I've seen various refutations of the sensational "corporations pay no taxes" study that came out recently, but so far this one is the best. FTW:

The politics behind the GAO report are transparent—to undermine the momentum that’s building to cut corporate tax rates. As I wrote several weeks ago (“In the U.S., Selectively Applied Capitalism,” July 28), the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate among 30 countries in the Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development. That matters because, as economists for the OECD recently concluded, the corporate tax is the most harmful to economic growth of all the levies most commonly used by member nations. That’s why GOP presidential nominee John McCain favors lowering it, but so does the powerful Democratic Chairmen of the House Ways & Means Committee, Charlie Rangel. The Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, has also said in newspaper interviews that he would consider cutting the corporate tax, but he hasn’t made that an official part of his platform.

Now, however, labor-friendly legislators egged on by union leaders are trying to derail calls for a corporate tax cut by manufacturing outrage against U.S. businesses. That’s not hard to do when you have so many journalists reporting and commenting on these issues who can’t get behind headlines that are spoon fed to them, like the editorial writer at Newsday who found the GAO report “jaw dropping.”

I wonder how long it'll take them to declare that anyone who doesn't work for a union is rich and gets taxed much more because of it? Yeah, I don't think it'll happen either, but I bet they'd sure like to try.

We got yer state-run food bank right here:

With food prices rising, one of India's poorest states is considering adding rat meat to the menus of state-run canteens, a move officials in Bihar say could help provide cheap protein for the state's 80 million people, most of whom live off the land as poor sharecroppers or subsistence farmers.

Now that's a spicy meatball!

Via TSO.

It would seem the on again, off again Watchmen movie is now off again. The movie is in the can, as it were, but now two studios are squaring off over just who gets to distribute it. Probably was going to suck anyway. *sigh*

Bah. You can have your medals for gymnastics, diving, track-and-field, whatever. I've found a contest we can all participate in. 76 wpm on a QWERTY keyboard. I'll take it. I bet the super high scores are on Dvorak keyboards or something like them.

Kathleen M. gets a no-prize that must be rocked to sleep carefully for bringing us a different look at infant mortality rates and what they really mean about the quality of health care. Hint: people who tout them as a boost to socialized medicine "managed health care" are selling something.

Knowing one or to Quebecois over the years, I'm not completely surprised they'd turn poultry slaughter into a betting game. I'm just about certain you can't call betting on when and where a beheaded chicken will fall is literally cruel. The things are dead when the head parts with the neck after all. But it is damned weird and more than a little gross, IMO.

Men who want to live longer apparently need to get more wives. I have my hands full with just the one.

First plug-in car fridges, now plug-in car microwaves. It's getting to the point people are going to be able to tailgate party in one of those goofy little micro cars. Not as much fun as a gun-shaped barbecue, but it beats the heck out of eating cold food.

Today's "It's is easy if you can turn the entire mass of Jupiter into energy" faster-than-light travel strategy is brought to you by the Telegraph online.

Just how long this might take may depend on your view of man's handling of energy over time. If water wheels or even fire counts as man's first successful effort at controlling outside energy, it took thousands or even tens of thousands of years for us to make much progress increasing that amount. However, if you start the clock at steam, it only took about a century to go from controlling the equivalent of a few dozen horses to controlling the equivalent of several million*. If we take that sort of progression and project it forward, maybe converting 2000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of matter into energy isn't completely out of the reach of the near future.

Via Instapundit.

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* Or whatever the hell the aggregate shaft horsepower is from a nuclear reactor's power plant.

Fans of those neat "as it happens" camera shots at the Beijing Olympic diving contest may be interested to know how they get those shots. Once I saw the big tube I pretty much figured it out, but it turns out it was both simpler in general and more complex in detail than I'd imagined.

One of the most common convictions of social right-wingers is that relaxing the divorce laws in the 60s and 70s in the US lead to higher divorce rates and a very long list of social ills. Like most common convictions, it would appear this doesn't stand up to close examination:

The first surprise is that looser divorce laws have actually had little effect on the number of marriages that fall apart. Economist Justin Wolfers of Stanford University, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that when California passed a no-fault divorce law in 1970, the divorce rate jumped, then fell back to its old level—and then fell some more.
...
In short, nothing bad happened. But in another NBER paper, Wolfers and fellow economist Betsey Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania report that in states that relaxed their divorce laws, some very good things happened: Fewer women committed suicide, and fewer were murdered by husbands or other "intimate" partners. In addition, both men and women suffered less domestic violence, compared to states that didn't change their laws.

The only thing I find surprising is it took this long for someone to run the numbers. Once you think about it, it all really does make sense.

