Ben Shephard

I’ve been wanting to write down some thoughts for a while now. It seems that every which way you turn in the last few years there is someone banging on about green issues and stuff but recently I’ve heard something new and I’ve heard it several times in different places over the last few weeks.

The new thing is not how much CO2 we create or how wasteful we are but the sheer number of us. The BBC are currently running an advert for The Today Programme on Radio 4 which features David Attenborough talking about this very subject. He states that in the 50 or so years since he started making natural history programmes the global population has trebled in size. This got me wondering so I decided to have a look at Wikipedia and it seems he’s more or less right. He goes on to say that each one of us needs food to eat and cars to drive and houses to live in and the the earths resources are limited because as he puts it the earth is” finite-size”. I also watched a documentary called the future of food which to be honest I was expecting to be a cooking show when I saw the title and I almost turned over but I was glad I didn’t. It was about how we produce the food we eat and what other resources that impacts on such as water to grow things and oil to package it move it and cook it. I don’t remember the name of the presenter but they also mentioned population growth as the main problem.

It’s expected that the global population will grow by half again by 2050 to around nine billion people. Were already seeing countries buying up land abroad to secure their own food production and a lot of what we eat is imported already. There are people abroad starving yet I’ll admit I eat too much and I’m fat and unfit. I find myself wondering why this is and I think it’s a bit like Darwin’s survival of the fittest except in our world it’s not your ability to run after an animal it’s how much money you have that determines how much food you can buy and if you have no money you can’t eat so it’s become the survival of the richest.

I’ve not yet heard anyone say what they think the maximum number of people the planet can support is but like a packed football stadium there are only a certain number of seats and without crowd control it’s only a matter of time before we have a large scale version of the Hillsborough disaster. I know I probably won’t have much of a problem because I live in a reasonably wealthy country but it’s also a pretty well packed country and we can’t even now grow our own food. What if the imports suddenly stopped for some reason? how would we cope?

This was the very reason why I became a vegetarian when I was only a kid. I had the idea that it was more efficient to eat veggies than to eat meat. To get that chicken dinner on my plate a chicken had to be reared and that requires food and water as well and I could eat more if I hadn’t had to feed the chicken in the first place.

Another reason I wanted to write about this is that it seems that every where I look lately there is a heavily pregnant woman or someone with small children in push chairs. For some reason it seems like there are more than I normally notice and I don’t know why that is. Each and every one of those kids will need to spend a life time consuming the earths resources. It’s one thing to tell everyone to switch to energy saving bulbs or use other more efficient machines but to then crank out a load of kids and boost the population means that as a whole we aren’t any better off.

Perhaps the population figures can be likened to the economy. For example house prices got bigger and bigger because we thought it’s wasn’t a problem and then all of a sudden everything collapsed around us. This made life hard for quiet a few of us over the last year but what happens if the same thing happens with the resources we all take for granted, If the food imports dry up and gas and oil stops coming on from the middle east and Russia? We will probably starve and freeze to death starting with the poorest first.

It’s a pretty grim prospect I know but we do seem to be living on a knife edge this last couple of years. The only answer I can see  to all of this is a little bit of crowd control China style. Mostly when you hear about China’s one child policy it’s seen by us in the west in a very negative way but then we don’t live in China which has the highest population of any country on earth. I wouldn’t say I agree with it entirely myself but we can’t go on multiplying and expecting the planet to cope.

There is a scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith compares the human race to a virus and if you think about it that might well be pretty accurate. Sadly we haven’t yet developed the technology to move on to another host planet and until we can we better bloody well look after this one.

Perhaps weapons of mass destruction, killer disease, war and famine are the only way we will  save ourselves. It’s hard to think of wars breaking out over food but I don’t think it’s impossible after all I think most people would agree the Iraq war was mainly about securing oil for the rich countries in the west and had nothing to do with extremist groups or WMD. I think the world has become more dangerous since the invasion of Iraq as it’s become a breeding ground for extremists. As it was Saddam’s regime had such a tight control over the people of Iraq that it kept a lid on that kind of stuff.

