I only just turned 30.
I figured the test must be flawed. I checked. The test was not flawed, but the way I took it was. I couldn't even do it right.
I tried to look on the bright side, thinking that an 80 year-old has a wealth of wisdom earned by years of playing the game called life.
But this didn't test wisdom. It tested response times to simple brain teasers and arithmetic.
So I started doing the training - it's kind of addictive. It's the stuff you secretly liked in primary school - fast sums and that sort of thing. There's memory stuff as well. There are drawbacks - a 3d floating head of the Japanese scientist that invented the game mocks you if your scores slip and laughs at its own dreadful jokes. That's creepy.
But I've dropped 53 years in just over a week. Which makes my brain 3 years younger than the rest of me. I think learning how to take the test helped.
Oh, and just because your idea's rubbish doesn't mean it won't make you millions. I like the LaserMonks. They sound kind of like Jedis, but for printers.
In other news, London's an oven. In fact, scratch that, Britain's an oven at the moment. Except for North West Scotland, which is more like a weak heat lamp. With every news service chiming in on the thermal meltdown of Wales and everywhere else, I thought I'd throw my two cents in as well.
- People, it is summer. Summer is, by its very nature, a hot time of year - much like winter is a cold time of the year.
- When you say it's the hottest summer in history, you are guilty of sensationalist, dreadful, irresponsible journalism and should be ashamed of yourselves.
- Global warming is probably responsible. This is like standing in the rain and muttering that it's the drops making you wet. Climate is not a constant. Nothing on the planet is a constant. It is dynamic, in constant flux and whether the cause is human or natural, the effect is the same. The last 25 million years or so is the only period in the earth's 4 billion years that it's been temperate enough for ice to cover both poles. So for 160th of the planet's history, there's been weather systems that we would consider 'normal'. Just suppose we did manage to curb global warming, and the planet decides to fuck us with her own climate change, one that we can't blame on emissions? Do we adapt, or try to fix it?
3 comments:
Well, but...it IS the hottest summer in history. We hit 112 yesterday, broke every record on the books. So ok, make that recorded history, but still. When the tarmac is melting to the bottom of your feet, it stops being hyperbole and starts being simple fact.
It's the hottest summer, in certain places, since records began. However, in relation to the rest of history, temperature records are lacking. They start, at the earliest, about 175 years ago. Recorded human history dates back much further, say about 10,000 years. But because they lacked thermometers, we don't know how hot it was. We know that most of southern England was under vine in Roman times, and famous for its wine, suggesting it was pretty hot. Geological evidence suggests that the world has gone through periods of unbearable heat on a far larger scale than what even the worst case scenario for global warming.
So it's not a simple fact. It's a loaded fact. And I was talking about London, not New York. :-P
But it's the hottest summer in history in London AND New York.
And as I said, recorded history. If you want to go beyond that we could certainly argue that it was rather hotter several billion years ago when the entirety of existence was separating out into its component atoms, but that would be stupid, so that's why we start 175 years ago. Now stop arguing with me, it's too hot.
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