Broken Things

Life lessons from Einstein

10 very good life lessons from Albert Einstein:
1. Follow your curiosity.
2. Perseverance is priceless.
3. Focus on the present.
4. The imagination is powerful. According to Einstein it's more important than knowledge.
5. Make mistakes, i.e. try new things, and take on challenges.
6. Live in the moment. This seems a little contradictory to the imagination one.
7. Create value. Don't try to be successful instead be valuable - success will find you. I agree.
8. Don't expect different results if you keep doing the same thing over and over again. This is so obvious but how many of us just keep repeating the same behaviours or ways of thinking and expect magically our lives to change?
9. Knowledge comes from experience; knowledge without experience is just information. For example, someone can explain to you how to ride a bike but until you do it yourself you'll never actually know how to do it. Life is a lot like that I guess.
10. Learn the rules of the game and then commit to playing better than anyone else. Even if you never become the best by aiming high you will go further.

Full article can be found on dumblittleman.com

UK wants to end internet freedom of speech

A deeply worrying overview of a 'proposed' bill to restrict access to information in the name of 'copy-right law'

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/07/nsfw-hey-america-our-draconian-copyright-law-could-kick-your-draconian-copyright-laws-ass/

Why all drugs should be legal?

Friedman argues the case for getting rid of drug prohibition.

At last good news

Civil Servants To Stage 48-Hour Walkout

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100225/tuk-civil-servants-to-stage-48-hour-walk-45dbed5.html

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman - Economist, Nobel Prize winner and libertarian minarchist.
In this clip Friedman discusses the 'virtues' of greed.

Dr Martin Luther King Day

Today is Martin Luther King Jr day in the USA.
I was going to post the 'I have a dream speech', but for me this was more prescient.

Eat slower fatty!

A plate that weighs how much food is on a plate and tracks the speed at which that food is shoveled into your gob has been invented.

Apparently, speed is important. It's not the shit your shovelling its the speed in which you do it. So, eating a bucket of fried chicken very quickly is worse then eating it slowly. It's all to do with the behaviours of fatties. Fat people tend to eat quicker, and consequently the experts suggest more.

I am fascinated by human behaviour, so I agree with the premise that fat people share common behavioural traits, but eating quickly?! I know plenty of people who eat quickly and are thin as a rake. The computerised plate, just seems very gimmicky, and unnecessary, when the truth is that fat people eat more (period). Now they also probably don't get very much exercise, but again there are plenty of people who don't get any exercise, but still remain thin.

Boy 'suspended for crisp dealing'

As a clear example of how prohibition of anything, no matter how inane, causes the market to respond in unexpected ways I would like to draw your attention to the seedy underworld of 'crisp dealing'. Yes that's right the 'fatty potatoe' snacks that were once part of a child's packed lunch are now being 'marked-up' and sold on the black market. The crisp dealer has been suspended from Cardinal Heenan High School in Liverpool. A school in which all fatty snacks have been outlawed. I mean its quite funny, but it really does highlight how prohibiting a product doesn't remove the demand it only creates a culture of criminality around the product.

Full story

Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time

I agree with nearly everything in this edition of Question time.

The price of life

If you were terminally ill how much would you pay or what would you give to live longer than you expected. I mean if the pain and agony you might be in was only exceeded by the psychological distress of leaving loved ones behind on this mortal coil, how much would you pay?

If we are to believe that life is priceless and health care is a right then surely £3,000 a month is a minuscule price to pay, right? I mean the biggest advocates for the NHS argue that the UK system with all its flaws, is a righteous institute, whereby if you get ill or injured and need to come into a hospital or see a doctor you'll be treated regardless of your ability to pay (God save the Queen!). Well, the reality (truth) is different. It would seem that the preservation/prolonging of life is secondary to our health bureaucrats, instead management and rationing is its primary concern.

NICE, an Orwellian new-speak abbreviation of 'The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence', has decided to not give patients in the last stages of Liver cancer a drug which could prolong their life for a couple of months to a year. Yes I said 'could'! Now for all of you leftists out there who bang on that making profit out of health care is cruel, take a look at what rationing and health care does, people die and suffer. Think about it! So, next time you start getting all teary eyed and patriotic look at what you, because apparently this Government represents you, are doing to sick people. I mean these people probably payed their taxes and contributed to society, and when they need it most the door is slammed in their face. As you can tell this makes me somewhat angry..

Full article here.

