Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktHere are 5 People Who Succeeded Long After They Should’ve Quit.
Robert Hooke was the Steve Jobs of the 17th Century.
It doesn’t look like things are going to improve much in North Korea. North Korea makes it a war crime to use a cell phone during 100 day mourning period.
Everything Lee Stranahan’s learned about business, he learned from playing Monopoly.
Not that any of you need any more reasons to avoid swinging drug-fueled orgies with strange couples, but now you have one: bear mace.
Survivors of the Costa Concordia are being offered money to shut up and sign a liability waver. At least, that’s my assumption. Given that Carnival Cruises, who owns Costa Cruises, has a lot of money, I’m betting not everybody takes them up on that offer. I’d at least assume that’s a first offer, and return with: “Well, I’m talking to my lawyer, and he says the whole thing was a lot more traumatic than that.”
The Costa Concordia After Captain Ignored Both Maps and Procedures to "Wave at people"
That’s it for tonight. Hope you have a great Friday Night! — KW
Filed under: Bits and Pieces | Tagged: bear mace, costa concordia, lee stranahan, monopoly, North Korea, steve job |
All Things in Moderation 
Flip side of tax code complexity:
“Paying Far More Than 13.9%: A Taxpayer’s Lament
By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: January 27, 2012 ”
…
“So with all the focus on tax rates, I sat down with my 2010 returns, calculator in hand. I’m still reeling from the results.
I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal taxes and 37 percent in combined federal, state and local income taxes. I paid 49 percent of my taxable income in federal income tax, and 74 percent of my taxable income in combined federal, state and local income taxes. My totals include federal payroll and self-employment taxes.”
…
“It turns out that my individual circumstances are a near-perfect storm of punitive tax policies. Nearly all my income is earned, as opposed to capital gains, carried interest or dividend income taxed at a lower rate. I live in New York City, where I pay some of the highest state and local taxes in the nation. My mortgage deduction is small relative to my adjusted gross income, so it doesn’t help me much. Because I have nonemployee income, like book royalties, I also pay the unincorporated business tax on top of other income taxes, which costs me an additional 5 percent of adjusted gross income. And because my deductions are high relative to my total income, mostly because of the state and local income taxes I pay, I’m hit hard by the alternative minimum tax. ”
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My first recommendation to Mr. Stewart would be to move out of New York. A big chunk of that change is paid in order to live on a particular chunk of land. Move to Tennessee or Mississippi and fly up to Manhattan for meetings, send everything else via email, and he’d have a lot more money.
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Monopoly Rule #4
Once all the property has been bought, you’re better off in jail.
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The Costa Concordia disaster is not good for Florida. First however I wish to express sorrow at the loss of life which of course compared to money…well you get my meaning.
But Carnival is one of the largest Corps in our state. They now have two boats that sail out of Tampa, which along with the Holland American and Royal Carribean ships bring a lot of tourist dollars and a lot of business to an otherwise moribund Channelside district. It’s not just the legal financial liability hanging over the heads of Carnival…it’s the damage this could do to the cruise industry. They are just now entering peak season here in Florida. I suspect it’ll be only a year or so before everything is back to normal, but who knows.
Globalization has presented some interesting challenges…legally, financially and safety wise. My last cruise to Mexico the wife and I signed up for horseback riding.
There apparently are few personal injury attorneys in Mexico to crank up protections out of liability fear. They took us to some ruins and then we mounted the horses. I expected something like the states, where a ride open to the mass public usually is simply sitting on the horse which follows the horse in front until you get back. You may get a little horsey flatulence, some snot tossed your way, or the horse refuses to move, but I’ve never felt endangered.
In Mexico they put us on some real mustangs. I had the worst. He was literally bucking, kicking the other folks horses (they were pissed at me..I didn’t do the kicking) and biting several others. We rode not on a groomed and manicured trail but over rock croppings that seemed slippery to me. It was totally dangerous..I am not a cowboy. I was scared shtless and my wife and I were relieved to get off those wild beasts.
