Dean Mead from Carmarthen

I never met Dean Mead, but both Stewart and Lauren have and counted him as a good friend, they were both deeply shocked when they heard of his untimely death in Afghanistan by an IED.... I was very moved by how well he was thought of by his fellow Marines.


I won't replicate the comments out of respect, but I suggest you go and read them.....here

A fine young man cut down in his prime doing something he loved.


"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."


RIP Dean Mead 1991 - 2011

Imagine

Andromeda Galaxy our nearest neighbour

Fitting our Earth inside our Sun, how many Earth's could you fit into it ? Well you could fit 1 million (1,000,000) Earth sized objects inside of our Sun.

Now let’s take that a stage further. Imagine that our Sun was the size of a grain of ordinary sand that you would find on a beach.... Then imagine that all the stars in the universe were that size as well.... There would not be enough sand on our earth to equal the amount of stars in the Universe.

That gives you an idea of how many stars there are out there which is one of the reasons why I have great difficulty believing in any God, Why would a God create such a massive and vast expanse of basically nothing, then fill it with trillions upon trillions of stars... and then on one spiral arm of our Milky Way a pretty insignificant galaxy by all accounts, would he create an unremarkable star (our Sun) and several planets and on one of those orbiting rocks create the Earth.

It seems a little too far fetched for my liking. With all of those trillions of stars and all of those orbiting planets formed from the remnants of enormous exploding supernova over billions of years. It's more likely that we came about by pure chance. After all the numbers are pretty high, we just happen to be the lucky planet where it happened a place where all things fell into place to allow life to thrive......I’m sure there are many trillions of other planets where it didn’t and all of this over a massive time scale to humans, but to the time-scale of the Universe would be a minuscule amount of time.

Religion in my opinion is an easy way out, it's the lazy man's blind acceptance of what must be for people who don’t want to think too hard about it. An all encompassing explanation of everything in one easily digestible book, it's the comfort blanket where no real comfort exists, it's all in the mind. It's the world as man thought it existed thousands of years ago... We are a bit more up to date these days.... it's akin to opening a book about medical cures in the Middle Ages compared to the latest MRI scans of today...There is no mystery only an elusive deity backed up by blind "Faith" Of course "some" religions have valuable lessons to teach such as morality, love etc... but I think we are all born with these things or at least we have the ability to take on board these ideals and make them our own, without the need of religion....

You could believe that the Sun won't rise tomorrow. The probability would be that you'd be wrong, but that is something tangible that you can prove. You cannot use rational arguments about faith or religion with a believer, faith  isn't  rational or logical. Although a believer would argue that point...

I have some very good friends who believe in God and I respect them for their belief, and would defend their right to believe in what they wish.... but I can't help thinking they severely restrict the way they see the world (meaning all things relating to our existence) mainly because of their belief which hobbles their thought processes at the starting gate. Anything that questions the existence of God is dismissed or given a very simplistic explanation, and if the question fits neither of those explanations, then "Faith" is rolled out.

But if they are happy about that then who am I to question it? I would no more expect to pummel them with facts to disprove their faith than I would expect them to try and convert me. (But it’s fun sparring with believers, because I do like a lively debate ;¬) )…. 

Man in the human sense of the word, has an enormous capacity to think, we have massive brains and it's only really since the 1920's that we've discovered that galaxies existed outside of ours, when the Andromeda Galaxy was proven to exist at vast distances outside of our Galaxy. So it is only relatively recently that we  started to realise how vast the Universe is...

Furthermore the light from the Andromeda Galaxy hitting Earth now left the Andromeda Galaxy before man existed on Earth...(and no that wasn’t 6000 years ago biblically speaking) we are but a mere speck in a vast expanse of space.... and the more man knows about the Universe the less places there are left to hide a God.

They have recently proven one of Einstein’s theories in that a massive object  (Earth in this case) would bend space and time, they have measured it's effect on the  Gravity B probe

And that is what has prompted this blog entry... the more we know the less humanity will need a God

A Palindrome

Or something which is the same backwards or forwards for those who don't know or possibly even care what the date is it's 11/5/11 .... of course it's not a "proper" palindrome because the date is 11/05/2011 but in its shortened form it is...

Anyway I've decided to add a bit of useless knowledge to each of my ramblings the palindrome wasn't it but I suppose it could be included.

No.... my useless bit of knowledge for today is quite stunning really in that the fissionable material in the Atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima amounted to just over the size of a UK 10p piece, and although the bomb contained 60 kilograms of U-235 only 1.38% of it was actually fissionable.... So something the size of a 10 pence piece destroyed Hiroshima which is quite astounding really, that something so small could cause the loss of so many lives. Of course the argument still stands did it shorten the war ? I think it probably did, but at what cost?

I think the years that followed during the cold war pretty much cemented the idea that the use of atomic weapons wasn't something to be taken lightly considering the more modern weapons were many times more powerful and many times more efficient than the first two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So if any leader considered the use of them the mutually assured destruction of their own country pretty much put an end to their use, and they remained simply a deterrent that could never be used.

Anyway changing the subject slightly I'm now going to rant on the subject of TV.....or the lack of good TV.....I see the rights to "Big Brother" have been bought up and that they will be reviving the tired old horse this year.... it's something I won't be watching, I knew it was too good to be true for it to have gone forever, obviously some TV executives think it still has legs... hopefully it will fall at the first fence and break all four of them...

I'm also not too happy with the offerings on TV of late, what with "The Great British Hairdresser" (YAWN), "The Apprentice" (DOUBLE YAWN) and the whole slew of other utterly mindless drivel they pump out these days for consumption by the morons of our society... chewing gum for the masses. Whatever happened to informative, educational TV ???? TV seems to have turned into some entertainment box in the corner, which I'm not against but ALL of the time ? Surely it would be nice to ACTUALLY learn something new every now and again ???

There are a few programmes which stand out but they are few and far between.... I don't know maybe I just don't fit into the demographic of the typical TV viewer these days. I don't watch soap's they are borderline fodder for idiots and completely unrealistic (even the writer of Eastenders admitted that only today), if my own life was half as miserable as most in Eastenders or Hollyoakes for instance I would have booked myself into Diginitas years ago and popped the barbiturate smoothie... gladly.

Thankfully it isn't.... Anyway I've rambled on long enough I'm sure you've got something better to do like watch Eastenders or something ? ..... ;¬)