Wednesday, December 25, 02002
The government gives SUV owners a simply enormous tax break:
At the same time the tax code sanctions $30,000 write-offs for SUVs, prospective purchasers of a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles qualify for a relatively small $4,000 tax credit.
Actually the hybrid tax credit is only $2,000. The SUV tax break is more than the price of my Insight. Way, way more. And to add insult to injury, after the giveaway, the SUV turns out to be a couple thousand dollars cheaper.
How pathetic. The government could close the Section 179 loophole, start giving away hybrids and still save money.
Posted at 07:53 PM EST [Link]
SLAPP is going global: Dow sues Bhopal survivors and Nestle sues Ethiopia. OK, maybe that Nestle case isn't a SLAPP, but they still deserve to be slapped.
Posted at 11:21 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, December 24, 02002
I'm in Easton for the holiday. I got 55.6 mpg ont he drive up. Yippee. It's snowing now. Word is we're going to get up to eight inches. It's looking like it'll be a White Christmas. Hopefully it'll be gone when I drive back on Saturday...
My brother, Alexander, showed me the social psych book he's teaching out of this semester. I opened up to a random page, when what to my wondering eyes do appear but a half-page Honda Insight ad ! It's in the section on changing the consequences of short-sighted selfishness. Page 468.
Normally I'm all for commercial-free education, but it was still a hoot.
Posted at 10:19 PM EST [Link]
"No government can go about sucking (the) blood of its own people," Muluzi said Sunday. "That's thuggery."
Posted at 09:01 AM EST [Link]
Democracy in action: 91.3 percent of citizens favored the idea of pig-featured trains. From the BBC story:
And later, passengers will think, 'What's going on, why did they make this?' And then they will realise, 'oh, there's a problem'.
Here in the States, we prefer our pork in anti-terror bills instead of trains. No word on whether Todd Greenberg will be riding the Happy Flying Pig Metro to Gameworks.
(Thanks NWD)
Posted at 08:24 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, December 22, 02002
Forget about Tissue-san - I like Eco Kun !
He is made with environmentally friendly 50 percent recycled paper. Likes to read a book on a shelf.
He has an ability to eat trash and produce recycled paper.
Posted at 09:45 PM EST [Link]
Yesterday I returned to my car after a dreadful afternoon of shopping, only to find I had dropped my car keys sometime in the previous two or three hours.
Horror-of-horrors. I had to go back to all the shops I'd been to, trudging all my bags along witth me asking if any keys had shown up. All the time, I was imagining some evil key robber waiting until the lots cleared out so they would know which car they could drive off with... The keys ended up at the very last store I had visited, so I probably should have retraced my steps in reverse. Oh well. The keys may not have made it to the Lost and Found area by the time I'd revisited had I done that. Still the experience did nothing to increase my decidedly-lacking Christmas cheer of this year. I hate shopping. People had better appreciate their gifts.
On a more positive note, I also put in some time volunteering at the co-op yesterday. My job is to redo the bulk food labels. I managed to update the bulk food label spreadsheet. Over the next few days I'll be using it to build some labels that can be stuck on the bins. It was fun. People were asking me where stuff was, and I actually knew some of the answers. There seemed to be a good number of customers while I was there. Normally whenever I go, it's the last hour they're open and I'm usually the only shopper there. Hopefully it won't be as doomed as I had feared, especially with all the upcoming spiffy new bulk food labels.
(I've made some slight changes to the site. There's no more karma voting since nobody ever used it, and it was starting to get abused by bots. I also upgraded to GPG 1.2.1 and published my key, since things will probably start getting out of hand pretty soon. Seems like I think things are getting out of hand about once every two years.I also added a minimal FOAF file built using FOAF-a-matic and signed it. I've also switched to a Creative Commons license)
Posted at 01:58 PM EST [Link]
