London Bye Ta-Ta (Improving the Capital - part 3)

I've left London. Why? Well it is a horrible place to live. And yet millions of people have actively chosen to live there. Even people who were fortunate enough not to be born in Britain's capital. I can't understand it myself. In fact I'm surprised that I put up with the place for so many years myself. 

I wouldn't want to return (Not immediately anyway, and when i do it'll be hopefully just as an annoying tourist*). I haven't turned my back on London though. Not completely. Here's another idea that'll make the big smoke a less depressing place to live, to go along with my existing genius-like ideas of putting an invisible roof over Soho, and giving the London underground a colonic.

Cigarette Butt Fine

People who throw litter on the ground disgust me. If the litter happens to be a cigarette then I'm disgusted more so, on account of a cigarette's toxic nature. You people make me sick! I want to vomit on you, you vile smoke filled litterer! You know who you are. I hate you, and everyone you associate with I hope you all die of an appropriate throat or lung based illness! **

My solution to this social disease?... There should be an on-the-spot fine for anybody caught littering. They'll be charged a mere pound for regular litter and two pounds for anyone chucking a cigarette/roll-up on the ground. 

Any adult caught littering will be given the choice of picking up said litter themselves or paying the fine.

Now you may think that it can't be policed, but it can. With a couple of thousand recruits of undercover litter cops. They'll have the power to demand the money there and then. And people with have the choice of paying the fine immediately or if they can't then their details are taken and the fine increases to twenty pounds. 

This scheme will stop people littering the streets. It'll create jobs, money (which will go back into funding the litter-police), and a general sense of paranoia amongst your fellow man. No one will know who else is secretly a litter-cop. People can have this job full time and still hold down their existing job full time. It's a genius idea and one that I am surprised hasn't been instigated already. I mean, that's the way society's going isn't it?

More genius 'make London nicer' ideas to come.

* 'Pardon me, but could you direct me to lie-sester square?'

** I still feel like I'm sitting on the fence here. This is as polite as I get. After all, I never said the C word.   ...Either of them.

Science Friction (Perpetual Motion's Nemesis)

These days I seem to be posting my ideas more infrequently. Which is to say, I've been posting my ideas more sparsely, with a higher rate of infrequency, and in fewer abundance. Which is to say, in plain English, I've been posting less inperiodically or more commonly less frequently more often.

It is for this reason that I challenged my genius brain to come up with an idea that will solve more than one of mankind's problems in one go. We're talking killing two birds with one stone. But I didn't want to stop at two. Anyone who knows me knows how I love to maim a multitude of feathered creatures with one projectile, but on this occasion I decided to leave them be, and just think about the problem I'd set myself. Well within 15 minutes I came up with a single concept that will help reduce humanity's social, environmental, technological, residential and economic problems. All you need is a few decades work on an international scale, in a large section of Antarctica.

(an area of 500km radius around the south pole to be exact)

Problem 1.
The prisons in [insert country here] are full, but people keep doing crimes.

Solution: Send all the world's prisoners (or all the lifers at least) to one massive prison on an island. Perhaps not such an original idea. It's like when the US used to send criminals to Alcatraz. ...or when the UK used to send criminals to Australia. (In retrospect we call all agree that the latter was a terrible idea).
A large prison will be built in the centre of the continent of Antarctica, which (when the prisoners have finished building it) will be escape-proof. Anyone leaving the prison complex to go outside is essentially committing suicide. This of course is illegal, and will be punished by 24 hours isolation in the cooler.
Once it's up and running, a vast majority of the worlds prisons can be closed.  ... and then converted into budget housing. I'm not suggesting people will live in cell-sized flats. (not everyone anyway) I'm saying you could knock though several cells and have an apartment that was made up of up to 5 cells. Luxury.


Problem 2.
How can the world save money on the space program?

Solution: You'd have a lift into space. Yes, this isn't a new idea, not even by me. But it is an idea I came up with many years ago. I've adapted it though, so that the base of the lift is in the Antarctic (to capitalise on the very cheap/free labour among the local residents), and the counterweight at the other end is in a low orbit in space, but at an angle (of maybe 60°) from the base. The counterweight can make several orbits of the Earth each day in the opposite direction that the Earth is turning. The base in this new design however is actually anchored to a platform that moves around a large track with a circumference of approximately 3142km around the South Pole (again, built over many years by convicts). The speed of the platform around the track can be altered any time the lift needs to be used. Why the track? Well this is part of the answer to my third problem...


Problem 3.
How can we create renewable energy and stop burning fossil fuels?

