Tax Reform

Everyone hates taxes. There is nothing about my financial situation that pisses me off quite as much as getting my paycheck and seeing exactly how much money the government has dug out of my pockets. Not only that, but in the US at least, taxes are a pretty complicated procedure. I have no clue how to do anything with taxes except pay them and seeth with impotent rage about it. So I'd be pretty open to the idea of tax reform.

Apparently, Mike Huckabee has a plan for this. He has embraced the idea of a national flat sales tax of 23%, instead of the current system. Now I don't know if 23% would be enough to support the monster that is the federal and state governments of this "free" country, but it occurs to me that the adoption of such a system would have one major bonus: the dissolution of the IRS and all related government organisations. There wouldn't really be any way to commit tax evasion; there's no income to lie about or tax returns to file. I'm not sure how much it costs to run the IRS, but I'd bet it's a hell of a lot of money. It would take a more informed man than me to figure out how much that would offset the much larger total budget, but in theory, it seems preferable.

Such a system would also remain progressive - people with higher incomes would still pay more taxes. Not because they have higher incomes, exactly, but because they would (theoretically) be spending more. The percent of thier income that is taxed might be less, but the absolute amount of the tax would be increased. This would mean that everyone would always retain the incentive to make more money; there would be nobody bent on making no more than $49,999 so that they stay out of the $50,000 tax bracket.

The article mentions that this system would be an incentive for people to save money, since it is a tax on spending and not on income. This makes sense to me, but I am under the impression that our economy improves by increasing spending, not reducing it. Rampant spending and lots of debt fuel the fires of the US economy - more spending means more income and more GDP. Not to say there's anything wrong with saving, exactly, but I wonder if excessive saving would save us from the credit failure we're supposed to be entering, only to plunge us into a completely different kind of recession, where people just don't spend enough money.

Seriously?

I just saw a very disturbing video on the Philosopher-King's sheeple-liberating friend's web page, although probably not disturbing in the way he intended most of those videos to be.

In this video, some psychologist guy designed a zombie-shooting game intended to put the player into a "catatonic trance." When they finally get someone to play the game and they pass out (still standing, by the way - a little suspicious), the psychologist comes out of hiding, puts the player onto one of those hospital beds, and wheels him over to a set designed to look exactly like the video game. They leave him (again standing up with a paintball gun in his hand - even more suspicious) and blow a horn to wake him up. After the subject runs around for a little bit trying to find his way out of this creepy place he's woken up in, doors around the room open, and people dressed as zombies come out, walking in the zombie fashion and groaning for brains. Shockingly enough, the dude freaks out and eventually starts shooting them with the paintball gun.

I'm not sure if this was supposed to be surprising or something, or if we're supposed to be shocked at how easily this guy started shooting at people, but come on... what would you do? If you woke up in a strange room surrounded by deformed people who looked like zombies and kept coming at you while groaning for brains, what would you do? Most people would be freaked out if a single hobo came up and tried to touch them. I don't think his reaction was surprising at all...

What was surprising was what happened afterwards. Eventually the psychologist dude came out and put the subject into a trance again (by putting his hand on the guy's face and saying something - also suspicious), wheeled him back to the video game machine, and woke him up again. The subject looked around at his friends and said "awesome game!"

His friends, by the way, didn't try to stop this at all, but actually helped the psychologist do all this crap. Which is also suspicious, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let some random dude do this to anyone I know...

So basically, I have two questions for everyone. First, isn't this illegal somehow? Second, what would you do if you woke up in a room surrounded by zombies?

Genius!

Facebook is a pretty popular network these days. Personally, I don't use it very often, but whenever I do log in, I usually have 10 or so invitations to various groups or events, most of which I ignore without reading. Sometimes, however, a group catches my eye as intriguing: 1,000,000 Strong for Colbert, for instance, or I bet I can Find a Million People who Dislike George Bush. I was reading through the discussion board of the latter group, chuckling to myself at all the comments, when I came across a link that I just could not pass up - a site called Kill Bush.

I imagine you can all figure out the agenda of this site without much help, but what I found really funny (besides the fact that sites like this exist) was a clever grammatical device they used in one of their stories. It's pretty apparent that whoever made the site is not exactly a grammarian, as the majority of the text is wrong in some way or another. However, a phrase that I noted immediately was the figure they cited as the number of people Bush has killed, or something like that: "tenths of millions."

This is pure genius.

