Friday, August 31, 2007

Taxing

"The Treasury Department reported Friday that federal revenues reached $2.12 trillion ($2,120,000,000,0000) for the first ten months of fiscal year 2007. In both current and inflation-adjusted dollars, that puts the federal government on course for the most revenue it's ever collected in a year. Indeed, it's the most revenue any government in the history of the world has ever collected."

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/08/12/bush-the-biggest-taxer-in-world-history/

There are a lot of reasons for variations in the amount of income tax collected by the federal government; this administration's shift of the tax burden from the upper class to the middle class, IRS enforcement strategies, and shifts in the economy, for example.

But a very interesting thing is that, in direct contradiction to what American voters think and believe about the George W. Bush, and the Republican party which has ruled all on it's own until recently, this administration will go down in history as the biggest taxer and the biggest spender ever (even in inflation adjusted dollars), by a very wide margin.

Why did people vote for George W. Bush? Oh ya, people are stupid.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Love

For the life of me I just don't understand these people! I'm getting up to 25 or 30 of these emails everyday now. Idiots...


Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:29:36 +0100
From: tmasilo@mib.org.uk
To:
Subject: love ecard

Good day.

Your School-mate has sent you love ecard from deepestfeelings.com.

Click on your love ecard link below:

http://207.5.229.194/

Copyright (c) 1993-2007 deepestfeelings.com All Rights Reserved

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Travel

My question is when do these things become a public safety issued covered by existing law? If a restaurant operated like this, what do you think would happen?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/business/14road.html?ex=1344744000&en=f4a809a52ad148a5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

"ON July 29, Continental Flight 1669, a 737-700 with about 120 passengers aboard, was bound for Newark from Caracas, Venezuela, when bad weather caused the plane to be diverted to Baltimore. It sat there for about five hours with passengers on board as food and water ran low and toilets became filthy.

...

"But what made the Continental flight somewhat different was that passengers organized and protested by clapping in rhythm and drumming on overhead bins. Finally, the pilot, worried about mayhem, called the police.

...

"As passengers described it, once the police ordered the plane emptied, they filed out into the secure area, where some said they felt as if they were being treated like suspects.

"As we walked down the hallway, we were yelled at like we were scary criminals by this female cop who had a dog." She kept yelling: "Stay against the wall!" Mr. Niezen said.

...

"At Newark, the service just got worse," Mr. Niezen said. "People were shouting at us. One agent told Caroline Murray to shut up about her connecting flight."

"Ms. Murray said she stood at a counter behind Mr. Niezen, who was vehemently insisting on being rebooked that night. .They made him say he was sorry before he could continue speaking to someone,. she said. When she got to the front of the line and complained about inattentive service, one of the men behind the counter called her a derogatory name, she said."

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Bio 28 x

http://news.opb.org/article/osu-study-finds-bio-fuels-more-expensive-alternatives/

Oregon State University economist Bill Jaeger, has published a study arguing that biodiesel and ethanol rely too much on fossil fuels and tax subsidies to get to the pump. He says other methods are more cost-effective.

Bill Jaeger: "Compared to raising fuel economy standards, or a gas tax, we found biofuels in terms of achieving energy independence, the cost to be ten, up to 28 times more expensive than these other approaches."

The only thing that can save us, if it's not too late already, is using less energy. But what's science compared to the power of marketing? Not much... So just keep driving, it is "Bio" afterall, so it must be good!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Soap

Antibacterial soap is no better, and may be worse, for our health than plain soap. Shocking!

http://www.physorg.com/news106418144.html

"In the first known comprehensive analysis of whether antibacterial soaps work better than plain soaps, Allison Aiello of the U-M School of Public Health and her team found that washing hands with an antibacterial soap was no more effective in preventing infectious illness than plain soap. Moreover, antibacterial soaps at formulations sold to the public do not remove any more bacteria from the hands during washing than plain soaps."

I'd be surprised if this surprises anyone. Fear is one of the most commonly used marketing tactics - and fear of the unseen (germs!) tops to list. Consumers of course consistently fail to consider the source of information presented to them with regard to their purchasing choices (i.e. advertising, the soap packaging in this case).

But of course this report won't matter to most people, it is science afterall.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Web Cooking

Another fun membership! Lucky me!
I've been sent three variations of this within the past two hours. What morons...


