Playing around with Sketchup and Photoshop.

After going through some *tricks* from the Google SketchUp Cookbook I decided to play around with a simple model and dress it up in Photoshop.  I know, whatever, it's simple playing around with ambiguous forms, but these things tend to lead to other ideas.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

How I would restructure US taxes.

I want to see the income tax become even more progressive, with 12 tax brackets instead of 6, and I want the first $11,000 (or basically what is just slightly above the US federal poverty guideline for a single person) to not be taxed, because it makes no sense to tax someone that is so poor, that they receive federal money for food stamps and Medicaid.

I want the income tax bracket for individuals to be as follows:

• 45% over $10,000,000;
• 42% over $1,000,000 but below $10,000,000;
• 40% over $500,000 but below $1,000,000;
• 38% over $250,000 but below $500,000;
• 35% over $125,000 but below $250,000;
• 30% over $75,000 but below $125,000;
• 25% over $50,000 but below $75,000;
• 20% over $35,000 but below $50,000;
• 15% over $25,000 but below $35,000;
• 10% over $15,000 but below $25,000;
• 05% over $11,000 but below $15,000;
• 00% below $11,000

I want to see capital gains taxed at four rates:

• 7+ years: 00%
• 2-5 years: 10%
• more than 6 months but less than 2 years: your ordinary income tax rate
• less than 6 months (day traders and speculators): your ordinary income tax rate + 10%

I would have the following six tax rates of estates:

• 40%: over $100,000,000
• 25%: over $10,000,000 but below $100,000,000
• 20%: over $2,000,000 but below $10,000,000
• 10%: over $500,000 but below $2,000,000
• 05%: over $250,000 but below $500,000
• 00%: under $250,000

I would have the following domestic corporate income tax rates:

• 35% over $100,000,000
• 32% over $10,000,000 but below $100,000,000
• 30% over $1,000,000 but below $10,000,000
• 25% over $500,000 but below $500,000
• 20% over $250,000 but below $125,000
• 15% over $75,000 but below $125,000
• 10% over $25,000 but below $75,000
• 05% below $25,000

And I would have the following foreign income corporate income tax rates:

• 50% over $100,000,000
• 45% over $10,000,000 but below $100,000,000
• 40% over $1,000,000 but below $10,000,000
• 35% over $500,000 but below $500,000
• 30% over $250,000 but below $125,000
• 25% over $75,000 but below $125,000
• 20% over $25,000 but below $75,000
• 15% below $25,000

Now, many people will insist that this is redistribution of wealth, but that's hardly the case.  What this proposal does, is recirculate money into the system, so that the ultra-rich cannot remove vast amounts of it from circulation on a near-permanent basis by creating huge estates of savings that then get passed along to their heirs, which are often set up in low-tax schemes.

Also, the corporate income rates are scaled such that, it tends to encourage small businesses domestically, while discouraging the exportation of jobs overseas in manufacturing.

Movie studios think people will pay $30 to rental movie streaming.

No really, they are contemplating the idea that people are willing to pay $30 per movie, to stream at home, before you can either get it on cable, Netflix or buy the DVD/BluRay.  The top 2% no doubt are excited.  The other 98% were last heard and seen rolling on the floor, laughing out loud.

Southwest Air is growing; most everyone else is contracting.

The NYT has an article about Southwest Air's purchase of ATA for $1.4B, which is significant in itself, if for no other reason than the fact that I love Southwest for its low prices and no baggage fee (for your first 2 checked in luggage).  But what's caught my attention is the side graphics, showing that of the major US airlines, all but Jet Blue and Southwest have been shrinking.  But whereas Jet Blue is in its relative infancy, Southwest is now the largest US airlines.

Image via NYT

When a Chinese company tries to sell fake Chinese products...

You get a battery made for the HT G1.  I dunno, should I get one for my HTC G1?

Mr. Colbert goes to Washington!

What's better than Stephen Colbert speaking before a Congressional panel on illegal immigration?  The people behind him, trying to maintain composure.

Republicans shoot down campaign finance disclosure bill; Democrats cower on Bush Tax issue.

Apparently thrilled that corporations are now able to hide their money in political campaigns, Republicans in unison, voted against allowing the Disclose Act from ending debate in the Senate, and preventing a vote on the bill itself, even though it passed the House three months ago.