I actually didn't even notice when I first read it what it actually said, until, a few sentences later, it occurred to me that the entire population of Iraq is something like 30 million. I admit I haven't been keeping up on the death tolls, but I think I would have heard about it if a third of the country had died. The author of this article has come up with a way to inflate figures without actually inflating them: use fractions that sound like big numbers. The next time I complain about my tuition bill, I'm going to say that I'm in debt by hundreths of millions of dollars. Maybe I can get a tax break that way.

Either that, or the author actually meant to say "tens of millions," and just sucks so bad at writing that he/she didn't notice that they used the wrong word. That's probably more likely.

"So what are your opinions on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the precipitation of World War I?"

I imagine if the Treaty of Berlin had remained inviolate ad infinitum, the entire issue might have been avoided. Alternatively, I suppose if the July Ultimatum was never sent, the fallout of the assassination, while still throwing Austria-Hungary into chaos, would have been significantly alleviated for the rest of the continent.

I never actually expected someone to respond to that question...

Well, I suppose in any case it's better than "would you believe me if I told you I was black from the waist down?"


Sometimes I wonder...what do normal people talk about?

I am an Idiot.

So apparently the Boston Red Sox won the World Series sometime over the weekend. Through an unfortunate coincidence of assignments and exams, I somehow managed, despite living in downtown Boston, to remain completely unaware of this until today. I didn't find out until I walked into my Introduction to Philosophy elective at around noon, mentally running through everything we'd learned up until now, since we were supposed to have an exam today. I entered the room, only to find it empty but for the professor, who informed me that on account of the celebration in progress downtown, the exam was cancelled. Instead of administering the test, he handed out a couple questions and told us to do them at home and email our answers to him at our leisure, as long as he gets them by Friday afternoon. So rather than taking an exam, the class gets to go celebrate with the Red Sox. Well, except for me, of course, because I still had a road to design by 4:30.

Why the hell aren't I a philosophy major??? I'm fairly certain none of my engineering professors would cancel an exam so that the students could go get drunk before noon.

Question...

A few days ago I went to the library in an effort to follow in my more philosophically-minded brother's footsteps and read The God Delusion. I am interested to see what he says, as I have heard him described, albeit hyperbolically, as the greatest thinker of our time. Unfortunately, the book was checked out, and so I settled instead for another book by Dawkins, entitled The Selfish Gene. I am probably about 3/4 of the way through it, and so far it is interesting and I have had almost no major disagreements with what he says. He focuses on evolution with respect to the genes of an individual (his catch phrase is the "survival machine", manufactured by the gene to facilitate its replication), and appears to be able to explain the theory pretty well as far as I can see. I do, however, have one big question about evolution which I have not found in his book thus far, which perhaps someone might be able to help me with. Natural selection is pretty much a universally accepted principle nowadays, and it seems perfectly sound to me - using Dawkins' language, genes which produce flawed bodies would fail to reproduce themselves and become less numerous in the gene pool, while genes producing fitter bodies would become more numerous. Eventually the unfit ones would die out completely and the species could be considered to have evolved.
The problem with this is the enormous complexity that we observe in the world. Evolution can explain species changing, but it does not seem to explain them growing more diverse. In fact, Dawkins himself points out that genes which fail to replicate themselves perfectly would become less numerous in the gene pool. Natural selection does not account for variation, it should actually eliminate it.
Suppose an animal's (say, a giraffe's) habitat is suddenly changed in such a way that only by having a long neck could it survive. We are inclined to say that the species develops and "evolves" a longer neck, but this is not how it happens. In reality, giraffes with short necks die off and giraffes with long necks live. This is the essence of natural selection. While we could say that the species "evolves" a longer neck, all that really happens is that the average neck length increased, because you killed off all the animals with short necks. The genetic makeup of a giraffe did not really evolve; that's like saying a school gets smarter when the stupid students drop out. No individual student will get smarter - it is only the average which increases. In the same way, a giraffe's neck could not get longer because giraffes with short necks died out. The giraffe could only have developed its long neck if there existed, prior to the need for a long neck, at least one individual of each sex within the population with the long neck that we see today. After the change, all the other giraffes would die and only these relatively few would be available to "rebuild" the species in their own image, namely, that long neck. But that neck would not, barring extremely fortuitous genetic mutation, be longer in the next generation than it was in the previous.
Natural selection can take advantage of an existing variation within a population to change the average genetic makeup of that population, but it cannot actually perform a feat of evolution as it is purported to have done. Proponents of evolution then seem to be left with random mutations to provide this variation which natural selection can then choose between. It is my understanding, however, before reading Dawkins' book, that mutations are incredibly rare and random occurrences which are overwhelmingly more likely to harm an animal than help it anyway, and in addition, Dawkins himself seems to say that gene mutation should decrease through evolution, as it is only genes which replicate themselves to the most reliable extent possible that persist through the ages.

