ThinkingShift

I’m really shocked by an article that has appeared on ABC News (not!). Doubts have been raised about the usefulness of CCTV cameras in preventing crime. The dude who heads up Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections section (and who should know a thing or two I’d think about visual identification) is saying that billions of dollars have been wasted on a crime prevention tool that is ineffective.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville says only 3% of London street robberies have been solved through using CCTV cams. Worse: he maintains that no thought has been given to how the CCTV images should be used or analysed by police and he goes on to describe London’s CCTV system as an “utter fiasco”. And before we jump up and down and suggest that the Brits don’t know what they’re talking about, Australian criminologists are agreeing with Neville.

Millions of dollars that could have been put toward (let’s see: better hospital and old age care or education) have been thrown down the gurgler in Australia. A police official said: “There is no national database of images of people. So whilst we might have the images, the difficulty we then have is trying to identify who it is and sometimes that isn’t easy and clearly we can do better.”

Professor Paul Wilson is one of Australia’s best known criminologists and he has conducted an extensive study of CCTV cams in Australia (and you know how irate I get about them because there are so many!). Wilson says“It can work as a device to detect criminals in some cases but often the images are not very clear and do not provide material which is good enough to detect or even prosecute people who have committed crimes. We have people suffering mortgage-stress thanks to the sub-prime mortgage debacle. We have homeless people in Australia. We have a hospital system that is a worry - read this article to see why there might be cause for concern. So I really shake my head wondering why we throw away millions in installing these blind eyes on city streets, around ATMs and in office buildings when extensive studies consistently point to the ineffectiveness of CCTV.

Prof Wilson (clearly a smart dude) says: “I think it’s a great tragedy that Australian politicians at the local and state and federal level believe that crime and terrorism and antisocial activity generally, can be stopped by having more and more CCTV cameras. The evidence is very clear that it can’t be and what we’re doing is pouring literally millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into a crime prevention technique which only has very limited results and ignoring other methods of reducing crime“.

We have far more things in society to worry about and address. You can read an interesting e-journal article by Wilson and others on the relationship between crime and CCTV here.

The British motorist is under threat. Not from another British motorist sidelining a car, although that may indeed happen. Nope, the British motorist, happily exploring the back roads of the British countryside on a Sunday afternoon, is threatened by US enforcement agencies keen to spy on them. I’m sure Mum and Dad cruising down the country roads of the UK will be a fascinating subject for the snoops in our surveillance society.

Images of private cars captured by public/street cams and personal data that can be gleaned from these images (such as licence plate number, driver details and so on) are to be exported to the US under a secret squirrel proposal by the Home Secretary (Jacqui Smith). Under the guise of the usual “anti-terrorism” mantra, the Home Secretary seemed to forget to mention, when saying the police could access “real time” images from cameras, that she was also proposing to ship the data offshore to the US (and other enforcement agencies around the world). A spokesperson for the Home Secretary has declined to say how many images have already been sent to the US. But the spokesperson said that: “We would like to reassure the public that robust controls have been put in place to control and safeguard access to, and use of, the information.” Yeah? Like what?

This is the pattern of the future: huge databases stuffed full of private information about YOU and ME, being data mined by powerful computers looking for patterns and profiling behaviours. This is insidious enough but when we find that personal data is being “exported” to the US through “forgetting to mention” or keeping plans secret from the UK Parliament, then this just an abuse of civil liberties.

What’s up with the UK? They seem to be hell-bent on snooping and surveilling their citizens and sharing this data with the US. Homeland Security in the US is busy with its plans to collect all 10 fingerprints from international visitors rushing through American airports and the UK is following suit with its proposal to collect the 10 fingerprints of its citizens and residents for a massive central database. This will be achieved through the controversial national ID card scheme. Interesting to see that the UK Govt is currently proposing that biometric data be collected by the private sector (let’s not get our hands dirty they’re thinking) - further evidence of the strong alliance between the State and Big Business when it comes to snooping and tagging its citizens. So criminals and citizens get the same treatment. Collection of DNA will follow no doubt.

And who will be the first UK politician to get their paws printed in ink I wonder? Perhaps the UK Prime Minister or Home Secretary? I had to laugh when I saw this Wanted poster from Privacy International:
Privacy International are offering a reward for the first person to collect and submit the fingerprints of Brown or Smith.