If passed, the Disclose Act would have required corporations to disclose their political spending, and barred government contractors from spending directly on elections. Makes sense, because people should have the right to know which candidates companies are spending their money on, and contractors would have a clear, self-serving interest in supporting or getting rid of members of Congress, in what is an obvious quid pro quo.  After all, wouldn't you want to know if KBR was pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars to support pro-war members of Congress, in an effort to maintain a war machine?

In related news, Senate leader Harry Reid has put off a vote on the Bush tax cuts set to expire this year, until after the elections.

That's a cop out and a failed strategy, if I've ever seen one.  Seeing as only about 1/3 of Americans polled support extending all tax cuts, the Democratic leadership just caved in to their Blue Dogs for no good reason.  That money could have been diverted towards the REAL small businesses whose direct investment in new software and equipment could have driven manufacturing and job growth, as opposed to tax cuts for those who pass their income directly to their 1040 via Schedule C.

I am annoyed.

China's got the free trade thing backwards.

China's upset that Japan has detained a ship's captain after he reportedly rammed Japanese coast guard boats in an area of islands that are disputed between China and Japan.

China has retaliated by canceling a meeting over the possible joint-exploration for natural gas of another disputed region, among other things.  And now, China has blocked the export of goods to Japan, particularly rare earth materials.

Now, that just seems short-sighted.  Cutting off supplies and natural resources will only encourage the US to export more to Japan.  But more than that, it raises prices outside of China while concurrently lowers prices inside of China and discourages mining operations in China (as supply exceeds demand).  It also ends up encouraging other nations to go searching for rare earth resources outside of China, which is something China would probably NOT want to happen.  That is to say, China wouldn't like it much if someone did find huge reserves of rare earth materials - say in Canada or the US - and find that its own mines are now in competition.  I say, don't count US and Canada out, because North America is astoundingly rich in natural resources, from natural gas, to shale oil, tungsten, copper, uranium, nickel, silver and gold among others.  Combined with Australia, they could crowd out China in a trade war.

And as it is, China's actions could likely provoke Americans to push for a trade war, with their currency manipulation, strict import rules and requiring car manufacturers to share their EV secrets with China, in order to import vehicles.

I think China's grown an ego bigger than its britches.

Here's a shocker: Did you know the federal spending deficit shrank 13% in August?

Well, it's only a shocker to Conservatives, really.  You see, everyone who has a basic understanding of macroeconomics knew that when people are earning more and employment grows, so do tax receipts.

So it's no wonder that the budget deficit shrank in August.

The CBO is predicting that federal deficit spending will be 9.1% of GDP for 2010, which is a contrast of the warning of many Republican capitalists who have been going off on shrill warnings of out of control spending.  Never mind that, even while GDP was growing, Republicans chose to allow the federal deficit spending to increase.

Neat views of Jupiter in the sky.

Harvest moon is out, and it makes finding Jupiter that much easier in the sky, by telescope that is.  Jupiter also happens to be the closest to our own planet since 1963 and won't be this close until 2022.  I have a very old (20 years old), low power telescope, but amazingly, I can actually see the ring around Jupiter!  In fact, I can even see Jupiter's moons.  This image is close to what I can see, except that the ring is quite clear compared to this image, probably because of over-exposure in the image.

If you have a weak telescope, it is absolutely worth the effort to look at the ring and moons of Jupiter.

Oh, and don't stare at the moon forever with your telescope, because it is extremely bright.

You've got to be f'ing kidding me...earning $250,000 and crying about your cost of living?!?

A law professor at the U Chicago, on his own volition, wrote this post, lamenting the struggles of getting by on a combined household income of $250,000.  I kid you not, this whiner is complaining that his property tax is $15,000, to which the whole internet responded, "MOVE!"

"We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income."

What an idiot!  Someone, send him to STFU University!

4chan has been busy.

Previously bombarded a Justin Bieber poll, suggesting he perform in North Korea, the other day they targeted RIAA/MPAA with a DDOS attack, and now they've defaced the Tea Party's national website.

Poachers kill deer, accidentally land their truck on it, cited for stupidity.