The next day we tried the kayaking with the clear bottoms so you could see the fish in Mexico’s “Riviera”. The tide was pulling us out into the gulf, our kayak was leaking and taking on water, I told my wife…eff this let’s just go back…smart choice. We sat on the shore and laughed at our compatriots struggling against the current with waterlogged boats, they were exhausted by the time they made it back to shore.
Point is..folks overseas have a far different view of safety than we do. I’ve cruised Carnival out of Tampa and the muster drill is the FIRST thing they do before they even up anchor. Apparently in Italy they can’t be bothered with common sense safety moves and if you are in Mexico…it’s a libertarian paradise..you are totally free to pursue crazy activities and maim and injure yourself and the Mexicans are glad to help you do it!
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Here’s a fun article from Forbes. I wish I had a dog hunting in this debate, but I really do not.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2012/01/27/warren-buffetts-advice-to-a-boomer-buy-your-sunbelt-retirement-home-now/
Mike
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Wow! I totally did not realize that Alan Rickman was Snape! It must be the hair, because I have long thought that he is one of those men that became totally hot in middle age and is just improving.
ruk:
Point is..folks overseas have a far different view of safety than we do.
I’ve noticed the same thing numerous times; it’s almost like they expect people to use, you know, common sense or something! 😉 And, I will add, that you can find out how to do bolding if you read the FAQ©. . . but now I’m getting repetitious!
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I’m off to a gymnastics meet in which the U’s Red Rocks will thoroughly demolish BYU. Back in a couple of hours–try not to bring the blog down this time, OK??
:->
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Mich,
Hopefully you will see this when you get back. I was someone who actually DID go to your most excellent FAQ page. And on the screen it looks great. In reality..er…not so sure.
I think perhaps your FAQ’s work for those with administrator capacities. I tried with the avatar loading…I don’t even get the “options” on my screen that apparently exist for the admins. Same with the bolding…I do not get “edit” capabilities as a peon here.
A: Bold ([b][/b]), italic ([i][/i]), and active links (the HTML code is in the upper right sidebar) (obviously, replace the brackets with carats in order for the code to work).
Let’s try an experiment here (b)bold(\b) and if bold comes out bold in this post then I’ve figured out how to do it with all the old fashioned keystrokes. (i)italics(\i)
And even though I’m a point and click kind of guy…I’m used to all those commands on my tool bar in MSWord…if this works and I see bold and italics, then out of respect for Scott I’ll do it the old fashioned way.
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Point is…folks overseas have a far different view of safety than we do
It’s my fault… I’m a lawyer so it really is my fault. Although your example of horseback riding is one of the few areas where you assume all the risk even here in the US at least in most states. The lack of crazy horses in the US is probably due to reputation concerns rather than liability.
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Well you see my frustration Mich. I’m just not a very bold man I guess! 🙂
At least smiley faces usually show up and now I find we’re banning those?
And since we’re airing technical laundry..the little box where you can check for email notification of follow up comments…that was awesome during the “nested” period because you could see if someone answered a question or continued a discussion. Does it still work, I can’t imagine how, because comments following each other are no longer sequentially organized by topic or thought but by time. I’m not griping just observing
I don’t mind scrolling the entire thread however..and the feature in the upper right where you see recent posts also helps a lot!
If someone invents an easy way to bold I’ll be happy to follow convention.
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ash
” Although your example of horseback riding is one of the few areas where you assume all the risk even here in the US at least in most states”
I did not know that. I was aware that the “ski states” had enacted laws to place liability on the individual skiers so that the industry was not put out of business with an endless round of personal injury suits, but horseback riding?
I guess riding those little jackasses? mules? down that Grand Canyon trail might be dangerous as well.
I have been an adrenaline junkie most of my life…skydiving..snow skiing…rode..oops tried to ride a real live bull once at the rodeo…done aerobatics in a bi plane..flown ultralights…I love thrilling sports…and so I’m not a big fan of personal injury liability shutting them down…but there must be a proper balance. Putting folks on horses that are barely broken without even warning them, and then taking them over craggy rocky trails, no helmets, well I’d rather do all those other activities with the possible exception of ever getting on a bull again.
