The Billion Dollar Mouse Problem

This may seem like quite a mundane post, but it's actually quite an important one to me, and one I've been meaning to write for a while. It concerns the problem of mouse infestations - I know, quite a prosaic topic. I've worked at quite a lot of normal jobs over the years and I've noticed that this is a big problem pretty much everywhere, especially in retail and restaurant work.

I'm a vegetarian and quite hostile to the idea of killing innocent animals, however, at the same time practical experience tells me that this is a real problem, and one that companies and small businesses can't not deal with.

If you have a problem with mice, but aren't prepared to literally kill these little animals what can you do? The answer is, at the moment, very little. Apart from keeping things tidy and making it hard for mice to get access to food, it really is pretty much a case of exterminate or let them run riot. This is especially the case for businesses that can't afford to devote hours of man power doing all the little things that might help keep mice at bay - and this is pretty much all businesses these days.

On top of this extermination is never a complete solution - as mice will keep coming back as long as there's an environment in which they can thrive, no matter how many are killed.

It's like throwing down bird seed in the garden. You could get rid of every bird in your garden one day, but as long as there is food on the floor more will keep coming no matter how many you get rid of.

Now the obvious solution is to run a tidy ship and keep things nice and clean. However, in our bustling, interconnected world no business is an island. You can do everything in your power to limit the conditions for mice, but if the businesses next door are not following the same strict protocols you'll still suffer from their negligence. And more to the point your business will suffer more as the added expense you're going to in trying to tackle the problem is making you less competitive than your more cavalier neighbours.

So for me this is a very big problem that needs a solution. For personal and moral reasons I deem it an absolute tragedy that so many innocent and sentient mice are being killed daily. It's an endless cruelty that underpins our entire economy and is unacceptable in my opinion.

There's also the business imperative. Think of how much stock is written off on a daily basis due to mouse damage across the UK. Add to this the sheer number of man hours spent everyday trying to tackle the problem, not to mention the cost of the resources needed. I would love to see the figures on what it costs the economy on a yearly basis.

There's also the simple fact of how unfair it makes the marketplace. Companies that spend money dealing with the issue, or that go the extra mile to deal with the issue in an ethical way suffer, whilst laissez faire, profit obsessed companies fuel the problem for everyone else.

All the discount chains and takeaways that now proliferate on our high streets are creating havens of mice and rat infestation. It's impossible for any conscientious business to insulate themselves from this.

So what can be done? Surely we are intelligent enough to find more elegant solutions to this problem. I would say that first of all the problem needs recognising and raising to public discussion. Although it's not a glamorous topic to talk about I think politicians need to bring it to prominence. I also think that governments should allocate much more money to not only tackling the problem, but also to pushing new technologies and ideas to take things forward. We need a smarter attitude to this problem.

There should also be policies in place that reward businesses that try to deal with this issue in a progressive and ethical way. Likewise the interconnected nature of the problem needs recognising.

For my two cents one simple and practical thing that could be done is to regulate the packaging that pet and bird foods come in. Often the packaging that say a large bag of birdseed comes in is very flimsy and easily ripped (or nibbled through). Such poor packaging makes it very easy for mice to get access to food. Obviously most people are much less fussy about the food they buy for outdoor wildlife or household pets than they are when it comes to food they buy for themselves and their family. This means there's much less of an impetus for companies to go to the extra expense of providing decent packaging for these products.

It may sound like a small inconsequential thing, but at two separate places I've worked the mouse problem has started around the pet and bird food section. It's a real weak link in the chain. It could be so easily plugged.

To conclude, it seems no-one really appreciates the scale of this problem, or the potential reward of working around it, but it's costing the economy a lot of money, and leading to the endless unnecessary suffering of countless mice.

The daily mouse massacre is an unseen added cost to almost every transaction we make.

Homeless White Males.

