一個中國人, 這是我的故事
CARLSON: I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.
STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.
(LAUGHTER)
Even better: Jon Stewart on Charlie Rose, in RealAudio. It is a really good conversation.
I just got back from my American Government class where we had a heated debate about tax policy. I made a comment about how strange it is that so many Americans argue for a flat tax rate based on social justice
. They claim that “it is unfair to tax someone who earns more money”.
This makes no sense at all. If anything, the rich use more public resources than the poor and it is fair
to pay for it. For a good summary, read The Life of Joe Republican.
On my way back from home, as I was crossing the foot bridge, I thought of a line that I could have used during the discussion:
Tax is only burden if you cannot afford it. If you can afford it and still call it a burden and ask for relief, then that is lazy and weak.
For a long time, I have been puzzled as to why some many supporters of Republican policies choose to do so; most of them I know are simply not rich enough to benefit from those policies. I think this Slate article answers some of those questions for me.
Choice quotes:
“The people with less than $10 million are still very focused on their personal financial situation in the short term,” he told the Wall Street Journal, where the results were first published.
and also
At a certain point—somewhere north of $10 million—wealth may become “f*** you and f*** you, Republicans” money…. People with such sums don’t need to worry about how income or capital gains taxes affect their daily lives. Raise ‘em, lower ‘em, who cares? They’re still going to be disgustingly rich. And so they are free to devote their attention—and resources—to other areas: the environment, education, foreign policy, the Supreme Court, social issues, stem-cell research, the war on drugs, whatever. And it seems that for many of the truly wealthy, focusing on those other issues leads them to favor Kerry over Bush.
I think the key quote is this: Taxes are a byproduct of wealth, not an obstacle to its creation.
Go read this and watch this now.
… and there is more from the always excellent Juan Cole.
More required reading: Open Letter to President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld.
I walked a lot today.
Walked around Chinatown with Celia earlier this afternoon. Met a guy at Panang with cool hair.
It’s fun being with Celia. It’s nice to be able to speak Chinese. I’d like to see her more.
I met up with Atsushi afterward and showed him the Copley / Hynes area. Bought the new Zap Mama CD.
Started reading So Yesterday, it’s fun so far. A little bit later: I finished it. It was a quick read. Recommanded.
Came home to discover that my Windows laptop is FUBAR. Major bummer.
I watched it tonight at the library. It was pretty fun. Kerry did well, but I wish he threw more punches at Bush.
Some suggestions:
, he could have mentioned the decision to go into Fallujah, and then abrupting pulling out as the troops started attacking. The result of this mixed message from Bush is particular devastating, leading to deaths of US military personnels.
It is the wrong war
because Iraq has no ties to Al Qaida; it is the wrong time
because Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, and it is the wrong place
because that’s not where bin Laden is.
I think this would have been a terrific argument against Bush, and it fits in with the rest of Kerry’s argument as well. (You could be certain, but you could still be wrong)
If Bush mentions the necessity of a “multi-faceted war on terror”, then it is yet another point that shows Bush’s lack of focus; he couldn’t even finish up the first target properly to move on to the next one.
The Democrats seem pretty happy about their lead now. Let’s hope this cheerfulness does not translate into cockiness. This debate series is going to be interesting. I look forward to the next debate on domestic issues, as well as the VP debate (Edwards vs. Cheney, fight!)
I started blogging again. I’m toying with my Bloglines client protoype, but I think the smart thing to do eventually might be to work with the Blam guys to support the Bloglines API.
I talked to Mike on IRC. I really shouldn’t be writing code at night. The two bugs that I mentioned have been fixed. Here’s the code and a sample OPML file.
I haven’t been able to concentrate on homework lately, but I did get to do a bit of fun hacking tonight.
I read that Bloglines released a set of Web Services APIs today. I have been a Bloglines user for a long time, but I have always missed the option of reading my feeds offline (especially when I didn’t a net connection at home). Now that an API is available, I figured I can do something about it.
It took a while to read up on the how the NodeStore API works, but after finding this vital bit of documentation, I got it working in no time.
Unfortunately, the selection API is still not complete yet, so for now, I only have a simple OPML (+ Bloglines extension) viewer.
There are still some bugs: most notably, the unread count at the top is wrong. Also, the rendering of the text is statically hooked. I had tried using a delegate to allow for pluggable rendering, but it fails with an Exception.
The code is available here: nodestore.cs.
I think I got LivePress working now. The trick is to put md5 () around my password.
Let’s see if this is working….
I’ve been customizing my firefox setup by installing various extensions, here’s a list:
AdBlock, Image Zoom, BugMeNot, ContextHighlight, GMailCompose, Sage, Flat Bookmark Editing, McSearchPreview, Gmail Notifier, Bloglines Toolkit, MiniT (drag+indicator), Deepest Sender, Disable Targets For Downloads, Download Statusbar, Openbook, Show Failed URL, Tabbrowser Preferences, TargetAlert, Linky, Down Them All and undoclosedtab.
On a whim, I decided to buy a new laptop on eBay. This will be my 3rd IBM thinkpad in 4 years. I started with a X20 in the summer of 2001, then upgraded to a X24 in the summer of 2002. This X31 will be my third.
The DSL man from Covad / Speakeasy will be coming on Monday to install DSL. The laptop will arrive Monday.