Although I find the collection of biometric data offensive in itself, I could live with it if I had confidence that the data would be used responsibly and for the purposes it’s said to be collected for (which is the usual War on Terror drivel that I simply don’t believe). But I have no confidence that it will be safeguarded or used responsibly. Consider the recent publication (not a leakage, publication!) of Italian citizens’ tax details and incomes on the website of the Italian National Tax Office recently. I’m sure that finding out what your neighbour earns would be fascinating but it’s PRIVATE and we look to the State and its agencies to safeguard our private details. Not the poor Italians though: a list arranged alphabetically and by region was freely available until outraged citizens demanded its removal from the website (smart people those Italians!). The idiot (and now former) Tax Minister who authorised the publication defended his actions by saying: “This is an act of transparency, of democracy, similar to what happens elsewhere in the world”. Hello? Mr Tax Minister, democracy is supposed to protect privacy and not smack citizens in the face by publishing private details! This private right is of course tempered by the public’s right to security - I don’t see how publishing citizens’ private tax details aided the general public’s security. Even Australia hasn’t gone this far!

Well, the evolving form of democracy IMHO is the surveillance society. I met yet another person the other day who said he could care less whether he’s fingerprinted because he “has nothing to hide”. Sure, the usual response. That’s true, if you have nothing to hide why not get fingerprinted. But we need to look beyond this simple response and ask some serious questions:

• is a monitored and surveilled society in which our behaviours and actions are closely scrutinised really the world we wish to live in? Do we really want our biometric data, including DNA, stored in huge central databases (remember the film Gattaca?)
• can we be confident that our private data will not be abused by the State in cahoots with private companies?
• why are we standing back like submissive sheep and allowing monitoring technologies the control?
• even if we go down at the barricades, why aren’t we putting up a fight?

My answer to this last question I guess is because we are too busy living the good life in the selfish society - we are not noticing the gradual (actually, rapid) erosion of our basic right to privacy and our loss of civil liberties.

It’s one of those synchronicity things. Over the last week or so, I’ve come across Moonri.se several times, with people going into a twitter about it. As far I can see, it’s Twitter for those who wish to also tell us how they feel. At first, I thought Twitter was for the geeky types who like to demonstrate to all and sundry that they are cool, awesome (take your pick of the latest word) when it comes to what’s new in technology. I still can’t be bothered with tweets. Basically, it would limit me to 140 characters and there’s no way I can tackle privacy issues or control my rants to 140 characters! And who could really care where I am or what I’m doing (except me). But…I can get Twitter and I think (for those who can tweet succinctly) it’s pretty cool.

But Moonri.se - early days for me, but I’m not getting this need to display the emotions. It seems to be a social network for feelings. You can post photos or videos along with your feelings. Guess you could do that on your blog - hey, having a crappy day, here’s a photo. But with a blog, the fan base has to know of you and come to you (where are you fans?). With a social network, it’s the hive, the collective - and you congregate together.

So I checked out Moonri.se and here’s what it says in the About section:

“Feelings matter the most, they make us human. In years to come, you remember your feelings - and you remember great moments in your life. At some sites, you can post whatever you want, and you end up posting too much. When you look back in years to come, there will be too much to read and only a few posts will bring back memories. If you post on moonrise, one day you can look back and say this was my life. moonrise will hold your true memories.”

Good marketing! I might be vaguely interested to look back in 40 years to check on how I felt on May 8 2008, but frankly I have more important things to do. I can see how some people will like this - accompanied by photos and videos, a more authentic social interaction could take place by including emotions. What sort of person will this appeal to I’m not sure yet.

A quick look at the front page and it reminds me of Flickr - photo with a word or a tag - in this case, the word is about emotions. So for example:

this rather cute photo was accompanied by the word sleepy. I’m tempted to say “profound”. I note that the photo came over from Flickr. Moonri.se is also peppered with quotations that uplift (or in one case, was mildly depressing).

A quick scan of the feelings so far on Moonri.se reveals that this budding social network feels:

• energy
• wistful
• happy x 2
• better
• frustrated
• tired
• sad
• detached
• refreshed
• in need of sun
• hyped
• hungry for lunch
• overworked unpaid
• pleased
• indifferent
• lost
• ill

okay you get the picture. Doesn’t do anything for me and I immediately consider it to be yet another indulgence of our self-obsessed society that feels the need to tell everyone everything. I don’t think the majority of people could give a rat’s **** about how you or I feel, photo or no photo, because we are too self-absorbed to care. But I’ll keep an eye on Moonri.se to see how it evolves.

