jeffmcbride.net

Hello wandering reader. You are, no doubt, here because you are looking for something desperately enough to make it all the way to page 10 of your search results, where you found me. I know it is you, because I’m quite sure that my three regular readers from long ago have long since stopped checking for any new posts. However, I am not dead. Just quiet. I don’t actually have anything to say, but I have been taking a lot of photos recently (Mostly using my wonderful girlfriend’s Nikon D50), so I thought I’d share a few here.

I saw this lucky bamboo at Ikea today for $3. I thought it looked cool, and they had the perfect vase for it for only $0.79. I got to wondering how you make bamboo curl like that, so I went and looked it up.  So, someone, somewhere, has been patiently and slowly rotating my bamboo around for at least a year, until it was shipped to Burbank so I could buy it for $3. I’m often amazed at just how cheap some things are. Then again, perhaps they fed it some kind of bamboo super-grow fertilizer and it grows a couple of inches in a month instead of a couple per year.

Paraglider at Torrey Pines Glider Port

The pier at Paradise Cove in Malibu. Went for breakfast here last week. Was a pretty nice place, ate breakfast at a table on the sand, then walked on the beach for a bit.

More on my Flickr page. Just click any of the photos.

Photoshop is pretty cool. Gimp is nice…but photoshop…its just better.

This is a combination of shots taken while walking out into some sand dunes at Death Valley a couple months ago.

People, are, really, really, stupid.

Sam Harris has a Newsweek article up about Sarah Palin, and America’s apparent penchant for mediocrity in politicians. When McCain was nominated, I had decided that this was an election I could live with either way. There are some things to like about McCain. His choice of Palin changed that real fast. John McCain is 72 years old, can’t dress himself without help, and Sarah Palin as POTUS is a very scary prospect. Please, please, please, please America, do not elect her vice president. Any policy differences between McCain and Obama are completely mute points next to the possibility of Sarah Palin as president.

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world’s only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

“Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child’s brain?”

“Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I’m an avid hunter.”

“But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.”

“That’s just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink.”

If the US presidential election was being held worldwide, it looks like Obama would be on course for an easy victory. At least according to a Pew Research Survey, in June. Perhaps republicans have good reason to resist immigration. Courtesty of Alex at The Daily Transcript, who discussed it as part of his “Let’s talk about facts this election” series.

USA Today: Space junk could hinder Hubble repair mission

One of every 300 shuttle missions to the space station could expect to be destroyed by space debris, Shannon said. By contrast, Atlantis faces a 1-in-185 risk of fatal damage, he said.

Wow. That’s scary odds, if you ask me.

I’d just like to point out that if you search for “electric clipper” on google images, there is a picture of me with a hole in my hair on the first page. Woohoo! But, if you add an ’s’, I am lost in obscurity.

I would like to voice my support for retiring the US penny. It is a waste of time and metal. I have a jar containing virtually every penny that has passed through my hands for the last year, and it is not worth enough for me to drive to the grocery store and deal with the change counting machine. I’m certainly never going to count them myself, nor am I going to carry them around and spend them. I only save them in the jar because I can’t bring myself to throw away money. If your purchases are rounded to the nickel, would you ever even notice? For that matter, I could get behind retiring both the penny and the nickel at the same time. The dime is small enough to cover any cash transaction, and it is a nice even metric 1/10th of a dollar.

But the penny is a no brainer. It has outlived its usefulness. Sorry Abe.

As in Pigovian Taxes, of course. I’d like to throw the term around like I know what I’m talking about, but the truth is I just learned it and had to go to wikipedia to figure it out. It comes from Greg Mankiw’s post, The Pigou Club Manifesto. It’s almost two years old, but it’s new to me, so I thought I’d echo it again.  An argument for taxing gas consumption. He also has a more recent post about why the much more popular “windfall profits” tax on oil companies is NOT just as good.

I’d like to add road tolls as a much better way to pay for highway systems. They are paid for by taxes anyway, but the up front lump sum has no effect on people’s driving decisions; paying per trip would. It wouldn’t have to change revenue, but it could encourage more efficient use of roads, lower congestion, and those who used it more would pay more. With today’s high-speed toll lanes, it doesn’t even require a lot of toll booth lanes and extra delays to pay. Just drive through at 70, and the transponder on your windshield beeps to let you know you’ve just paid.  Plus, rates can be adjusted for areas of high congestion, or during peak times to spread the load.