Looks like the RAAF may end up asking for F-18Gs to upgrade their fleet. I'm too damned lazy to go look up what they have right now, but, considering the furor that seemed to surround the initial purchase of -Es, I can't see this being an easy or simple process.

After a medically determined "early termination," a five-month old... infant? ... showed signs of breathing after spending a few hours in the cryo chamber. Such a profoundly premature infant obviously has a very slim chance for survival, but (obviously) weirder things have happened.

I'm not sure what's worse, the tragedy of the thing or that a whole bunch of anti-abortion wackamoles just got a new arrow to stuff in their quiver.

When human idealism runs up against human nature, the results can sometimes be a really great deal on eBay. Homeless people trashing public facilities created for them. Nope, I didn't see that coming at all. Ha!

Coming to a trailer park near you: styrofoam dome houses. I'm actually a bit surprised it's taken this long. However, I'm not particularly surprised it took the Japanese to make it popular.

Mark gets a no-prize so ugly and slow you can't help but love it for letting us know France's iconic Citroen 2CV is turning 60 this year. Road and Track made endless fun of the car when I was in high school, and yet they still shed an editorial tear when the production line finally closed up.

Happy Birthday Ellen!

Watch this space, for in a few weeks her b-day present may show up. Or not, it all depends :).

According to Olivia, every "kung-fu" girl has a side kick. Apparently this one has 3 legs and a scratching post.

** yes yes... we know Kung-Fu and Tae Kwon Do are different. To a 5 year old, it's not. **

I'm sure lots of other people knew about it, but I definitely didn't understand the ANWR region was about as big as South Carolina. I did, however, know most of it was a barren wasteland frozen solid in the winter and covered in literal fog banks of mosquitoes in the summer. A place only a watermelon could love.

While it's kinda short and the white-on-green color choice is awful, this brief look at the kind of support e-mail Slashdot gets was still amusing, at least to me. It's nice when you get proof positive that it's not just your users who are a bunch of panicky screwups.

There's nothing like seeing Peter Pan getting hauled away in zip-tie cuffs to get a day started. No, really!

Annie gets a no-prize Mickey once used to bang on his cell bars for bringing us this most unfortunate of labor disputes.

Mark gets an ancient and strangely beautiful no-prize for bringing us news of the discovery of a giant statue head in the remains of a Roman bath house. It would seem later residents were breaking up these statues to burn them for cement when an earthquake buried everything. A loss for one age is a gain for another, I suppose.

The Navy's new soopa-ship is just about to be turned over to the service for trials. It was built by the well-known shipwrights at Lockheed Martin.

Yeah, I had to look at it twice too. This sort of partnership was mentioned briefly in the book Skunkworks, but the author said the Navy was so entrenched in "the Navy way" they were impossible to deal with. I guess anybody can get along if enough money is put on the table.

It's dangerous to report from a war zone. People shoot at you and stuff. That doesn't look like a graze, that looks like a flat-out hole through the ol' arm.

... smells like victory:

Boeing announced today the first ever test firing of a real-life ray gun that could become US special forces' way to carry out covert strikes with "plausible deniability."

Go for the news, stay for the description:

Precision engagement of a PID [Positively Identified] insurgent by a DEW [Directed Energy Weapon] will be a highly surgical and impressively violent event.

If it actually works as advertised, I imagine there will be more than a few of these mounted on a certain wall with a certain blue star painted on the side of it.

I guess I'm surprised it took this long for some anarchist to supply the general public a tool that allows them to do what spammers have done forever. Maybe it'll raise awareness amongst the general public just how easy it is to manipulate all the varied fields that make up an e-mail message?

Pardon me while I go revive a few sysadmins who've passed out from laughing at that last sentence...

It seems our solar system may actually be rather unique. If their model can be trusted, that is. And we all know how accurate those can be. Just ask Al Gore!

It's something I've thought a few times myself: if it's just about impossible to police athletic doping, why bother? There would absolutely have to be some changes in policy regarding age of participation. We don't want 14 year olds messing with this stuff, after all.

The best counter argument I saw over at Slashdot was "well, if we make it legal, they'll dope themselves to within six inches of death because they have to." While valid, I did think of a counter. Many auto racing rules* are meant to address exactly this sort of thing: if they didn't exist, teams would run patently unsafe vehicles simply because they had to in order to win. By making your rules pro-safety instead of anti-something (speed or dope), the incentives get turned around and, at least in auto racing, the rules work.

Would it work in people like it does in machines? I dunno, but it might be worth examining.

----
* Oh stop groaning! You knew I was going to say it! Sit down and listen.