Welcome,

Are you ready to have fun at Web Cooking.

Account Number: 9574868359349
Temp Login ID: user3195
Your Password ID: as343

Your temporary Login Info will expire in 24 hours. Please login and change it.

This link will allow you to securely change your login info: http://69.205.144.105/

Thank You,
Technical Services
Web Cooking

Testing

"The United States Supreme Court first cleared the way for drug testing of student athletes in 1995, in a case called Vernonia School District vs. Acton. In the Vernonia case, an Oregon high school football team was known to be rampantly using and dealing drugs, and authorities wanted to test them. The Supreme Court decision ruled that testing was permissible in this case because there was reasonable suspicion of drug use, and because athletes who got naked in locker rooms had lowered expectations of privacy as well as heightened requirements for safety on the field."

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2002/04/22/drug_testing/index.html

"Vernonia Superintendent Kenneth Cox said Tuesday that Aaron Miller has his "full support" and will stay on as principal of Washington Grade School and Mist Elementary School after telling a Clatsop County sheriff's deputy that he'd been smoking pot."

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1184126109316030.xml&coll=7

"It was an unfortunate mistake and a poor choice to make," Cox said. "But I've had a meeting with Mr. Miller, and he's planning on making things better, making things right."

It's a Joke Alright

Here's one of the stupidist spams I've seen in awhile. At least it's not written in mal-formed HTML.


Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:23:46 +0100
From: Joke-A-Day
To:
Subject: Your Member Info

Welcome,

We are glad you joined Joke-A-Day.

Member Number: 2657738841261
Your Login ID: user7649
Password ID: yp593

For security purposes please login and change the temporary Login ID and Password.

Follow this link, or paste it in your browser: http://83.84.20.47/

Thank You,
Technical Services
Joke-A-Day

Friday, August 17, 2007

Sold Out

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5061221.html

PEARLAND - Korean War veteran Nyles Reed, 75, opened an envelope last week to learn a Purple Heart had been approved for injuries he sustained as a Marine on June 22, 1952.

But there was no medal. Just a certificate and a form stating that the medal was "out of stock."

"I can imagine, of course, with what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's a big shortage," Reed said. "At least, I would imagine so."

The form letter from the Navy Personnel Command told Reed he could wait 90 days and resubmit an application, or buy his own medal.

After waiting 55 years, however, Reed decided to pay $42 for his own Purple Heart and accompanying ribbon, plus state sales taxes, at a military surplus store.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Where They Are

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2185

"the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
March 30, 2003

*

Yes Dick Cheney really did say this:

http://failover.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-iraq.html

A video has surfaced of Mr. Cheney's stunning 1994 appraisal of the likely outcomes of a war and of the occupation of Iraq. "How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our view was not very many, and I think we got it right," he said. See the video here:

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/cheneyvideo.html?r=2879&id=10983-5474646-u578aV

Mr. Cheney's office responded to this; "he was not Vice President at the time."

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_227234128.html

As many as 500 Innocent people were killed in one single attack earlier this week. The explosions leveled entire neighborhoods. And it still goes on.

License to Boat

An email sent to me recently...

Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 08:35:44 -0700 (PDT)
From:
To:
Subject:

I was reading a regional boating publication yesterday and came across a two page rant from some guy that is sick and tired of being stopped mutiple times by multiple agencies almost every time he takes his boat out. He started logging when it happened and a DEP (department of environmental protection) cop asked him what he was writing. The scene just got ugly from there. He's been stopped by county sheriff departments, state police, DEP, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, etc. etc. etc.

He was having lunch while anchored one day and when he went to pull his anchor a sheriff's boat came screaming over with full lights and everything and DEMANDED to know what he was doing EXACTLY. Uhh, pulling up my anchor. Apparently that's on the list of suspicious activities or something.

I hate what this country is becoming.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Fat Fee

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/070802/aug2007db2007081804238.html?.v=1&.pf=insurance

"In late June, the Indianapolis-based hospital system announced that starting in 2009, it will fine employees $10 per paycheck if their body mass index (BMI, a ratio of height to weight that measures body fat) is over 30. If their cholesterol, blood pressure, and glucose levels are too high, they'll be charged $5 for each standard they don't meet. Ditto if they smoke: Starting next year, they'll be charged another $5 in each check."

