave the book to would have been motivated to buy it and read it and this is where the music and film industry’s argument begins to break down. For music, many who download a track illegally do so because it is free and would never consider paying to listen to that song and artist. However, having heard the song they may well decide to go and buy the artists CD’s or recommend it to a friend !

What the consumer wants is choice and a fair price. When I buy a CD I may only want a couple of tracks on it, the rest I am paying for but I probably wont like and wont play. Why should I pay for something I don’t want?

Where did the file sharing mess start?

If I buy a CD of music I need a CD player to play it on which may or may not be portable and if I want to have a selection of music I need to carry a lot of CD’s.

The consumer decided that an Ipod type device was more convenient to store and play music when on the move and that required the Ripping of the original CD into a digital format called MP3 that could be easily uploaded onto the Ipod type device. This is where it all started to go wrong for the music industry.

Once in digital MP3 format the song was easily copied and could be shared with anyone on the Internet who could play the music on their PC or transferred to an Ipod. This trend was quickly picked up as it cut out an annoying step for music consumers of buying the CD and Ripping it and this turned out to be what the consumers wanted. However, it was not what the music industry wanted but at least it was only a small number of people doing this so they could live with it.

Napster made things much worse, Innovative entrepreneurial spirit got involved and created an easy way for people to share their favourite tracks with thousands of others. Napster was shut down but rose from the ashes with a pay per track business model, subsequently copied by itunes and others like Amazon, agreeing to pay royalties to the music industry for each paid track downloaded. It is worth noting that these services, despite free music downloads still being available, are experiencing a massive growth, partly driven by the inovative ipod technology. But still, consumers were now used to music for free so where does this take us?

What is fair use of an original artistic works copy? Would I be displeased if someone found my work so impressive that they wanted to share it with others and from that I became better known? The copyright laws are a minefield, not particularly well based in logic and heavily biased towards the interests of the media corporations. This is the root of the conflict that has seen the sinking of Pirate Bay.

Some music artists have recognised that, with a record company, they are dependant on their marketing and distribution which eats away at revenues and ultimately the artists earnings. Whereas free distribution of their songs through viral marketing amongst enthusiastic Internet users may produce low record sales but affords much greater exposure and recognition at almost zero cost. The latter leads to opportunities for live gigs and merchandising and ironically CD sales or paid for downloads in the end. New performers don’t have to wait to be “discovered” and promoted by music companies, they can just go ahead and do it themselves on YouTube.

One of the drivers here is technology, faster and faster internet connections, smaller personal digital media players and mobile phones with audio, video, and internet capability that turns every owner into a potential event recorder, journalist and media distributor/consumer. As quality improves to high definition video and surround sound HiFi audio, who needs a media corporation?

Obviously the real losers are the record and media companies if the viral marketing and file sharing model is widely accepted, not the artist and the consumer, this is why they are fighting so hard to make it illegal. But are the media companies missing a trick here and a great opportunity?

In any revolution there will be battles, casualties, heroes and martyrs but in the end for the entertainment industry the outcome is already decided by the consumer. The entertainment industry will have to change as you can not force a change in consumer preference or behaviour by threats and legislation. You only alienate the very people you want to buy from you and seal your own demise.

In the near future the entertainment industry will not exist in the form it does today, the big corporations will be mostly gone or radically transformed being replaced with smaller agile, innovative and social media aware marketeers and independent artists. Artists will take control of their own material and fan base, only using external companies to help them stage live events or handle merchandising as needed. I am glad to see that some are already doing this and I hope it continues with not too many music and film lovers being martyred along the way.

Until a change comes about and the war between the media companies and the consumer ends I can only recommend that you download music and films from the paid services like Amazon (link opposite) http://www.amazon.co.uk , Itunes or advertising supported site like Spotify….etc…

If you have any ideas or recomendations on this topic leave a comment.

Millions of people every day are flying, visiting night clubs, beaches, shopping malls, getting married, making things, battling with axes, and some even visit space stations, planets, and all manner of exotic places. To many of them it is as real as your every day life and in some ways there are similarities but this is Virtual Reality simulations where you are represented by an Avatar.

Your Avatar could be a human looking representation of you, perhaps of a younger and more handsome physic, a furry creature with a tail, a Celtic warrior with an axe or an alien, there are no norms to conform to in the virtual reality simulated environments of games and cyberspace.

As technology advances at an exponential rate these simulations will get more and more realistic until perhaps in 10 or 20 years it may be difficult to tell virtual reality from reality. With the world becoming a harsher place and people seeking refuge from it more and more, they will retreat to a perfect world inside there computer virtual reality game.

Perhaps the real world lacks something? Why else are people being seduced by these artificial constructs? Right now virtual worlds can provide, adventure, excitement, love, sex, super powers, wealth, fulfil distant dreams and make real money, all with virtually no risk and a small subscription. Sounds very tempting doesn’t it?

