7 Reasons

Tag: alien

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    Those wishing to avoid excessive roaming charges while exploring the far flung corners of the globe may assume that relying on emails and instant messaging services offer the best way to stay in touch with those left behind. There are, however, many cheap ways to call home while travelling, and plenty of reasons to do so – here are just seven of them.

    7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    1.  To check on your housesitters. So you’re off on a year’s trip around the world and you’ve rented the house out to that lovely old Mrs Bates. Admittedly her son Norman was a little creepy, but everything will be alright, won’t it? There are simply some occasions when an email just can’t give you the reassurances you need, and a human voice can.

    2.  To gloat. You may have posted your photos on Facebook and kept your travel blog full of daring escapades and tantalising travel titbits, but nothing can make you enjoy your holidays more than hearing those miserable voices from back home still moaning about the weather, congestion on the road to work and humdrum details of their daily life. Make that call to really feel great about your break.

    3.  To borrow money. After kicking off your travels with a week in Monte Carlo, your carefully made travel budget plans may suddenly be looking about as secure as the Greek economy. When the chips are down, a pleading email for money just won’t give you the emotional edge that you require to secure that couple of thousand needed to carry out your itinerary. Make sure you’re ready to sound really desperate as your fingers dial home.

    4.  To secure favours. It’s lovely to get a phone call from a friend or relative who has been out of the country for a while and you can make that warm glow work to your advantage. Once you’ve made sure they’re feeling special and loved (“I just wanted to hear your voice to make me feel like I was home…”) you can get them working for you to finish off all those bits you didn’t get around to before dropping everything and taking off on your trip of a lifetime.

    Garden watered – check. Mail opened and answered – check. Taxing your motorbike (“It’s just impossible from this godforsaken place”) – check. With just one or two phone calls it can be a done deal.

    5.  To apologise for the lack of birthday presents. That special anniversary or birthday really shouldn’t be missed just because you’re away. If there’s an internet connection, there is always Amazon and they’ll even gift wrap it for you. It just is so easy to forget dates back home when you’re far away from it but, don’t worry, a phone call can put things right. There is, however, one date that you forget at your peril. You don’t need to send a present but this could truly be your last trip anywhere, ever, if you don’t call home on Mother’s Day.

    6.  To speak to work. Sometimes we just need to extend our travels. After all, the flights have all been paid for and we’re already in Asia, so an extra couple of weeks won’t cost the earth ─ if only it can be squared with the boss. This one is best handled by a call rather than an email. And, if you need that job when you return get your reasons, excuses and sob stories straight before you’re connected.

    7.  Because it’s just so darn cheap! Calling home from abroad simply doesn’t have to be expensive. With internet calls offered by VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services you can actually call home from most places in the world for free.

    Skype allows you to make phone or video calls but with services like those offered by Vonage.co.uk you don’t even need a computer to make an internet call. Find out how to set up a new phone number that you can use from any phone near a broadband supply and you could be calling home from anywhere for the price of a local call. Now you have no excuses!

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Would Be Safe In The Event Of An Alien Invasion

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Would Be Safe In The Event Of An Alien Invasion

    When Sam Murray knocked on our email inbox, we thought he’d come to check on the progress of our chest hairs. Thankfully, he just wanted somewhere to hide. The aliens are coming! The aliens are coming! Erm…here’s Sam.

    ET
    Frustratingly, Earth's atmosphere had caused ET's breasts to sag.

    We have all been there, drifting off into a daydream you begin to wonder what you would do if you won the lottery, how long it would take for you to trap a badger out in the wilderness, or what would happen if there was an alien invasion? Well, fear not as I can answer one of them, no, not the badger daydream but the alien invasion. And the good news is, we would all be safe.

    Gone are the days that the most well protected place on Earth was the sweet cupboard or the chocolate box in your house as a child. Here we look at the 7 most well protected places on Earth not only to appease your curiosity but to let you plan the quickest route in your Sat Nav if an invasion ever did happen.

    1.  Fort Knox. Fort Knox is the commonly used name for the United States Bullion Depository. Understandably very little information about the security systems and technologies used at the Gold Depository is known to the general public but we do know the depository is protected by numerous layers of physical security, alarms, video cameras, armed guards, including; Apache helicopter gunships, around 30,000 soldiers, with associated tanks, armoured personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and artillery. It is rumoured a 3 headed dog similar to the one in Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone is rumoured to guard the entrance.

    2.  Doomsday Seed Vault. The Doomsday vault opened in 2008 and is located in a remote Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean. It is essentially a vault which contains more than 100 million seeds representing every major food crop on Earth which is why it gets its nickname as the Noah’s Ark for plant genetics. The vault is protected by an armed guard and if that doesn’t put the aliens off then hopefully the -40°C and the fact they have forgot their thermals will. The vault has also been designed to withstand global warming, earthquakes – 6.2 magnitudes – and even a direct nuclear strike.

