What should we strive for in our lives?

OK, I put this in a facebook post last night after drinking 8 * 275ml bottles of becks.

What is meant to make a success of one's life? Earning loads of money perhaps? Or becoming some famous figure? If the latter, surely not someone like David Beckham? But what about a influential scientist like Newton or Darwin?

Is it the transient happiness of loads of money, or the feeling of satisfaction of fame, that should be the goal of life? But what happens if we achieve either of these? What happens if one becomes incredibly rich? Or incredibly famous? Will that bring some sort of ultimate satisfaction? I doubt it. We need to bear in mind that, at the end of our lives we are all equal; we either just cease to exist, or enter some strange new reality (or perhaps not so strange, I don't know).

I'm unconvinced that striving to make as much money as possible, or striving to obtain as much admiration from others as possible, is what we ought to aim towards.

I think we should try to be as honest, open, and authentic as possible. Express our feelings to others, especially anyone special in our lives. Forget putting on a mask to get on with others. If they think you're weird, so what?? Be yourself, don't pretend to be what you're not.

Walking in the Sun when topless

Unbelievably warm outside, but nevertheless I'm still the only person in existence who is out topless -- or at least in Louth, Lincolnshire, England. It appears to have the interesting consequence that people don't say hello to me when passing me. Nor do they when I'm unshaved etc.

On the other hand, if I've just been in the shower, shaved, nicely dressed etc, people keep asking me directions to places every 5 mins when I'm out walking!

Ian's tip of the day. If you're doing a timed walk, ensure you're unshaved or topless or whatever, so you don't kept being stopped by people asking directions to places.

Ian Wardell

A Sobering Thought

Sobering thought to think that by around 2150 I will have been completely forgotten -- as if I had never existed. Unless my blogs survive, or my Facebook posts etc, which I doubt.

Northfield School

Northfield School in Teesside


This is the school I attended for 5 years.

Article says:

"Northfield School has been providing high quality education for the young people of Billingham for over forty years".

What complete nonsense, I learnt next to nothing. My one regret was not playing truant. A misspent youth wasting my life in classrooms, not listening to the teacher, and daydreaming my life away. I could have been reading Enid Blyton, or playing on the swings, or whatever.

Humans and Dolphins

"[M]an [has] always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons".

Douglas Adams on intelligence from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979

Banning the advertising of Junk Food

I read the following article:
Labour vows to ban junk food adverts during X Factor and Hollyoaks


I hear people arguing that this is a ridiculous policy. They tend to say that:

a) Banning these advertisements would have no effect on the consumption of these foods.

b) It's the parents responsibility and the state shouldn't intervene.

If "a" then the manufacturers are wasting their money producing and buying the time for TV commercials. They should simply keep this money so they'll have higher profits. Or pass the savings on to the consumer. The latter would be good, cheaper prices and we don't have to suffer their adverts!

Frankly though I regard it as being preposterous to suggest these adverts have no effect at all. Especially advertising tasty food.

As for "b" it'll simply never work. Kids see junk food advertised, they'll go and buy it if they have the money, especially as their friends are all buying it.

Human beings are human beings. Many of them are influenced by adverts -- especially for nice tasting food. You can't change what human beings are. You can't change their nature -- you have to change society to accommodate their nature.

An all pervasive spiritual force

From here:

Completely independently, many indigenous groups developed concepts of a fundamental ‘spiritual force’ which they perceived as pervading the whole of reality.
...
As these peoples perceived it, this force is not a personal being such as a deity, who watches over the world and requires human beings to worship it. It is usually seen as an all-pervading force or power, with no gender or personality

Yes, I think this is pointing along the right path. Reality as a whole is somehow infused with awareness, and indeed a manifestation of awareness? And all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be, is infused with ultimate meaning. A meaning that eludes us in our daily day to day existence, but whose existence might be very briefly glimpsed with peak experiences and mystical experiences. Jus' thinking aloud.

If I am Reincarnated.

The evidence from young children who seem to remember a previous life and even the period between lives suggests that at least some people appear to have some degree of control as to where, and to which parents, they will be born to in the next life.

I think I'll decide to be born to parents who are both rich and loving. I think I'd probably prefer to be born male, in the west, in idyllic countryside. And would be great to be good looking, and intelligent, and enigmatic, and mysterious, outgoing, and strangely alluring.

What is love?

What is love? I kind of regard it as being something like a total and complete appreciation of another person's essence, a total empathetic identification with their being. Often people say love is all in the mind, or it is merely chemicals. But what would it mean to say that such feelings are in one's mind? How would this differ if they were not in one's mind? Is mere liking of a person also in one's mind? Hating a person? Admiring a person?

I would guess they mean that love is caused by processes occurring in the brain. But how do we know the causal relationship always runs from the brain to the mind? Perhaps feelings of love precipitate processes in the brain?

Are the trappist planets really similar to Earth?

A 5 minute video explaining why so-called "earth-like planets" discovered around Trappist-1 and elsewhere might not be anything like Earth.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170220-the-earth-like-planets-we-have-found-may-not-be-like-earth

Because these planets are orbiting very small stars, and hence have to be close in to be in the inhabitable zone, they will be tidally locked. So one side of the planet will be impossibly hot for any life, the other side impossibly cold.

We need to detect planets around bigger stars that are similar to our Sun. They won't be tidally locked, and any planet in the habitable zone, and which is the right size, has a faint possibility of being genuinely Earth-like. But we don't have the technology to detect such planets due to the glare of the star. We need more powerful telescopes and better technology.

Another link regarding these planets:

Could TRAPPIST-1 Be Home to a Galactic Alien Empire?

"Shostak says we should look for radio signals that can tell us if there’s possibly intelligent life on these planets".

Even if there is intelligent life, it's highly unlikely they'll have radio. Dolphins don't have radio. Humans only have had radio about 1/1000th of the time we've existed.

I reckon that planets that are genuinely similar to Earth will not be common, perhaps one in a million or perhaps even one in ten million? And perhaps only one in a thousand of them will have evolved a species that uses radio and has an advanced technological civilisation similar to ours. Most would be like Earth without humans.