Two men were driving their truck when they spotted a deer; stopped to shoot it and kill the deer; tried to back their vehicle out of the roadway but instead slid down a steep embankment; called to get help; officer notices dead deer has holes when truck is towed out; men admit to poaching, and are cited.

Curse of the poached deer or stupid people?

via PDX Traffic blog / Oregon State Police

"My resolution is the same as always. Keep her full and focused with my fiber."

You saw those frosted fiber cereal ads last month before the start of the school year, didn't you?  It cracked me up, every time I saw it, on so many levels.  It was so unbelievable - kids so eager to get back to school that they run in with smiles and cheers when the alarm goes off - I have no idea what sort of mind could come up with this ad.

But anyway, the comic cynic in me thought that the ad's most lame line should be turned into an Ad-Lib game of fill in the blanks:

"My resolution is the same as always.  Keep her ______ and ______ with my _____."

Much better, I think.

NIN's Trent Reznor's got more free downloads.

To support the new soundtrack album for the movie, "The Social Network", Reznor's got a free download sampler of 5 tracks (you have to register your email address to get the download link).  The link sends you to a site that also allows you to buy the physical album with various options.  I call it smart marketing, really.  Of course, you can probably find it on a torrent.

If you were expecting Reznor to sing, the 5 tracks are background movie music, but it's still very good.  Is he doing a Danny Elfman?

They've also set up a $2.99 price for digital download of the entire album on September 28 - 29 only, on Amazon.com.  That's less than what I paid for downloading Radiohead's exclusive In Rainbows album, when they allowed you to set your own price (I set my own price at $5).

It's not available yet on Amazon, so don't bother searching.

I was right: John Boehner and Republicans are lying about the Bush-era tax effect.

I posted earlier this week about how John Boehner made the ridiculous assertion on Face the Nation that half of all the income earned by small businesses would be affected by the expiration of the highest tier federal tax rate? The NYT did their own investigation:

"Because 80 percent of America’s 32 million businesses are sole proprietorships, 90 percent of the tax cut would be derived from businesses without employees."

-and-

"A report released by the Joint Tax Committee in July found that many of the tax returns categorized as small businesses were actually filed by wealthy taxpayers who earned business income through limited partnerships or S corporations to allow their firms to avoid paying corporate taxes."

Yes, I am calling John Boehner and Republicans LIARS.  The problem is, so few Americans have even a basic understanding of how taxes work for the self-employed or for that which is generated outside of being employed by a company, that they are easily misled into believing the Republican lies about what the effects of increasing the top tax bracket are.

---

Since 1982, we've had 3 changes of tax policy that have altered the top US marginal tax rate.  (You can track the changes in income tax rates here, and GDP here.)  Year Zero is the first year of each tax change.

Can you tell which of the three lines indicates a tax cut and which of the three indicates a tax increase?  One line reflects a marginal tax rate cut from 70% down to 28% by year 6; another reflects a marginal tax rate cut from 39.6% to 35% by year 3; another reflects a marginal tax rate increase from 28% to 39.6% by year 2.

The point of this exercise, is to question the Republican notion that GDP and the top marginal tax rate have a direct causal relationship.  That is to say, if you believe what Republicans are telling America and the world, then we should be able to clearly distinguish which of these time lines indicates a tax increase, right?

Woman who claimed acid attack was lying.

This hoax feels awfully similar: Ashley Todd.

But the joke's on this woman who threw acid on her own face...half-brained comes to mind.  Now that she's admitted to perpetrating a hoax, she's going to have to explain why she chose to use an African-American woman as her fake attacker to the media.

Her Christianity cred is in question.  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor?

And heck, she now has to live with her goofball image pasted all over the internet!

[Added: Psychologists on TV have suggested that she has a mental disease of having some unfulfilled need (probably a form of histrionic personality disorder). Well you know, the DSM also lists severe mental retardation as a mental disease; I wouldn't leave that one out of the picture here. You know, I'm just having a difficult time digging up sympathy for her. The bottom line is that she lied. She caused many other women to worry and many people donated money to help what they thought was a victim. As my sister would say, this woman is an idiot. What if some African American woman actually matched the false description that she gave, and was detained by the police? I mean, if she's got some unfulfilled personal needs, GET IN LINE. We ALL have unfulfilled personal needs.]

