Another reason to love eBay

As if Luke Skywalker's Land Speeder weren't enough, now eBay brings us this.

Fscking Spammers

I was poking around this morning and found this. Time to rework the feedback mechanism to incorporate bayesian filtering? But who has the time for that?

I'm guessing this was a trial run for someone's spamming software. If it gets out of hand, I'll disable the feedback in the interim. Not like anyone really uses it much.

You can't beat a woman

Here's a story about an imam who was expelled from France because he said that the Koran authorized the beating of an adulterous wife.

And there's more, he admitted that he was polygamous. The Koran says it's ok for him to have relations with as many women as he wants, but if one of his wives sleeps with another man, he is allowed to beat her.

The good imam also hopes "the entire world becomes Muslim." Over my dead body.

This is not the first time I've mentioned this subject in this blog. Some belief systems really are worse than others.

Here kitty, kitty...

The following hoax appeared in my inbox this morning:

===== Begin Message =====
FYI, some believe a conspiracy is a foot and that the KS wildlife secretly introduced a number of these into the KS wild. They deny it, this is the second case of one being killed in the last year. One was also hit by a car crossing a hi-way. Numerous sightings of these big cats have occurred in the last year with numerous pictures and statements by creditable people. I guess they could be aliens.

Big Cats in Kansas
This mountain lion was shot near Leon, KS. This guy was going deer
hunting when he heard his neighbors cows making noises. He discovered this cat attacking some calves. He shot it and reportedly the cat jumped eight feet into the air, ran about 100 yards and died. The man in the picture is over 6 feet tall and the cat weighed over 200 pounds.

Don't believe I would want to meet one of these in a dark alley.
Let's see the Kansas Fish & Game laugh this one off.
===== End Message =====

Here's the picture that was attached:



Uh forget about "Dark alleys." The only place I want to meet up with one of these is either at the zoo, or when I'm well armed in the field.

As I said, this may be a hoax, but several individuals claim they have seen one of these running around my home town. Scat collected from a wooded area across the street from my house has been sent to a lab for DNA analysis and the result was that it came from a big cat, though Kansas game officials still deny the claims. For what purpose?

Here's more info from a local fish wrap.

The golf course mentioned in some of the articles is the same golf course where my children and I go for walks nearly every night. Shouldn't I be allowed to carry a handgun in the event this thing things my daughters would make a fitting meal?

It's the Most Wonderful Day of the Year!

According to this Associated Press article American individuals filing tax returns are spending an average of 28 hours to prepare the required documents.

Paying taxes doesn't bother me too much, but I disagree with how the money is being spent and I think the system could use an enema.

According to the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice who were handing out dead tree propaganda at the local post tonight, fully half of our the U.S. discretionary budget for 2004 is "Military" expenditures.

However, according to these documents posted by the U.S. Government, only 48% of discretionary monies are spent on "Defense", perhaps there's some semantic difference between "Military" and "Defense" that pushes it up a couple of percentage points (or $28 billion). Forty-eight percent of the discretionary budget for 2004 amounts to $390 billion, give or take a few dollars.

Of greater concern are inconsistencies between the Coalition's propaganda and the Government's documents, like "discretionary non-military budget items" on the Coalition's list that are listed as "Mandatory" expenditures on the Government's list.

These mandatory items amount to $1.1 trillion for 2004. The total budget for 2004 is $2.1 trillion, plus or minus 42 cents.

Anyhow, I'm not sure I should believe the Coalition's handout when it says the "U.S. military spending exceeds that of all the other nations of the world combined." Given their previous accuracy, they may be close or completely wrong.

Most of this is besides the point. I'll grant that it's terribly expsensive to maintain the world's greatest military. But is it a good value? And this is where the Coalition's tract was going. We're spending nearly half of our discretionary budget on "Defense", but are we as safe as we could be for the same amount of money?

I don't think so, but that's another post.

My wife and I have done our own taxes for several years running and due to many variables, it's a complicated ordeal. I wouldn't put it at 28 hours, but my math is not that good, or I don't want to face the truth. Certainly it's a painful process, and for what?

I paid nearly 10% of my income to the state and federal governments in income taxes. If our government could simplify this system, they could get a more accurate accounting of the money going round and would likely be able to eliminate thousands of jobs in the IRS.

If we close the loopholes that allowed 60% of U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes between 1996 and 2000, (source), we'd probably collect a lot more in taxes. Just think of the "Defense" we could buy then?! That's sarcasm, by the way. But maybe we could maintain our current ridiculous level of "Defense" spending and pay for fossil fuel rehab at the same time.

A friend of mine sent along a post, reportedly written by David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D, Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Goergia, though I've seen it elsewhere attributed to someone else.

Regardless, take a minute to follow the "elsewhere" link and read the analogy, then come back. I'll wait...

Nice story, but it presents an oversimplified view of the situation when you consider that according to these folks, the top 1% of the wealthiest households in the U.S. hold 30% of all the wealth in the U.S. and the top 20%, hold 80% of all U.S. wealth.

Sanctity of Marriage

Check out this piece by Adam Felber regarding our country's current crisis on the definition of marraige.

I first heard it on the radio last night and nearly had to pull over because it was so funny.