Adventures in Smarshland

Check out Photosynth.  This online photoaggregator takes known pictures of the same thing from the internet from flicker and such social media sites and puts them together in a 3d model that turns landscapes and other areas of interest into something like an online museum.  An amazingly innovative way of using public data to generate something more than the sum of its parts.  Enough words, go experience.

All of these doomsayers who are forecasting the price of gas going to 10 dollars a gallon are full of crap and should put their money where their mouth is.  The futures price of light sweet crude is expected to be $131-132 over the next 7 years.  Yes, that is right, if you are convince the price of oil will be about $500 ( the approx. price a barrel of oil would need to be to generate a retail gas price $10 per gallon) in 7 years you can lock in a bet that is extremely leveraged.  On the other hand if you are worried your transportation costs may skyrocket in the future you could use these futures contracts to hedge you transportation cost risk.  I am going to defer my risk entirely an build a fixed gear bike for commuting instead

This is a particular good TED Talk that was recently released: Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

Rare disease (1/100,000) cured using stem cells. A child with a disease that does not allow the skin or digestive track tissue to adhere to surrounding tissues is cured by stem cells.  This kid couldn’t eat an oreo without dying before treatment.  Aside from this being a miracle for this child’s family, this also marks the first disease that has been cured by stem cells than is not blood related.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I’m getting started today.  If your time is too committed to work, family, … then you might enjoy Librivox which is like the Wikipedia of audiobooks from the public domain.  Although the books are read by volunteers, the ones I have listened to have been of acceptable quality, especially considering the price (Free).

I am going to attempt to identify every tax that I am paying any form of U.S. government either explicitly or implicitly.  As I do my income taxes this year I am going to attempt to quantify everything.  If there is a tax you think I should be including I would like to hear about it.  I am going to also try to put together a list of taxes I would not pay myself, but others might, such as the cigarette tax, which as a non-smoker I would not be burdened by.

• Federal income tax
• Corporate Payroll tax
• Social Security (7.5% paid to government directly and 7.5% paid to government by my employer)
• State Income Tax (I have to investigate if my company pays payroll tax to my state)
• Local Income Tax (I have to investigate if my company pays payroll tax to my city)
• Sales tax (I will need to look at my purchases over the course of the year and estimate this)
• Property Tax (I actually rent, however my landlord pays property taxes which are then past along implicitly)
• Gas Tax (I have heard that in various location this can be as much as $1.00 per gallon)
• Bureau of Motor Vehicles Taxes for registration and various other unwanted “services”
• Inflation caused by the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply (Estimating this will be tricky but I will attempt to quantify)
• Taxes on purchases of alcohol (I do not drink much but I am trying to be comprehensive and exhaustive)
• Taxes on Insurance Premiums (Yes, the government taxes your insurance premiums which are then passed along to you in the form of higher prices for insurance)
• Air Travel Tax (7.5%, plus $3.00 per segment, plus $2.50 per segment for TSA)
• Telephone Excise Tax
• Tax on Electric Service
• Tax on Natural Gas Heating
• Taxes on imported goods (This one might be tough to estimate, but I will find a way)

I found out about an amazing website today.  Apparently, you can cheat on your significant other as long as you make sure that someone else doesn’t cheat.  This is what you might consider “Cheating Neutral”.  How can I buy such Cheating Offsets you ask, through an intermediary such as the website CheatNeutral.  So go ahead and sully that relationship of yours, just make sure to offset your cheating.  Also, you should buy a Hummer and use it for commuting in single occupancy style.  But remember to purchase carbon offsets.  Here’s another idea, MLB needs to create a steroid use trading exchange.  Bud Selig would allow for a fixed number of doses of steroids and distribute them equally among players and the players could then trade them on the “Juice Exchange”.  Really an enterprising entrepreneur needs to get on this pronto.  I should write for the Onion.

Hate having to register for websites that require you to give your email and a thousand other personal information items? Do you keep a separate junk email address just for these registration websites to avoid getting spam like I do? I think you will appreciate a handy plugin for Firefox called BugMeNot. You can download the extension here. It has a sister plugin called RetailMeNot, which will inform you of available coupons and promo codes for websites you are browsing. Although I have yet to try RetailMeNot, I have been impressed with the BugMeNot plugin and will give it a whirl as well. Both plugins rely on the users to some degree to update the backbone website with information. For instance if you come across a website that requires registration, you can volunteer yourself as the guinea pig and fill out the information to get a valid username and password which everyone else can benefit from. A similar concept applies to the retail version, if you are aware of a promo code you can enter the information on the RetailMeNot website which will in turn alert everyone who visits that retail website with the plugin installed.

My new HD DVD player which I wrote about earlier here arrive yesterday and just let me say, total worth the money.  The HD DVD player came with 300 and The Bourne Identity and the A/V quality is stunning.