Halloween Freak Out

Was going to get some candy to give out, just because I hate the fact that Halloween trick-or-treating seems to be dying. Not because I enjoy it (I don't) but just because. But then I forgot. So there I am sitting at my computer upstairs and comes a knock on the door. Completely forgetting that it is Halloween I run downstairs to see who's at the door. The game is up. From the front door, thirty seven kids can see me coming down the stairs so I can't just hide and pretend not to be there. So I have to man up, open the door, and tell a HUGE crowd that I have no candy. Really sorry! Aah!

Infinite Possibilities

So once you discover that you can stuff a chicken breast with cheese, the possibilities are endless. Last night it was cheddar cheese and chipotle peppers with adobo sauce, topped with pepper bacon. Incredible. No point in even posting them on the recipe blog with pictures cause they all look the same and they are all just as good as the last.

Spotty Bloggers Anonymous

Well, inspiration strikes from many quarters. Harv over at Bad Example mentioned Spotty Bloggers Anonymous. The goal is to post 69 days in a row, even if they aren't that great. Long term, I guess the idea is to get into the habit of putting up something each day so that you don't feel like each post has to be great. That way, madness lies. Harv also suggests a really sucky post at the beginning. You can think about why. Or not. Today is day two since I decided on Saturday but didn't mention it til now. 67 to go. Should be fun. And maybe frustrating.

Living Like the King of Spain

"one in seven Americans the government categorizes as poor in the United States enjoys nutrition, leisure, entertainment, and health care superior to those available to the king of Spain in the 16th century"

What is poverty in the United States today?

Here is a direct link to the .pdf article on the Heritage Foundation website.

And here are the highlights if you don't want to read the whole article. Reading is so time consuming, after all.

• The typical poor household, as defined by the
  government, has a car and air conditioning,
  two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a
  DVD player, and a VCR. If there are children,
  especially boys, the family has a game system,
  such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• In the kitchen, the household has a refrigerator,
  an oven and stove, and a microwave.
  Other household conveniences include a
  clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a
  cordless phone, and a coffee maker.
• The home of the typical poor family is in
  good repair and is not overcrowded. In fact,
  the typical average poor American has more
  living space in his home than the average
  (non-poor) European has.
• By its own report, the typical poor family was
  not hungry, was able to obtain medical care
  when needed, and had sufficient funds during
  the past year to meet all essential needs.

So is it possible that the whole "Occupy" movement doesn't really care about income equality as a means of alleviating poverty, but instead wants to advance their ideological preferences of socialism and radical egalitarianism?

Income Inequality Explained

I wasn't familiar with Richard Epstein until I stumbled across this video on PBS. Turns out he is a law professor at New York University School of Law and a libertarian. In this video he makes a compelling case that income inequality is beneficial when it occurs naturally in a free society.

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

I'm ordering his book Simple Rules for a Complex World from Amazon because I want to read more of what he has to say. The synopsis of his book says it is about simplifying the legal code since complex rules create excessive costs. Should be interesting.

Scoremobile Push Feeds Working Again

So one could argue that I have become a technology junkie, a slave to my mobile phone. I would argue that this is a case where technology actually benefits me and makes my life more productive and happy (unlike blogger.com which just rips up huge junks of my day while I post meaningless drivel and read that of other bloggers for my own entertainment.) In this case Scoremobile will actually notify me in advance of my favorite sports teams playing a game and let me know when someone scores in the aforementioned game. If you are not sports fans this may not seem significant, but for me I no longer have to spend any time at all wondering when my teams play or checking scores. My phone makes a cool lightsaber sound (I know, that was redundant, lightsaber sounds are cool by definition), and when I look it tells me that the Canucks game starts in 15 minutes. If I am near a TV (I am), and not doing anything else (I'm not), I can turn on the game. If the answer to my questions are (I'm not or I am, respectively), I can still find out what is happening with almost no effort on my part. This is a good thing.

Anyway, the push feeds weren't working (see title). Amazingly, I actually got a notification from Scoremobile that they were working to fix the problem, instead of the usual "treat them like mushrooms" philosophies that most software and web companies seem to adopt. Today it is working again. Just got the aforementioned Canucks notification.

Speed Racer

OK. Imagine this. You want to put on a TV show where you are going to invite celebrities to race around a closed track. Each week a celebrity will do timed laps and will then be added to the list, showing where they stand relative to the other celebrities. But here's the kicker. They will race in a Kia Cee'd.

This is hysterical. The front right wheel actually fell off the car when Lionel Richie was racing it. In previous years they have raced a Chevrolet Lacetti and a Suzuki Liana.

If you want to see more, watch Top Gear on BBC America.

Hidden Taxes

Swedes, on average, think that they only pay 40% of their income in taxes, when the actual figure is 63%. The median (middle) Swede thinks that they only pay 35%. So half the country thinks that the actual tax burden is almost half what it actually is.

Fiscal Illusion

I wonder what percentage of Americans could correctly identify the average overall tax rates that they are paying.