Poor health costs. It drains the economy, and it impacts far more than just individuals. The state of health in America is an international embarrassment.


Tuesday, August 14, 2007

I Sure Am Popular

These spams are up to about 25 per day, and rising.


Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:16:50 -0400
From: muzteach@opentable.com
To:
Subject: Movie-quality ecard

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Here's another one...

Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:16:39 -0400
From: slocum@kidsii.com
To:
Subject: Holiday ecard

Colleague() has created Holiday ecard for you at greet2k.com.

To see your custom Holiday ecard, simply click on the following link:

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New Accord

The US can't increase mileage standards because it's too technically difficult, impractical from an engineering prospective and would wreck the economy... You know the drill. Every time the possibility comes up a parade of lobbyists storm capital hill.

Now granted, people are stupid. They do, many do, insist on wildly impractical, unethical and generally HUGE automobiles to drive 10 blocks to do their grocery shopping in. But fads won't last. American companies had better be ready for change. Because slightly more responsible companies overseas will be.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/fuel-efficiency/new-honda-accord-diesel-gets-nearly-63-miles-per-gallon-283911.php

"Fuel-economy mavens take note. Honda recently showed off an alternative to hybrid cars at a Sacramento car show: a diesel-powered Accord that is scheduled to hit the American market in 2010. Unlike a hybrid, the diesel promises more power, but it still gets a whopping 62.8 mpg."

What we have here is a great example of an industrial strategy where the "free market" fails to produce to greatest good for the greatest number. Industry has done a cost-benefit analysis and determined beyond all doubt that it is cheaper to protect its market share by lobbying Congress than it is to design, produce and market a more advanced product. Cheaper in the short term... In the long term, the better product is perfected overseas, and American jobs are lost from an already slim manufacturing base.

Oh yes, people are stupid.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Freedom

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

-- Rudy Guiliani in a 1994 speech

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260

Friday, August 10, 2007

Downer

August 9th the DOW closed down 387 points at 12,270.

The mortgage issue is a mortgage issue. It's an issue of poor business chooses and practices in one part of one industry. It's clearly not impacting the economy. Second-quarter corporate earnings exceeded expectations all over the place, and the government reported the best quarterly economic growth since the beginning of 2006. Core inflation declined to the lowest level in three years.

Hopefully the hysterics in the NYSE will not rise to the level of self-fulfilling prophecy. No doubt some in the predatory loan business would like that to happen. Then they could argue for a handout from the government to recover their loses, without regard to home owners naturally.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Vegetables

It's that time of year again; harvest time.

Every office has at least one urban farmer that brings their extra zucchini to work so everyone can "take some home. " They always say the same thing, "ya, we planted too much and they just went crazy!"

They then proceed to regale us with tales for these giant vegetables and huge tangles of leafy vines that have taken other their backyard. People come and go, jobs come and go, but there's always one. Every year, the same thing. "We have so much of this stuff we can't possibly eat it all! Hope someone here will take it home..."

Well then why on earth did you grow it?!
And why on earth do you do this same exact thing every single year and then complain about it?!

The vegetables sit in lunchroom for days... One or two people take one each, because that's all any sane person needs.

People are stupid.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

On the Market

The NYSE supposedly drops because of "worries" about sub-prime mortgages. Well, the "worry" is that the problems in that industry will lead to a general credit squeeze thus dampening economic activity and thus impacting profits, and thus impacting the stock markets.

By dropping now, in other words, the market is expressing concern about a future speculation that may occur, if a credit squeeze happens. Now, the market is nearly always priced on a basis of speculation about the future (that's what investing is), but this a clear case of speculation about speculation that might occur in the future, *if* something else happens in the credit markets (also, plainly, driven by speculation, since after all that's what an interest rate is).

The only thing increased sub-prime mortgage defaults have impacted so far, aside from from individual home owners, is the stock market. Nearly all other financial indicators are solid and looking good.

Yesterday, American Home Mortgage filed for chapter 11 protection and the S&P 500 went up 2.4%. Stocks regained pretty much all the ground lost the prior Friday, the worst single day loss in years.