The other day I was dropped off in town after finishing work. It was late-ish, about 8:30 pm and pretty cold. I popped in Tesco and outside there was a homeless guy that had fallen asleep whilst begging - he was still sitting up. It was a pretty harsh sight, but not an uncommon one these days.

A few weeks previously I'd decided to walk home at a similar time rather than wait for the bus (it was quite a mild night for December). It was a Friday and the bars and clubs were heaving, but outside every single one I passed there was at least one homeless person begging. It really was quite bad, and the contrast between the people in the bars having a good time and the people outside on the street was stark. I don't ever recall seeing this sort of homelessness at anytime in the past. I'm sure I can't be the only person noticing it.

I also can't help but contrast it with the Women's March on Washington that has recently taken place. It does seem like white males really have it pretty bad at the moment. Now I'm not saying that women, or non-whites, or any other group you care to mention don't have it bad as well. However, I do always try to gauge what's happening in society by using my own eyes and my own primary evidence, rather than being led by images in the media. And what I see is a lot of white males sleeping rough on the streets. The night I walked home I noticed one homeless white girl and the rest were all white guys.

So why is this issue not media worthy? Are white males such a problem that even homeless ones are undeserving of sympathy? Are people blinded even to the very possibility that white males can be victims in our society as well?

I would suggest that it's not deemed media-worthy as it doesn't serve the agendas our elites have planned, but that's another topic. At the moment I just want to simply highlight the issue and point out how unjust it is.

How can we tolerate people sleeping rough on the streets? Especially on nights as cold as these. Surely it's the birthright of all human beings to have a roof over their head. How is this issue being ignored? Why no protests over this?

I must admit I do feel a little uncomfortable mentioning that these homeless people are white, however it is what I see with my own eyes, and it would be remiss of me not to report honestly. There should be no taboo topics. If we can talk about white males when issuing blame, we should be able to talk about white males when highlighting injustice as well.

[I should mention for context that I live in the town of Middlesbrough, in the north of England. From what I've heard secondhand the exact same issue is common to most other towns and cities in the UK.]

EU Discussion: Limits on the Sizes of Democracies

There's one topic that has been noticeably lacking in all the discussions we've had on the question of EU membership, and that is the question of how large a functioning democracy should be - i.e. what is the optimum size of a democratic state?

One thing you'll notice when looking at both the EU parliament and the British parliament is their respective sizes.

There are currently 650 MPs in the British House of Commons.

There are currently 751 MEPs in the European Parliament.

Quite similar figures. Especially when one considers that there are approximately 510 million people in the EU, but only 64 million people in the UK. Were the EU to become the true primary democracy in Europe that would be quite a dilution in regards representation.

(Incidentally, the United States with a population of approximately 319 million has a Congress of 535 politicians - 435 Representatives and 100 Senators).

So why such similar figures for the number of MPs?

The answer is a simple and practical one. There's a limit to the number of people you can have speaking in a single room before it becomes simply unworkable.

This is something that goes to the very heart of the democratic process.

Let's imagine how the democratic process would function in a small village. Let's say there are 100 people. Each could go to the local village hall, express their opinion, listen to the opinions of the other 99 (should they each choose to give one), then vote on the particular issue at hand. This would be a truly fair and democratic way for a democracy to function, and everyone would be truly equal.

However, what happens when there are 1000 people, or 10,000 people. The higher the number the less practical it becomes for this pure form of democracy to function. There are simply not enough hours in the day for everyone to give an opinion and have it heard by the rest of the group, nor a room big enough for everyone to sit down and be able to hear said opinions. Even the simple practice of voting on the issue at hand would be a time and resource consuming exercise.

It's at this point that representational democracy is needed. Instead of each person turning up at a parliament to speak and vote for themselves they would choose to elect an individual to go and speak on their behalf. So, in a town of say 100,000 people each suburb or ward would elect an individual to be their representative. Let's say each ward has 1,000 people, and each ward elects a single representative, there would then be 100 representatives sat in the town hall making decisions on behalf of the 100,000.

