Facebook FTW!

Evening all,

The first thing I want to chat about is Facebook's new Suicide prevention tool. The idea is a pretty cool one, the idea being that if you see a post from a friend or family member that you feel indicates that they may be thinking about suicide or self-harm, you can flag the post. The post then gets analyzed by a dedicated team within Facebook, (one assumes properly trained) who then assess the risk level and intervene accordingly. It has been trialed in the US since 2015 and has been fairly successful. This is a prime example of a company that takes it' social responsibility to it's clients very seriously.

Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal has said that the European Space Agency should devote it's budget to robotic space missions rather than sending astronauts into space. His thinking being that all of the tasks performed by humans can now be performed by machines, for longer and cheaper. Whilst I can see his point it doesn't address something huge. Surely the end game to space exploration has to be colonization of other planets. We know for a fact that the human population growth is unsustainable, with nothing in sight to indicate that the growth will change, we need to be looking towards sustainable solutions like colonizing other planets if we hope to survive much longer as a species.

In more positive news, following the large scale arrest of at least 3000 people suspected of being involved in recent attacks by islamic radicals in Bangladesh, one of them has been charged with the murder of Faisal Arefin Dipon because the publishing house that he headed had published books by atheist author Avijit Roy. A victory, not only in that it seems that the perpetrator will be brought to justice, but also because it seems as if police in Bangladesh are taking the matters very seriously. Let's just hope that this can bring some peace to Faisal's family.

Tonight's video comes courtesy of Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who made a music video in space. It may seem small but to me it embodies all that is good and right with this world, as well as our hope for the future.


Please remember that I don't own the content, Chris Hadfield has also done a lot in terms of Education and encouraging students to go into the sciences, please visit his youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ColChrisHadfield/featured.

Well, that's it for tonight, please remember to comment, subscribe and like the Facebook page.

Ta,
G