Small business bill passes Senate vote.

With renewed hopes of passing this bill after a July Republican filibuster, Democrats were able to bring the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 to a vote, and passed with two Republicans crossing the aisle.

According to the LA Times, the small business bill included an extension of SBA loan fee waivers, deduction for health care costs for self-employed, and immediate write offs of business equipment investments.

Any self-employed person - who has followed the IRS rules - would know that unlike companies who provide health care to their employees, self-employed persons had to follow the  7.5% AGI rule.  This bill basically corrects a long-standing wrong.

The House version also included $30B in direct help for small business lending via small banks, an allowance of 100% of proceeds from the sale of stock of small businesses to be tax-free, increases the start-up costs deduction from $5,000 to $10,000, and requires each executive agency to go over their documents and rewrite them in plain English.  That last item might sound odd, but people tend to write in a different style when they've been steeped in legalese / contract language for years.

Once reconciliation of the two bills is considered and both chambers re-vote on the bill, we will know what exactly made it to the final passage.

KC Joyner is wrong; strong conferences do not produce more Super Bowl wins.

I grabbed KC Joyner's book, "Blindsided; Why the left tackle is overrated and other contrarian football thoughts" from the library the other week, and I could immediately tell that something was wrong with his analysis. Now, I haven't gone through the whole book, but in one section, he poses the question, "Does the creampuff diet work for NFL teams?"

His conclusion, obviously, is that strong conferences produce Super Bowl winners.

I decided I should take a closer look at his data. Instead of trying to analyze how well each conference was in the playoffs and separating them into different eras (based on the changes of playoff formats), I merely grabbed the winning percentage of each conference for every year between 1970 and 2007 (his data) in which the Super Bowl winner came from.

It turns out, coming from the historically strongest and weakest conferences throughout the years, does not produce the most amount of Super Bowl wins. In fact, it looks a lot like a standard statistical bell curve, don't you think?

If you read his book, KC Joyner draws distinctions between periods of where the top-winning percentage conference produced the Super Bowl winner consistently, and other times when the opposite was true.  To me, there is a lack of consistency for his conclusion that strong conferences produce winners.  By recasting his data by looking directly at how conferences performed throughout the years, we can see that the real key to predicting which conference will produce a Super Bowl winner in any given season, is to look for the conference to win between 51~56%, with the mean at 53%.  Keep that in mind when evaluating the odds of any given Super Bowl, huh?

Great video of "luck", though in some cases, I'd call it "stupid"

No one dies (they're lucky) or gets seriously injured (no broken bones but maybe some scrapes), so don't worry.

via BoingBoing

John Boehner's plan for economic recovery.

Go back to 2008.

No seriously, that's what his goal is.  He has stated a 3 point plan:

1. Cut federal spending 22% to 2008 levels.
2. Remove laws and policies, including health care changes back to 2008.
3. Keep income tax rates at 2008 levels.

Don't believe me?  Go watch him on Face the Nation.

It's just mind-blowing that Republicans can proffer this simplistic idea of going back to exactly where we were in 2008, and expect the outcome to be BETTER, if we did nothing.

Of course, if Democrats had enough guts to do it, they could simply give the budget to John Boehner to solve where he'd cut 22%, and see how the markets - especially the bond markets - react to the Republican idea of cutting federal spending to 2008 levels.  Do it, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama...let them start the discussion about where they'd like to cut 22% of the federal budget, and let it come to a vote on the floors of both houses, and see how the markets react.

Did you listen to what John Boehner said on Face the Nation?

Did you happen to catch his fuzzy math and questionable logic?

Bob Schieffer pressed John Boehner on what he thought about the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation's report, which stated that only 3% of all small businesses would be affected by allowing the top tax bracket cut to expire.  Boehner responded:

"Well it may be 3%, but it's half of small business income, uh because uh, obviously the top 3% uh have half of the gross income, uh, for those companies that we would term small businesses."

