world of warcraft tax

“There is a concern that the IRS might step forward with regulations that start taxing transactions that occur within virtual economies. This, I believe, would be a mistake,” Chairman Jim Saxton said today.

seriously. 

but really?  so… i log on to wow and kill a dragon.  it drops 2 gold, and i owe – what – 34% of that to the IRS in taxes, but if my annual income in one year is more than 30 geldars it goes on a graduated scale?  only the us government could come up with a way to require accountants in a game with elves, dwarves, and orcs.

thats supposed to be a joke in the onion, not actual government policy. 

battlestar galactica

reasons to watch battlestar galactica?

1. extended exploration of the issues on the war on terror
2. surprising role reversal when humans become the terrorists
3. tim burke says so

i’d been wondering what all the hype was about, and now that i know… i’ll have to steal the remote from the roommate

old already?

A 2005 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project called “Teens and Technology” found that teenagers preferred new technology, like instant messaging or text messaging, for talking to friends and use e-mail to communicate with “old people.”

(here)

That I’m actually eating apple sauce on account of an ulcer doesn’t comfort me much.

body armor

just when you thought going after firefighers was too much, vote vets exposes burn’s voting record against our troops.

i’m still waiting for burns to kick some babies or something.

wish i had said that #102

“another full day of aimless mental loitering”   –phd

that wasn’t really supposed to describe my work life, was it?

wish i had said that #101

“hate the game, not the player”

its practically my political philosophy.

montana pride

i get this stare of wonderment whenever i tell someone i’m from montana. you know, like when aliens disembark from the mothership and everyone is surprised when they are liberals and can speak english. ok, the liberal part is just about montana. though, martians with a respect for JS Mill would be cool.

some of it is exposure. in college, we had more students from both singapore and turkey, so we were a prized minority or something. i twisted it, of course, by convincing a california girl that montana bordered on mexico. (no, it really doesn’t). as a result of our minority status, we created a homeland group. though, the plans for steak meetings never came through.

some of the stereotype is my fault, i suppose. in nyc, i started asking for directions with “hi, i’m from montana, and lost, do you know how to get to…”. and i do get inordinately irate when jerks do jerky things back home, which can’t help our state image.

on a related note, being east, some things continue to baffle me. like v, i was surpised to discover that they charge for WiFi in DC (it is free in virtually every bozeman coffeeshop). i mean, really? or debates about health insurance. our state offers free/low cost insurance to all children. but others can’t afford it? we really aren’t the land that time forgot. sure, we’re more personable and friendly, but that doesn’t make us naieve. just, you know, nice people.

i think this shirt sums it up, and i’ll be the guy in dc wearing one of them. though, at the moment, i’m back in the homeland, wandering up a mountain or the like.

i have to wonder what % of this is junk

huh.  so i’m a political science / philosophy dual major – minor in stats.  so i pretty much covered my top 3.  but 88% in HR?  huh?  problem is, i was also briefly a teacher in nyc (81%) and love doing tech work (44%).

welcome to friday cat blogging, on tuesday, yes, it is that kind of week.

You scored as History/Anthropology. Related majors that match your highest scored category: African and African-American Studies, Anthropology, Chinese, Classics, Cultural Studies, Economics, English, French, Geography, German, Greek, Hebrew, History, International Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Medieval/Renaissance Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Spanish, Women’s Studies.Consider all majors in your OTHER high scoring categories. The right major for you will be something 1) you love and enjoy and 2) are really great at it. Consider adding a minor or double majoring. Please post your results in your myspace/blog/journal. Mathematics/Statistics 100% PoliticalScience/Philosophy 100% History/Anthropology 100% English/Journalism/Comm 94% HR/BusinessManagement 88% Biology/Chemistry/Geology 88% Education/Counseling 81% Religion/Theology 81% Psychology/Sociology 81% Physics/Engineering 81% Nursing/AthleticTraining 69% French/German/Spanish 63% Visual&PerformingArts 44% Accounting/Finance/Econ 38% WHAT MAJOR IS RIGHT FOR YOU? created with QuizFarm.com

et tu, brute?

82.37 cups of betrayal-y goodness.

three laws safe

unintended complications from i, robot may have infested my work computer. this may be a sign.

totally stealing the best sentence idea soon.

patriarchy claims another

a husband suspects his wife had an abortion and lied, and the advice given is outright amazing:

These are problems of emotion and hope and living, human problems, rather than a problem of whether she did something wrong or not. And this work may require you to think of the connections between your life up till now and your relationship with your wife; things that you consider unrelated may come up unexpectedly. You will need to make a good-faith effort to see how these things are related.

and then it makes it onto pandagon, where it becomes a bit nasty, i think.what purpose does this post serve on pandagon? i don’t know more about feminism as a result of it. its not deep enough for that. this certainly isn’t newsworthy. it isn’t quite a parable. its a witch hunt. a chance for the faithful to stone someone, to affirm who they are. there really isn’t enough here to assume (as some commenters do) that he’s a jerk, and responses seem to be more about assumptions than anything else. its like a slightly skewed rorschach inkblot.

i know communities do this all the time. i have a sense of the psychological functions it serves. still, a little disheartening. at some point, it looks like we’re defining ourselves and our goodness by who we exclude, rather than who we care for and the kindness we offer. i appologize if this post violates my own rules.

[full disclosure: this sounds like a trust/communication issue to me, with a whole debate being grafted onto that.]

gapminder

via crooked timber and jim gibbon, i stumbled into gapminder, a neat data-visualization package available online (alternate link). so so cool, and not just for us geeks.

while i’m at it…

neat link on the monte carlo method
we all use it, i just need to store links: mathworld
possibly going on my sidebar: social science stat blog. too cool