Heisman trophy winner Sam Bradford, a University of Oklahoma sophomore, performed his role, and immediately the business of buying and selling began. There were multimillion dollar deals on apparel. Celebrity performers brokered large fees for their appearances. Broadcast and other media companies offered nine-figure contracts for programming. The top names in the business received top salaries and some substantial performance bonuses. There was wheeling and dealing like nobody's business. And Bradford and those like him, even though responsible for the very acts that set all this financial flow in motion, won't receive a single dime today and have no guarantee they ever would.
Oh yeah, and Bradford got to ring the bell that opened trading on the New York Stock Exchange, too.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
When Sales Attack?
A couple of our Oklahoma legislators would like the state to stop assessing sales tax on firearms & ammo purchases. I'm not a gun-owner, nor am I likely to be, but I don't have problems with responsible firearms ownership, combined with appropriate background checks and safety training. So I don't see a real problem with this idea.
The rationale, however, is interesting. Read this statement from Rep. Proctor:
It's an excellent rationale for his bill, but it's also an excellent rationale for repealing almost any non-luxury-item sales tax. People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need food in the home for protection against starvation, for example. People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need clothes in the home for protection against nudity (in some cases, of course, the ones protected from certain people's nudity would be the rest of us).
Carry it further, and it's an argument against other kinds of taxes, too. Property taxes: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need a home for protection against December. Excise tax on automobiles: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need a car to get from that home to the place where they buy the food, clothes and/or firearms they need for protection against those other things. Federal income tax: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government just because they need a military or police to protect them from the folks who own bigger firearms than they do.
Keep this up, and this is what we end up with:
1. Donald Trump paying taxes for stuff with his name on it and ugly combovers (the latter figured according to the Blagojevich Assessment Ratio (BAR), which indexes the marginal rate to the ugliness and fakeness of what is not actually fake hair).
2. Osama Bin Laden paying taxes for wasteful consumption of natural resources (the air he breathes).
3. Hugh Hefner for the same (Viagra, silicone, blonde hair-coloring and bimbos -- some of those, like silicone, are non-renewable).
4. Roseanne Barr and Rosie O'Donnell for wasteful use & corruption of the good name of a blameless flowering plant.
Man, I love this idea! Rep. Proctor, you and Sen. Corn are my new heroes!
The rationale, however, is interesting. Read this statement from Rep. Proctor:
People shouldn’t have to pay a tax to the government if they need a gun in the home for self-protection.
It's an excellent rationale for his bill, but it's also an excellent rationale for repealing almost any non-luxury-item sales tax. People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need food in the home for protection against starvation, for example. People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need clothes in the home for protection against nudity (in some cases, of course, the ones protected from certain people's nudity would be the rest of us).
Carry it further, and it's an argument against other kinds of taxes, too. Property taxes: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need a home for protection against December. Excise tax on automobiles: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government if they need a car to get from that home to the place where they buy the food, clothes and/or firearms they need for protection against those other things. Federal income tax: People shouldn't have to pay a tax to the government just because they need a military or police to protect them from the folks who own bigger firearms than they do.
Keep this up, and this is what we end up with:
1. Donald Trump paying taxes for stuff with his name on it and ugly combovers (the latter figured according to the Blagojevich Assessment Ratio (BAR), which indexes the marginal rate to the ugliness and fakeness of what is not actually fake hair).
2. Osama Bin Laden paying taxes for wasteful consumption of natural resources (the air he breathes).
3. Hugh Hefner for the same (Viagra, silicone, blonde hair-coloring and bimbos -- some of those, like silicone, are non-renewable).
4. Roseanne Barr and Rosie O'Donnell for wasteful use & corruption of the good name of a blameless flowering plant.
Man, I love this idea! Rep. Proctor, you and Sen. Corn are my new heroes!
Send in the Clones...
At what point can we officially declare that it is no longer linguistically correct to refer to the movie industry as a creative enterprise?
The Procrastination Formula
Even though that headline sounds like the title to a Robert Ludlum novel (The Aquitaine Progression, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Bourne Ultimatum, etc.,) there is a professor in Canada who has actually studied procrastination for the last 10 years and has developed a mathematical formula that determines why people procrastinate.
The professor -- who has one of the ultimate cool professor names, Professor Piers Steel -- began by studying 250 college students. The jokes, they overwhelm my poor brain and I cannot pick just one...
Anyway, Professor Steel says that procrastination is different from laziness. Lazy people don't care about the task they're not doing. Procrastinators care about the task, but they're impulsive and easily distracted by something that will be more fun, more satisfying or at the very least, less boring right now than whatever the task is.
And those procrastinators who've claimed the real reason they put stuff off is that they're such perfectionists they can't stand the idea of doing a less than perfect job? Nope, says Professor Steel. Just like the rest of the impulsive & easily distracted folks who find what they think are more interesting things to do, like play Spider Solitaire, InkBall or write stuff in a blog...well, that's enough of that right there.
He goes into greater detail in a book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow. It's due out soon.
The professor -- who has one of the ultimate cool professor names, Professor Piers Steel -- began by studying 250 college students. The jokes, they overwhelm my poor brain and I cannot pick just one...
Anyway, Professor Steel says that procrastination is different from laziness. Lazy people don't care about the task they're not doing. Procrastinators care about the task, but they're impulsive and easily distracted by something that will be more fun, more satisfying or at the very least, less boring right now than whatever the task is.
And those procrastinators who've claimed the real reason they put stuff off is that they're such perfectionists they can't stand the idea of doing a less than perfect job? Nope, says Professor Steel. Just like the rest of the impulsive & easily distracted folks who find what they think are more interesting things to do, like play Spider Solitaire, InkBall or write stuff in a blog...well, that's enough of that right there.
He goes into greater detail in a book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow. It's due out soon.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Pastoral Scene?
I'm not like this fellow, who decided "O Little Town of Bethlehem" wouldn't be sung in his church, because the Bethlehem depicted in its lyrics doesn't match the reality of life in Bethlehem today.
OK, but Phillip Brooks wrote the words in 1868, inspired after his own visit to Bethlehem in 1865. This was a number of years after the events he describes, and he never indicated he was writing a historically accurate recreation of events. If he had, he probably would have had to figure out a way to include the hubbub that was supposed to have been going on because of the census that brought Mary and Joseph to town and the fact that Bethlehem's Jewish citizens were in barely-subdued revolt against the Romans.
But on the other hand, I may follow this guy's lead and try to get a Christmas song banned myself. I'll start here...
OK, but Phillip Brooks wrote the words in 1868, inspired after his own visit to Bethlehem in 1865. This was a number of years after the events he describes, and he never indicated he was writing a historically accurate recreation of events. If he had, he probably would have had to figure out a way to include the hubbub that was supposed to have been going on because of the census that brought Mary and Joseph to town and the fact that Bethlehem's Jewish citizens were in barely-subdued revolt against the Romans.
But on the other hand, I may follow this guy's lead and try to get a Christmas song banned myself. I'll start here...
Friday, December 12, 2008
Out of balance
Number of children who die of starvation per day around the world: roughly 30,000.
Number of children who died of starvation between when Florida toddler Caylee Anthony was reported missing July 15 and a bag with her possible remains was found December 9: Nearly 4.5 million.
Number of children who died since the disappearane of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway on May 30, 2005: More than thirty-eight million.
Number of times any of those children have been mentioned on nightly news programs, discussed during news analysis shows, profiled by Oprah, been the subject of special investigative reports or had their deaths/disappearances analyzed by Greta Van Susteren: 1.
Really, one, you may ask. You're sure it's one time?
Well, no. But I'm an incurable optimist.
Number of children who died of starvation between when Florida toddler Caylee Anthony was reported missing July 15 and a bag with her possible remains was found December 9: Nearly 4.5 million.
Number of children who died since the disappearane of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway on May 30, 2005: More than thirty-eight million.
Number of times any of those children have been mentioned on nightly news programs, discussed during news analysis shows, profiled by Oprah, been the subject of special investigative reports or had their deaths/disappearances analyzed by Greta Van Susteren: 1.
Really, one, you may ask. You're sure it's one time?
Well, no. But I'm an incurable optimist.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
On this (Lego) block I shall build my church...
A family in England has a unique Christmas tradition of building some gigantic project each year with some of their nearly 500,000 Lego bricks. This year, they built a church.
On the downside, a full-size church made of Legos would probably be pretty drafty, and not have a lot of structural support. On the upside, since most Lego blocks only come in three colors, that limits the number of fights the congregation can have about the color of the floor...
On the downside, a full-size church made of Legos would probably be pretty drafty, and not have a lot of structural support. On the upside, since most Lego blocks only come in three colors, that limits the number of fights the congregation can have about the color of the floor...
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