Following a recent post, which in part highlighted a senseless act of cruelty against a defenseless animal, comes some good news for a change. But first: just imagine for a moment that you are confined to a small cage, with no room to simply turn around or stretch out your limbs. Any natural movement of your body is totally restricted. Day in day out you are in this cage. Artificial lights glare down on you relentlessly. Up to nine other tormented individuals probably occupy the cage with you. You get no exercise and you’re in this cage for up to 12 months, in a gloomy shed that holds maybe 100,000 other individuals living in the same conditions. You become increasingly stressed, anxious and depressed. And you’re in pain.

Are you a prisoner of war? Nope, you’re a battery hen. Probably debeaked cruelly with a hot machine when you were a day or so old and now forced to live out your life in miserable, cramped conditions. Or you might be a pig or calf or sow.

A couple of months back, I told you about a book I’d finished reading: Why Animals Matter by Erin Williams and Margo Demello. One of the co-authors, Erin Williams, contacted me and is keeping ThinkingShift up to date with latest developments in animal welfare. Erin works for the Humane Society in the US and has just alerted me to a Pew Commission Report on Industrial Farm Animal Production. You can read the Humane Society’s story about this report on their website. But in a nutshell, the report says:

• factory farms pose unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and animal welfare (anyone thinking bird flu?)
• a phase-out of inhumane practices such as battery cages is recommended
• the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act has qualified for the November ballot in California after 800,000 Californians signed petitions (go California!)
• the ballot initiative prescribes that cages and crates on factory farms get the boot so that the most basic right - the right to simply stretch and move about - is granted to animals

The Pew Commission report follows a two-year investigation and site visits to facilities across America and industry leaders, animal experts, scientists and so on were consulted. And it seems that Colorado, Florida, Arizona and Oregon are following California’s lead by gathering signatures to ban gestation crates and legislate against animal abuse.

So a good news story! If you’d like to inform yourself about how calves and pigs live out their sorry lives in inhumane conditions, then read this story from the Humane Society. Hint: don’t read while eating as you’ll probably throw up.

Let’s stop worrying about whether we have the latest designer handbag or whether we are paid enough to do our jobs so we can afford THE BRANDS and the McMansion- let’s spend a moment thinking about the sorry lives of some of our planet’s species. After all, it is us who inflict such pain and suffering on these poor creatures.

Thx to Erin and the Humane Society of the United States for the story.

This post will probably only interest the girls. So guys: sorry you might not be so interested, unless of course you are pondering why we are all looking and smelling alike these days. Regular ThinkingShift readers will be aware that I gave up THE BRANDS just before my trip to Hong Kong back in late March. So getting towards two months now and I have bought no “brand names”. Hasn’t been all that hard really.

I said I would buy my winter coat at a vintage clothing shop. Well, I ended up with a snappy looking moss green coat from the late 1970s. It’s so well made I was rather stunned (ie we are inured these days to dodgy stuff that falls apart or doesn’t last long). This coat has a wonderful lining and it’s reversible, so two coats for the price of one. And much cheaper than one I saw in a major department store (brand new and made in China).

And so with perfumes. I’ve always loved the “old time” perfumes - Coriandre by Jean Couturier (definitely not for the shrinking violets amongst us ladies!). Or perfumes by Caron such as Coup de Fouet created in 1957. It used to be that a woman was known by her “signature perfume”. My mother loved Crepe de Chine by Millot (I think this was created in the mid-1920s). She also loved Bond Street No 9, which was popular during WWII. My grandmother wore something called Rosa Centifolia - I think this was a German perfume.

Anyway, these specialist perfumes are almost as rare as the Kohinoor diamond! These days, women are stuck with the designer brand perfumes or the watery-like perfumes of “celebrities”. I mean really: do you want to wear a perfume by Britney Spears?? Is she a “nose”? So it’s very easy (for me anyway due to my love-affair with perfume) to sniff out what a woman is wearing pretty quickly. It’s rare these days for me to sniff a unique smell from an old-time perfume house.

And so to the really sad news. My favourite perfumery in Sydney was Julia’s Perfumery. It was run by a woman with outstanding knowledge of perfumes, especially the old time classics. After years of going there for Coriandre, we were talking one day about where we grew up and in one of those very spooky moments, it turned out we’d been dance partners in ballet school when we were 5 years old or so. Way too spooky for me!