This is still democratic of course. However, it's a massive dilution of the process. An individual goes from having the chance to represent themselves in person and voting on each and every issue, to simply getting the opportunity to vote for someone else to represent them once every year, or four years, or whatever the case may be.

There's also the problem that you may end up being represented by someone you didn't even vote for. In which case the person representing you may have completely different views or desires than yourself.

So coming back to the EU vs UK question it seems to be quite clear that the British people would be much better represented by a UK parliament than a European one. And again it's just a case of numbers. There are only so many pieces of information a single person can process at any one time. For example, imagine a single EU President making decisions for the entire continent. How could one man simultaneously know what was going on in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Krakow, Milan, Manchester and everywhere else well enough to make good executive decisions about those places.

Here in the UK we often complain about Westminster politicians not representing the north of England, or Wales, or Scotland adequately (in fact, this is one of the good arguments for Scottish Independence). Again though this is once again a problem of practicality. Westminster politicians have a bias towards the south-east of England simply because that's where they spend most of their time. Theresa May doesn't wake up in the morning and deliberately plot to marginalise the north of England. She simply isn't fully aware of what's happening up here on a daily basis - i.e. she has more information about her immediate surroundings than she does about distant places.

It completely stands to reason that someone living in the south will be more aware of problems facing the south than they are of problems facing the north. This is just basic logic.

For example, I live in the northern town of Middlesbrough. Consequently I have a good understanding and general knowledge about what's going on here. Were I a politician I could probably represent the town quite well. However, conversely, I have very little knowledge regarding what's going on in the city of Newcastle (even though it's only about 30 miles away). So, even with the best intentions in the world it would be very difficult for me to represent the people of Newcastle better than a person that actually lives in that city and witnesses its problems firsthand could do.

So, in summary, it's your local politicians job to adequately represent you. You should be able to speak to them in person at times, or send them letters or emails. However, even the most conscientious of politicians can only read a certain amount of correspondence in a given day. Or educate themselves regarding a certain number of issues or topics in any given amount of time.

How could 751 MEPs ever adequately represent 500 million people? More to the point how could a single EU President adequately provide good governance? Especially when you take into account all the varying language and cultural barriers across the continent. On top of this we have a growing population, not a shrinking one. Surely we need more representation, not less representation.

*****

For further reading check out the following articles;

An Island. An Example.
Why Empires Fall

Hyperbolic Perspective: Bedroom in Arles

In my last post I was discussing the book Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science by Patrick A. Heelan. This is a follow-on post focusing on one aspect of the book where he mentions the possibility that artists from the past may have tried to incorporate hyperbolic perspective into their artwork.

The most striking example in the book concerns the work of Vincent van Gogh, in particular his painting Bedroom in Arles.

This is the painting in question.

Heelan points out that the painting, instead of following the conventions of standard linear perspective that artists would normally use, actually tries to capture or convey the curved hyperbolic space within which we actually see the world. 

Whether Van Gogh was consciously trying to achieve this effect or simply following his own artistic or aesthetic instincts is an issue of contention. However, intentional or not, Heelan provides images that illustrate how this painting differs from how such a room would normally be painted using standard perspective techniques.

The first image (Figure 6.5) shows how the bedroom would be depicted using standard linear perspective. Note the straight regimented box-like structure of the room.

However, in this second image (Figure 6.6) we see Heelan has traced over the Van Gogh painting, showing how radically it differs from the first. Note for example how the bottom edge of the bed at the front of the painting appears to curve. Also note the angle of the walls, and how they appear to form a single curving wall, as oppose to what should be three distinct ones. Likewise note how the seats of the chairs appear to tilt towards the viewer. If you study the image you'll notice many other "distortions" like this.

It's a very fascinating thing to take note of, and something I would never have thought to look for in a painting had it not been for this book. I guess the real question then is; does the Van Gogh version look more realistic than the one following the standard conventions of perspective?

Does it more accurately depict what we actually see with our eyes when we stand in the real world and view objects? It's a difficult question to answer.

