<\/a>In their excellent song “A day in space”, Ballboy<\/a> makes the case for spending a windfall million quid on a day in space:<\/p>\n

\nAnd then I say
\n“What better place could you go to than space?
\nWhat’s a better holiday than that?
\nThink about lying there in your 100’s,
\n110 or whatever,
\nlooking back on your life and thinking, well,
\nwhat did I actually do?
\nWhat did I actually achieve?
\nOh, yeah, I saw the pyramids.
\nBig deal.
\nYou can apparently see those from space anyway.
\nYou see all the rest of the blue and green globe
\ntwisting and turning below you.
\nYou can see the sun lighting up the moon,
\nfeel the stars shining down upon your back.
\nYou don’t get that in Egypt,
\nand you don’t get that in the pyramids,
\nand you don’t get that by pissing away your million pounds
\non something everyone else can do
\nif they save up long enough.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>If presented with a \u00a31M, I’m pretty sure we’d do the safe thing, socking most of it away to ensure Sub-Evil Boy<\/a>‘s college education and our happy (and perhaps early) retirement. I suspect we would travel a lot more, but we’d be much more likely to spend extended periods in Florence than a day in space. And then there’s be the neat opportunities for charitable giving, as well as nifty consumer electronics to feed WeatherGirl<\/a>‘s habit (and help prop up Our Fearless Leader’s U.S. economy).<\/p>\n

If I was totally unattached, the idea of a day in space would probably sound more appealing. I’m not, though, and it would have to be a family thing (which is a cool thing to look back on when I’m 110). For now, I think family time works better on the surface than in space. The possibilities of (incredibly expensive) “space tourism” are becoming sufficiently real, though, that the government is now starting the regulatory wheels<\/a>, leading to the predictable clash with those who wish to profit from people’s desire to see “the blue and green globe twisting and turning below”.<\/p>\n

So what would you do with a \u00a31M?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their excellent song “A day in space”, Ballboy makes the case for spending a windfall million quid on a day in space: And then I say “What better place could you go to than space? What’s a better holiday than that? Think about lying there in your 100’s, 110 or whatever, looking back on … Continue reading “So, what would you do with \u00a31M?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-music"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-2w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":223,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/08\/29\/martin-fowler-likes-open-space-meetings\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":0},"title":"Martin Fowler likes Open Space meetings","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"29 Aug 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Martin Fowler just blogged in a positive way about Open Space meetings, and he's smarter (and more experienced) than your average bear (e.g., me). I really have to get myself in some situation where I get to seriously try something like this.","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":84,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/03\/16\/open-space-meetings-sound-really-cool\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":1},"title":"Open space meetings sound really cool","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"16 Mar 05","format":false,"excerpt":"I ran across this fine rant on Bill Tozier's Notional Slurry (which looks like an fascinating blog - I look forward to reading more) on Open Space conferences\/meetings. I'll have to think this through some more, but I am naturally drawn to the idea. Lord knows I've shared many of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":633,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/08\/28\/like-he-needs-_help_-making-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":2},"title":"Like he needs _help_ making money?!?","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"28 Aug 07","format":false,"excerpt":"There are many things George Lucas might need assistance with, but I wouldn't have thought that making money was one of them. Someone, however, apparently believes that the the federal government should be in the business of providing him with even more publicity for his mighty Star Wars empire. If\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":845,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/06\/12\/at-a-loss-for-words-at-the-alhambra\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":3},"title":"At a loss for words (At the Alhambra)","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"12 Jun 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Today we spent a wonderful, exhausting day at the Alhambra in Granada, and it's every bit as cool as the books, etc., made out. Which is good, since that's a key reason for this entire trip to Spain! I frankly don't have any idea where to begin. I took over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/14\/paul-nelson-had-a-nice-time-at-umm-but-needs-a-lesson-in-the-power-of-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":4},"title":"Paul Nelson had a nice time at UMM, but needs a lesson in the power of time","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"14 Apr 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Turns out that Paul Nelson has written on his blog about his visit to UMM. I continue to be amazed at how damned pleasant he is about all this. The guy looked pretty exhausted to me at the end, and while I love a good intellectual tussle as much as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/03\/14\/a-cool-graph\/","url_meta":{"origin":156,"position":5},"title":"A cool graph","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"14 Mar 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Ellery and I continue to wrestle our GPTP paper into submission before tomorrow's deadline. There's a ton of cool data, but we're both tired and worried about the deadline and the page limits, and I suspect it's going to be a long 30 hours before we send this thing off.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}