Where your taxes go (2009 edition)
[2/3 military/national security, 1/3 every single other thing the government does](http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs29/f/2008/140/5/7/Death_and_Taxes__2009_by_mibi.jpg).
[2/3 military/national security, 1/3 every single other thing the government does](http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs29/f/2008/140/5/7/Death_and_Taxes__2009_by_mibi.jpg).
From [Ed Catmull’s talk](http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/inside-pixars-leadership/) at the [Economist Ideas conference](http://ideas.economist.com/): > I do believe you want a vision, so you start off with a person who has a vision for a story. And we do things to try and protect that vision and its not easy to protect it, because they feel these pressures. > One…more
The sentence of the day: > In a society resolutely anti-immigration, robotic technology is seen as the answer to the lack of human beings. – [Solving Japan’s age-old problem](http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/mar/20/japan-ageing-population-technology)
I love [this contest idea](http://designforthefirstworld.com/): > Dx1W is a competition for designers, artists, scientists, makers and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for First World problems. While my lovely wife works tirelessly to help the rest of the world develop, I’m working in the “first world” to make sure there’s a worthwhile and sustainable…more
Remember this the next time you need a malleable logrithmic casing with spurving bearings in a hydrocoptic marzlevein: And yes, [it’s a meme](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=turbo+encabulator&aq=0).
The only area with majority support for spending cuts is…foreign aid. Which we spend less than 1% of the budget on anyway. Sigh.
[This interview with Eagleman by the Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/04/david-eagleman-40-afterlives) contains a lot of great bits, many which resonate with my recent thinking. Eagleman is the author of [Sum](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/alternative-afterlives.html), which I greatly enjoyed. > I’m using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human – it turns out that it’s…more
This is basically my New Year’s Resolution every year. But he actually did it.
Finally. Beyond TTs this would be great in the rain and cold; those GoreTex ones never look very good.