Music

Now I'm unashamedly locked into the 70's when it comes to music,particularly 70's prog rock. Is it just me or is modern music  so alike that it can be interchangeable? I like bands such as Cold Play and Snow Patrol but they could just as easily be called Snow Play and Cold Patrol they could also be dropped into a 70's rock gig and not be out of place.
Time was when you could hear an opening riff and identify the band fairly accurately even if you didn't know the song.
As for hip hop, rap and that genre of music well I think I'll refrain from commenting except to say I agree with George Harrison's comment that there is a silent C in rap.

Old Horror Films

Caught an old film on BBC4 last night. The Witchfinder General, starring Vincent Price. Based on the true character of Matthew Hopkins, during the English civil war. These old horror films are so dated now and the overacting makes them a bit comical. I must admit though I do like Vincent Price he always managed to bring a sense of menace to his performances.
Time was when on a Friday night you could settle down and watch a good Hammer Horror film. with Vincent Price or Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. None of the splatter fests you get nowadays in horror films and I suppose they were a bit cheesy but they were fun.

News

I really must start taking some notice of the News again. Haven't had anything to rant about for ages. The problem is TV news is as bad as some of the worst of the tabloids sensationalising everything in a desperate need for ratings. 
Take for instance this recent E coli outbreak in Germany. Now I'm not trivialising it but there was no indication that anyone had caught the bug from anyone else. The only people in the UK that had it could be directly linked with visits to Germany and there were about eleven of them. Yet on the TV news out trots the "expert" to tell everyone about how it's resistant to antibiotics and how IF it ever became transmittable how much danger we could all be in. 
So here we go, it's the end of life as we know it all over again. Time was when the TV news concentrated on the facts but now with so many channels everything becomes a ratings war. I haven't bought a news paper in years because of this sensationalism. Now I find it hard to watch TV news for the same reason. Having to filter the facts from a torrent of bullshit makes me angry and I end up ranting about the content of the report instead of listening to the news.
Still I suppose if they stuck to the facts and reported objectively I'd have nothing to put in this blog.

If they say it's too good to be true.....

Had an email saying "Build your own website for free and earn money". Go on then I thought give it a go. So I clicked the link. At first it tells me that for about $90 I can get the pro version with 10 websites that will give me more income,or (in little print) I can continue with the free version. I clicked for the free." Sure you don't want the pro version?" it asked. again click on the little print for the free version. " absolutely the last time you'll never see this again. buy pro version for $90 instead of $190. You will not get this offer again!". Again I click on the small print for the free version and hey presto I go to the set up page. Whoopee. I select products write a review and move on to the next page which is getting a domain name. Think up a domain name and click for availability. Yes it's available at a cost of $24.99. Ok run that past me again... what part of this is free? I can do exactly the same on Google and it costs nothing. If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Measles

http://newsthump.com/2011/05/27/why-are-all-my-children-getting-measles-ask-homeopathy-fans/

The above link from Newsthump is a satirical look at the failure of some parents to have their children vaccinated against measles.
The scare about the MMR vaccine 10 years ago meant that a lot of people didn't get their kids immunised. 
I think people forget that until the arrival of penicillin measles was often a killer disease and even now can lead to complications. 
Measles is a very serious disease which I think the labelling under "Childhood diseases" tends to trivialise. 

learning on the fly

Well I'm not much of a computer head so I just made some changes to the template and so far the computer hasn't blown up. Only time will tell. 

The Final Frontier

I know they say that necessity is the mother of invention but I wonder, if we hadn't spent most of human history trying to find more efficient ways of killing ever larger numbers of people, whether we might not have had some reasonably good space travel by now.
With earth's population growing and resources running low I think we need to move out and colonise. Unless some scientist can discover hyperspace (much beloved by the sci-fi writers) for instantaneous travel, then it's going to have to be done by slowly moving through the solar system colonising different planets and moons. consolidating and moving on.
Way back in the late 60's this almost seemed to be attainable but the cutting of funds for the space programme and the paranoia of the superpowers meant a shelving of ideas for bases on the moon and voyages to Mars. Now some entrepreneurs are trying to build  passenger space vehicles for space tourism but is it too little too late? Only the very rich will be able to afford to go and will it ever be enough to finally get something like a moon base built? 
Will there ever come a day when a true interplanetary space ship is built in space large enough to take a population of colonists across the void. To boldly split infinitives where no man has gone before?