Given another 10 to 20 years and the pull might be irresistible. Today we spend many hours a week watching television and this is being superseded by hours of Internet browsing, shopping, chatting, blogging, and gaming. Tomorrow we may spend more time immersed in our preferred virtual world than we do in the real world. We may venture out into the real world only when a face to face physical meeting is required but there is reason to predict that even that wont be strictly necessary.

Right now I have an avatar in SecondLife http://www.secondlife.com with a beach side villa and many friends that I chat too, go to live concerts and dance clubs with. I wear the trendiest cloths, and I can fly unaided !

On the Internet I can shop for groceries, books, CDs, DVDs, almost anything. I can visit places and see pictures and video from those places. I can listen to music and watch films. I can web cam chat with friends around the world and collaborate on projects. I can work from home, I don’t have to commute to an office 50 miles away. I can share my thoughts with the world, I am free to express myself in my blog. I can let other people know what I’m doing and thinking with twitter http://www.twitter.com in real-time.

With future technology enabling immersion in a 3D world, with touch, smell and control by thought and speech, will reality as we know it be superseded?

Do you wanna date my Avatar? Watch The Guild http://www.watchtheguild.com/ LMAO very funny !

As well as reviewing science and science fiction books and films I will be writing several books on these very blog pages over the coming year. You will be able to follow each story chapter by chapter and comment on the scenarios and characters as they unfold. The plots remain solely mine but you are welcome to try to guess the twists and turns and the endings, but I can almost guarantee that no one will “get it” until the final chapters or even the final line. The working titles in the set are as follows:

Beyond – A tapestry of events following the parallel development of AI, global catastrophes and generations of a family caught in the middle of mystery, mysticism, murder and mayhem. A human intelligence is pitted against an AI for the future of the world and human kind but this is no ordinary human and no ordinary AI.

Seed – Last chance for human kind, extinction has been predicted, it’s unavoidable. A 21st century solution to ensure a billion years of human existence is set in motion but there are those that would do anything to stop it succeeding. Going beyond ethics into uncharted territories and what really is human. How far would you go to survive? What wouldn’t you do?

Rock Star - An alien race of beings (always a good start I think!) are running out of resources to complete a project essential for their survival and it seems we have just what they need, plenty of rock, shame we happen to be living on it.

Dimension – A new Moon?. No, not our familiar motley white crescent one, you can only see this one in the day time. It’s totally black and it’s invisible to radar (of course). Same size as our moon, totally round with some odd bumps on the surface, and it seems to have no gravitational effect on Earth or the Moon, but it’s like our Moon in one other way, one face always point towards Earth. What’s on the side we can’t see? Who or what are the visitors that poped out of the black thing (no other way to describe it) on the Whitehouse lawn and where do they come from? And of course what on Earth do they want?

The books will be developed in parrallel so be sure to come back regularly to catch up on your favorite story. When completed you will be able to download the books as e-books or buy a copy from Amazon. Publisher enquiries welcome

All book ideas, plots, scenarios, characters and all words written here in this blog are copyright of the blog owner and author. Copyright Theaxion 2009.

I posted this comment to an article in NewScientist www.newscientist.com . The Article was dealing with NASA’s reluctance to go all out for a Mars Direct mission but instead take baby steps to near earth asteroids and perhaps the moon first. My thoughts on this are as follows:

It seems more and more likely that another nation or combination of collaborating nations will make it to Mars before NASA.

If you set the bar low then that is all you will achieve and you will be lucky to even do that.

It is a pity that China and Japan dont get along so well, as a tripartite arrangement between India, China and Japan would get to Mars by 2020 easily.

Shared costs and low workforce costs, quality manufacturing capability, advanced technology and software engineering are all in abundance between the three.

The shear population resource of nearly 2.5 billion people working towards a single dream is bound to succeed. They would likely try many times and fail but finally they would succeed.

The one big advantage that they have is that they are prepared to take bold risks.

A tripartite arrangement between the USA, Russia and Europe for example would also achieve Mars by 2020 but here the costs are much higher and they are more risk averse. A loss of an astronaut would stop the programme in its tracks for years as was seen with the space shuttle disasters.

Whatever way you want to call it the only way we can and should be going to Mars is in collaboration with other nations. If each country committed a share of its space budget to going to Mars whilst still retaining other parts of their own space development programme, robotic landers, satellites, space stations etc… then it can be done.

NASA is in effect telling us in this review that it cant do it on its own with the funds available and in the time scale required. Time to form the United Federation of Space Exploration or UFOSE for short and just get on with it, we are already 40 years behind schedule.

Awesome video of Hubble ultra Deep Field as seen on youtube.

Looking back in time 13 Billion years (all is explained in the video commentary) , is there alien life in this picture? Are they looking at us? Wave.


Click the image for a full size version.