Now, here's the thing.  I'm almost certain he's referring to an often-quoted figure, that approximately 3% of all Americans earn over $200,000, and are responsible for 52% of all taxes paid. (1)  It's either that, or he's using the Tax Policy Center's numbers where the top 2.2% of businesses affected, earn 40.3% of all the income. (2)  That is to say, there are a few people who earn huge sums of money from being a "small business", but the majority of small business owners, in fact, come nowhere near the average $718K income, of those 2.2% who would be affected by the 39.6% rate.

But I keep making the same point over and over to anyone who insists that a tax increase of the upper bracket would devastate job creation: HOW?  Most people running S-Corporations will reduce their cash to zero at the end of the year, to avoid paying taxes on it.  Where do you think Christmas bonuses come from?  Further, since you're subtracting business expenses such as payroll, your leftover income - that which is taxable - does not apply to the income you're paying a new hire.

But for argument's sake, let's say that you're one of those people who actually don't mind getting taxed and letting HUGE amounts of cash sitting in your company's bank account.  To be able to pay someone earning the federal minimum wage for a whole year, based on 40 hours, you'd have to have about $350,000, before the proposed tax difference at the top rate (35% increased to 39.6%) would be large enough to pay for that extra employee.

Of course, the middle-fifth percentile of households earned over $61,000 at the upper limit and $40,000 at the lower limit. (3)  If we examine the lower limit of the middle-fifth percentile, one would need to earn over $875,000 in order for the proposed tax change to effectively prevent you from hiring a new employee at that lower range of the middle-fifth percentile, otherwise known as the middle class.

Now, here's the real stinger.  In response to whether or not he'd vote for a continuation of the tax cuts for the middle class, John Boehner said:

"If that's what we can get done, but I think that's bad policy.  I don't think that's going to help our economy."

Well how about that, huh?  On the one hand, Republicans have been arguing that across the board tax cuts will get the country moving forward, but on the other hand, John Boehner just told us that a middle- and bottom-class tax cut would do diddly-squat!  Translation: John Boehner and Republicans believe that only tax cuts for the rich will get the economy moving forward!

Middle class folks, forget about that tax cut extension; Republicans don't think you'd do much to move the economy forward.

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703876404575200621394266894.html
(2) http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2783&DocTypeID=7
(3) =http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0678.pdf

Microsoft touts IE9's speed. Smoke screen, I say.

Microsoft announced that in a release of IE9 beta, it will have graphics hardware acceleration that beats Chrome and Firefox.  But it's like a half-truth, because at the point that Microsoft releases IE9 beta and finalized versions out to the public, we could be seeing Chrome 7 move out into the beta channel with support for graphics hardware acceleration.  And we already know that Chrome plans to release updates much faster than before.

But more than that, IE8 is severely lacking in support of web standards either using the ACID3 test or the HTML5Test, AND IE9 won't support XP.  So what this means, is that IE8's lack of support for HTML5 will cripple people who use XP while the internet moves to HTML5 over the next year.  And hey, just a reminder but IE8 also fails the javascript test (ECMA-262)

Of course, for those waiting to use IE9, PP4 still remains far behind Chrome 7, (and 6 dev channel) in the HTML5Test, and it's not clear that IE9 will beat Chrome, even when it moves into beta.

But we won't really know until Wednesday (Sept 15) when Microsoft is expected to release IE9 beta.  At that point, we'll be able to test it closely.  But don't expect it to support WebM open video codec standards.  In fact, Microsoft can't really help but be Microsoft, so you shouldn't be expecting it to support 100% standards; that is to say, we've heard that announcement before.

(And by the way, my harping on Microsoft doesn't mean that I strongly dislike them.  To the contrary, they have some great products in visual programming, security software, silverlight and photosynth.)

This just in: Meg Whitman's campaign lied, and refuses to admit it.

Apparently all of their spending isn't helping them gain an advantage in the California governor race, and have decided to go ahead with outright lies.  There is no gray area in this dispute, which makes is confounding why they would refuse to pull their new ad that cites completely false assertions.

Google Android growth in US.

Not that I trust Nielsen's numbers - I tend to believe other groups over Nielsen - but every metric shows Android having grown in US market share like crazy.

Both IDC and Gartner expect Android to continue to rise like crazy.  No doubt, in large part because of the first 4G phone in the US, from Sprint, and the Droid line of phones on Verizon.

via Silicon Valley Mercury News

The Conjunction to Nowhere.

