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…]

Using wills to rule from the grave

The last will of a person is usually considered binding on the executors and people sometimes try to ‘rule from the grave’ by laying down stiff conditions that heirs must meet in order to get their inheritance. Putting such conditions always struck me as a bad idea except in the case where the heirs were small children or otherwise incompetent to handle their own affairs, but such requests are almost always obligatory. [Read more…]

Don’t cry for me, Jesus statue

Sanal Edamaruku is the head of the Indian Rationalist Association and has a flair for the dramatic.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall the time I wrote about a Hindu ‘tantric guru’ (whatever the hell that is) who claimed that he could kill someone without touching him or her, just by performing rituals. Edmaruku challenged the guru to kill him on live TV and hilarity ensued as he laughed and taunted the guru as the latter desperately went through his entire repertoire of mumbo-jumbo to no avail. Now that is what I call must-see TV. [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.