Anyway, I went last week to get another bottle of Coriandre. Quell horror! Julia’s Perfumery is shut. She’s apparently gone online but I can’t find her (Julia if you stumble onto this blog through some sort of miracle, tell me how to find you!!). So now I am left wondering if I will be forced to totter off to a department store and pick up a bottle of perfume by some celebrity or designer. Some of them aren’t that bad. But for me, it’s about individuality and not having a perfume that’s totally synthetic. The jewellery girls (and guys these days) wear is about wearing art and expressing your identity. Same with perfume. Whatever fragrance family you prefer - Greens, Florals, Aldehydics, Chypre, Oriental, Fougère & Tobacco/Leather - it says a lot about who you are as an individual. Have the old time perfumes been engulfed by the brand names? I know many women who simply haven’t heard of some of the classics of the perfume world.

If you’re like me, you prefer a strong mossy wood. Coriandre fits that with notes of (obviously) coriander but also orange blossom, angelica, jasmine and lily. (I’m doing this by memory so I might have some of that wrong). But it’s not the hideous overpowering gardenia that seems to be the main ingredient of perfumes of the 1990s onward. I well remember the perfumes of the “greed is good” 1980s. These perfumes were shoulder-padded to death, Opium being a stand-out. Can’t stand that perfume personally but it was symptomatic of the excess of the 1980s.

And so, dear reader, I need help. Am I to wade my way through DIY books on how to make perfumes? Will I have to swallow my pride and go off to buy a BRAND name perfume? Coriandre is available, for example, on some online perfume sites, but is it the real deal? How do you know it is truly Coriandre?

Whilst our choice of luxury brands continues to expand, those of us who don’t wish to smell like every other woman are facing a real problem. Where to find the unusual perfume? Where to find that old-time perfume that is still available? Where to find your individuality?

I decided to take a different route late last year. In Dubai, I checked out some of the very strong perfume oils they have there. I went into a perfume oil shop where some guy was a bit perplexed with a Western woman wanting something with sandalwood in it that would last all day. To his credit and after three hours of sniffing and exiting the shop with a headache, he found for me two perfume oils that I love.

But I can’t whip off to Dubai every few months to update my perfume wardrobe, so the dilemma still stands. I’d be really intrigued to know whether you share the same dilemma and what your favourite perfume is. And Julia: are you there?

I want you to read this news item that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last week. I simply can’t bring myself to describe what happened, so I’m going to ask you to read the article instead. Once you have, I’m sure you’ll be staggered by this senseless and cruel act. There is no reason to believe the woman was lying or exaggerating. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t the smartest thing to do: walking late at night, a woman alone, in an isolated industrial estate. I’ll be very interested to see if the area was monitored by CCTV: here’s where I would agree with CCTV if it can identify the “hoons” and send them off for punishment.

I’m sure that people think of Sydney as a safe place, with a glittering harbour, good food, plenty of sunshine and so on. On the whole, it’s a great place to live but I’ve been noting subtle (and not so subtle) changes of late. I’m noticing a lot more homeless people or people sitting on the sidewalks near Martin Place asking for spare change. Over the last month, about five people have come up to me asking for money. Every city has its underbelly of homeless or struggling people, but as I was growing up, it was a rare sight indeed to see people asking for money. What really gets me is whilst I give them whatever spare change I have, besuited people rush on by, almost as though to look at a person who is struggling or dirty is abhorrent.

And we seem to be witnessing a rise in unbelievable acts of violence. Melbourne has also been suffering of late with its fair share of crazed people. A young man in his late 20s was quietly reading his book on a train when a “speed-using schizophrenic” fatally stabbed the man with a serrated knife without provocation or warning. Apparently, the man who did the stabbing said his victim was “looking at me the wrong way”.

Of course, we live in a selfish society: it’s all about ME. So we indulge ourselves with drugs that mess with the mind; we want our 15 minutes of fame because we believe we have stuff to say (and that people actually want to hear it). But I think these two acts in Sydney and Melbourne point to the fact that our society is starting to cross the line. We could say the hoons in the car were (a) simply evil or (b) on some sort of drug trip and that the Melbourne incident occurred because our society prefers to ignore the plight of the mentally ill and so they are often not appropriately medicated or integrated into mainstream society.

Or we could say that there is something deep-rooted in contemporary society, something disturbing and unsettling. Whilst we are busy worrying about ME and whether ME is known and worshipped by OTHERS; and whilst we’re worrying about whether ME is paid well enough or has a big enough house - what we don’t fully appreciate is that we are isolating ourselves, drawing a tight boundary around ourselves. And this is leading IMHO to looking at others with suspicion. Trust is dead, kaput in our society. So we have CCTV cams because WE can’t be trusted by the State and private corporations; we protect ourselves from increasing abnormal behaviour by installing security alarms. We are not friendly and welcoming or helpful and caring. We are aggressive, self-centred and prone to poking fun at anything “different”.

