Scargill

Archive for November, 2015

As the evil results of religious extremism start to look like they may plunge us into something approaching another world war, understanding the dangers of religion becomes more and more important – and yet, one of the best documentaries on the subject “The Root of all Evil” which was produced by the UK and Richard Dawkins in 2006 seems to have just about disappeared off the map.

Worse, not just disappeared but it has been deliberately removed by YouTube – and that is a worry considering the amount of pro-religious nonsense available via that channel.

Thankfully I found these.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpqpkw_root-of-all-evil-the-god-delusion-part-1_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpqpkw_root-of-all-evil-the-god-delusion-part-2_shortfilms

Here we are back in rainy, miserable, cold Britain and I have to say not voluntarily but the cottage needs work over the winter.

The first thing I had to do on returning to the UK was to update computers that had not had updated since July, the fridge was duff, Microwave had some damage, heating was acting up, the electrician I asked to fix the hot water something like a month or so ago hadn’t done the job…  in short, lots of work to do.

We’re just about to upgrade the cottage to high speed broadband – and when I say that we’re looking at up to 80 Mbps down and up to 20Mbps up – that should bring the place into the 21st century – well, for rural areas anyway!

Meanwhile shortly after returning from Spain we headed off to the USA for Thanksgiving – in Chicago. An interesting place, wealthy for the most part, people are super friendly but it is a little like being in a time-warp, nothing significant has changed since i first went there – the same music (80s rock and country and western) seems to dominate the radio, cars don’t seem to have changed much…  on the other hand neither has the price of fuel. Americans may gripe at the cost of “gas” but when it costs £20 to fill up the tank you really are in automotive heaven!

At one point we went down to an electronics store – specifically when they introduced the “Raspberry Pi ZERO” – the $5 computer on a board. Made in Ireland you’d think we’d get the best deals here in the UK – no chance. In the USA I picked the board up for $5.31 – here they are like gold-dust and people are selling them on Ebay for as much as £40 – or twice that with the magazine that was giving them away for free.

So, I’m back, Maureen is back soon and now the job of fixing up the house begins.