Sandy Allen, the world's tallest woman, died yesterday at the age of 53. We saw several documentaries about her over the years, she seemed like a really nice lady who had been inflicted with a really weird condition. Our condolences go out to her family & friends.

O going to day care after school now? Hell no! Tae Kwan Do!

This'll mess up your day:

A local business owner got the shock of a lifetime when she left the Bank of America in Newport News Friday. She'd asked for money to pay her employees, but what she got has her seeing red.

You'd think there would be lots of safeguards to prevent a dye bomb from getting into the hands of a legitimate customer, ya know? I don't have clue one how they work. Maybe this wasn't really all that accidental?

Mark gets a damned salty no-prize for bringing us the latest celebrity behaving badly. I'm pretty sure it's staged; then again, Howard Stern runs out-takes of various celebrities melting down during voice-over sessions and I have to admit this sounds a lot like those.

Language is NSFW, but everything else is fine.

Same song, different singer: politician confesses to just what he's been caught at, then gets busted again. The Post featured nothing about the Edwards scandal until the Kurtz article a few days ago. I'd make a comment about how they sang from the tops of their towers over a suspicion that McCain had an affair, but it's already been said much better in different places.

Well, except for the MSM, that is.

A group of scientists have revealed a theory which says cooking is what allowed our ancestors to develop efficient brains. The thinking (as it were) goes that after long use, the evolution strategy of getting bigger and bigger brains had run up against physical limitations related to birth. In other words, human heads just couldn't get any bigger and still have women able to walk around. However, by processing our food externally using tools and fire, we greatly reduced the amount of energy required for digestion, freeing it up to be used to power faster metabolic processes in our already quite large brains. In a funny sort of way, it really did amount to "we are what we eat."

Or, perhaps, what we ate allowed us to become what we are.

One of Swoozie's most favorite snacks!

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this whole lambda thing. I think this will actually work! Well, it compiles at any rate:

List<RegistrationBatch> rbl = rbl.Where(x => x.Registrations.Where (y => y.RegistrationTypeUsed.MyClass == registrationType.RegClass.regular).Count() > 0).ToList();

It gives me all the registration batches which contain "regular" registrations. Yeah, I can do this in a heartbeat with a sql string, but that tends to net me unexpected behavior that doesn't show up until runtime, and won't let me use all my handy enums besides.

Wrong Wrong Wrong! comments in 3... 2... 1...

It's my blog, I'll write what I want to!

Sometimes the ball clears the wall, sometimes the wall grabs the ball. Proof positive that if you wait long enough, the weirdest plays can and will happen.

One of the more entertaining aspects of science is when something shows up that has no right to be there:

Scientists are baffled after carbon dating showed the skull, a woman's which was found near [New Zealand's] capital, Wellington, dates back from 1742 – decades before Cook's Pacific expedition arrived in 1769.

I'd like to know the precise dating technique used. Back when I was studying such things, radio carbon dates usually had margins of error much larger than 20 years.

I dunno, it makes it sound like they've mounted the thing on old truck leaf springs:

NASA will incorporate a system of springs into its future Ares I rocket to prevent potentially deadly vibrations from shaking the astronauts it carries, agency officials said on Monday.

The days of the Marshal Boys' huge weight margin vanished along with the Apollo boosters they created. Nowadays, it's becoming increasingly evident the original idea of using a single SRB as the first stage was overly optimistic, even with the up-sizing that came with adding an extra segment and (now) another half. And Orion continues to gain weight.

The article itself cites some back-room lobbying being done by at least a few people in the astronaut office who want to ashcan the whole concept and start over with something bigger. Of course, if that happened it'd represent a reboot of a major section of the program, with the concomitant delays and over-runs.

The Shuttle is definitely on its way out, Columbia made certain of that. I'm just not at all certain what will replace it, and when.

It seems Canon is bringing a fuel cell-based SLR to the market. If previous patterns are any indication, it won't be something mere mortals can afford, but after a few years? Who knows?

Sometimes it's scary, most of the time it's dull, and sometimes, well, sometimes life in the military can be just a little silly. Making inappropriate jokes at inopportune times is, after all, an American past time.

Mark gets a no-prize he can strap to a bomb rack for bringing us this collection of uniquely themed photographs.

I love this....*sigh*

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending my money than I would.

I'm voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

I'm voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe the people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

I'm voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves and their families. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the GOVERNMENT sees fit.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe five elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, when they come over here.

I don't want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with because someone, who had an unhappy childhood, may get hurt.

I'm voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.

I'm voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 7% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 18% isn't.

Makes ya wonder why anyone would EVER vote Republican, now doesn't it?