    3.  Mormon’s Church Vaults. The Granite Mountain Record Vault, which is the Mormon church’s vaults for storing genealogical and other historical records. The vault is flood-proof, fire-proof and even earthquake-proof, unfortunately it doesn’t say anything about it being alien proof. The vault also contains 6-ton blast doors and seismic sensors can detect if anyone is drilling to get in which I think will stand you in very good stead

    4.  Bahnhof’s Underground Data Center. At first glance it may seem to be the setting for Dr Evil latest lair in Austin Powers but it is the home to Internet Service Providers Bahnhof and if you are to believe the media then if anyone needs protecting due to the amount of enemies they have made then it is these guys… I don’t think aliens are amongst that list but you should be safe if they are as the site is an old nuclear bomb shelter, situated 100 feet below a mountain in Stockholm and accessed via foot thick steel doors.

    5.  Saddam Hussein’s Bunker. Mr Hussein was a much sought after man but judging by his home he wasn’t the most sociable chap. Saddam built an impenetrable underground fortress that could and did withstand bombs. The US military dropped two 2-ton “bunker busting” bombs clean on top of Saddam’s bunker completely destroying the palace above, but not affecting the bunker below which should make you feel safer against any alien attack. Apparently, the shelter was designed by the grandson of the woman that built Hitler’s bunker and came as they called “fully furnished” as they called it in the trade. That means it had its very own power station, water treatment plant and air filtering system.

    6.  The Tower of London. [Insert funny witticism regarding the crown jewels here] Fortunately there will be no touching as the security measures are very tight. There are tower guard sentries throughout the Tower of London complex and every street and every path leading there is guarded by sentries, 24 hours a day, every day, every night. The safest part of the Tower of London is where the Queen’s Jewels are situated so if you can get in there you have made it to safety. They are hosted on a single-level, on the ground floor inside the Army barracks and with reports stating there are up to 1,000 soldiers based there.

    7.  Area 51. Area 51 is the most infamous alien crash site and probably the first place they would attack, which is why I have left this last on the list and is realistically the last place you should consider, okay, second last after the sweet cupboard. The borders of Area 51 are not fenced, but are marked with orange poles and warning signs both of which would be unlikely to deter any invasion. But stay calm as there is still hope as the base is guarded by the US military and is their test base for all new military aircraft, including stealth planes, B2 Bombers, F-117 Nighthawks and if the conspiracy theorist are right (and for once everyone hopes they are) a few top secret weapons which means they should be able to defend you.

    This article was written in association with Yale composite doors who securely protect you in your home. The doors are manufactured in the UK, adhere to the standards set by the makers of the world’s favourite lock and conform to police approved security standards.

  • Russian Roulette Sunday: The Remainder of the Reason

    Russian Roulette Sunday: The Remainder of the Reason

    We have quite a strict format for our posts at 7 Reasons.  We post every day and hope that people will read us every day; we appreciate that people come to spend their time with us so we try to respect it and not take up too much of it.  This is why we try to write our 7 reasons concisely.

    Sometimes though, this necessary brevity comes into conflict with the writing process.  Once in a while you have an idea and become carried away with it; you start writing and words flow ceaselessly and effortlessly until, having typed for a good while without really being aware of doing so, you snap back to reality and discover you’ve written more words than you can possibly use.

    This was the case last Tuesday.  I wrote about aliens and why we shouldn’t contact them, I went on to suggest that they might conquer Earth and install Richard Bacon as their puppet-leader.  That’s where that particular train of thought ended in 7 Reasons We Shouldn’t Try To Contact Aliens.  That was a result of heavy editing though.  Here, on Russian Roulette Sunday is…(Do the deep movie trailer voice again, you know you want to)

    The Remainder of the Reason.

    …The aliens might not want a global puppet-leader though.  They might understand that Earth’s history abounds with internecine squabbling and conflict.  The aliens might, therefore, want to install puppet-rulers on a nation-by-nation basis.  If that is to be the case then the 7 Reasons team would like to respectfully suggest to our new alien-overlords that they appoint us as Britain’s puppet-leaders.  We feel that we have a good understanding of British culture and history.  We also have the necessary backgrounds and media skills to spin the decrees of our extraterrestrial controllers to the British people.

    We feel certain that the aliens will accept our generous and selfless offer so, people of Britain, here’s how we will set about things.

    Essentially, we imagine that under our government, the British way of life will remain substantially unaltered.  You, our subjects, may begin to notice some minor changes under our rule though.  All motorways will now have a ginger-only lane, for example.  There will be a minimum height requirement for consumption of tiramisu.  Cricket will be compulsory in all British schools, as will spelling.

    We will also be introducing stricter dress codes.  Not only will shopping in nightwear be punishable by death, but so will the wearing of sportswear by people not competing in the pertinent sport at the time of wearing.  The tucking of trousers into socks will be punishable by transportation to Rhyl, as will wearing the wrong coloured top hat at Ascot, gold hoop-earrings, shoes that look like Cornish pasties, jeans so tight that your back oozes over the waistband and wearing jeans and a skirt at the same time, because that looks ridiculous and is, frankly, baffling.

