A brilliant programme

I’m speaking of a series on BBC Radio 4.

The series is called Naturebang: “Becky Ripley and Emily Knight make sense of what it means to be human by looking to the natural world… Science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist.

The website is: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00060x0

There are 35 episodes. I particularly liked the episode broadcast yesterday about the Clams.

How do we extract the maximum amount of power from the sun? Becky Ripley and Emily Knight enlist the help of a giant, thousand-year old clam. And end up in the depths of space…

Featuring Professor Alison Sweeney at Yale University, and Mike Garrett from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics.

Produced and presented by Emily Knight and Becky Ripley

Amazing!

2 thoughts on “A brilliant programme

  1. Very interesting. A few words from the super clam. Europe has outlawed the usage of fuels by 2035, another self-destructive policy. That includes synthetic fuels from algae… Now for more general considerations:

    Ever More Energy For Space And AI? USA And China! Instead Europe Opts For Subjugation

    While the USA evolves and builds new intelligence systems (AI) and is reducing the cost of going to space by orders of magnitude, China is forging ahead with new nuclear technologies launched in France before France became woke, then senile (and soon incontinent). Those nuclear technologies are one hundred times (10000%) more efficient than existing nuclear fission reactors.

    So Europe is going towards SUBMISSION (in Arabic, Islam) and energy has a lot to do with it. Europe has decided to reduce its energy usage considerably just when ascending powers (USA, China, India) are doing their best to make more energy. How to explain Europe’s self-harm program? Woke gone rogue? An intellectual failure? Mental processes so erroneous that they achieve the exact opposite of what they are trying to do?

    Like Britain which exited the EU to reduce immigration and now has augmented immigration considerably, to a quasi grotesque extent?  

    The human adventure uses intelligence to expand its colonization, and this requires energy. Non human apes have huge beer bellies because they (mostly) extract energy directly from plants, like climbing cows. Humans instead eat the fat and protein of vegetarians, providing themselves with much more compact sources of energy. So humans have smaller guts and bigger brains.

    Notice that all the concepts fundamental to the human adventure for the last seven million years: expansion, colonization, energy, intelligence are on the NOT TO DO list of Europe. 

    In particular (pseudo-) ecologists decided to discontinue nuclear research and deployment and instead finance tyrant Putin (to this day the EU sends 3.5 more money to Putin than to Ukraine). France has a law forbidding the extraction of French gas (it has one century of gas). Instead, Europe whines when the Ukrainians bomb pipes bringing Russian gas (Trump is trying to force Europe to acquire US gas instead).

    So Europe has a psycho-philosophical problem with energy and self-harm. In turn, that mental deficit in the largest economic area of the planet, is having disastrous effects on the planet’s economy. Europe is wasting hundreds of billions a year on wasteful “green” energy whose most spectacular effect is to zap the electricity networks… Indeed, solar and wind were the big European revolution of.. 12 centuries ago. Now space beckons: Earth has 15 kilograms of Helium 3, and the Moon… a million tons. He3 fusion allows to produce electricity directly, no neutrons.

    And these fast Chinese surgenerators now entering their third generation? They get fueled with nuclear waste and can be made passively safe.

    And what to do with EDS, Europe Despondency Syndrome? Well the USA, a child and product of France and Britain can take over, as it is presently doing, and show the general direction to save civilization. Europeans can follow, as bleating sheep unable to get to space on their own, or even to warm themselves up in winter without the help of the genocidal tyrant next door whom they fed and cultivated.

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    1. Patrice, I have read your comment several times and still am unsure of your motivation for your remarks. It appears you are having a general bitch at the way things are going. And that’s fine! But for me I would rather watch the sunrise, or feed the wild deer, or write, or potter about the home. Politics has become too crazy for me. However, I am very grateful for your lengthy reply and your interest in worldly matters. Please take care!

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