I might have ranted about this before, but I keep running into it.  People seem to be in love with ending their sentences, when talking, with a conjunction.  Specifically, I have watched many interviews on the news, where people will end their sentences with "so".

Ex: "I was reading my book on the bus when the commotion occurred, so..."

From now on, I'm calling it the conjunction to nowhere.  It's an annoying, bad habit that has ticked up in popularity over the past handful of years.

My top-15 list of Pizzicato Five songs.

I think it was 1995 or 1996 when I first discovered them via their Twiggy Twiggy video on MTV, of all places.  Of course, P5 being from Japan, all of their music is import-issued...aka EXPENSIVE! -- Until recently, that is.  Now, you can grab a lot of their MP3s on the cheap at eMusic.  They also have a wide selection of MP3s at Amazon, though slightly more expensive than eMusic, but at a higher bitrate (256Kbps average) than eMusic (192Kbps average).*

Their specific J-POP style makes me smile...big smile.  So I thought I'd make a top-15 list of my favorite P5 songs (I had too difficult of a time limiting myself to 10 songs):

1. Magic Carpet Ride
2. Sweet Soul Revue
3. Twiggy Twiggy
4. Strawberry Sleighride
5. The Night Is Still Young
6. Contact (Percolator Mix)
7. Collision And Improvisation (The Shooter Remix)
8. Rock N' Roll
9. Go Go Dancer
10. Groovy Is My Name
11. Happy Sad
12. Good
13. A Perfect World
14. Tout, Tout Pour Ma Cherie
15. Airplane

*-If you ask me, I never rip my CDs as MP3s, because MP3 codec is a compression format that creates loss in audio fidelity, even if minute in scope and difference.  I only use FLAC to rip my CDs, which you can control to create lossless audio digital files.  They may be much larger than uncompressed, but they remain true to the original source (CD).  My favorite tool to rip FLAC files, is WinAmp (free version).  However, if you are in the Apple ecosystem, you cannot easily play back FLAC, and would have to rip your files to Apple Lossless format (MP4 files with the .m4a extension).  I consider this the primary reason why I will not touch Apple products, BTW.

[added: I should have checked earlier but it escaped me.  Amie Street has Pizzicato Five MP3s for very cheap.]

Chill Ambient music - my first taste.

I remember, in 1992, sitting in a movie theater waiting for the movie to start, and they were playing Enigma's MCMXC a.D. No one forgets Sadness Part 1.

I was hooked on the genre immediately.

The second album that I latched onto (five years later) - which I just dug out of my boxes of CDs - is Paul Schwartz and Mario Grigorov's Aria 1.  I know that track 4, "Dido" is popular, but I think I like track 6, "Pamina Blue" a bit more.

Austerity in Germany is a lie.

Total (local and federal spending) measured, via Paul Krugman's Blog. Amusing to say the least, that people continue to fall for public lies.

Bing...the cheap experience on Verizon?

According to Engadget, it appears that the top of the line Verizon Android phones will retain the full Google experience, while the lower-end smartphones will end up with Bing.

And I'm here to report, I've just come back from the future, where I overheard the following conversation: "You have Bing?  What's the matter, your parents couldn't afford Google?"

Nissan teaser ahead of Paris Motor Show

Yeah yeah, it's everywhere on the internet at this point, the Townpod EV concept.

So I thought I'd take a moment and look at some of the interesting vehicles Nissan makes but you can't purchase, if you live in the US or Canada, presumably because they're small vehicles.

Shall we?

The 2010 Nissan March / Micra

The 2010 Nissan Roox "Highway Star"

The 2010 Nissan Kix (which is actually a Mitsubishi Pajero Mini)

The 2008 (current design) Nissan Otti

The 2008 (current design) Nissan Serena

Polar bears love electric cars (Nissan Leaf)

Want to use your own Chrome Browser Theme?

It takes coordination and some playing around, but you can create your own themes online at Chrometheme.net.  If you review the Chromium website's outline of the sizes and elements (notice the numbers match to the image or item used at Chrometheme.net) you will be able to understand how to plan the size of images for your custom theme.

As mentioned, it takes some time to play around and here's my first try at a black-white theme.

