By Roy Mathur, on 2021-01-15, at 22:59:56--23:47:34, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
I tweeted earlier that because of some long overdue website work and some recent computer and life problems, I didn't have time for this week's continuing vintage Doctor Who revisit.
Instead, call tonight's show one of those ever-so-trendy "After Dark" episodes that some of my fellow podcasters are producing. (The difference being, they stick them behind a paywall. I know of two podcasts that do this. Seriously guys, I know you are more liquid than me, so do you really need to beg for extra cash?)
In my case, "After Dark" is also, of course, both redundant and ridiculous as most of my shows take place after sunset. Don't try and out-goth a proto-goth. (Even more shadowy musings of misery later in the pod).
I don't want to belittle the seriousness of the situation, but Trump encouraged a silly little failed coup---I told you on Twitter it wouldn't work---then quickly backed off when he realised the amount of trouble he had got himself into.
Hey USA, forget punishing Assange and Snowden (you should give them medals) and make an example of your cowardly and seditious trouble-making bully President Chump.
What would you collect? I like pens, and I recently heard on the Pen Addict podcast that Lamy is reissuing the first Safari and Parker is reissuing the Parker 51. They are affordable and I'd quite like them, but, while I have a few other rare pens (nothing expensive), I'm not keen on investing in a collection.
The same for comics, cassette tapes, figurines, books, retro computers etc. There are some that I'd like to own, but "some" does not constitute a collection.
Records on the other hand... Since my move from Canada, I have exactly one record, a George Formby album bought as a joke item because I am also a banjolele player---you can hear me playing a split strum riff in the theme music of this pod---but records, oh, there are so many I'd like from just about every genre. They are very collectable, affordable, and easy to enjoy. I am spec'ing up a budget HiFi right now. Stay tuned.
The UK is currently rolling out Covid-19 vaccine relatively quickly (though not quick enough for me) compared to other countries, however...
Our government, in a half-baked attempt at rapidly giving more people the vaccine, have gambled our lives by delaying the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, against the specific instructions of Pfizer-BioNTech and the WHO.
Unfortunately, if this backfires by not conferring enough immunity to those who are most vulnerable in the first place, then the government will only have themselves to blame.
As well as the exploding rates of Covid-19 infection, death, new variants of the coronavirus, and higher death rates for BAME people, we are now also dealing with outright lies aimed at brown people like me, with the purpose of discouraging us from taking the vaccine.
The lies spread on social media (WhatsApp in particular) include that there are animal products incompatible with our religious beliefs, or that the vaccine contains a microchip.
Not only should we as vulnerable minorities welcome the vaccine, but those spreading this lethal misinformation must be caught and punished.
"We need to be clear and make people realise there is no meat in the vaccine, there is no pork in the vaccine, it has been accepted and endorsed by all the religious leaders"---Dr Harpreet Sood, NHS England, Source: BBC
To end on a more positive note, a happy Makar Sankranti (yesterday) to my fellow Hindus, and everyone else too.
Did you know our universe began 13.978+/-0.037 billion years ago, but will end only 5 billion years from now?
That is according to a 2010 paper Eternal inflation predicts that time will end by Raphael Bousso et al (https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4698).
Of course, when you factor in the ever decreasingly periods consisting of the age of the Earth, life on Earth, the time humans have been around, and finally the time in which we stopped clubbing each other (oh, sorry, we're still doing that), proportionally, we still have quite a bit of time left.
But the way we are going at the moment, we'll be long gone before the end of everything. Where did all the time go? What have we got to show for it? Enjoy what little time remains.