Anyone care to explain this discrepancy to me? I may not have much respect for Dawkins, but too many other learned people are staunch supporters of evolution for me to dismiss it readily. I feel as though I must be missing something.

Damn It, Ray!

So I've just watched the YouTube rendition of Ray Comfort's ABC debate with a couple atheists. I'll admit I only watched part of it (I got too pissed off to finish the whole thing), but one question struck me pretty quickly: Why are the people we see arguing for Christianity on television always so stupid? I know at least a dozen people who could have done a better job than Mr. Comfort in that debate, and half of them aren't even really Christians. I should mention that I'm not too happy with the atheists either (although I think one of them was at least smarter than Ray), but the burden of proof was not on them, so all they had to do was find out how Ray screwed up... a much easier task.
What really gets me is that I think Ray started out with a good point; the idea that when we see a building, we know there was a builder - when we see a painting, we know there was a painter. And then he does something really stupid. He uses this to say that since we "prove" the existence of a painter from the existence of a painting, we can "prove" the existence of a Creator from the existence of Creation. This is where he pissed me off. The atheist on the other end of the debate made the point that we can call the builder or the painter, while we cannot call the Creator.
Almost a good point, but this doesn't really prove that the builder built this or the painter painted this. Now what Ray could have done is said that it is reasonable to believe that the painter and the builder are not lying to us, and whatever documentation exists is accurate. We therefore take it on faith that the builders and painters we call are not lying to us, and that the documentation was not forged. We cannot prove this; but it is reasonable to believe it. By the same token, you could say that it is reasonable to believe in a Creator. You could say that we take things on faith every day of our lives - why are we so opposed to taking something like the existence of God on faith? But Ray doesn't do that. He continues to pretend that he can prove scientifically the existence of God, when really it is impossible to prove almost anything at all. Scientific proofs are not about what it true anyway, they are about what it is reasonable to assume is true. If people could see this, then they could make much more intelligent arguments.
People like Ray's biggest problem in these debates is the burden of proof; if they would stop thinking of it as proof and start thinking of it as reasonable belief, maybe they'd get somewhere. Or maybe they still couldn't go anywhere with it. I don't know. They might not be smart enough to ever get anywhere. I just wish we could start finding real intellectuals to consider intellectual.

"I wanna dedicate this book to my dick"

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

Guilt; the Destroyer of Good Deeds

I've decided that Uriel is right after all. People, by and large, are hedonists. But I don't just mean the prostitutes and tax collectors; I also mean the lady who helps out every week at the homeless shelter, and the boy scout who helps that lady cross the street. Ask somebody who does these "good" deeds why they do them, and you will, nine times out of ten, get a response similar to "I like helping people." People who do good deeds inevitably feel good about doing them; people who do bad deeds inevitably feel guilty about doing them. This does not, of course, prove that these consequences are why people choose to do good deeds and not bad ones, but once we accumulate a certain amount of purely circumstantial evidence, it would be foolish to ignore it.
Now I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly the homeless person doesn't care why that lady helps them every week, and that lady doesn't care why the boy scout helps her across the street. Our motives do not affect the consequences of our actions upon society. I think it does, however, affect the inherent goodness of those actions. A good deed done out of fear of guilt or out of desire to feel good about doing it is no more a good deed than a criminal sentenced to community service. It has good effects; it is not a good deed. It is, in essence, hedonism. And a hedonistic act that helps society is no less hedonistic because of that.
Through mechanisms such as guilt, we are programmed to do these "good" acts not out of selflessness, but out of our own selfish desires. I'm not arguing that guilt is a bad thing - our society depends upon said mechanisms to remain stable. As the Good Reverend once said, "People without guilt are called 'criminals'." However, it seems to me that only in a world without guilt can any truly selfless act occur.

