Archive for April 2011
waiting on that FAT $8.01 tax refund
I used Intuit Turbo Tax Online, FREE if you have a simple tax return.
Each year I find those online services better than the last.
But when, after finishing on Turbo Tax, I went to submit my .tax file to Revenue Canada via NETFILE, I found I did not have my four-digit access number.
Instead I printed the PDF. And sent it by snail.
… your taxes filed?
Last Typewriter Factory CLOSES
Oh NO.
How am I going to replace my IBM Selectric after it dies ??
After selling only 800 models last year – down from over 10,000 as recently as 2009 – the last typewriter factory in the world (according to The Daily Mail) has closed its doors and halted production. The factory was run by Godrej and Boyce and was based in Mumbai, India. …
Don’t you think taxpayers should subsidize that last factory?
why is the ‘Midwest’ north-central?
The Midwestern United States (in the U.S. generally referred to as the Midwest) is one of the four geographic regions within the United States of America used by the United States Census Bureau in its reporting.
The region consists of 12 states in the north-central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. …
Donald Trump ‘proud of himself’
Trump, for me, has been some sort of bizarre comic figure. I couldn’t care less about him.
It didn’t seem possible that there could be anything more embarrassing about The Donald than his hair …
Now there is. This press conference video.
The Onion responds – Donald Trump Under Pressure To Prove He’s Not A Pathetic Sack Of Human Scum
FOX News remains the dominant cable network by a mile. But their Prime Time ratings are finally slipping.
I’m hoping we’ll soon see more American Idol on Fox, less Trump. That he could be considered a candidate for American President is as sad and insane as his hair.
in defense of Ayn Rand
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs.”
- Attributed to Paul Krugman.
Atlas Shrugged had that effect on me.
… explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society.
The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry (including Taggart Transcontinental, the once mighty transcontinental railroad for which she serves as the Vice President of Operations), while society’s most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. …
I’ve given Atlas Shrugged to a number of teens. It’s an important book …
Kids need to learn that all men are not created equal, rather that all men should have equal opportunity.
Kids need to learn that we should promote and encourage greatness.
Kids need to learn that authority organizations can ruin their lives ... OK, they already know that.
Now I find myself defending Ayn Rand alongside fans as odious as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That does hurt.
The new Ayn Rand movie adaptation Atlas Shrugged Part 1 got nuked and ridiculed on the Slate Culture Gabfest audiocast.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
I’m going to see it. Unfortunately the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said:
… that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.
“Critics, you won,” …
I hope he joins Gault and makes the two sequels.
California – extreme democracy gone wrong
… California is now called a “dysfunctional”, “ungovernable” and even “failed” state. When Mr Brown began his first stint as governor, California had an AAA credit rating, the best there is. Today its rating is A-, the worst among all 50 states and not much better than “junk”. The boss of JPMorgan Chase, America’s second-largest bank, last year told investors that he was more worried about California’s solvency than Greece’s. For three years and counting, California has been mired in a budget crisis. At its nadir, the state was paying its bills in IOUs instead of cash. …
I’ve never understood how California can be failing. This article helps clarify:
The people’s will
California is an experiment in extreme democracy gone wrong, says Andreas Kluth. But reform could make it a model for others …
starting in 1978, the culture and system mutated. Jerry Brown was governor when Californians passed Proposition 13, ostensibly an anti-tax measure but in reality a fundamental constitutional change with vast, and mostly unforeseen, consequences. It led to hundreds of ballot measures as citizens increasingly legislated directly and in tense competition with their own representatives.
Economist blames “voter initiatives”. What seemed like a good idea at the time, doesn’t seem to work in practice.
Better than the article is the accompanying audiocast – Lessons from California – The Perils of Extreme Democracy
#hotmail sucks WORSE than ever
Each new feature added seems to further ruin the user experience for me.
Last year they made it impossible to page back. How can that be good for anyone?
Today I received a perfectly normal email … and could not open the attachments. Some sort of improvement in how you view photos resulted in this:
Now images cannot be opened in a new tab. And these wouldn’t display in Firefox on a new Mac. Nor could I close that blank black box.
I finally forwarded to Gmail where it opened perfectly.
People would abandon Hotmail by the hundreds of thousands … if only they’d let us forward our email.
#HotmailSucks
traffic jam crossing the Erie Canal
Niagara Falls in winter
The weather too lousy to hike, I visited Niagara Falls Ontario, instead, last week.
Sure $14 seems expensive to enter an empty parking lot, but that money (I assume) goes to pay for some of the landscaping. These streamers decorating the bare trees, for example.
Niagara on the Canadian side is like a frozen Reno, … but not quite so classy. I’d think twice before getting married, if contingent on honeymooning here.
… maybe I should return in Summer.
