Voting in Los Angeles

I was reading about prop. S and became very disturbed when I read the definition of taxable communication services in the Prop. S. Since the tax would apply to many services not currently taxed, it would effectively be a tax hike even though the tax rate lowers to 9%.
Read more:

"Prop S does reduce the tax rate from the invalid 10% rate to a 9% rate. But actually, if the city loses its appeal the rate will be 0%. Prop S also imposes the tax on a host of new electronic communications that were not included before, such as using the internet, DSL, VOIP, PCS and other electronic services"

I don't normally consider myself a "right wing" voter, but I agree with some centrist thinking such as the statement above.
If you don't like to read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxWoKbGpriE

Idiocracy - the movie

Have you ever noticed that the higher a person's education, the longer they wait to have children? And have you noticed that more educated people tend to have smaller families than their less educated neighbors?
Well, have you ever wondered how this would affect the evolution of humanity?
If the answer to this last question was "huh?", you might already have too many children. If your answer was "Yes, I have thought about that", then you may want to check out this delightful little comedy which has been compared to futurama by at least one youtube critic.
Seriously, this is a cute, witty, smart comedy that is well worth the price of a rental.
See the IMDB Movie Entry for more information.


Save the world, educate your kids.

GoldMein??

Last night, I went to a little party for former GoldMine employees. It was great. I got to see some folks I had not seen in a long time. Doug, Dexter, John, Angel, Mark, Greg, Wilson, Steven, Jose ..... and our gracious host (who made us fresh baked cookies) Natalie.
It was a lot of fun... I don't have any photos, but I hope Natalie will post some..
Cheers you guys.
Dan.

Taiwan trip - 2007 (part trois) - blooming flowers!

My mother in law told us several times to go see the flowers blooming in Hsin She. We ignored her for a few days, and I will review something we did instead in my next post. However, we eventually made the trip. Now, the basic setup is that Hsin She is a farming town. While the big seller there is mushrooms, they grow many things and have weekend markets which can get very busy. At this time of year, they grow flowers and make a big show of it to attract people from the city to come spend money. Exploitation of nature is nothing new to humans. And, sometimes, it's actually pretty cool.

The fields in Hsin She were laid out with different

flowers and sections

where roped off for people to walk

through exhibits with placards in both English and Chinese. It was actually pretty cool. And, of course, we left with passion fruit and other fresh fruits and veggies from the market.