We live in an era of a very different style of Fed management, from the '70s and '80s. The market is also much larger, and much more connected overseas, than it's ever been.

If extremely volitility is a bad thing (if). Traders are just going to have get over themselves.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Someone Had To Do A Study To Find This Out?

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0230737820070803?feedType=RSS

In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

...

They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

People who are bad at their jobs, managers in this case, get rewarded rather than punished. I have never worked anywhere where this was not the case to at least a degree, and further where the organization suffered greatly for it. Faulty human organizational infrastructure is a driving force behind the failure of strategic corporate initiatives, technological projects and entire business plans. Everyone sees this. No one in a position to do so takes corrective action. Failure results.

People are stupid.





Thursday, August 2, 2007

Wesley

He's right you know...

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/08/darryl-issa-is-.html

Honestly I don't expect lawmakers at the Congressional level to know very much about Internet technologies (although some of them actually do). Things have changed too much and too fast. But it's unfortunate and dangerous for consumers that so many of them really have no idea about how these things work.

It's particularly dangerous at this time when new frequencies are being auctioned and philosophical business issues like "net neutrality" are being debated. And all this is on top of the all too easy to stir up hysterics about pornography, violence, and gambling - red herrings all.

I'm not sure what the solutions should be to get good legal frameworks established, but I know this. As a strategic matter it is generally more cost effective for business to loby the government then actually invest in research, superior technologies and new business models. That's a recipe for broad-band backwater, useless lock-in technologies designed by marketers instead of engineers, less choice for consumers, and a less competitive United States.

People are stupid.

Corn

Reality Check

Ethanol based fuels do not burn cleaner than gasoline. Ethanol is not cheaper to make or distribute than gasoline. Ethanol is not in any way "greener" than gasoline and is in fact in some ways worse than gasoline.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethanol_scam_ethanol_hurts_the_environment_and_is_one_of_americas_biggest_political_boondoggles/2

"In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 -- that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That's a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source."

When these total carbon ratios are calculated for various energy sources, from wind to waves, there are some inescapable conclusions. Failing some sort of fabulous technological discovery (that no one thinks will happen), 1) we will likely be building a lot more nuclear plants, and 2) we can not completely replace our current rate of energy consumption with anything we know of (society will be forced to make significant structural changes, globally, one way or another). Given what we know today, this is unavoidable.

"The ethanol boondoggle is largely a tribute to the political muscle of a single company: agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethanol_scam_ethanol_hurts_the_environment_and_is_one_of_americas_biggest_political_boondoggles/2


As usual...

"...corn production depends on huge amounts of fossil fuel -- not just the diesel needed to plow fields and transport crops, but also the vast quantities of natural gas used to produce fertilizers. Runoff from industrial-scale cornfields also silts up the Mississippi River and creates a vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. What's more, when corn ethanol is burned in vehicles, it is as dirty as conventional gasoline and does little to solve global warming: E85 reduces carbon dioxide emissions by a modest fifteen percent at best, while fueling the destruction of tropical forests."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethanol_scam_ethanol_hurts_the_environment_and_is_one_of_americas_biggest_political_boondoggles/2

Not just America, but the global human population is at a crisis point; a point at which we have our last decades available to make changes that may overt economic, political and environmental disasters that could, and probably would, lead to the downfall of this current incarnation of human civilization. But people will do nothing, no matter what, until it is already much too late. The "idea" (and that's all it is, a well marketed idea where by a few will reap a great short term profit) of an ethanol-based energy infrastructure is not just fiction, it's likely dangerous.

But wait, aren't there technologies for creating alcohol from corn fiber using organic processes? There's two points, 1) the technology affectively does not exist as a practical matter so the idea of adopting ethanol as energy policy now is very premature. And 2) why corn at all? Well, a look at the Senators backing this and where they are from answers that.

Meanwhile, America continues to have some of the worst automobile mileage standards of all major nations, including China. This whole thing has nothing to do with creating a more responsible energy policy.

America continues to avoid the real heavy lifting it will have to do, one way or another, someday; use less energy. Much, much less energy. We either do that in a planned organized way, or nature will do it for us and we'll find ourselves returned to some sort of bronze age. It's one way or the other.

I know which outcome I'd bet on. People are stupid.



Wednesday, August 1, 2007

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