Of course, the Van Gogh painting wasn't intended as a photo-realistic image. The intention was no doubt more an artistic rendering, an interpretation of reality, so that needs to be taken into account too. However, even photographs can't capture the reality of what we actually see when we're experiencing full 3D reality, and this goes to the heart of the issue, and is why Heelan in his book claims that hyperbolic perspective offers a much better approximation of what we actually see with our eyes than Euclidean renderings can.

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For anyone who'd like further information on this topic I recommend the following web page. It's a blog post by an artist called Rob Adams, and it explains the issue of spherical perspective better than anything else I've come across online. It's very easy to understand and explains the problems that can arise when attempting to render what we see in the real world in a 2-dimensional image. He also explains the famous "fish-eye" lens effect in a way that's very concise and easy to understand. I really can't recommend the article more highly.

http://www.treeshark.com/treeblog/?p=301

Hyperbolic Perspective: The Visual Dome You Experience

Anyone familiar with this blog will probably know that I became fascinated with the flat earth topic last year - a fascination which continues. It led me to question many of my previously held assumptions and I've since been trying to understand the world from the ground up - i.e. from a first person perspective. Using evidence from my own eyes and other senses as my primary source of information.

Anyway, inspired by the arguments made by leading flat earthers concerning perspective, I quickly began to realise that much of what we see in the sky follows curved lines of perspective. Just watching airplanes fly overhead, or the passage of the Sun or Moon across the sky shows that they follow curved paths relative to the observer. After searching online I found that the correct name for what I'd been noticing was hyperbolic vision (or hyperbolic perspective). I also came across the following book on Google Books, which I felt compelled to purchase. That was back in about March of this year, and since then I've slowly been worming my way through the book in between other things.

The book is called Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science by Patrick A. Heelan.

(Some of you au fait with the flat earth renaissance may have already noticed the picture on the cover illustrating how perspective makes clouds appear to slope off to the horizon.)

First a note on the author. Patrick Aidan Heelan was an Irish-American physicist and philosopher of science. He died quite recently in 2015, and was professor of philosophy at Georgetown University. This particular book was published by the University of California Press, Berkeley. Oddly, at least to my mind anyway, he was also a Jesuit priest. Maybe this isn't surprising given his Irish background, but it still seemed a little strange to me. The book is a very academic work, and it wouldn't have led me to think it was the work of a modern day Jesuit had I not read it on his Wikipedia page. In fact, for anyone thinking about reading the book themselves be warned it is very heavy going. I had to reach for the dictionary on quite a few occasions xD There's also a fair bit of maths involved. It's well worth reading and I feel very fortunate to have found it, but it's not a light read by any stretch of the imagination.

The book is mainly focused upon how we interpret the information we receive through our senses and scientific instruments, and the implications this may have regarding our wider scientific philosophies. It also makes the case that hyperbolic vision describes the world we see and experience better than Euclidean geometry does in certain cases.

It would be very difficult for me to do the book justice in a few short paragraphs, and I fear if I try to explain it I may end up misrepresenting the ideas and themes contained within - either through my inability to articulate them, or through my own misunderstanding of them. Like I said, it's quite a heavy going book. So I thought I would make things a little easier by simply sharing some of the images from the book.

This first one seeks to illustrate the way hyperbolic space (i.e. visual perspective) creates a curved image of the actual world. If I'm interpreting it correctly the boxes on the left of the line represent the actual world, and those on the right represent what the observer would actually see.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The image may seem a little confusing at first, but once you realise that the horizontal line in the centre (the one with the arrow on it) represents the ground and the person is standing at the centre looking towards "P'" it starts to make a little more sense. It might be easier if you imagine the "boxes" to be very large buildings or structures of some sort - like you're in a huge hall or corridor and the ceiling seems to be sloping to the horizon as it gets further from you.

The next two images should seem a little more straight forward. One shows how the clouds or sky seem to create a dome shape over your head due to these effects of perspective, and the other shows the same effect but looking down at the ground from a balloon, with the ground appearing to curve upwards.