Suck it Obama! I hope you only have 19 year old tree huggers voting for you. I'm sure the housing foreclosures will only grow since they have no idea what owning a house is like... or rather RESPONSIBILITY!

I'm JUST SAYIN'! Utter bullshit. Let's see how the boomers feel.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised I agree with just about all of the "elements" on this table. Except for Saget. For some reason every time I see him on TV I start to chant "DIAF DIAF DIAF". Sue me.

Making the rounds: It's easy to have amazing fireworks displays if you let the CGI guys take a crack at them:

London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But -- hold on -- it's not necessarily as bad as you think.

NBC gets caught doing crap like this what, every three or four years or so? You'd think by now they'd know better. This being the M-est of the MSM, you'd of course be wrong.

Update: Looks like NBC didn't have a choice. My apologies.

Annie gets a crystal-clear no-prize for bringing us news of further developments in "invisible cloaks". The example definitely doesn't make the subject disappear, but it's weird enough to certainly warrant further research.

No, really, falling rock:

One of the largest and most photographed arches in Arches National Park has collapsed.

Ron gets a hard-hat no-prize for bringing us news that we know will be blamed on the Bush administration, even though we're not quite sure how just yet.

The F-35 program continues to experience delays. Which of course turn into price increases, which create cost overruns, and around and around it goes. As a red-blooded American male, I love all the gear the Pentagon uses, but there's gotta be a better way to develop and buy it all.

The revelation that certain kinds of high-security locks can be picked with plastic cut into a key pattern is, on the face of it, pretty embarrassing. However, on further reading it would seem to require an extensive knowledge of how the locks themselves are engineered before this sort of thing can even be contemplated. This is not the sort of thing a thief would really concern themselves about, since an eight pound sledge will do the deed much more efficiently.

"That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen," teacher Martha Gietner said. "It looks like a person. It really does. I think it's a ghost."

The black image is then seen moving into a lighted hallway and casting a shadow.

Skeptics are having a hard time explaining what could cause a shadow and appear to float in the building at 2:51 a.m.

Video is here!

Aussie floats with its belly pointing up and its eyes staring down because of a problem with its swim bladder.

Really cute pix.

Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department.

Paramedics attempted to revive him and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m., the sheriff's department said.

No foul play is suspected, the agency said in a written statement.

Read the entire CNN article here

I knew it was bad to ignore the "clearance: X ft" signs, but I didn't know it could get this bad. I'm not completely sure that the guy even survived it.

... it's not painted red:

The Italian Navy has finalized a contract with Fincantieri, worth about EUR915 million, for two more Todaro-class submarines.
...
Currently, Todaro is in the US, taking part in a six-month Atlantic training mission. After having called at Mayport and Norfolk, it is due to go to Groton and will conclude its US cruise in October by joining Columbus Day celebrations in New York.

Fun!

This has to be satire or something. Nobody's campaign staff is that dumb. Right?

Via Instapundit, who took it seriously enough to do some research, with... interesting... results.

Ah, for a ticket to London:

A new London exhibition gives visitors a chance to see for themselves the traces left by disease and diet on 26 skeletons recovered from beneath London.

I bet the slide show is interesting. Unfortunately I can't get the @#$#$@ player to work. Ah well.

Take your computer in to get it fixed, end up naked on the "intartubes". Which should teach the class two things: 1) learn to use your computer properly so you don't f- it up with spyware and viruses, and 2) do like Ellen and marry your IT support. Easy-peasy!

Fans of big science should have some fun with this collection of pictures taken in and around the soon-to-be-activated Large Hadron Collider. I'm not sure science gets much bigger than the LHC.

One of my boarding cats right now. He has the crazies. Often.

Thanks to Shirin for the entry!

Hee!!!

Andrea Pininfarina, head of the famous car design company which bears his family's name, has been killed in a car accident. The Pininfarina house has been responsible for dozens of famous car designs, not the least of which is our Alfa Spider. A damned shame.

It doesn't sound like flying a U2 around Korea is all that much fun. When you add the SAMs the DPRK must fling at them on occasion, it really sounds like a party!

Recent research seems to indicate the centers of Jupiter and Saturn are composed of a metallic liquid helium/hydrogen alloy. Tests also seem to indicate both elements turn into a liquid metal at much lower temperatures than previously supposed.

I'm not at all sure what it'll mean for us, but it definitely sounds cool.

Seconded: "It's metrosexuality gone stark raving mad."

It's all Ellen can do to keep me from wearing knee-high socks and shorts. Tights?!? Fuggedaboudit!