It’s kind of like getting on an Italian cruise ship the size of the Titanic and assuming they know what their doing when it comes to safety eh?
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I’m just going to throw this in here. Admittedly, I haven’t had time to study any of this or read much of the commentary or even explanations of the “tax on millionaires”, but just off the top of my head, they can call it whatever they want, “Buffett/Romney/Kerry Tax”, it kinda makes sense to me that if a large percentage of people who pay combined rates above 20%, 25%, or even 30% can do it, people making $1M+ can do it as well. All the talk about flat tax and the 47% who don’t pay Federal Income Tax seems like a bit of a distraction to me from the real issue, that people like Buffett/Romney/Kerry appear to be getting a pretty unfair tax advantage over most of us.
After Jan. 31st I’ll be caught up with my dreaded paper work, because I have to, and hopefully I’ll have a little more time to dig into this and other issues. Lately I’ve been avoiding some of these discussion because I like to have a few more facts stored up in the ole noggin’ and haven’t had time to worry about it. I mean, I still haven’t seen a single debate yet or even a political ad, that’s a dereliction of duty for me. Anyway, I’ll be back to my usual form on Feb. 1st……………….fair warning……………lol
For now, I’m mostly an observer of our discussions, but I do enjoy reading what all of you are writing and really appreciate the tone of the place, so thanks everyone. I think our little experiment is working. We’ve got the best bar in town IMO.
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ruk
Let me try the bold thing.
Type a left carat (which is above the comma on your keyboard), now type a lower case b, next a right carat (which is above the period). That goes to the left of the sentence or paragraph or whatever you want bolded, it could even be just a word. After you put your desired bolded words in there at the end of that, or to the right of it, and without a space or anything, type a left carat, a forward slash, another lower case b, and then the right carat. Voila! There are no parentheses, quotation marks, spaces or anything else. Just carats, b’s and one forward slash. The italics are exactly the same except instead of the b type in a lower case i.
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ruk
We can’t show you exactly what it looks like because all you would see are the bolded words as the html disappears if you do it right. I’ll give you some musical notes though. Hold down the alt key and at the same time on your numbers pad type a 1 and a 3. Release the alt key. Hold down the alt key again and type a 1 and then a 4. ♪♫♪♫♪♫
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lmsinca
Thanks…here goes….lmsinca is the best although I must confess in any contest for the best michigoose must also be mentioned
Ok I’m going to hit post to see if that works. The computer geek who shall not be named on this blog once made fun of folks for confusing the term cursor with carat.
The keystrokes you just suggested are literally strokes I have never used in the past I had to search for the backslash and now that you’ve directed me to the carats lmsinca perhaps I can make this work…well let’s test this baby out. time for post
I can handle that because it’s a button
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OK…why didn’t it drop out of bold when I ended a sentence with ?
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Wow..I ended the sentence with…and I’m going to space here so it shows up..
IE how do you turn it off?
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Ok..carats and backslashes do not show up no matter how you enter them.
Well at least you got me halfway home lmsinca! You’re such a tease.
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RUK, the entire thing is there in my directions. At the end of the sentence you want bolded type in the right carat, a forward slash which looks like this / , and then the lower case b, and then the right carat.
You’re almost there.
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lmsinca
One more try…I was using the backslash not the forward slash.
And so once again…Michi’s FAQ’s should be mandatory reading and lmsinca’s followup course essential
Let’s see what we have now….
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Where are you? It’s the forward slash added into the html code which ends the bold or italic effect.
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LMAO
We’re sooooo close lmsinca…. maybe I used backslash on the italics instead of forward and that lack of attention to detail is why italics did not turn off.
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Yay, memorize it or write it down somewhere. It will become second nature soon. ♥ ♥
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Well lmsinca for some reason the forward slash on the bold ended it for me but on the italics it didn’t seem to work. If there is a space between the last letter you want effected and the carat does that mess it up?