Republican hypocrisy, Chris Dudley

We've heard about Meg Whitman's lack of voting for most of her life, and we've read about Carly Fiorina's lacking of leadership skills at HP, but now we have Chris Dudley, former Trailblazer, now running for Governor in Oregon.  So what did Dudley do?

Tax dodging.

It's not just that he tried to avoid taxes by "moving" to Washington, even though he had a home in Oregon, but he registered his own charity in California, even though it was located in Vernonia, Oregon.  And his charity failed to pay its taxes on time for 5 straight years, and of those 5 years, the charity spent more than it received.

Or put it this way: If he doesn't want to pay taxes in Oregon but wants to live here, why shouldn't ALL Oregonians follow his example and dodge all Oregon taxes?  I cannot help but see this as another case of IOKIYAR, or "do as I say, not as I do."

And that's downright irritating.

What I think of Twitter-ers.

I keep thinking of Paris Hilton's tweet about her handbag that was found with cocaine inside.

Spam crazy Gmail.

I think I hit a personal record with 11 spam emails in a day, today.  Spam filtering aside, it does you no good if you have to look at your spam box for accidentally re-routed emails, which to me, means that spam is ruling Gmail.

Seattle Kingdome...gone, but still not paid for?

Came across this article in the NYT, looking at NFL stadiums, and they had this graphic to show how much the public has paid towards NFL stadiums.  It was an article targeting the old Giants Stadium that was demolished and turned into a parking lot for the new Meadowlands Stadium, even while the public owes money on the old stadium.

The graphic makes a reference to the Seattle Kingdome that was demolished, and how the public owes more now than when the stadium was first built...partly a result of the remodel to repair ceiling tiles and other items, in 1997, that doubled the total cost of the facility.

How sad...paying down debt to a building that is no longer around.

Oracle and the Prince of Darkness.

Cracked me up.  I was following through on looking at how disparate Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison were, and I came upon this book:

The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison*

* - God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison.

---

And that was first published in 1997!

Housing problems, and how to deal with them.

I just started reading this idea about how the Obama Administration will have to choose between helping current homeowners or future homeowners.  The belief is that, so far, not much has worked to stimulate the housing market to drive it into a strong rebound, and therefore, something else completely different needs to be pursued:

"Some economists and analysts are now urging a dose of shock therapy that would greatly shift the benefits to future homeowners: Let the housing market crash.

When prices are lower, these experts argue, buyers will pour in, creating the elusive stability the government has spent billions upon billions trying to achieve."

This idea that future homeowners would benefit from some sort of "shock therapy" is pure folly for five reasons:

• Negative emotions spark irrational fear, especially when it comes to money.
• This one can be seen all the time, everywhere you look.  The Great Depression is noted for many things, but specifically to this point of irrational fear, is how children of the Great Depression took to saving their money in secret hiding places at home instead of sitting in a bank earning interest, protected by the FDIC (created by one of the two Glass-Steagall Acts).  If housing is allowed to drop without any intervention - and we all know we are currently entering the second wave of mortgage resets - the majority of people will go through a negative emotional state, forming an enormous deterrent to risk.  This leads to the next reason.
• Deflation.
• When people see prices dropping - particularly if they drop rapidly - if there is no backstop to the drop, they assume prices will continue to fall.  After all, why buy now, if in the future, it'll be cheaper?  To understand this, see Japan's Lost Decade.  This ties into the next reason.
• Standard investment advice.
• I'm not proffering an argument that this is sensible, but everywhere you read, the advice says that you don't add to a losing position.  You don't buy when prices are continuing to fall and you have no idea how far they're going to fall.  If you do buy even as prices continue to fall, you will have to wait for prices to bottom, then rise to the level that you purchased at, in order to break even.  Sounds great in theory (buying at the bottom), but in practice, it is much more difficult.  Nonetheless, if people see that the rest of the economy is not doing so well, it feeds into the belief that prices will continue to drop.  Which leads into the next reason.
• An assumption that housing will lead the economy out of the doldrums, is false, unless of course, you want speculators to fill the gap.
• According to Moody's, at the end of the second quarter, there were 1.8M more units empty than what would have been the norm, on average, based on the past 20 years.  Looking at Census data, rental vacancy rates in the US have increased 30% since 2000 while homeowner vacancy rates have increased 63% during that same period.  It seems to me, that people who have lost their jobs or moved out of their homes, have not moved into rental units, but have moved into homes already occupied.  It appears that, unless they were to find jobs, these people would not be able to buy another home, and even at that, it will take some time to gain enough capital to buy again.  It also seems clear, that with the stricter lending standards, not many people would qualify that didn't already own a home.  This leaves us with just one group: non-homeowner investors, of which in a previous post, I described how there is one particular subset, the speculator, aka flippers.  Not that they're a big group - especially with stricter lending standards - but I would not want speculators to drive the housing recovery, given their contribution to the asset bubble in the first place.
• Bank capital losses.
• If home prices are allowed to plunge, what happens when banks lose even more of their capital?  Seems to me, that these people fail to reflect upon the cycle of the credit crunch of 2008!  If investors see that values suddenly plunge and homes are lost to foreclosure, those losses become realized by both the former homeowner but most explicitly by the banks and investors holding the mortgages.  Where do the new loans come from, when there is even less credit?