I’d rather not see things end up like that and so I try to live my life according to the same ideas I thought up when I was about 8 years old and although I’ve started eating meat again I think about the impact of what I do on the earths resources.

I think the biggest thing we can do is try not to reproduce so that there be some space left for all the other kids which is one reason why I’m in no hurry to settle down with a partner and start a family. After all I’d hate for my child to have to suffer the kind of apocalypse I fear may be on the cards if we all continue to expect the supermarket shelves to full and the house to be warm and cosy.

Sorry if my views are a little upsetting but that’s just the way I see the world at the moment. I’d like to hear what other people think so feel free to comment. I’d especialy like to know if any one else has had the same kind of ideas I had as  kid or weather I’m just a little bit crackers.

Anyway Swine flu has allmost gone away now so it’s back to work for me tomorrow. It didn’t kill me this time but I suppose thats another good way to keep the numbers down.

Ben

= 4.9

I’ve started to feel a bit better today and bored of sitting in the house I started to think what I could do to get a change of scenery for a few hours. I didn’t want to go to my parents or anything like that in case I end up passing my bug on. I decided to get my car cleaned and head off to Ikea for a few more bits for the house. I was only at Ikea for half an hour or so but it wore me out  just doing that. I came home and had a sit down before putting my coffee tables together. As I was putting all the screws in I started to sweat and that’s got to be an improvement over the last few days as I haven’t been able to keep warm since I started feeling ill. I had to take my hoody off at one point. I can’t say it’s been a busy day but at least I’ve managed to do something even if not a lot. I’ve spent most of the last few days messing around on the Internet listening to pod casts and watching TV. I’ve been looking around for some exciting new technologies to tinker with to entertain myself. I’ve not had the concentration for anything complicated so I’ve been looking for something simple like twitter. I came across AudioBoo I’ve heard of it before but never looked into what it was and it looks interesting. You can record audio with your I-Phone and upload it to AudioBoo like you would a tweet on twitter. I really like the idea behind AudioBoo and a blogger friend of mine had had the idea to use it to record sounds around him in his every day life and talk about them in two minute long clips. There are a few issues with this service as it stands which sadly put it out of my reach. It seems you have to have an I-Phone  to record and upload your audio. The ability to upload from a mobile is convenient but it would be nice to do it other ways too. You can dial a number and record your audio via a phone call but this would impact on the quality of the recording. I was hoping to find an Android app for my G1 but sadly this doesn’t exist. Looking around the forums I see there are a few issues with the I-phone app in that you have to upload recording as soon as you record it and you can’t make another recording until you have uploaded the first one. This is no good if you are abroad or somewhere where you have no data coverage. It seems a little strange to me that we have had video sharing sites such as YouTube and picture sharing sites like Flickr for years but we have never had anyting simalar for audio as far as I’m aware apart from AudioBoo. Having just signed up for it I can’t see any way to upload audio from a pc over the web but it does pull in my avatar from gravatar but apart from that it’s useless to people who don’t have an I-phone. It’s a nice idea but not very well implemented as yet.

I’ve not been to work today and yesterday because I haven’t felt well at all. I decided to have a look at the NHS swine flu diagnosis website and according to that I have the bug. I don’t think I do because I was able to get on the site. I went out today and bought 12 lemons and a jar of honey. I’ve been making hot honey and lemon drinks all day and taking paracetamol which has helped a bit. The worst thing is feeling sleepy. Yesterday I went to sleep at about 3:30pm until about 8pm. I saved my Tamiflu collection number and if I feel worse tomorrow I’ll have to try and get someone to collect it for me. I knew something was wrong Tuesday when I couldn’t get warm and then started with aches and a sore throat. Hopefully this will be over soon because being stuck in the house too tired to do any of the things I want to is just boring.

Ben

= 3

I’ve not posted for about a week now because I’ve been stupidly busy this last week. I’ve not been finishing work until late most nights as I’ve stayed to get some things done that needed doing. Friday night I didn’t leave until 9:45 pm because there were some issues that began in the afternoon and I was interested in seeing how we deal with things when there is a major outage as there was. It turned out to be a really odd ball network issue but it was good to see how the others traced the fault and get everything back up and running.