Solution: This is also a question I've attempted to answer before. Albeit, not very convincingly. The idea was a very simple perpetual motion machine. And while that genius magnetic contraption has it's charms, I'll be the first to admit that it does sort of contravene Newton's third law of motion. Generally you can't create energy from nothing. You can only convert energy. Which is exactly what we're doing here. For all intents and purposes, this coasting Antarctic space elevator is a genuine perpetual motion machine. It would actually work. Why? Because it's not actually a genuine perpetual motion machine. But it almost is. The movement on the track will either turn a giant underground wheel, or turn a series of generator as the platform speeds round the track. The speed of the thing is determined by the radius of the track as well as the height of the counterweight's orbit.* It will never stop, so long as the Earth keeps spinning. A by-product of this ingenious suggestion is that (very gradually) the Earth's spin will slow down as a result of friction. The Earth's spin is slowing down very gradually anyway, but this machinery will increase this deceleration. However, it's worth pointing out that you won't see any noticeable effect of this for many hundreds of years.  ...probably.

Still, I'm always saying there aren't enough hours in the day.



*Assuming the counterweight goes round the earth just twice a day, and the track has a diameter of 1000km, then the base will be travelling at about 262km/h (163mph). For convenience this speed can be sped up or slowed down by decreasing or increasing the length of the counterweight's tether.

Additions, Updates & Anymore?

What's new? I added a couple new poems (Same Old, Same Old and Trapped in Taupo) to this site. I wrote these in moments of boredom on my first excursion to the beautiful country of New Zealand in 2005 and 2006.

I've also included a new painting on the Art page.

I picked up this latest acquisition on one of my recent time-travel excursions to 1950s Soviet Union, and is evidence that supports my firmly held belief that propaganda for household cleaning products was key to eventually bringing about the end of communism in this part of the world.* More paintings coming soon.

*This may not be true.


So, I've not been here for a while.
Why? Well I've been busy doing other things. When you're a genius (like I am), you hardly see the point of blogging you latest ideas for the good of mankind. I mean, who really listens anyway?

I have to conclude that the people who have the power to practically get things done in this world simply don't want to hear from a modestly self-confessed genius like myself. Or more likely they do want to hear my ideas but don't want to credit me for them. I guess I don't mind is this is the case. I really don't care that I can save man king and don't get any thanks. Just the knowledge that I can is reward enough for me. I'm kind of like Jesus that way; Doing good for mankind without wanting anything in return. Just so long as things get done.

A good example of this is when I solved the problem of the appalling air pollution in London. Having written this entry, I then contacted the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. I laid out my genius scheme to him succinctly and also left a link to my blog post. His website assures me that all messages to the Mayor get read by him or one of his assistance, and that I should receive a reply within 21 days. After 21 days I hadn't heard back from the Mayor. But he must have read it. In fact 5 months have been and gone between then and now, and I still haven't heard word back. The only logical conclusions to draw from this are that either a) The Mayor of London is an idiot who wouldn't recognise a good idea if it fell on him... or b) Boris saw my genius idea for what it is: A genius idea. Already he's put plans in place to make this tube cleaning idea a reality, but he's not returned my email as he doesn't want to acknowledge that it was my idea. He intends to take all the credit himself. This seems to be the most likely scenario. Boris is indeed smarter than he lets on, and only acts like a clumsy buffoon in public to mask his true persona as an evil genius. He and I are not so dissimilar after all.

Another example of ignorance in the face of genius came when I started this blog. I revolutionised the way to look at the universe with my trilogy of posts on gravity, focusing on space-time (part 1), matter (part 2) and the infinite omniverse (part 3). I contacted Professor Brian Cox about the first two of these, but didn't bother him about the third one. All I want to do is help accelerate Man's scientific knowledge, but if people aren't prepared to listen then I won't go out of my way to help too much. Having said that, I imagine Brian or one of his colleagues at CERN are currently writing lengthy papers on the very ideas and subjects that I have skimmed over in this blog. Again I don't mind. Just so long as the knowledge gets out there, I'm happy to help.


So what's next?
Well, the problem I have is that I have no problem.
Having solved the above, I've found time in my busy schedule to lay down the foundations that will inevitably lead to time travel. I've explored the consequences of such time travel, and predicted the future of robotics (along with the end of the human race). I've redesigned earth-to-orbit space travel and designed an exciting new purpose for the moon. I've revolutionised the criminal justice system and the future of space exploration in a single move. I've solved all of Mankind's energy problems, designed a hoverboard, written a box-office hit of a movie, and proposed a simple plan that will inevitably bring about world peace.

Now what?
Well, like I said, I'm all out of problems. Contentment's the enemy of invention. I'd need something to put my genius mind to. If you have a problem...if no one else can help...and if you can message me or leave a comment below, ... then maybe I'll get around to solving it in due course. Preferably something that might help mankind, or a universal mystery you'd like solving. Just don't ask me to take the lid of any pickle jars - I'm no good at that sort of thing.

Your Own... Personal... Robot...

(Someone to hoover your stairs. Someone who cares)

In the future we will all have our own personal robots. Fact.

It may not happen in the next 20 years, the next 100 years or even the next 1000 years, but if it can happen then it will. Eventually robots will be part of our society. This we know to be true, cos we've seen it in so many films. Ok, these are science fiction, and many of these films will often have one or all of these robotic slaves going on a human killing spree, or at all-out war with humanity. But we've got years of human/robot harmony before all that happens.
(Remember: given a long enough time period, if it can happen, it will).

