Shopping season

It's that time of year again. Time to buy gifts for friends, fiends, family, and foes alike. But where do you go for the hard to shop for friend that really deserves something super. You can always try the Super Hero Supply Company.

Of course, they are do-gooders too, so you know your shopping is safe. All their proceeds go directly to support 826NYC. 826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

To infinity and beyond!

The Willy Wonka of soda

John Nese is Obsessive over soda pop. John is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he converted it into the ultimate soda pop shop. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if he can avoid it).

John loves his job and has an opinion about everything in the soda pop world, as you can see by watching this video.

How to balance the budget. Idea #3

Here's a budget balancing idea that's keyed to health care, The Botax.

There are already taxes on death, luxury and sin, how about a tax on vanity? Under the Senate's proposal, there could be a five percent tax on cosmetic procedures and surgeries.

There were nearly 5 million last year and an average cost per visit of about $400, some including several injections. That's $2 billion spent on just one type of cosmetic surgery.

The plan, projected to raise $6 billion over 10 years, wouldn't apply to surgery to fix a deformity or injury, but would include procedures such as face lifts, liposuction, cosmetic implants or teeth-whitening. People familiar with the proposed 5 percent cosmetic surgery tax said Allergan and Johnson & Johnson along with others in the industry persuaded lawmakers to slash it from a 10 percent tax, which had been projected to raise about $11 billion over a decade.

If it were me, I would raise the tax to 20% or 30%. Anyone who chooses to spend money on doctors for cosmetic reasons, should help pay for the people who need to see doctors for health reasons.

How to balance the budget. Idea #2

Here's my next idea how to raise money. A war tax. If America wants to invade or occupy another country, or declare war on [terror, terrorism, terrorists, poverty, crime, drugs, etc.] let them pay for it at the same time.

David Obey, chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, agrees with me. He said Americans could be forced to pay a 'war tax' if the conflict escalates. He said he favors a 'war surtax' in which high-earners pay 5 per cent of their incomes and the lower paid hand over smaller percentages.
White House Budget Director has suggested it could cost the government $40 billion per year to send the 40,000 new troops sought.

"What we are saying is if this war is worth fighting, then it is worth paying for," Obey said.

"We would impose a one percent surtax on anyone with taxable income that would rise to about two percent if you are making roughly $200,000 dollars, and once you get up into the stratasphere in terms of four or five hundred thousand dollars in income the surtax would be higher than that," he said. "Whatever the cost of the war is would be paid forthrough that tax. Because if we don’t do that that war will bleed every dollar in the budget away from any other initiative and it will block us from making the investments we need to make in our own economy."

The cost of maintaining a strong national defense is one thing. Sending our men, women, and equipment to do national building is completely different. Anything beyond defending our borders needs a surtax to pay for it until the job is done. Maybe that way we would spend more time thinking about an exit strategy before rushing off to war.

How to balance the budget. Idea #1

The US national debt is over $12,121,000,000,000 and growing.

California budget's going to be dreadful. It's expected to have $20.7 billion in new red ink for the next 19 months.

Our elected representatives like to spend money. They don't seem to think about how to raise it. So I will pass along a few ideas.

You've heard me make this suggestion this before. Stop wasting money criminalizing marijuana and start taxing it. Like it or not, people smoke marijuana - lots of it. Here's a nice chart of the federal tax dollars spent to keep marijuana illegal, and the possible tax revenues that could be generated if marijuana production were legalized and taxed like any other agricultural product.

Möbius Music

This is an interesting interpretation of the Crab Canon by J.S. Bach.
First it's played forward, then backwards, then forward and backwards at the same time.
Finally, they show it being played as if it were written on a Möbius strip. Quite cool.

World Toilet Day

It's World Toilet Day. Why?

Even though the concept has been around for thousands of years, 2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, and kills 1.8 million people a year. It's a topic that is taken pretty seriously by many people.

There's a World Toilet Organization which is a global non-profit committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide. Then there is the World Toilet Summit this year from 2 to 4 December in Singapore.

Toilets also use a lot of water. The amount of water used in toilets is a significant portion of personal water usage, with an average of 24 gallons used per capita per day in 1990 in the United States. Toilets and urinals are flushed with potable water and it is estimated that up to 20% of the available drinking water in the world is flushed down the drain, wastefully. In addition, leakage of water delivery lines may add an additional 8% to the above. As demand for water hits the limits of finite supply, potential conflicts are brewing between nations.

That's why I think the waterless urinal is a pretty neat invention. The technology behind the setup is fairly simple. A biodegradable liquid sealant, such as oil or alcohol that is lighter than water, floats on top of a conventional water-filled drain. The barrier layer, a one-way seal, allows liquid waste to flow through but blocks sewer gases from coming back up and entering the restroom.

A single waterless urinal can save an average 20,000 to 45,000 gallons of water a year. which means it takes only about twenty-two waterless urinals to save 1,000,000 gallons of water per year. It can be estimated that there are approximately 8 million urinals installed in the US. Assuming an average 1 gallon flush, the potable water use of urinals alone, in this country per year, is approximately 80 billion gallons. 80 billion gallons of water is equivalent to the water usage of 250,000 homes or 1 million people per year.

I've only seen a few of these so far, but I expect they will become more common and the world places more value on fresh water.

You only think you're free

AMC has redone the TV show The Prisoner. It looks like it has most of the concepts captured from the original series (which they are nice enough to have free online). There is “Six”, who wakes up trapped in "The Village", which is controlled by the sinister and charismatic “Two”. They also have "Rover", but they seem to have left out the Little Man.

The original series was 17, 50 minute episodes. This new one is described as 6 one hour stories told over three nights. It looks interesting, but I don't see the same spark or humor as the original. Jim Caviezel plays #6 without much emotion. Ian McKellen, on the other hand, does an excellent job as #2.

As with the scifi movie District Nine, this has a lot of its scenes shot in South Africa which again make you feel like your in a completely different space.

If you want to watch a 9 minute preview from Comic Con, go here.

Be seeing you.

Elevator excitement

Last week in the Mojave Desert, three teams of engineers competed for a total NASA provided prize of $2,000,000 to build an elevator.
NASA calls it the Power Beaming Challenge. Everyone else was calling it the Space Elevator Games.
The challenge is described as a practical demonstration of wireless power transmission. Teams build mechanical devices (climbers) that can propel themselves up a vertical cable. The power supply for the device remains on the ground. The technical challenge is to transmit the power to the climber and transform it into mechanical motion, efficiently and reliably.

The goal was to climb a vertical distance of 1 km. The $2 million was split this way: if your climber could reach the top moving at least 2 m/s you win $900k, if you could reach the top by climbing at a rate of 5 m/s or better you win $1.1M

Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the machine’s photo voltaic cells, which convert the light into electricity, the LaserMotive completed one of its ascents in just three minutes and 48 seconds – fast enough to secure the $900,000 prize. You can see a video of their climb here (jump to the 4:15 mark to see the climb begin).

Somewhere, out there, Arthur C. Clarke is smiling.

Soon there will be one more by Moore

Ran across this tonight. Soon there will be another book out by one of my favorite authors. From the title, the cover, and his web page, we learn that this is the sequel to a couple of his previous books, You Suck and Bloodsucking Fiends.

He kindly posted the first two chapters on his blog. For those of you not sure if you want to want to read the book, or even the first couple chapters, here's the first paragraph.

The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge, shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, emergency back-up mistress of the greater Bay Area night, and my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. Which isn’t, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks ass.

(The book will be in stores April 1st, 2010 – Chris)

Personally, I'm looking forward to it.