Another reason to become a vegetarian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/24/cost-cheap-burger-higher-12p

Perhaps people are lucky if their 'beef' burger does contain a bit of horse meat instead of the usual stuff ?

Words of Wisdom

"no you won't be bored, because the world opens up for you, you can do anything you want, you don't need to be addicted'

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

The no brain tax is back

When the national lottery was introduced, some people wisely said it was a no brain tax.  The 'joke' being that the lottery was basically a tax and only people with no brain would pay it. (or alternatively that deciding whether to play was a 'no brainer' in that it didn't require a brain to work out it wasn't worth playing.

Now Camelot have announced that they are increasing the price of a lottery ticket from £1 to £2, and changing the odds on winning some of the prizes.

This has been met with 'outrage' by the more mathematically challenged members of society.

The chances of winning the national lottery is usually given at 14,000,000 to win.   That is for every person who wins, there will be 14 million who won't.

Most people can grasp that the chances of throwing a six on a standard 6 sided dice is 1 in 6.  Two sixes, 1 in 36, 3 sixes in a row will happen on average once every 216 throws.    No wonder those games that need a double six to start are so boring !   But to win the lottery is more like being given 10 dice and being told you win if you throw all sixes.
It it wrong to mock people for playing the lottery, for some, probably many people it may represent a way to riches when they have no other option, but there is something inherently cynical about lotteries.  We all like to think we are special, and we all hope that we are lucky, so almost all of us have the urge to play the lottery to day dream about how we would spend our winnings.  the reality is throw that most people are simply giving their money to someone else. If you don't mind doing that, then fine, but try and remember, we are all special, most of out lives are truly blessed with the most marvellous things, and often winning the lottery hasn't brought people happiness, rather the opposite. 

Sherlock Holmes

Caracatus recommends - The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (BBC Audio). Gripping well written and acted additions to the Sherlock Holmes cannon. Written by Bert Coules from references in the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

The Daylight Gate - Pendle Witches

The Daylight Gate is a book by Jeanette Winterson.  It tells the story of the women and men accused of witchcraft in Pendle (Lancashire England) and their subsequent trial.

The book weaves in fact and fiction and includes cameos from Dr John Dee and William Shakespeare.

The writing is good, the descriptions often gruesome yet not gratuitious but based on the reality of the time.

I won't give the plot away, but it was a gripping read which I read in less than a day.

The Hobbit

The film off the Hobbit has opened to mixed but generally favourable reviews.  Having seen it in 3D I would award it an excellent rating.  The critics seem to have honed in on a few points - the length of the film,  that the story takes a while to get going and the use of high speed 3D.

The first two points are related. By making use of the other writings of Tolkien, particularly the appendixes of the Lord of the Rings, the film is able to fill in the background information to the dwarfs quest.

This actually makes the film easier to follow and is to be welcomed in my view.  The film takes a while to 'get going' because the book takes a while to get going, but the early chapters of the hobbit are brilliantly imagined - keeping faithful to Tolkiens story without allowing the very childish passages of the book to change the tone of the film.

The bewildered Bilbo Baggins as the dwarfs ransack his larder is played to perfection. Of course it it difficult to distinguish all 14 dwarfs - but it is thus in the book and the film does a better job than the book does !

The film is largely faithful to the book, with the usual cinematic licence needed  to convert what is on the page into something on the screen.

The encounter with the trolls is comic, and that with the  goblins scary and that with Gollum deeply moving.  It is striking that Gollum comes across so sympathetically and one feels for a creature who is actually - only an animation. Definitely a highlight of the film.

It is great to see Radaghast the Brown given some scenes and these add to the arc of the story, especially as in years to come people will watch the hobbit followed by the extended version of the Lord of the Rings.

I didn't watch in the high speed version so i can't comment on that but The 3d effects are used sparingly and effectively.  I particularly enjoyed the eagles in flight and the various birds and butterflies flitting out into mid air.

The only worrying note - the great Goblin reminded me of  the late astronomer Patrick Moore.

from the telegraph comments

We spend £25 billion on working tax credits, in effect subsiding poor paying businesses and creating awful incentives for both employer and employee. Wouldn't it be simpler to get rid of working tax credits and increase the minimum wage, instead of having an inefficient bureaucracy in the middle collecting tax to only redistribute it back as a wage subsidy?
Similarly, instead of continuing with the £25 billion housing benefit bill madness, which is trapping ever more working people as rents rise whilst wages stagnate, shouldn't we be building social not for profit housing to house people in long-term affordable rents and remove the market distorting housing benefit from the for profit housing sector which only works to inflate rental prices for everyone? Over 90% of new housing benefit claimants are working and the housing benefit bill increased by £700 million last year, a £27k cap on the outliers is not going to dent the overall cost of this benefit