CAN YOU BELIEVE YOUR EARS?

BILL ANDERSON A PUBLIC SERVANT

I CONFESS to being a bit of a tech geek. Not that I have lots of very expensive tech, but I am always looking for reasonably priced ways to improve what I have, whether it is for my radio show, live streaming or editing. If it is free, then even better.

I was recently watching a YouTube Video re Live streaming and it is now fairly easy to use Artificial Intelligence to change your voice to a wide range of well known actors’ voices. I have known for a very long time how to cut and paste images onto other images and I could quite easily be standing next to any photographed celebrity or luxuriating in any landscape. These are reasons why it is sometimes hard to believe our eyes or our ears. How do we know that what we see or hear resembles reality in any way?

It might be fun to Live Stream sounding like Samuel L(eroy) Jackson, but I don’t think that many would be taken in by it, and probably after a while it would be irritating as getting it to synch perfectly is a little beyond the tech I have. It may sound real, look real but it isn’t real.

We are in the pre ­ election period running up to May 28. A lot of things will be written and said in the next weeks, a lot of promises made, so how do we know if they are real and not just politicians passing wind?

Artificial Intelligence is fascinating,

Brits Welcome On Lanzarote

SILVIA GARCIA moved to Lanzarote with her family 23 years ago from Argentina and has very much made it her home as well as her workplace.

She does a lot of work with new residents to Lanzarote in terms of translations and help with paperwork, as most don’t speak enough Spanish to manage on their own. Only around 100 Kms from the Western Sahara of Morocco, Lanzarote is one of seven main islands of the Canaries Archipelago.

Unlike some of the other Spanish Islands such as the Balearics, Lanzarote and the Canary Islands offer a year round tourist and holiday destination and is particularly popular with Scandinavian visitors during the summer.

Lanzarote is more than just a beach holiday resort. It hosts an annual

Iron Man competition and is popular for water sports and cycling. It is more likely than not that the Islands got their names from seals which the Romans referred to as Sea dogs and the Latin root ‘Can (ine)’ which refers to dogs.

Lanzarote has its own Volcanic National Park and the volcanic ash soil contributes to the rich soil which is used for growing grapes and the excellent Lanzarote wines.

Silvia feels that some people are more suited to island life than others.

There are those who feel that island life is too small and decide to move on, but the Island offers life in the holiday resorts or equally away from these busier areas.

Country life is never far away from the sea on an island which is 60Kms from north to south and only 25Kms from east to west.

Island residents also receive discounted travel tickets to the Spanish mainland.

The full interview can be heard on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YS_Rj6mviI but I would like to see a little more real intelligence used by both politicians and voters. There are those who have their party colours seemingly stitched into their DNA and that is not an easy thing to change. Come voting day, they will reach for the paper that their DNA coding compels them to.

However, there are still people out there who can apply an intellectual process to their choices and thank goodness for that.

I was recently criticised publicly for not carrying out our 2019 electoral promises, by a person who if he did vote, it certainly wasn’t for the party I represent. You can’t carry out electoral promises if you are not in government! I live in a municipality where 15 promises were made in 2019 by the party which is in government and none of them have been completed. To be honest, some were interesting but totally unbelievable. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and if something seems more exciting, pleasing, or ideal than seems reasonable, then it likely isn’t genuine, legitimate, or true.

In this pre ­ election period, no one is allowed to ask for votes and I certainly am not doing that, but I am asking that real intelligence is used over the next weeks to decide which paper should go into the envelope on voting day. Check out the levels of success in the presenting parties, and whether or not they have done what they promised. Does it sound real even if it may look real? Have people done what they said they would or was it all hot air?

A GOOD giggle could help to lower blood glucose levels following an Easter Egg spree.