In the mean time, while we're waiting for the inevitable revolution/war/Armageddon/global genocide/enslavement of humanity by our robot overlords, a question has occurred to me: If society was capable of creating enough intelligent machines to do every job that man can do, then how would that work?...

Surely we'd all be out of a job?

Well this is exactly what people thought back in the last century when factories were becoming more and more automated. Not as much man power was required and many people were out of work.

But there's always other jobs right? If every person was replaced by a robot tomorrow then you'd think that'd be terrible.... but no.

Perhaps in the short term it might be a problem on a small scale, but if a company didn't need to pay a work force then that'd be a good thing. And here's why... Here's how the future society would work (in the few years of Human/Robot bliss, before the nightmarish apocalyptic world becomes a reality) if you put me in charge:

For every robot doing a human's job in government, the government will give free food to someone. They can afford to do this cos they won't be paying an individual, and because the robot works in a farm/factory that supplies the food.

If you expand this idea, then what you have is a semi-communistic society when everyone gets a minimum wage/minimum free food hand outs. And no-one has to work if they don't want to. There will still be free enterprise, so you can still get rich if you want outside of the system, but get this: No one pays tax. Why?... Well it's the future. What does the government need money for? Your bins are collected by robots. Your power is renewable energy, everything is free as it's run and maintained by robots, who don't need paying. There will never be roadworks again. Everything that needed doing is now future-proofed, so that if ever there was an issue with something, it can be fixed, instantly, by robots. Everyone will get free hand-out/credits... unless you're actually working yourself. But the money you earn is not taxed. There is the great incentive to work, but if you want to live a life of leisure, you can. Most people won't need to retire, as they're not working, and there will be no more pension adverts on TV. Your funeral is even free, (unless of course you actually want a freelance human priest to conduct the service). Robots can do everything.

This is all the more easily integrated globally if the whole world is as one and at peace.

Have I missed anything out? Who pays for the robots?... initially the government. But once a few robots are made, these are put to good use in robot-making factories. And before you know it, you'll have 6.5 billion automated, soulless, (potential) killing machines on the planet, ready to do a bit of hard graft for humankind, so that I can put my feet up, watch some TV and perhaps spend some more of my infinite free time painting, without worrying about where my next semi-communistic, government-issue, robot-prepared ready meal is coming from. Is that too much to ask?

 

World Peace.

Yep. This is the big one.

People often ask me how to bring about world peace*.  They say to me "Jon, please tell us your genius ideas on how to stop all wars."**
Well, I was thinking about this problem one lunch time around 6 months ago. I was eating a ham sandwich, and within a couple of minutes I'd formulated a solution and finished my sandwich. It goes something like this:

The premise is to have a world-wide collective of peaceful countries. I guess it'd be like the UN. But on a larger scale, and with certain rules. Each country would have benefits in joining this peace collective. (At the time I thought of it, I named it Peace Club, but that just sounds naff. From here on in, let's just call it the Peace Collective until someone comes up with a name that doesn't sound so hippy)

• Any country joining the Peace Collective will automatically reap benefits. Poor countries more so than richer countries. Each country will donate a certain percentage (tbc) of their national exports and/or money to be evenly distributed to all other countries in the collective. - If the country makes cars, then cars are given away, if the country exports rice then rice is given away. This set percentage will remain the same and so the more joinees of the collective, the better it is for everyone.

• Each nation will not be allowed to declare war on any nation within or without the Peace Collective.

• Each nation that has joined will therefore reduce their armed forces drastically. Thus saving more money.

• If any nation within the Collective is attacked, then a Collective army will defend/intervene. This will be comprised of the various/numerous reduced-in-size armed forces of each nation. Therefore each country involved will have a standardised style of army training

Them's the rules. Stick with them and join the Peace Collective.
With more countries involved, the greater the benefits for those involved (including imports and armed forces protection). Thus every country will want to join.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking:
1) This sounds a bit like communism on a global scale.
2) What about the rich countries? Surely they'll be paying for most of this?
3) What about all the religious wars that are ongoing?

Well let me answer by saying:
1) Yep. That's exactly what it is. Communism is wrong on an individual/national scale... but on a global scale, the world will be a better place. After many years it'd even things out and then it will all seem fairer.
2) Well, yeah they will. To begin with. But surely the reduced cost of America's (come on. That's who we're talking about, and you know it) defences will save them so much money over the years. This is a long term plan. Where everyone wins eventually.
3) Well once most of the world was on the side of the collective army, global impartial decisions will be made to reduce such skirmishes in the middle east.

Ok, so world peace isn't goint to be instantaneous, but it's only gonna take a few decades/generations for it to actually come about. But it would happen. This idea would work. You may say I'm dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Obviously there's the finer details to iron out, but I think I've sorted out the main issues. There would be no one leader for this Peace Collective. But if people absolutely insist on having a president/king of the world, then they can do far worse that giving the position to the genius who thought up the scheme.

I will now take your questions...




* They don't. It's a big lie.
** Again, no-one has ever asked me this.