    In television, all so-called “reality-shows” will be banned, except for The Restaurant and The Office.  This will leave ITV substantially empty and the gap in its schedule will be filled with Channel Four’s current output.  Channel Four will revert to its schedule of pre-Big Brother days, which seemed to be targeted exclusively at pipe-smoking war buffs, because we like programmes about the war, they’re bloody lovely.  Jon will be launching a new channel called Jolly Interesting Telly, the running of which will keep him occupied while Marc deals with weightier affairs of state and concocts nefarious and elaborate schemes to grasp the balance of power.

    It is not just in cultural areas of life that you will notice a difference.  We are already negotiating a series of international trade agreements which will benefit our nation.  The country of Greece has an abundant supply of olives, whereas Britain does not.  We have observed that their diet is lacking in soup, which we have copious amounts of.  We will be shipping our soup-surplus to Greece in exchange for olives, a move which will enrich the dietary variety of both nations.  We will also be exchanging the nation’s apple crop for Burgundy’s output of Pinot Noir and we’ll nationalise Cadbury’s and exchange their entire output for sushi, which is healthier and, frankly, nicer.  We will also be exchanging just about anything we can get our hands on for tea…lots of tea.  All of the tea.

    We have also been doing some preparatory work in the field of international diplomacy.  We’re still not happy about the outcome of the Cod War – we thought the Reykjavik Parliament behaved reprehensibly over that and we also don’t believe that the British victims of the Icelandic banking crisis were adequately reimbursed.  Because of this – and also because Jon typed the declaration – we will be going to war with Ireland.

    We don’t expect that our leadership will be universally popular.  The installation of Queen Jennifer the 1st in my spare room may cause some domestic upheaval, for example.  We don’t imagine that the law requiring all public buildings to display a portrait of Jon will be to everyone’s satisfaction either. We will, however, try to rule fairly, even-handedly, openly and sympathetically.  And if you don’t like it we’ll shoot you with our death-ray.  Your leaders,

    Marc and Jon.

  • 7 Reasons We Shouldn’t Try To Contact Aliens

    7 Reasons We Shouldn’t Try To Contact Aliens

    This year is the fiftieth anniversary of SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).  For half a century mankind has been broadcasting into space, trying to contact extraterrestrial life forms.  Is it really a good idea to get in touch with aliens though?  Here are seven reasons that we shouldn’t.

    1.  Size.  Jimi Hendrix once said that he believed that aliens could be enormous, and that we would be like ants to them.  As he put it, “You wouldn’t go miles out of your way to step on an ant-hill”.  What if our communications are annoying them though?  You wouldn’t go miles to tread on ants, but you might cross the living room to swat a buzzing fly.

    2.  Evolution.  What if the aliens have evolved differently to us?  What if they’ve evolved from insects or snakes?  What if they have feelers on top of their bulbous heads?  What if they’re descended from ear-wax?  We’d find them repellent, that’s what.  What if they came to visit us and they turned out to be 15 feet high spiders?  Half of the world’s population would scream “Kill it!  Kill it!” and the other half would take one look at them and think “Not bloody likely”.  Do we even have a giant shoe?

    3.  Disease.  Aliens are…well, alien.  Humans would have no immunity to any diseases or infections that they would bring, and they would have none to ours.  We won’t be able to cope with Venusian Flu of the eye and they won’t be able to cope with Herpes of the tentacle.  Meeting aliens would be a bad idea for all concerned.

    4.  Dullness.  What if the aliens are uncharismatic?  Really boring?  Catatonically, mind-numbingly, vapidly, monotonously Daily Mail dull?  Do we really want to have an unimaginative dialogue with dreary spacemen?  What if they’re like Vogons?

    5.  Defeat.  What if the aliens are more powerful and more advanced than us?   We can’t know that they’re not war-like and intent on universal domination.  By trying to contact the aliens we could be guaranteeing ourselves a new world order.  We could only hope that our new alien masters would be benevolent.  Perhaps they’d be a bit subtler than going for out-and-out enslavement, preferring to conquer and rule us – they might even settle for a puppet-government.  To head this, they would need to find someone innocuous and popular, with a good grasp of modern communication, whose covetousness and vanity would leave him open to their manipulation.  Our new alien-overlords would probably install Richard Bacon as Earth’s puppet-leader.  No one wants that – even him.

    6.  Beggars.  Why would aliens want anything to do with us anyway?  If they’re in any way more advanced than us we’d drive them round the bend.  Whether It’s pestering them for technology to save our ailing planet, pestering them for accommodation when we realise that we can’t or pestering them to take David Gest back, we’ll be, at best, a nuisance, and at worst, a burden.  We’re like the annoying neighbour that you try to avoid by pretending to be out.  The aliens – if they have any sense – are hiding from us.

    7.  Madness.  What if there are no aliens?  Then the whole SETI programme will have been in vain.  If there are no aliens out there then essentially we’re talking to ourselves.  I’ve seen people that do that out on the street.  They look a bit foolish and they say the silliest things – often about spacemen, ironically.

    ********************UPDATE********************

    Since we wrote this article, Stephen Hawking has come out and stated his opinion on this subject.  He agrees with us.  We don’t know if he read this piece first or eventually – after considering these issues for a good while longer than we did – came to a similar conclusion by himself.  We like to think that it’s the former.