We’re a narcissistic society - the result of post-WWII innovation and increasing prosperity, good employment opportunities and unlimitless BRANDS to choose from. We’ve grown fat and lazy like the contented domestic cat wallowing away the hours on comfy cushions. We have road-rage, steroid-rage, obviously now “pet-rage”. We’re angry and feeling vulnerable. I think that modern capitalism has led to this - it has weakened unique cultures, traditions and values and left people confused about who they are and what they stand for. We (the West) are now culturally weak. The irony is that we are told to be “multi-cultural” and respect other cultures. Fine, but we fail to really understand those cultures or find out anything about their traditions - we simply pay lip-service. And this leads to kindergarten battles over whether Santa Claus and his “ho ho ho” is offensive to other cultures. It’s descended into a struggle for the soul of Christmas.

I suspect that Samuel Huntington was indeed right: the clash of civilisations is the pattern of conflict replacing the Cold War. Huntington said: It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

And so in a world that is facing the War on Terror, war on drugs, rage, aggression and anger - how can we not as individuals feel that our culture and self is being threatened. So we lash out or we take back control (for example controlling our bodies, hence eating disorders and diet obsessions). In no way do I think this excuses what happened to the pet dog or the train victim - these sorry and frightening incidents are symptoms of what’s coursing through the veins of Western society.

I remember that this essay by Mark Steyn had a profound impact on me when it was published in the WSJ in 2006. His bold statement is: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.

And if Huntington is right about the clash of civilisations, then Steyn’s essay I think shows us that perhaps we don’t need to worry about whether the planet is heating up - because humans won’t be around at the rate we’re going.

In the interests of bringing ThinkingShift readers cutting edge issues, I decided to find out what would happen if a human got in the way of birds feeding. My previous post looked at some recent research about domestic cats and bird feeders. And it seems that tweety has no reason to fear the pampered domestic cat. But if a human gets between a pigeon, some sparrows and a piece of chocolate cake, this is what happens.

Basically, it gets ugly. Sparrows bear their tongues and pigeons flick pieces of chocolate cake at you in an effort to say “back off: this food is all mine”. I ended up, dear reader, with bits of chocolate fudge brownie on my face, a pigeon on my head and lots of sparrows darting around me. It was a war zone but I will leave no stone unturned nor will I hesitate to risk life and limb for ThinkingShift readers!

A busy week this week, so no time for daily posts. But here’s a question for you - if you chuck a whole lot of domestic cats under a bird feeder, would they all be salivating at the thought of a yummy bird dinner and should the birds be extremely nervous? According to Science Daily, the birds can go on stuffing their faces happily because it seems that domestic cats aren’t interested.

A research team, looking into bird feeding habits, found evidence that a flurry of bird activity around feeding does not necessarily increase birds’ risk of predation. And for some odd reason, the presence of feeders is associated with lower levels of predation by domestic cats. We could conclude a number of things:

• domestic kitties are just plain dumb (cat lovers: don’t send me an abusive email, I don’t believe cats are dumb)
• domestic kitties are so well fed they can’t be bothered leaping up to capture a bird dinner from the feeder on the balcony
• kitties, after thousands of years of domestication and being worshipped as cat gods in Egypt, are used to the luxury life of sleeping on cushions or gazing out a window for hours. So they’ve had the hunting instinct bred out of them.

And my History of LOLCats post continues to be ThinkingShift’s No 1 post and after a spot of research and help from a ThinkingShift reader, I have now uncovered further historical details. LOLCats were around in the Medieval era. How insidious these cats are! No new cultural craze these LOLCats; they have a solid historical pedigree. You want proof? Check out this marginal illustration from a 14th Century Book of Hours (British Library MS Stowe 17) from the gotmedieval blog:

I will be looking into whether LOLCats actually originated in ancient Egypt

If you ask astrophysicist, Prof Stephen Hawking, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, he is likely to quip: “Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare.. some would say it has yet to occur on earth.”

