Thursday, 19 June 2025
We’ve got some but you can’t have any
If you don't want to be Anonymous
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
16,540 miles
Auckland City are the current champions of the New Zealand National League. Football is the third most popular sport after rugby union and cricket in that country. By winning the league the club, who play in a stadium with a capacity of just over 3,000, qualified to compete in the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) Champions League against clubs from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. In April this year they actually won it. In fact they have won it for the last four years in a row and in 11 of the last 13 years.
They’re not even the best team in Auckland. Auckland FC play in the Go Media Stadium which has a capacity of 25,000. But they can’t play in the OFC Champions League because they play in the Australian A League and Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation. They actually finished top of the A League in 2024 but were denied the opportunity to play in the Asian Champions League because they are based in New Zealand which, as we know, is in the Oceania Football Federation. In fact, although they finished 1st in the league phase they didn’t win it because 1st through 6th compete in a series of playoffs to decide who wins the title and they were beaten by Melbourne Victory.
I hope you’re keeping up.
Anyway a couple of weeks ago Auckland City flew 8,270 miles to Cincinnati to take part in the FIFA Club World Cup.
And got beaten 10-0 by Bayern Munich.
Why bother?
The answer: $6.25 million. Just for turning up. Theoretically they could get an extra $2.5 million if they win a match. In a couple of weeks' time they will take the 8,270 return journey home. Maybe they could buy a new stadium.
Where is everybody?
Following yesterday's exploration of conspiracy theory, I thought I'd mull over the Fermi Paradox. I asked ChatGPT about it.
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Ah, the Fermi Paradox—one of the most deliciously frustrating mysteries in science.
At its core, it asks a simple question:
“Where is everybody?”
In other words:
If the universe is so big, so old, and so full of stars (and planets), why haven’t we seen any signs of intelligent alien life?
๐ง Origin: Who Was Fermi?
The paradox is named after Enrico Fermi, a Nobel-winning physicist. In 1950, over lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos, he supposedly blurted out:
“But where is everybody?”
They were chatting about UFOs and the likelihood of life in the universe. Fermi realized that based on the size and age of the Milky Way, alien civilizations should already be here—or at least their signals should be.
๐ The Logic Behind the Paradox
Here’s the thinking:
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There are 100–400 billion stars in the Milky Way.
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Many of those stars have planets. Estimates suggest billions of Earth-like planets.
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Life evolved on Earth relatively quickly, geologically speaking.
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If intelligent life develops commonly, then some civilizations should be millions of years ahead of us.
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In millions of years, they could have:
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Explored the galaxy
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Sent probes everywhere
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Built giant structures
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Left signals we could detect
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But... we see nothing.
No ships. No radio signals. No evidence of colonization. Not even so much as an alien potato chip wrapper.
๐ณ️ So Where Are They? Theories and Possibilities
Here are some of the leading explanations people have offered—ranging from sober science to existential dread:
๐งฌ 1. Life is Rare
Maybe Earth is a freak accident. Life may be:
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Rare to begin with
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Often wiped out by asteroids or climate shifts
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Likely to stay microbial forever
๐ค 2. Intelligent Life Destroys Itself
The “Great Filter” theory says most civilizations self-destruct before they reach the stars—via:
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Nuclear war
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Climate collapse
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AI run amok
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Biological weapons
Sobering, isn’t it?
๐ 3. We’re the First
Someone has to be first. Maybe we’re the early bloomers, and in another billion years, the galaxy will be full of chatter.
๐ 4. They're Hiding
Advanced civilizations may:
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Choose not to contact us (the zoo hypothesis)
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Use communication methods we don’t understand (quantum? neutrinos?)
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Be deliberately quiet to avoid predators (the dark forest theory)
๐คฏ 5. They’re Already Here... and We’re Too Dumb to Notice
Maybe they're microscopic. Or post-biological. Or living in forms we can’t perceive. We could be like ants trying to understand the internet.
