Why I don’t file my taxes electronically

The deadline for filing taxes is April 17 and so I mailed in my tax returns over the weekend. Yes, I still send in paper returns via snail mail. It is not that I am a Luddite, not entirely anyway. In fact, I wrote my own spreadsheet for taxes many years ago that I update each year to accommodate any changes. All I have to do is input the data and it calculates my federal, state, and local taxes in exactly the same format as the tax forms. I then download the fillable pdf forms from the various government websites and copy the figures from my spreadsheet onto the forms. [Read more…]

The evil of private contractors like Blackwater/Xe

The US government is now relying more and more on private security contractors like Blackwater (which changed its name to Xe and then later again to Academi) to do things that the military used to do.

A series of videos have surfaced that show these contractors acting like they were in the old west, shooting indiscriminately at people as they careened dangerously through the streets of Iraq and not bothering to even stop and help when their vehicles knock down pedestrians.

Romney running mate speculation begins in earnest

Now that the Republican primary race seems to be effectively over as far as the pundits are concerned, they will have to fill airtime and newsprint with other sources of endless and mindless speculation. Brace yourselves because from this point onwards, you can be sure that nothing substantive will be discussed and the media will lurch from one ginned-up ‘controversy’ to the next, often about the most trivial things, with each one being framed in terms of its impact on the election. [Read more…]

Nonhuman animal species finally win one

Have you ever wondered what might have happened if Alfred Hitchcock had tried his hand at comedy? Me neither.

But in his latest commercial, Herman Cain tries to channel the master of suspense in a remake of The Birds and ends up with an ad that I think is supposed to be scary but which made me burst out laughing. Watch out for that skeletal arm, kid! [Read more…]

Phase two of the presidential election process begins

Now that it is widely conceded that Mitt Romney will be the Republican party nominee, we enter phase two of the presidential election cycle.

It may be the scientist in me but I tend to favor theoretical models that enable some predictivity in events, rather than the idea that we are totally at the mercy of idiosyncratic factors. This is true even in the world of presidential elections, despite all its seeming unpredictability. As I wrote earlier, strip away the surface turbulence and you see the steady flow of a predictable current. [Read more…]

The last warrior for Jesus bows out

What does it mean that the four people who entered the race suggesting that it was god’s idea in the first place (Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachman) have now all been eliminated? God’s power seems to have waned quite a bit from the days when he created the universe and parted the seas. Now he cannot even get his people the Republican nomination. Perhaps appearing on pieces of toast is the best he can do now. [Read more…]