Hawking gave a lecture last week to commemorate NASA’s 50th anniversary. Can you believe that a half century has already gone by since we first flung ourselves into space in tiny capsules (flying death traps if you ask me being someone who’s not keen on confined spaces). I read anything by Hawking, what a mind. And his NASA lecture, Why We Should Go Into Space, was fascinating and gave me hope that we will resuscitate our efforts to “seek out new worlds”. You can read his lecture here on the NASA site and check out the streaming video of Hawking’s lecture (if you can stick through all the introductory comments, it’s worth it get to the Prof and his daughter, Lucy).

The Prof considered whether intelligent life is “out there” (mmm…I know it’s not in some organisations I’ve worked in!) and started off with this reflection:

“Why we should go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth? In a way, the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet, the discovery of the new world made a profound difference to the old. Just think, we wouldn’t have had a Big Mac or a KFC.”

And with all the crap that goes on in our world these days (sorry, in dark, brooding phase about humanity), this comment from the Prof had me thinking:

“Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all…..It won’t solve any of our immediate problems on Planet Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them and cause us to look outwards and inwards. Hopefully, it would unite us to face a common challenge“.

Considering that we are fast depleting our natural resources, searching out new worlds could be the only factor that could possibly unite human kind. Mind you, we’d then rapidly pillage any new world we arrived on.

Now, we all know the decline in the education system around science and the arts and this was highlighted for me when Lucy Hawking said: “In the United Kingdom, a recent survey found that a third of U.K. school children believe that wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the Moon.” Cough: I’m sure Neil Armstrong will be really pleased to read this. Some blonde bimbos around 17 years old on some reality TV show recently said they’d never even heard of Winston Churchill. Obviously, to conquer space we need a new breed of scientists (along with some trained historians I’d suggest!).

Worse, the same survey found that “40% of children thought Mars was a chocolate bar, 35% of children said the Earth was not an official planet, and extraordinarily, 72% could not identify the Moon from pictures.” Quell horror! Not sure how we’ll be “going where no-one has gone before” if we keep taking the emphasis off science, history, classics and arts education. Thank goodness Lucy and her father are producing kids’ books on science to whet the appetite with great questions like - what exactly does happen when you get to the edge of the Universe? well, very clearly you fall into the abyss of a KM programme that is languishing in some organisation….sorry.

The Prof goes on to consider panspermia (the chance that life hitchhiked from planet to planet on a meteor for example), so maybe other worlds have species that share a similar DNA with us. Although Hawking added: “On the other hand, an independent occurrence of life would be extremely unlikely to be DNA based. So watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance.”

My UFO fans: sorry Hawking, doesn’t believe we’ve been visited by aliens and says: “We don’t appear to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?”. And despite “an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven’t heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred lightyears.”

This could be a good thing though: there might be a sensible alien civilization out there, one that doesn’t have nuclear weapons; one that doesn’t spend the majority of its time in hedonistic pursuits or killing off their world; one that respects and tolerates “difference” instead of trying to annihilate it in the name of some higher authority (probably not called God).

Hawking reckons there are three possible reasons aliens haven’t tried to contact us (well, one is that they are super smart and are giving us the flick):

• the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low
• the probability of primitive life appearing may be reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low
• life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings, but when it reaches a stage of sending radio signals, it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. It will, therefore, be in danger of .destroying itself before long (and adds: let us hope this third possibility is not the reason we haven’t seen ET yet).

Lots of great stuff in this lecture, including whether we could actually live on other worlds with a different atmosphere. Go on, pamper the inner Hawking in you and read it.

Some of you might have been around in 1952 (no, I wasn’t!). Seems like it was a pretty interesting year. In 1952, these things happened:

• King George VI of England snuffed it and the present Queen Elizabeth stepped up to the throne
• Dwight D. Eisenhower became US Prez
• Stalin ruled the former USSR with an iron fist
• the hydrogen bomb was detonated for the first time
• and…in Washington….the sniffer out of “reds under beds” - Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican from Wisconsin - whipped up a frenzy by exposing communists in government and even in the entertainment industry. A wave of anti-communism, known as McCarthyism, swept the US and even Australia. I seem to remember my father carrying on about Dr Jim Cairns and whether he had “connections” with Russia and the KGB (I never bothered to check out if he did or not!).

And what I believe is happening is that there is a new wave of McCarthyism threatening to engulf us. Consider this very famous quote by Adlai Stevenson from 1952 (US politician):

“The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.”

Now, just strike out “anti-communism” and replace with “war on terror”. I was reading a book about US history that covered the McCarthy era and it struck me that there’s not much difference between 1952 and 2008: fear of Communists has simply been replaced by fear of terrorists.