If you can read the text under the second image you may notice it states "the flat earth as seen from a balloon". No doubt the flat earth reference is just pure coincidence, either way though I'm sure you can all make up your own conspiracy theories about Jesuit priests hiding flat earth in plain sight.

I'll leave things there for now. Interestingly, the book also talks about how hyperbolic space may have been utilised by artists such as Vincent van Gogh in the past. This will be the topic of my next blog post. Effectively a "Part 2" to this post.

Rent, Mortgage and the Real Origins of Slavery

I've realised there's a big misconception when it comes to slavery.

The general view, logical though it sounds, is that people are forced into slavery by the fact that slave-owners are unwilling to pay people for their labour.

The logical consequence of this thinking then being that "paid work" is something of a step up from slavery ;- paid work equals freedom, unpaid work equals slavery.

This is the view I'd always held and it appears logical enough at first view. However, after reading up on how people were actually forced into slavery in former times I've come to realise that this view is very much incorrect  ..and that our misconceptions on this are fueling much of the misery we see in human society today.

So ..how did slavery really start?

The example that really opened my eyes was the story of how the American continent was discovered and conquered by Europeans.

Now to simplify things it seems there were two categories that individual Europeans could fall into when heading for this New World.

The first type were people simply looking for new land to start a new life - people who simply wanted a little slice of land to live on, feed themselves and raise a family.

The second type were people with grander ambitions - these people wanted to become rich and powerful. To rise up the social ladder, either in the Americas or back home in Europe, through the acquisition of money, resources and power.

Now it's this second group that we owe the slavery in the Americas to ..and this is why;

When these explorers went over in search of wealth and fame they decided to set up plantations and mines in order to exploit the natural resources of the land. However, they needed people to work on these plantations and down these mine pits.

So, they turned to the native population ...BUT the native population didn't want to spend their lives working on a plantation or down a mine ..not even if they were being paid. And they couldn't be persuaded to do so.

This is because they already had everything they needed and wanted.

They had homes - they didn't need to pay rent or mortgage for the luxury of having a home. Water fell from the sky and could be taken from streams or rivers for free. All they really had to do was find food - either by hunting, foraging or growing it themselves. And this only took a few hours a day. (Even today Amazonian tribes only spend a few hours a day "working").

So they had everything they needed, they were their own boss and they only had to work a fraction of the time that we do now (and certainly only a small fraction of the time they would've had to spend working down a mine or on a plantation - pay or no pay).

The idea of working all day, every day simply wasn't attractive to them - and given the choice who on earth would choose otherwise.

So, the plantation and mine owners had to literally hunt down the natives and force them at knife point or gun point to work (this is where we get the modern business term "head-hunting" from). They also had to ship slaves over from Africa.

So, they had to enslave people, not because they didn't want to pay people, but because the people simply did not want to work for them full stop.

..and this illustrates just how crazy our modern way of living is, and likewise illustrates how it's the Rent & Mortgage factor that is forcing us to work such extreme hours. As it's this need to pay rent or mortgage that is one of the driving forces behind why we have to go "out to work" in the first place.

For most people rent or mortgage is the biggest bill they have to pay. It often accounts for at least half of someones outgoings.

So, think about this, most people are going out to work primarily to pay for the privilege of having somewhere to live. Somewhere to exist. Somewhere to breathe. Somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to eat. Somewhere to BE.

Isn't that kinda crazy? Most native peoples took it for granted that they were entitled to somewhere to exist. They weren't paying for the right to simply breathe in and out somewhere. Yet we are, and we think we're free.

If we all had somewhere to live - rent or mortgage free - we would all have to work only half the time we do. We'd all be happier, healthier. Society would be better in every way.

So how is it that we've come to find ourselves in a system where we have to pay money to another human being simply for the right to exist somewhere?

I'd say we're all entitled to at least a little bit of land by birth.