The main flaw that I see with this idea is that of the martyr; or more specifically, an atheistic one. People like the ancient Christians or the modern suicide bombers do not count, as they believed they would receive their reward in Heaven. After all, what's a crucifixion or two compared to eternal bliss? But a true atheist who sacrifices themselves without any hope of a reward, now there's a problem. By the argument this post presented, the only reason an atheist would give their own life is that they are so afraid of the guilt they'd feel otherwise that they would rather die. Which, of course, is possible, but I don't think it would be provable.
Oh well. It was kind of a depressing idea anyway.

tDoI, Part Two

I'll come right out with it - I have been accused of being a racist. Rather than defend myself against this woeful injustice, I have chosen to respond in a far superior manner - attacking the person who accused me.

As someone who grew up in the age of computers, I spend a decent portion of time "on-line." This necessarily involves some degree of interaction with other people who spend time "on-line," and, of course, when people come together under condition of anonymity, disagreements must necessarily arise (The folks over at Penny Arcade lend their insight to this issue here, if you are interested). During one of these interactions, it seems that I fell victim to Mr. Gabriel's theory and said something that came off the wrong way. Frankly I don't see the offensive quality of my comment - I said "peace niggas!" before going "off-line" one day - and if anyone is really offended by that, they have much bigger problems than my racism to deal with. But anyway, that is actually not my point.

I was later contacted by someone who had heard of the incident. The first thing he asked me - and I laughed about this for quite some time afterwards - was "are u black?" Despite the aforementioned warm blanket of anonymity, I chose to tell this man the truth (if some random blogger is reading this, I'm about as white as it gets), after which he proceeded to chew me out and inform me that I should never say anything like that.

I have been waiting to see this person - who, I'm told, is black himself - again, so that I can ask him this question: "What would you have done if I had lied and said that I was black?"

The Definition of Irony

One of the interesting things about riding the subway or the bus around here is the newspapers people always leave in their chairs. Today, on my ride home, I picked up one of these papers and saw a story about the trial of two men for a shooting four years ago. Apparently, they were aiming for a man on the train, missed, and ended up - accidentally - shooting a pregnant woman in the stomach, killing the unborn baby.

They have both been convicted of first-degree murder and now face life sentences.

I don't think I really need to draw the comparison here, but allow me to quote a statistic from Wikipedia to make it painfully clear what I'm getting at: "According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 854,122 legal induced abortions in the US in 2003." Of the people who - purposefully - performed this near to a million abortions, how many do you suppose are now in prison for life?

Only connect!

I think the subway might just be the saddest place in existence. Nowhere else can you see so many people completely devoid of all emotion. It always amazes me when I look around at all the people who are concentrating so very hard on not looking at anyone. They stare at the advertisements. Listen to their IPod Nanos. Pretend to be sleeping. There are only so many ads on the train, you know - I think I've read them all about 50 times now. They're not really all that interesting. It's just something to look at so you don't have to make eye contact with the person across from you.
It reminds me of the song "Dark Blue," the refrain of which contains the words "have you ever been alone in a crowded room?" It's interesting to see so many humans with so little...humanity.

And that is the whole of my sermon.

"I Gotta Jet"

As you may know, this Thursday was the last episode of the show "The O.C." When I first heard of this program from my roommate last year, I thought it would be retarded and refused to watch even a few moments of it. Then a friend across the hall had a guest who happened to have the first two seasons on DVD. It was one of those situations where it's 2 am and you have nothing better to do, so we decided to watch one episode or another, I don't remember which. Anyway, at the end of the episode, when everyone else decided it was time to go to bed, I took the guy's DVDs and went back to my room, where I proceeded to watch one episode after another until 11:00 the next morning.
When the guest left and took his DVDs with him, I found someone on another floor who had the disks and watched his. When he got annoyed with me having his stuff all the time, I bought my own. For the next week, if I was not eating, sleeping, or in classes, I was watching the O.C. I saw the entire first two seasons in that week.
I was not impressed with the series finale. I actually didn't even watch the whole thing. The last two seasons have been little more than a mockery of the show's former glory. I will admit that I was a little sad on Thursday as I watched the O.C. come to an end, but it was not because I would never see a new episode. Rather, it saddened me to see such a good show in ruins.
So here's to the first two seasons of an amazing show. The candlelight vigil will be on Tuesday.

