In Response To Paris

Hi -di-hi y'all. Bet you didn't expect to hear from me again so quickly.

Like everyone else with access to the free media, I heard about the terrible attacks in Paris, among other places, last week. The media have covered it pretty much non-stop since it happened (at least in Paris, I've not seen a lot about anywhere else). I've been pondering my personal response to these actions for the last few days. I know I'm only one person, but with this blog I know I can reach at least, like, three whole other people. So maybe I can make a small difference.
When I heard about Paris, I was shocked. I wanted to cry, and scream. I wanted to get over to France and do anything and everything I could to help. Sadly, France was in total shutdown, and it wouldn't have been practical to go even if it hadn't been. So I decided to do everything I could from my family home in Hertfordshire.

I checked that my friends in Paris were safe, and then I did nothing.
That's it.

I didn't cancel my plans to travel (using public transport) into central London with my family on Saturday. I didn't stop myself from enjoying a night out in one of the most "at-risk" cities in Europe. (Xanadu at the Southwark Playhouse, if anyone's interested. Amazing. I'd recommend going, but they've sold out until the end of the season!) And I did nothing to lessen my experience of getting on the tube (I hate the tube) any further. I also didn't cancel my flight from London to Berlin (arguably another "high risk" city) on Sunday. I didn't change my travel plans to get to the airport either. And I didn't complain when they wanted to check my bag at security (my bacon showed up as a liquid on the scanner.) When in Berlin, I didn't do anything to alter my arranged journey back to Braunschweig. I didn't worry about anything apart from making sure I got on the right train.

Because that's the best way to fight these morons.

Terrorists are like naughty children. If you react to every little thing they do, they will never learn that that's not the right way to behave. If a child throws a hissy-fit in the middle of the supermarket because you refuse to buy them sweets, you shouldn't give in and buy them sweets. Then the child learns that making a fuss leads to getting what you want. If a terrorist organisation kills innocent people in one of the biggest cities in Europe, you don't creep around in fear for the next few months. And you certainly don't get into a screaming match in the middle of the metaphorical supermarket. You just get on with your day as you would have before. You don't let them learn that they win by making a fuss.

If we live in fear of everything, we provoke the response "Look how weak the West is! They cower at our feet!" If we retaliate and bomb them into oblivion, we provoke the response "Look how dangerous the West is! We must fight back to protect ourselves!" If we band together, recover from the atrocities they've committed and leave them alone, they'll realise that their plan isn't working. They might try again (I really hope not, surely nobody is that heartless), but they'll learn that it isn't going to help.

They'll grow up a bit if we just leave them alone.

America and Europe have sent fighters and bombers and soldiers into more countries than there are scenes starring Daniel Radcliffe in a Harry Potter film. IT DOESN'T WORK. We've never had the result we want, and we never will. What on earth makes people think "This time. This time we're going to come out on top." It just kills more innocent people, a result nobody wants.

Actually, that's a lie. You know who wants that result? Terrorists.

My point is: stop. Stop trying to fight back. Stop giving them reasons to come and do this again. People died. Over one hundred and thirty people died. One hundred and thirty. That's about the same as the number of people in a reasonably large Scout group (Beavers through to Leaders). That's not OK. In no universe is that OK. So don't send troops and planes and bombs. Don't cancel your holiday plans. Mourn the dead, of course, but don't make things worse for the living.

Carry on as before.
Offer support the the refugees trying to escape from these people.
Look after your friends, family, and neighbours. (Especially those who peacefully practice Islam, they need the support right now too.)
Help out if you can.
But apart from that, do nothing.


All my love goes out to those affected by the attacks France, Lebanon, Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria, to name some of the most recent ones. I hope life can resume for normal for you all as soon as possible.

Fax Machine Time Travel

Hello hello children, adults, and those lost somewhere in the middle. I've been having a lovely time in Germany since I last wrote on here, with lots of good times seeing friends and doing interesting things with my life. Last weekend I met some uni friends in Frankfurt, and we had a great catch up, as people who haven't seen each other for six months often do.

Anyway, I've got a ponderance. It's something I've been thinking about for a while and have decided to put into words now.
As many of you will be aware, the "Back to the Future" films go forward to this year. The story takes Marty and Doc Brown forward in time to 21st October 2015, to see how Marty's children have grown up. This, coupled with the popular Internet expression "If nobody from the future comes back to stop you, how bad can your idea be?" (or whatever it is) have led me to thinking about time travel.

You see, I've been alive for 20 years now, and it's reasonable to suggest that that's a fair window of time for someone going back in time to choose. Therefore, it doesn't make sense that nobody has met a time traveller. There are people who have been alive far longer than me who have also yet to meet anyone from he future who's come back for whatever reason.

This leaves us with two suggestions: either time travel is impossible and will never be invented, or there is something stopping time travellers from coming back so "far".

If we are optimistic and assume that time travel is entirely possible once the technology has been properly developed, we have to then ask why nobody has ever met a time traveller. Of course, I'm assuming that there must be a level of secrecy which goes without saying; if you tell the wrong person that time travel is possible, you'd cause a riot. Especially when so much information is shared in the way it is online nowadays. However, what if there's another reason? What if the reason nobody can come back in time to see us is because we haven't invented time travel yet?

Think about it. If we don't have the technology to send a person through time, what on earth makes people think we could receive someone who's travel through time? Think of it like accidentally calling a fax machine from a phone. The two technologies are incompatible and one is significantly more high tech than the other, which is why the person making the call will hear a lot of static and what sounds like a dialup broadband tone. The fax machine just doesn't have the capability to receive a voice.

This would mean that, at least to begin with, time travellers would only be able to go forward in time. If there is no chance of a receiving platform going back in time, then the only other option is to go somewhere where the technology is as good, if not better.

In my opinion, this doesn't mean that time travel is a worthless goal. Imagine how useful/terrifying it would be to be able to find out about the future, especially if you could only travel forward to a certain point... To me, it would suggest we should keep working towards this goal (if we even still think it's possible) to allow people from the future more range of times to travel back to.

However, the Internet quote about being stopped by someone from the future is still erroneous. Everyone knows that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn and improve. For example, I'm now never going to forget that Käse, Tee, and Name are all masculine nouns (despite ending in "e" - Mr Whelan lied) because I've made that mistake so many times, it's now impossible to forget. Equally, I will now always remember Mecklenburg Vorpommern, because it was the only Bundesland I couldn't name last time I tried. Mistakes are a great thing. Look how much history repeats itself anyway. Without certain events, we would never learn not to do things (like communism - although I still think that could work if everyone embraced it properly and the leader was willing to step down).

I guess what I'm trying to say, in my waffly and roundabout way, is that time travel is a brilliant idea, but it's like phoning a fax machine at the moment. We need to explore the possibilities further in order to allow it. Although I'm not a scientist, so I guess it may well just be horse apples.

Cool.

Also, if anyone wants to use this idea (probably in fiction, rather than research ;) ) please quote me as the original source. I'd love to have done something useful with my brain drivel.

See you around. Much love xx