Yeah, I know, it's made the rounds, but I still thought this "take down" of the chatty Today Show hosts was a hoot. Welcome to live TV!

Ron gets a no-prize he can use to torment Zorak with for bringing us news of the discovery of (yet another) really weird object in space. I don't think it looks that much like Space Ghost, but wtf do I know?

Nothing like an 800 degree patch of ground to get your firefighters all excited. As if we needed another reason to think California is one of the weirdest places on Earth.

Two words: inflatable church. What will those spunky Italians think of next?

This time, I found our previous reference. Lordy, this place has been around awhile.

New Scientist: "'We look like prats, but at least we're all prats together". On the one hand, I can see having a cellphone that can locate a person to within a foot or so a real safety boon. On the other, well, can see having a cellphone that can locate a person to within a foot or so a real safety hazard. Like any tool, I suppose it's all in the implementation.

However, I can't help but think of several lurid murder cases in the past which had the doomed victim calling police from, say, a locked trunk asking for help. With one of these things, they'll get it, and fast.

Nothing says "Valkyrie" like big German women with rocks and cudgels:

Pedestrians usually step aside when Gisela Lang and her lady warriors come down the street, re-enacting the glorious day when the Women of Kronach helped oust an invading army from Germany nearly 400 years ago.

"All of us weigh at least 90 kilograms," (200 lbs) said Lang, 52, a local culture official who herself tips the scales at 100 kilos.

Mark gets a no-prize that only sings when it's all over for bringing us this amusing bit of local German tradition.

Newbie cat owner Annie and anyone else new to cats should find this account of "an encounter with the vet" amusing. Ellen has things like that happen just about every day, so it's pretty routine to her. I still thought it was funny.

Via Yourish.

The guys at NASA seem to have come up with a workable method of deflecting asteroids on a collision course with Earth. "We have a little bitty spacecraft with this monster swinging its butt at it." Indeed.

That's definitely going to leave a mark. JASSM: helping Hajji meet his 72 virgins for 13 years.

Or, if you prefer old school, JASSM means never having to say you're sorry.

Being a member of a rather insular fan base, I've long known several extremely rare Alfa prototypes have ended up in private hands through the company's curious habit of selling them to random used car dealers across the US. It's part of the charm of the marque! What I didn't know was lot-find BAT-9 had an even more interesting story attached to it. Money quote: "Kaberle had no idea he owned a handmade masterpiece. He just loved the car. He drove it to work at the popcorn stand."

It just don't get no better than that.

Ron gets the no-prize every fanboy wants for bringing us a look at the surprise premier of test footage from the (presumably) upcoming TRON sequel. If the Wikipedia entry is accurate, we should look for this coming out in the summer of 2010. It's nice to see they're finally cutting metal on this thing, with the original leads no less, but it's (obviously) far from a finished product. Here's to hoping it a) comes out and b) doesn't suck!

It's bad enough when your experimental rocket kerplooies; it's worse when it was carrying the ashes of at least a few famous people. I wonder if they'll give refunds? Probably not.

While I personally wouldn't go through it, reading about someone else's attempt to re-create "The Real Thing" was nevertheless a fun diversion. Me, I'm all about various adult-class beverages, but if home-brewing sounds interesting and a combination of health, religious, or other factors prevent the more common sort of brewing, I suppose one could do worse than re-creating Coca Cola for the f- of it. The article even includes the recipe!

Looks like it's even harder to climb Everest's near-by companion:

Helicopters have begun airlifting climbers stranded on the world's second-highest mountain, K2, in north Pakistan, reports say.

News agency Reuters said rescuers had reached two Dutch members of the group, 11 of whom are feared dead.
...
The fatality rate for those who reach the summit at 27% is about three times higher than that for Mount Everest.

I'd be interested to know the percentage of people who make the summit vs. the number who try. That way we could tell if you're more likely to die than to succeed.

Which is why I only watch them try on the Discovery channel!

Annie gets a no-prize that's probably photoshopped for bringing us news of the "Montauk monster". I like how they've posed it flipping us the bird. Do people really get paid for viral marketing?

Think of it as a cat, with thumbs. It's not a sloth; I'm pretty sure it's some sort of loris. Hmm? Oh go look it up.

No, Ellen, you can't have one.

A new company is offering 3-D printing services for affordable prices. At $50-$150 a shot, you too can have your very own, well, whatever the heck you want. Artist friend Damion will probably just sign over his paycheck once he finds out about it.

S'mine! U go wai!

Joshua gets a light-hearted no-prize for bringing us an example of a very... possessive... "kitteh."

One by one the kittens just turned off last night. Being 10 days premature I am not surprised at all.