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You see the forward slash under the question mark right?
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Yes, no spaces between the codes and the words you’re highlighting.
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HOORAY thanks lmsinca I think I’ve got it….at least I think I got it.
Got to be honest though…pointing and clicking is a lot easier for a technological luddite! lol
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Your 7:50 looks perfect from here………………..hallelujah !!!!!!!
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You’ll get used to it and begin to wonder why you never tried it before, believe me, especially with Scott Bolder around.
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This may have been a spot where nested comments would have been appreciated. lol
Easier to quickly scroll by lminsca’s lesson for the Luddite
Thanks for the tip on the forward slash…I have a full keyboard and I was using the one on the number pad…they both obviously work but I’ve only used that question mark key for question marks..until now.
Thanks for your patience lmsinca. Have you ever thought about teaching elementary school?
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Sadly, back to work……. 😦
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We could just delete the entire lesson, but maybe someone else has been wondering how to do it themselves and it will make sense to them too.
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lmsinca
Do all of you guys have to go through the same keyboard gymnastics or do you have edit features where you point and click. Just curious. I’m not sure how all of you mastered this…not that it’s rocket science or tough..I’m just not sure where you were required to apply this knowledge unless you all go back to MSDOS.
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Have you ever thought about teaching elementary school?
No thanks.
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Ruk, most of us do both. I like seeing the thread in full so usually type in the code, it’s really easy once you get used to it. Others reply from a comments page with edit functions, but I don’t follow the conversation as well from there. I look at it while I’m working just to monitor the site. I learned this stuff the same way you just did. You should see my questions sometime to michi and okie……………eeeegawds. I’ve become their guinea pig…….html for dummies. I have to get back to work but will drop you an email later.
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ruk:
I think perhaps your FAQ’s work for those with administrator capacities.
You’re right–we didn’t realize that until after I’d written them up and lms tested a few things for me. . . and by then we’d started mucking around with nesting/un-nesting and stuff and I decided to wait until everything shook out before I re-wrote them all again. That’s one of my projects for this weekend. . . and to answer your question about using buttons or code, I generally comment from the blog page (rather than the comments page), so I usually type in the code. And I see that you’ve mastered it now, too–yea!!!!!
There is also this HTML cheatsheet that Kevin pointed me too ‘way back in the PL days, ’round about the time he wrote Troll Hunter and briefly solved the WaPo’s woes. They really missed the boat by not hiring him to fix their commenting software for them!
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Michigoose
Thanks for that cheat sheet. I remembered it back in PL days as well.
It looked like a bunch of gobbledy gook back then. But your FAQ’s and lmsinca’s patience in giving me specific keystrokes really helped.
I’m sure it’s easy once you start doing it on a regular basis.
BTW I agree 100% about Kevin’s troll blocker. I’m surprised Greg didn’t pick up on that because it is the one thing that could have really saved a lot of commenters IMO.
It’s really amazing to me that you guys can simply band together and produce a blog that is so technologically superior to WaPo. No disrespect but it’s the freaking WaPo and how many resources did they have to bring to bear, just amazing when you think about it.
Don’t know if you saw jnc4p’s post about Ezra’s ad for an IT person wanted. Just pathetic really. I obviously like the people here a lot and appreciate the moderation but I also liked Greg and I feel sorry for him…PL reached it’s zenith with Kevin’s troll blocker and remember it actually worked back then…before they went to the “consistent” platform and it became FUBAR!!!
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Getting late in the East for we old farts…time for bed.
BTW…I think I’ve said it before but I really like the feature in the upper right hand corner that shows the most recent posters and the thread where their posts are located…great idea!!!
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Oh, and I forgot to mention last night: Utah beat BYU 197.55 – 194.45. . . a three-point win in gymnastics is like a six-touchdown win in football. Four out of their five scores that counted on bars were 9.90s–they *dropped* a 9.85 from the score! What an amazing team they’ve got this year–go, Utes!!
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