Today is the start of a new decade

 Many people just won't get this, but then so many people are dickheads. It's really quite simple. Today is the first day of the new decade. I'm not going to repeat myself because you can jolly well read what I posted a year ago here. It's maths and in maths you have two choices, the right answer and the wrong answer. If you can't grasp this very simple concept about when decades start then you really are utterly stupid. If you start wittering on about Gregorian and Julian calendars then you are beyond stupid and need to crawl under the nearest stone. This is not up for discussion. You're welcome.

The decade doesn’t end here!

The current decade ends on 31/12/20.

To distort* slightly Goebbels’ quote “If you tell a lie… ...keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” and that’s just what has happened in terms of how we classify what a decade is, thanks to the media. They peddled the lie that the millennium ended on the 31st December 1999 (when obviously it ended a year later of 31/12/2000) and they continue to end decades a year too early. The Victorians knew when decades, centuries and millennia ended why don’t we?

There's enough lazy thinking and illogical behaviour in the world without adding to it unnecessarily. The last year of a decade, a century or a millennium always ends in a zero. It's very simple maths. It has nothing to do with Gregorian or Julian calendars. People that even mention that in a conversation about this stupidity are going off on a pointless tangent. It’s all about logic. Whatever calendar you work to, if you use numbers as the measurement, the first year of the calendar will always be one. You wouldn’t have a year zero. Zero represents nothing. Having a year zero would be like saying this is a year but really it isn’t as it’s a year without value. So by applying logic the first year is always 1, and therefore the last year of the first decade will be year 10, and thus the pattern will continue. If you can’t grasp that then there is no hope for you quite frankly.

Now you're probably saying, so what? In the great scheme of things does it really matter? Well on one level it really doesn't, but it's an indicator of what a poor state we are in if people can't grasp a simple maths concept. If people aren’t capable of understanding simple maths how the hell are they going to grasp even the basics of economics, and therefore be able to make political/voting decisions?

Of course you could argue that you can re-calibrate the calendar and start decades, centuries and millennia at 0. Which you could do, but you could also take 14.5 years and decide to call it a Doris! I'm not sure how useful it would be but there's nothing to stop anyone doing it. The whole point of measurement surely is that it's a communication tool. A way of telling someone how much of something you have got etc. If we're all using different measurements how do we communicate what we really mean?

So people, please stop this gross stupidity and start measuring things properly again.

*I like the irony of that.

Rainbow thinking - the only way ahead

I’ve written on this blog a number of times about nothing ever being black and white. I’m convinced that the western world is in the state that it is because of lazy thinking. Fundamentalism, political or religious, is the greatest philosophical danger to humankind; there are no one-word answers to the problems that beset our world. There are rarely simple solutions. Life is much more complicated than a tabloid headline. Unfortunately ‘public debate’ all too often sinks into polarised, lowest common denominator, narrow mindedness. Creating the Promised Land is not as easy as a political sound-bite or any religious teaching might suggest. Economics and indeed life itself are complicated webs. We are in the state that we are in because too many people think in black and white instead of all the colours of the rainbow.

Okay this one is not for the faint-hearted. This video has been at least a year and a half in the making, with some of the content dating back over the last ten years. It’s a slightly surreal video that I hope encapsulates my philosophy of ‘Nothing is ever black and white’. If you only think in black and white then you won't get this video. Even if you don't think in black and white you still might not get it. I've tried to convey a sense of the complexity of life and our existence. I hope I've at least partially achieved that. But of course it might be a load of old tosh and I'm a complete charlatan. If you're looking for the meaning of life you might find this helpful; I think humankind is a long way off finding a reason for life and I suspect a meaning might not even exist. Doubt is the beginning and not the end of wisdom. Scratch beneath the surface to see further than what you might think of as the obvious. Remove your blinkers!

The wages of sin

For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive you could employ 40 people at £25,000, 50 people at £20,000 or 66.6 at £15,000. If you raise the wage rate from the minimum wage (£6.08) to a living wage (£7.20) it would cost, per person, £1.12 per hour, which is £44.80 for a 40 hour week, or £2329.60 per annum. For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive 429 people could benefit from an increase from a minimum to a living wage. Now I realise that a living wage is still far from ideal and that any company that is serious about their business would pay more but it would be an improvement on what many have now.

Now I realise that the above is an oversimplification and that the costs of employing people are not directly proportional to their salary but it is accurate enough to highlight how unbalanced and unfair most businesses attitude to wages and staffing are, in that one person’s wage can be so high that it is the equivalent to 40, 50 or several hundred people’s wages put together.

Do bankers, footballers and multi-million pound earning captains of industry et al actually work any harder than the poor soul on minimum wage working as a cleaner care assistant or other equally valuable job? I think we know the answer to that, don’t we?

The minimum wage should be a living wage!

The living wage:
"An idea whose time has come"- David Cameron

One in a billion

Contrary to popular belief 1,000,000,000 is not a billion. It is only a thousand million. A real billion is one million multiplied by one million (million² or 1,000,000²), and is written thus: 1,000,000,000,000.

Okay?
Good!
Glad we sorted that out then.

It’s hip to be square?

#maths 

Kellogg’s produce a sugary snack bar called Squares. Actually it’s hard to tell if it’s a bar singular or bars plural from the advertising and promotional images, and as it’s packed with far too many carbohydrates for any sane person to want to eat, I shan’t be buying a pack to find out. But either way, singular or plural, it/they ain’t squares. A square is a two dimensional geometrical shape. A Kellogg’s Square is, I firmly believe, a three dimensional confectionery item, thus in reality making it a cuboid. I wonder if Kellogg’s are aware of their faux pas? Does no one at the company have a maths O’level?

The Kellogg’s Cuboid – I think it will catch on!

Year zero

I think without doubt I am becoming a grumpy old bloke. Why else would I get so irritated by the stupidity of others?

Time does not exist! It is merely an invention of man to measure his passing, a mathematical ruse. The calendar is nothing but a mathematical chart. It is not determined or guided by some cosmic being or force. A calendar starts at year 1 and carries on until people get fed up with it. It’s as simple as that.

Given that it is that simple why on earth are there so many idiots that can’t grasp the concept of a decade? I suppose they are the same idiots that thought the millennium started in the year 2000. Everybody has the right to be stupid but so many people seem to want to abuse the privilege.

So for the retarded out there:

Years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 equal a decade.

Years 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 also equal a decade.

Easy hey?

All you have to do is ‘do the maths’!

If there were a year zero, then this would indeed be the end of a decade, but as there wouldn’t be then this isn’t.

End of the decade my arse!

Why is it that ‘the media’ seem to be under the impression that we are just over a week away from the end of a decade?
Don’t they know we have got another year to go before that happens?
Of course I know the answer:
They and the vast majority of people that consume their nonsense output are too stupid and mathematically challenged to realise any different. They are the same morons who thought the last century ended with the dawn of the year 2000. Tossers!

The current decade ends on 31/12/10 - it’s very simple maths!