Lugh, Lugs Lodge and the Tuatha Dé Danann

A little bit of word investigation today.

This all started with some speculation with a friend about a building in my home town of Middlesbrough. The building concerned was the old synagogue near Albert Park. The building is not in use as a synagogue anymore and has now been converted into apartments. The building is named Lugs Lodge and has a big 33 above the door (it being house no.33 on the road).

Having read lots of books about conspiracy theories and Freemasons controlling the world the name Lugs Lodge, along with the big 33, used to fascinate me no end. And I often wondered what the building was for and why it was so named. When I discovered it was simply a bunch of flats or apartments it seemed a little more mundane than I had imagined.

The fact that it used to be a synagogue also interested me as well. It seems odd that there was once a flourishing Jewish community in Middlesbrough that has since dwindled away. There's also a small Jewish cemetery in town, which again has always seemed a little poignant and enigmatic to me.

Anyhow, after recently speaking with a friend about the building I decided to look up the name Lug to see if there was a meaning to it (of course, it could simply be the name, or nickname, of the person who owns the apartment block, but that would be way too boring).

I found that the name Lug, or Lugh, is the name of an Irish deity, depicted in texts as a hero or high-king. The etymology of the name was particularly intriguing. According to Wikipedia it either means light or oath - both quite fitting masonic motifs.

"Lugh's name has been interpreted as deriving from the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, "flashing light", and he is often surrounded by solar imagery, so from Victorian times he has often been considered a sun god, similar to the Greco-Roman Apollo though historically he is only ever equated with Mercury."

"Juliette Wood interprets Lugh's name as deriving from the Celtic root *lugios, "oath", and the Irish word lugh connotes ideas of "blasphemy, cussing, lies, bond, joint, binding oath", which strengthens the identification with Mercury, who was, among other attributes, a god of contracts."

Reading up on Lugh also led me to read up on the Tuatha Dé Danann - the supernatural tribe from Irish mythology that Lugh was said to descend from.

The Tuatha Dé Danann often pop up in relation to conspiracies on-line. What struck me though was the Tu sound at the beginning of the name. I've mentioned this sound on here before, and how it seems to pop up in history again and again. Jew, Dieu, Jutes, Teu(-tonic), Tudors, Tiw (pronounced Tu) - the god from which we get the name Tuesday. I've even linked it to the words Druid and David.

I read all these names to essentially mean god or godly people. So it was something of a reaffirmation to read the etymology of the name Tuatha Dé Danann on Wikipedia.

"The Old Irish word tuath (plural tuatha) means "people, tribe, nation"; dé is the genitive case of día and, depending on context, can mean "god, gods, goddess" or more broadly "supernatural being, object of worship""

The dé/dia part of the name also chimes quite well. Similar to the French Dieu, the Spanish Dios also means god. (The name Tudor is said to be a Welsh variation on the Greek Theo or Theodore, again meaning god.) In fact, all these names seem to just repeat over and over. Just looking again at the name Theodore - dore could be linked to door or Druid - the name Dürer, as in the famed Albrecht Dürer meant door.

Interestingly, Wikipedia then goes on to state the following;

"In the earliest writings, the mythical race are referred to as the Tuath Dé (plural Tuatha Dé). However, Irish monks also began using the term Tuath Dé to refer to the Israelites, with the meaning "People of God". Apparently to avoid confusion with the Israelites, writers began to refer to the mythical race as the Tuath Dé Danann"

The fact that Irish monks equated the name Tuath Dé with the Israelites is fascinating and once again plays into the idea that our current interpretation of history is quite confused. Anyone who has read my previous posts will be aware that I have a vague reinterpretation of history that states that the history of the Jewish peoples is quite different to what we think (like most of human history). I'm of the opinion that most Jewish people have roots that lie in Europe and that these roots go as deep as all the other peoples of Europe (Judas in medieval times was generally depicted with white skin and red hair).

I think many of the problems we see in the world today stem from our confusion regarding history.