Galactic Scale Mindf*ck

Patience... this doesn't happen all at once.

Herzog's Penguin: Introduction

"Is there... insanity, derangement amongst... penguins?"

Don't Eat The Rich - Bleed Them

Alistair Darling has announced a new top tax rate of 50% for those earning more than £150,000 from next April.

Things we value; a stable society that produces the most happiness (freedom from suffering) for the largest number. Agreed? If not, no point talking. If so, read on.

Equality of opportunity offers the most likely route for the greatest number to achieve freedom from suffering. Concentration of resources in few hands allows them to manipulate systems that affect us easily, aggregating yet more resources in their hands, disincentivising others to challenge them and closing off opportunities for those who have skills to raise themselves up. Redistribution counteracts these centralising tendencies of certain economic systems and increases equality of opportunity throughout our lives. We want systems to be as open as possible with information on those systems as free as possible to allow the largest number to enter and compete in those systems, to produce in turn the most efficient results - all moves against this, whether oligopolistic or monopolistic, are anti-equality and hence anti-happiness.

In the old days, the poor paid taxes to support the rich, who didn't work. Now the middle class support the poor, and the rich dodge taxes. Moreover, the rich (and the middle class) do things that hardly constitute work (gambling with someone else's money) and, at best, do work that is no harder than the work anyone else does. If you argue, as you're likely to, that certain jobs are more _skilled_, I'd argue that it's the luck of the individual involved that they either a) were brought up in a situation that allowed them better education and more schooling or b) they were _genetically_ lucky, in that they had genetic advantages allowing them to prosper better. Neither are virtuous qualities that should be rewarded, but luck. I do believe that mantra "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs."

I don't think we should eat the rich - I think we should bleed the endlessly burgeoning fat from them. They'll still be incentivised to work to maintain their way of life, and just removing that money from them, even if it isn't effectively redistributed, is a move towards equality. America doesn't do that. The UK tries, but doesn't. I hope this change is a helpful move towards equality of opportunity, if not by redistribution, by sapping the fat of the rich.

My Recent Photos

Recent Images, originally uploaded by Hot Grill.

1. The White Horse of Billericay, 2. Too Many Signs, 3. The Gap, 4. Beautiful Big-Eared Piggles, 5. Freaky Teddy Bears & Doll, 6. 170309 105, 7. Worm, 8. Mannequin, 9. The White Horse of Billericay

Oregon Trail iPhone Map

I couldn't find a map online for Gameloft's excellent iPhone conversion of the 1982 game The Oregon Trail. You control a team of pioneers attempting to make the 5-6 month slog across the West to Oregon, battling bears, flooded rivers, broken waggons and , and meeting great names from the opening up of the west. Here's an in-game map I've stitched together myself; click on it for the original size.

Newswipe with Charlie Brooker News Clip

The UK news is not only voyeuristic, it's also nationalistic and enormously biased towards the increased value of a white, English middle-class life. I'm rather tired of it.

Beatiful Tilt-Shift Movie

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

These are real people, the video's just been sped-up and tilt-shifted.

McGoohan, McGoohan, McGone.

Just remembered that Patrick McGoohan died yesterday. Farewell childhood hero, our rebel without reason (but not without a cause), now you're Number Zero.

I'm currently listening to "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" by The Times. S'alright.

I Won A Book!

Congratulations to Dan Griliopoulos, winner of our Medical London competition. We asked for a piece of trivia connected with medicine in London, and Dan provided this:

The premier London medical story has to be that of Samuel Pepys' stone. Not the actual operation - which was long and painful (without anaesthetic) or highly dangerous (without modern medical techniques they had to cut up through the perineum to actually reach the kidneys where the stones were forming) - but his later love for the tennis ball-sized lump of crystalline urine. He'd carry in his pocket everywhere, show it to friends, and once considered spending 24s (a hefty sum) on a display case so he could show it off in his house. He also had yearly dinners to show his appreciation at surviving, where guests would drink and eat themselves into an absolute stupor, pretty much guaranteeing that they too would end up with similar kidney problems to his...
So a copy of the much-praised tome Medical London is on the way to him.

Stolen From LOL GOD