๐งช 6. We Haven’t Looked Hard Enough (Yet)
The universe is huge. We’ve only just started scanning for alien signals, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has covered a tiny sliver of the radio spectrum, for a tiny amount of time.
Imagine listening to one second of one radio station, and concluding no one broadcasts music.
๐ช So What’s the Verdict?
The Fermi Paradox doesn’t say aliens don’t exist—
it highlights the weird silence in a galaxy that should be screaming with life.
Whether it’s because we’re rare, doomed, or just not looking in the right way, no one knows.
But it haunts astronomers, physicists, and philosophers alike—and it’s one of the best reasons to keep looking up.
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Now, as I and my fellow Star Trekkies know, the aliens are out there but you need a warp engine to go and find them. But there's plenty to get our teeth into here. For myself, I really hope we're not alone; it would be tremendously exciting to find some extraterrestrial life. And does SETI really exist? Hopefully Elon (clearly a Trekkie at heart) will have protected them from his chainsaw.
On their website seti.org I am promised
When we make first contact, you'll be one of the first we contact.
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Flight BA149
From time to time I explore the offerings on the Sky Documentaries channel. Last night I watched Flight 149: Hostage of War. There was a thorough review in the Guardian a few days ago so I'm just going to focus on a few essential points. It is centred around events on 2 August 1990, a date best known for the start of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
My default position for "revelations" of secret government plots is scepticism. Nevertheless some known facts exist:
- British Airways flight 149 left London Heathrow at 19:05 BST on 1 August 1990 en route to Kuala Lumpur with stops scheduled in Kuwait and Madras (now Chennai). The flight had been delayed from its original departure time of 18:00.
- The flight touched down in Kuwait at 04:13 local time on 2 August, by which time Iraq's invasion had begun.
- Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated in Parliament that the flight had landed before the invasion began. In 2021, however Foreign Office papers were declassified and released and showed that the UK government was not only aware that of the invasion before the flight's arrival time in Kuwait but that they "allowed" the flight to take off from London knowing that there was a risk the invasion would take place imminently. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed that the government had misled British Airways by not passing on a warning about the invasion.
Thursday, 12 June 2025
Rinse and repeat
I remember exactly where I was when President Kennedy was shot. In the bath (me not him). My mother came into the bathroom and told me. I was 19 and a bit protective of my privacy so I was a bit shocked.
Memory is a funny thing. I can see that in my mind from 62 years ago but I can't recall what I had for dinner last night.
I don't remember when we were told we couldn't call Peking Peking any more, it had to be Beijing. I can remember it happening but not when. Maybe it just crept into our consciousness. Or perhaps the Chinese leader (I don't know which one, just that it wasn't Chairman Mao) phoned the BBC and said "we've issued an edict that filthy imperialists must address us respectfully".
Is that what happened with Kiev? I've lived with my childhood love of geography for 70 years and suddenly the old atlases are wrong? Who decided? I know, it's about derussification but I say again: who decided?
The latest (and I'm probably coming a bit late to this party) is - no more Czech Republic. I'd just got used to forgetting the Czechoslovakia that shockingly won the European Championship in 1976. I remember that I was sitting in my car listening to the commentary on the car radio, and that I felt great joy at the underdog winning the penalty shootout with Antonin Panenka chipping the winning penalty down the middle - a technique now forever known as a Panenka. More so that they beat the Germans. Who at that time were West Germany. Anyway, it's now Czechia. Which I'm uncertain how to pronounce (not Chechnya, that's a different country - pay attention at the back!). In any case "the Czechs have just scored a third goal past the hapless England goalkeeper" will probably do for past, present and future. Unless we change our name. Or goalkeeper.
Tonight they are playing us (England under 21s) at soccer. They being Czech Republic. Which is apparently what we have to call them when it's an official occasion, as opposed to a holiday destination. Hope our goalkeeper's OK.
And on a completely different note and referring back to a recent post: