A good thing

I'm always told that I'm being negative about things I don't like.

This is true.

So I'm going say something positive about the worst thing I can think of. No, that's not the Labour party. Or the weather.

Nope - I'm talking Windows Vista. Now, all of you who have spoken to me about Microsoft and Windows know my views. But I'm going to say something nice about it.

Vista allows you to install without a code, for 30 days.

This means you can set it up, realise how abysmal it is and uninstall it without spending a penny.

I am being positive. Really!!

All good things

I should right now be packing for Maelstrom.

Really, I should.

But instead I've been distracted by All Good Things.

That is, the very last episode of Star trek, next generation. Arguably the last good episode ever flmed. That I've only ever seen once.

The sheer intelligence of the episode - the first time you see it, unprepared and unwarned. The first, last and only truly epic time travel episode.

Picard - Now tell me one thing: this anomaly we're looking for - will that destroy humanity?
Q - You're forgetting, Jean-Luc - you destroy humanity.

Being tired

I'm tired.

Really, really tired. Maybe even a little ill. Probably not anything interesting.

Because I've got Maelstrom at the weekend. There is no peace in the war - and I need to be there. I have things to do. There are demons to kill.

And a small child that needs to be laid to rest. After a party. With cake.

But I don't even have the energy to write a review of My New Toy. I'm going to bed in a minute - and I dread the morning sun.

Because I'll only want to sleep again.

This whole sperm thing

If you pay any attention to the news - at all - in the last couple of days you've probably heard the news that some scientists have managed to create sperm using stem cells. Significantly, they can do this from a woman's stem cells.

As you can predict there's been things like this - a list of 101 uses for a man and the like. It's dotted around the media...all over the place.

And I'm getting rather sick of it.

Because it's even more short sighted then cutting off your feet - because you've got a remote control.

There's a couple of reasons this isn't going to go anywhere.

1) Check the person who made this possible - a man. In all of human history a large proportion of new technology has been created and designed by men.

Women have made huge contributions - but if you want complete obsession over 20 years of dedication, without distractions of children, real life or even noticing an oncoming train...

Or - to put it another way - women tend to lead rounder lives, with things like a work-life balance. Men do not.

2) Economics - right now the cost for the majority of couples who want children the cost to create them is negative. That is - they pay less to conceive them, because they are not using (some form of) contraception.

Imagine if the cost was somewhat similar to a medical procedure - but I'm not going to pick one. Look around on the internet - they are Expensive. But as a opening number, lets say £2000. Average UK wage is about 25% (according to the ONS, anyway) - so 1/3 in tax (wishful thinking, I know..) leaves us with about 16K. So that's 6 weeks income straight.

And what do you do in our perfect female society when a boy is conceived? Abort them all? Separate out all the male sperm? (Good luck with that)

So we're talking a large cost that could be avoided, with additional moral dilemma and heartache for added fun.

3) And the real reason this won't happen any time soon - not economics, not science..

Most women rather like men. Most men rather like women. No matter how much they might complain about each other...however many painful heartbreaks they have they still want the other.

So this scientific miracle will be left as a oddity that might help a few childless couples, perhaps a few children might be born to pairs of women.

But society as a whole will not spend a huge amount of money on a solution that would exclude the low paid, leaving half the population rather upset and the other half unsatisfied.

If any country did try it people would just leave for another that didn't. And before you say "what if we all did it" - imagine trying to sustain this technology in somewhere like Africa. It's hard enough to live there as it is.

So could the mainstream media please stop going on about a fantasy world that will never exist and get back to reporting the real news.

like this

I'm going slightly mad

Just to let everyone know I Have Returned.

Like Return of the Jedi, but less lightsabers and more unpacking. I've only been awake for the last 30 or so hours, so I'm rather tired.

I don't have any net at home now - although I've put an order in - so for the moment I'm sponging off the parents, while they cook me dinner.

This works all round, as far as I can tell...