Rise of Zit Boy

I recently had the inordinate pleasure of watching the popular television show "American Idol." On this program, "wannabes" and "gonnabes" exhibit their talent, or lack thereof, to a panel of judges who unerringly target and mock those who show some degree of imperfection. I especially like it when they burst out laughing before the contestant finishes. Classy.
The popularity of the show, of course, comes from the people who absolutely suck. People with no talent whatsoever who come on the show and embarrass themselves on national television. And then they have the nerve to act disappointed when they are not chosen to be stars. This is the show where I saw an overweight, unattractive girl with absolutely no dancing talent attempt to perform a ballet routine. As I recall, it resembled a huge, hideous egg rolling about on the stage. She also threw up off the edge halfway through.
I am convinced that no human being is this stupid. No one in their right mind thinks they will win this thing. Clearly they are being brainwashed. Who is the culprit? Parents. That's right. Instead of encouraging your child's ambitions to succeed at something they suck at, share with them the wise words of a modern-day prophet: Tyler Durden. Instead of saying grace at dinner every night, repeat his words: "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake." Let each child know, let them truly believe, that they are indeed "the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

Maybe then we wouldn't have to bear witness to this hideous montage of humiliation and shame.

Tributaries

For your information, I've been fighting Mom to stay away from my laundry since I began high school. I am convinced that somewhere there is a massive box where she collects all the socks she has siphoned from me over the years. Pure evil, I say!
I would also like to point out that before January 2, 2007, I had not seen the hour of 6:30 am in at least a year and a half unless I was staying up a few hours later than normal. Unlike the residents of the arctic North, I am not accustomed to leaving my room before the sun comes up and returning after it goes down.

Gambling

In keeping with my elder siblings' tradition of whining about things that piss them off, I have decided to discuss something that annoys me to no end: gambling. I don't mean the kind of gambling that most people think of; I've nothing against poker or Las Vegas or putting a few bucks on the game. No, the gambling I speak of is of a much more sinister nature. Indeed, it is so vile that few even recognise what it is. I tell you now, I am one of those enlightened few. And while the burden of this knowledge is a heavy one, I am confident that you, my worthy disciples, will be able to handle the strain.
Let me first make one simple clarification of how I define gambling. When you enter into an agreement with another person or organisation that if one event happens, you get their money, but if another event happens, they get your money, you have gambled. The implication is that some element of chance is involved - if there's no chance you could lose, it's not a gamble. I think this is a fairly reasonable definition. If anyone has a problem with this, please, let me know so that I can express my complete disregard for your opinion.
Now, consider how casinos make their money. You're all aware; the odds are massively stacked against the gambler. The chances of winning are significantly lower than the chances of losing. You can tell this because the casinos consistently make large amounts of money. If they didn't win most of the time, they would not be in business. The gambling I speak of operates on the same principle, except on a much larger scale. The customer base of these companies is enormous - it is actually required by law for most people to gamble with them.
What companies, you ask? The insurance companies. These places make tons of money. Berkshire-Hathaway, which you may know as Warren Buffet's company (Forbes' 2nd richest man in the world), a company whose stock is currently worth over $100,000, is an insurance company. People make deals with these companies saying that if they get hurt, the company gives them money; if they don't, then they give the company money (actually they always give the company money, but the end result is the same). Per my earlier definition of gambling, I hereby accuse people who fraternize with insurance companies as gamblers. That's right. You thought your old man who blew his paycheck down at Foxwoods was bad? You're just as bad, because you are sinking massive quantities of your own paycheck into a similar gamble. Really, it's a worse gamble, because you're betting that something bad is going to happen to you.
For some reason people do not seem to understand this. Insurance companies make money by preying on people's fears. Statistically speaking, you are as likely to collect on your insurance as you are to win the lottery. And the insurance company is going to raise your premiums if you do collect. Most people are simply too afraid to play the odds. They live their lives behind the bars of insurance, too frightened to step out into the freedom of statistical analysis.
Instead of cowering in a corner and wondering "what if I get cancer?", try canceling your insurance and putting the money you usually spent on premiums into a bank account. Even better, invest. Earn 15% off the money you were previously throwing in the trash.
Now normally I would not be mad about this. All you infidels are welcome to give away as much of your own money as you like. I couldn't care less what various ill-advised investments you make. But when I get a letter advising me that I am required as a student to have health insurance, then I get pissed off. A year ago I wasn't allowed to gamble, and now I am required to? Whose idea was this?

Time waits for no man

I regret to announce that Mandal Man has passed away. He took his own life some nights ago, after a tragic encounter with a band of monkeys which left him maimed almost beyond recognition. He felt he could no longer stand to live after the humiliation. What can I say. Shit happens.