So you see, it is pure folly for people to believe such nonsense, that letting the housing prices drop, will be good for anyone, let alone some phantom future homeowners.  Or rather, I see this as the speculator's dream, for prices to be allowed to dramatically drop.  With cash in hand, no other group could benefit more than those with liquid assets, and lots of them.

Craigslist caves in.

Attorneys General from various states have been attacking Craigslist on its Adult Services section. Today, CL replaced the Adult Services link with a black bar with white text that read, "censored".

So I thought to myself, why not push CL to be completely honest with its listings?

Jan Brewer in trouble?

Apparently she's running against herself as Governor of Arizona.

She had her 16 seconds of uncomfortable silence in her opening speech of the gubernatorial debate the other night, she misspoke with fallacies about headless people showing up in the Arizona desert (it was in Mexico), but she also ran out of the post-debate interviews.

I think people are left wondering if she took the debate seriously, and why she's running for the highest political office in Arizona, if she cannot compose herself and remain cool under embarrassment?

But it's not like this was her first gaffe. It did give her supporters some pause however...at least 16 seconds.

Went to Kruger's Farms on Sauvie Island

It was sunny and warm, so I drove out today to Sauvie Island, just to grab some fresh fruits and vegetables. Grabbed some red pears, Tokyo Rose apples, sweet onions, peaches, and blue lake beans. Oh yeah, and local wildflower honey.

The irony of the photo of the sign, is that I was already in the vehicle leaving, when I thought this sign was worth taking, as an introduction to Kruger's Farms.

There's probably over an acre of flowers to pick, though at the end of Summer, not so much.

Fall is the best, as you have all sorts of gourds, apples and pears, pumpkins, corn and a maze of maize.

Have you tried Weather Underground?

The Weather Underground is a weather portal unlike any other weather portal.  There is so much data, it's an amateur meteorologist's dream.  They have this most awesome full screen weather which fills your entire browser window with a map and selectable options (temperature, precipitation, clouds).  There are a lot of options to tracking hurricanes too, not just the infrared cloud image below.

Shelties!

Last Saturday, this 6 month old female sheltie wanted to say hi. But we don't rob the cradle. We just say "hi" and we're off to play.

Ah, rock star sheltie.

SketchUp 8 intro'd at 3D Basecamp

I guess I should have sent in an application to go to it.  :P   The speculation was that SU8 was going to be unveiled at that time, and sure enough, it was.

First off, watch the video.

I think this may be the tool that puts AutoCAD LT and a lot of other 2D drafting programs out of business.  At $495 (and just a $95 upgrade each major, new version), it undercuts AutoCAD LT by 50% (or so), and AutoCAD LT doesn't include 3D.

Most of all, this is the tool that every person in Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture has ever wanted since college.  Just watch the video, to understand this.

Apparently, the spam never quits. :P

It was just a couple of days of quiet, and boom...my Gmail spam box exploded again.  Amazing how quickly these spammers get back into the game.  Way too many rogue servers in the world.

Just for kicks, a comparison of the amount of spam for August 26-31:

Yahoo: 0
Gmail: 9
Hotmail: 11

Hmm.  I might have to use some techniques to find out which retailer is selling my info.