It is clear that there are serious vertical inequities in the tax code, in the sense that some people who are in the highest income quintiles, and even some of those in the top 1%, pay federal taxes at a lower rate than those in lower quintiles. Bruce Bartlett shows a [Read more…]
Michael Caine is one of my favorite actors and has a reputation for knowing lots of arcane bits of information that he brings out in conversations, ending it with what has becomes his catchphrase, “Not many people know that”.
Because of his distinctive manner of speaking he is also widely impersonated by his fellow actors. In this interview with Michael Parkinson, Caine is [Read more…]
Russian scientists have managed to grow a plant from 32,000 year old seeds that had been buried by an Ice-Age squirrel. (Who knew that the Ice Age animated films were documentaries?) The previous record for such an achievement was a mere 2,000 years. [Read more…]
The two posts on changing the seasons (here and here) resulted in a lot of interesting information in the comments and it seems like there is quite a geographical variation in how the seasons are demarcated, with the US possibly being an outlier in using the solstices.
Reader ahcuah is a kindred soul and has kindly sent me the data he collected over a full year of the daytime high and low temperatures. He lives fairly close to Cleveland and [Read more…]
Colbert has a good singing voice and often sings along with his musical guests but singing an opera duet with one of the great tenors Placido Domingo must be his most ambitious effort yet. Here they perform La Donna E Mobile from Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. [Read more…]
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has been following the disturbing trend of countries trying to enact international treaties [Read more…]
Cranking up the crazy way beyond 11
The Republican party primary race has been noticeable for the crazed one-upmanship on display by the candidates, competing with each other to say the most astoundingly absurd things to the point that the whole things seems like some massive performance art project. It is clear that [Read more…]
All of us know that we are all the victims of electronic snooping by the government and business. But even I was unaware of the amount of sophisticated snooping that companies like the department store chain Target do on us. This clip [Read more…]
If an object like a thrown ball or a car is heading towards us, we know that we can react and take effective avoidance strategies very quickly. How do the neurons in our brains manage to work so fast to determine the trajectory and decide what is the best avoidance strategy? It is clearly automatic and not done by our conscious brains.
A recent study, the conclusions of which are summarized [Read more…]