I spent my Saturday working on the house and garden with my parents. My mum tidied up the garden ready for winter and I painted the gate to try and keep it nice and my dad pointed up some of the brick work. We also finished off a few of the last bits in the dining room and kitchen such as putting curtains up and blocking off the now unused hot water pipe behind the washer.

I was hoping to go take out some of my savings to pay for all the new stuff I’ve bought but I didn’t wake up until late having been at work late the night before so that will have to wait until Monday now. I decided to have a ride out and look for some more furniture today. There was a glass TV stand I had been looking at getting at JYSK in Mansfield. It was on sale at £50 but they didn’t have one in and are only getting one more in so i decided not to bother and to go get one of the cheaper coffee tables from Ikea that would do the job nicely. Also If I get  I can get a matching side table to put between my two chairs. Sadly they were also out of stock so  couldn’t get the main thing I wanted to get. All was not lost as there was still plenty of stuff I wanted to get from Ikea. I wanted a chair and some lights for the dining room and I also came across some LED lights that were intended for use in display cabinets and such. There were a reasonable price for LED so I bought a set thinking they would look pretty good on the kick boards under my kitchen units. They were really easy to install as they just stick on with sticky pads and I cut a few notches in the top of the board for the cables to go through so they are all hidden behind the units. My mum bought me a couple of small strip lights to go under the high cupboards to light up my work tops. Before I fit them I need to install some wooden strips around the edge of the cupboards to hide them but I couldn’t find any in Ikea so I’ll be off to Wickes or B&Q tomorrow to see what they have. If I can’t get any proper stuff I’ll make my own out of rounded architrave and paint them white to match the cupboards.

New curtains and lamp

New chair and tall lamp

Funky LED Kitchen lights attached to my kick board

I don’t do ornaments but I liked this vase and the flower went with it rather nicely I thought

Today my parents came over to help me finish the kitchen. We started getting the lino down in the kitchen and once my dad was started me and my mum went out to shop for a washing machine. We found one we both liked for a reasonable price. It was slightly more than I wanted to spend but it’s got an lcd display and looks like something out of Darth Vader’s utility room. The problem is figuring out how to use it. I’ve managed to wash some dust sheets and when I wanted to set it up to dry my stuff I accidentally set off another wash cycle. Then an error flashed up “no water – check supply” I had a quick look round the back and I’d managed to kink the hose as I put it in the gap. I straightened it out but the message didn’t go away. I turned it off mid cycle and the stuff inside was soaking so I set it on a spin cycle. all through the spin it still kept complaining there was no water. once it stopped I unplugged it and plugged it back in. It’s not complained since but it’s now drying my sheets on a 40 min cycle to see how it copes. Hopefully the good old turn it off and on trick fixed it. While we were in Comet I also decided to have a look at the TV I blogged about yesterday and decided to get one. This I can work no instructions needed. The number of connections on the back is mind blowing. It’s even got a network connection for interactive TV. I tried hooking it up to my MythBox but I don’t think the graphics card is too happy. I swapped it out for a better one so I might be able to run it at full 1080p but it I didn’t get any picture when i fired it up so I plugged in my net book which managed to drive it with it’s built in intel graphics but after a while the screen just went pink so it’s probably not quiet up to the job. The graphics card in my server is a pretty good one with a HDMI output and every other video output known to man but the trouble is it’s a little bit busy being a server right now so I don’t want to take it down without I have something to drop in it’s place. I’m thinking of building a Myth box out of bits I’ve got knocking about and getting a nice case and a capable graphics card but that won’t happen until the new year. I’ve spent a small fortune today so I want to hold back for a while.

The house is looking good and I’ve got some nice new things I’ve been wanting for a while. Just need to get a few bits from Ikea next week and my spending spree is over. As soom as everthing is just so and I’ve got everywhere clean and tidy I’ll post a few pics of the finished item.

Ben

= 7