Distractions

Well i haven't posted in a while. No excuses, except that I was on my holidays in a part of the world where prolonged Internet access is very difficult to come by. But I'm not going to use that as an excuse. Anyway, I'm going to start posting again but its like running its so easy to keep moving but once you stop you might as well call it a day and hit the shower.

Life lessons from a Ninja

Change your thoughts, and change your world...

Crime doesn't pay and nor do the perpetrators apparently, well at least not very much. A couple have been convicted of falsely claiming benefits. The man in the wig aka the judge told the accused couple that for claiming £55,000 falsely the punishment is they 'must' pay back 85p a day!

I actually don't have too much of a problem with the so called 'benefit cheats' claiming this money falsely, what I have a problem with is the concept of benefits. I mean human nature is such that if something is easy to get we will take it. Also, why are these two cheeky chappies getting punished for having their hand in the cookie jar when not so long ago the politicians were caught doing the same thing, and the criminal justice system didn't give them so much as a slap on the wrist?

Money's too tight to mention

Money's something that I try not to worry about.
I know we keep being told that we are in a recession, but I have a relatively good lifestyle. I mean the signs are there; rising unemployment etc. Although, nobody is going to convince me that the problem of having millions on state welfare appeared overnight this has been going on even in the good years. Anyway, the truth is that I have been thinking alot more about money recently. I have been looking at setting up a pension at work and maybe taking out some private health insurance. This made me realise that these things which I have so far ignored are quite important and if I did pay them more attention my lifestyle would probably be severly impacted. So, this post is a bit of a moan and basically an excuse to link to a song which I recently re-discovered.

Why the USA should not socialise their health care

I have concluded that there are two fundamental obstacles in making socialised health care work.

1. Human nature (...and its impact on economics)

When something is free human nature is to use it excessively.
When something has value and a cost to yourself then we are more sparing with its usage.
Socialising healthcare obscures market forces. For example, if an individual wanted to buy a certain treatment for an illness in a totally independent health care system they would shop around for the service that provided the best quality to cost ratio. When you introduce socialised healthcare there is no incentive to shop around and people are likely to except lower quality because its 'free at the point of need'. Plus the socialised healthcare does not have to respond to market indicators and compete on quality and price. Thats why no matter how much money you throw at the NHS it will never be fixed, because they do not have an incentive to respond to market forces and the people who use it will use it more excessively.

2. Moral arguement

You will often hear that 'you shouldn't make a profit out of healthcare'. Should we be making profit out of people with cancer? Well what if the profit was used to develop a cure for cancer? If a company did that then doesn't it deserve a profit? I know that people often say that health care should be altruistic but that removes human nature from the equation. Would you do anything without a benefit to yourself? Would you work for the benefit of your boss without being cut a pay-cheque at the end of the month?

People often say that mixing healthcare and business is abhorrent, but what about healthcare and politics? The NHS only reacts to things which the politicians think they can get political mileage from. Take for example the treatment of mental health patients compared to that of the elderly. Politicians can target the ever increasing elderly people voting block, however what would be the point of targeting mentally ill people?

I discovered this link from a discussion on Free-Talk Live ( I am telling you its a brilliant source of info not just political but about life in general.) . The website is a blog about life skills and self improvement and I have been reading avidly for a few days now.

The url is quite comical too http://www.dumblittleman.com/

Killer ratings

In Brazil politicians can literally get away with murder!

Wallace Souza, a popular Amazonian MP who moonlights as a TV presenter(or maybe the other way round),has been accused of orchestrating a series of murders in Brazil to boost ratings for his tv show.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/12/brazilian-tv-host-accused-of-crime

Humans built with awareness of pentatonic scale?

Just to prove that I do have hobbies outside of ranting about the government, though that in itself provides plently of material, I am including a link to an experiment conducted by Bobby McFerrin. The following video suggests that fundementally humans are hard wired to recognise certain musical patterns?! I am not a musician but its quite interesting to see an audience, an unrelated mass, being unified almost magically.

Autonomous robot soliders!?

Now I know what your thinking, stupid decisions and the government don't go together. However, you'll never guess what scheme they have come up with now - Terminators! Well actually its better than that. The US and UK government want to create robots that can 'determine whether or not to unleash lethal weapons –without human intervention'(PcWorld.com). What could go wrong!?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/28/us-air-force-says-decision-making-attack-drones-will-be-here-by/

If your thinking that this is a little far fetched just look at the following links

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7419751.stm - Holy crap they called the damn thing 'Skynet'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper