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Random Thoughts
Sep. 23rd, 2009 01:56 pmTwo completely random thoughts, which means it's not enough even for link salad, but you go to blogging with the blog you have, not the blog you wished you had. (Extra points for the commentor who identifies what Famous Personage I just ripped off).
Thought The First - My beloved state of Illinois has needed to increase the taxation rates for a long time. Our flat 3% of income tax rate is nice to pay, not so nice to run a state with. Well, rather than actually fix the underlying problem, our political class in Illinois decided to apply a bandaid in the form of increased taxes on liquor. What makes this worse is that we have a legal monopoly in Illinois - only two liquor distributors. So the distributors decided to use the tax hike as an excuse to bump their profits up. As the guy quoted in the article said, "One thing you don't do is give up drinking, especially if you lose your job or your stock portfolio is in the toilet."
Thought The Second - I was watching the show History Detectives on PBS the other night. Basically, various historians go meet with people who have historical artifacts, and then go dig up the rest of the story. From that show, I learned of an effort to use packs of dogs to hunt Japanese soldiers in WWII. Basically, a civilian named Prestre had come up with an idea to train large groups of dogs to hunt Japanese soldiers by scent, without human handler intervention. It was a wacky idea, but wars, especially ones where, in 1942 when this was green-lighted, you're getting your ass kicked, tend to make these ideas seem less wacky.
The Army gave Prestre 90 days to show some results. He failed miserably, despite using Japanese-American soldiers as live bait (the soldiers' words, not mine). Prestre did not take the closure of his program sitting down - in fact he made a big enough fuss that the Army recommended to the FBI to put him under surveillance.
Thought The First - My beloved state of Illinois has needed to increase the taxation rates for a long time. Our flat 3% of income tax rate is nice to pay, not so nice to run a state with. Well, rather than actually fix the underlying problem, our political class in Illinois decided to apply a bandaid in the form of increased taxes on liquor. What makes this worse is that we have a legal monopoly in Illinois - only two liquor distributors. So the distributors decided to use the tax hike as an excuse to bump their profits up. As the guy quoted in the article said, "One thing you don't do is give up drinking, especially if you lose your job or your stock portfolio is in the toilet."
Thought The Second - I was watching the show History Detectives on PBS the other night. Basically, various historians go meet with people who have historical artifacts, and then go dig up the rest of the story. From that show, I learned of an effort to use packs of dogs to hunt Japanese soldiers in WWII. Basically, a civilian named Prestre had come up with an idea to train large groups of dogs to hunt Japanese soldiers by scent, without human handler intervention. It was a wacky idea, but wars, especially ones where, in 1942 when this was green-lighted, you're getting your ass kicked, tend to make these ideas seem less wacky.
The Army gave Prestre 90 days to show some results. He failed miserably, despite using Japanese-American soldiers as live bait (the soldiers' words, not mine). Prestre did not take the closure of his program sitting down - in fact he made a big enough fuss that the Army recommended to the FBI to put him under surveillance.