One of the selling points of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan is that it moves much of the tax burden into public view by eliminating hidden taxes (like payroll tax) and replacing them with direct taxes such as sales and income.

On the Matter of Processed Cheese

An interesting article. by The Sagacious Iconoclast.

Synopsis: All cheese is processed. Live with it and decide what you like by tasting it, not by what the label says.

(Elevation) Signs, (Elevation) Signs, Everywhere There's (Elevation) Signs

As I rode to Albuquerque this summer I routinely passed signs telling me the elevation, generally at the top of a pass (although one state had random signs that appeared to be at a certain elevation, rather than a certain place). After I had ridden through the sixth or seventh pass that was above 7,000 ft I stopped counting passes that were above 6,000 feet. Then I rode through a couple that were marked above 8,000 feet (btw, if you suddenly realize that your Harley doesn't seem to have as much power as it did, first think elevation rather than mechanical problems).

As I rode to Lillooet, BC a couple months ago I rode over the Jackass Mountain Pass summit. It had a sign that told me I was barely 1000 feet above sea level (361m if you are really anal retentive).

So this got me thinking. Do we really care that a place is 1000 feet above sea level? Isn't the point of the 7,896 foot sign to tell you how ridiculously high up you are? Come one, that's a mile and a half! That sign lets me know that I: a) shouldn't try to run a marathon (or go for a long walk, for that matter) b)should expect to have trouble with my carburetted Harley, and c) should buy a really good star map if I camp out up here. What on earth does the 1000 ft sign tell me? "This place isn't really special at all because all we just did is ride up a miniscule little hill that wouldn't even be much use for sledding in winter"?

MYOB

Short for Mind Your Own Business, in case you didn't know.

How about if the gov't just stays the hell out of our business? I can eat as much salt as I want, and if I don't like the amount in HP sauce (for the record, I think it tastes fine) I'll stop eating it.

HP Sauce recipe changed after government pressure

I'm So Confused

Greed is bad,

buy our junk.

Which is it? Seriously guys. I didn't buy a Jimmy Buffett T at the Fruitcakes tour in 1994 cause they wanted too much money for it. We spent the evening laughing about Jimmy "making music for money" but we didn't protest Jimmy or try to keep him from doing his thing.

If greed is the problem, why is OK to sell a crappy "Occupy Wall Street" t-shirt for $30 on ebay. Sounds pretty greedy to me. Maybe you should go get a productive job and make your own money instead of trying to tear down a system that has resulted in more productivity, more freedom, and more wealth mobility than any other system in the history of the world.

Seriously. Go away.

Next Blog?

So up at the top of my blog page (as I see it) is a link called "Next Blog". No idea what it does.

Maybe it is some sort of Minority Report thing where blogspot tells me what I am going to do in the future. That would be cool. I wouldn't have to spend as much time thinking up cool ideas and could go to the range (or grade all those tests that are sitting on my desk).

Or maybe it is a random generator that takes me to another blog. In that case, why not call it "Random Blog" or "I feel lucky" (Oh, wait, google already got that one) (Oh, double wait, blogspot is a google company). Anyway.

Maybe blogspot parses my posts and blogs I've subscribed to and has put together a list of things I might be interested in.

Maybe Next Blog actually means that there is a giant list of blogs stored in the computer somewhere and I will go to the Next One on the list if I click the button. Well, if that's true, what a stupid button. It would take me to the same place every time unless the list changes.

Well, only one way to find out.

Trauko Metal Attack. Guess what, not as interesting as it sounds. It isn't Trauko's blog devoted to ways to survive during the next global holocaust with a stockpile of awesome yet legally available weapons (which of course would only be a knife with a blade under three inches in most countries in the world), it isn't a collection of pictures of main battle tanks, nope, nothing like that.

Nope. Instead it's some cheesy metal band and not only that, it's all in Spanish. Which I don't read. Huh? WTF? Is is alphabetical? T doesn't come after V so that theory is out. Random? Why not call it random? What makes Traukometalattack the next blog? Is there a way to pony up a little cash to ensure that you are the next blog? Or is it luck of the draw?

I guess next time I am really bored I'll click it again and see if Trauko is still next on the list.

PS: Trauko, dude, link to some of your music or something. And put something in English. Most of the world speaks at least a smattering of English, including Chileans (at least they seemed to when I visited). Maybe if I knew just enough to click on some of the links I'd discover that Chilean Cheese Metal is my next passion.

PPS: I must really not want to grade that giant stack of tests. Here is a sample from the website. "Acá les dejo el disco de la mejor banda de Chiloé" I don't know. Something about disco. "mejor banda"? Major band? Really? Then people get mad when we just add an "a" to the end of an English word and speak with an accent to pretend we know Spanish? (OK to be fair, usually people are making fun when they do that so I'll concede that point). From what I can tell, Trauko Metal Attack (stupid band name, btw) is the biggest disco band in Chile. Although their picture looks like cheese metal and there are all sorts of skull type drawings. Oh well. I've probably wasted enough of your my time here. If your time was wasted it's because you kept reading, even after you figured out that this post was meaningless.

Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

From Borak:

Janis on Wall Street