Tax and Budget Reform

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by Lisa

I wish there was a decent way to file RFE’s (request for enhancements) with the federal government. I can’t do a thing about the complexity of the tax code or the annoyance of having to spend a weekend filling out forms just to get my money back. But there’s existing tax code for charitable deductions (although you can fall afoul of the AMT if you donate too much of your income … so that may need a little rewrite here). Create a new tax deductible donation categorization for government entities — then each department of the government not get themselves registered as a not-for-profit-goverment-entity that qualifies for tax deductible charitable donations. I would feel a LOT better about paying 10k in taxes this year if I knew the money was going toward departments I support (and not going to departments I do not support). I could literally donate every dollar I owe in taxes to specific departments – then get my payroll deduction contributions completely refunded (bonus, US government, you got the interest on my payroll deductions since you held on to them). Don’t want to bother? Then don’t – your payroll deductions will get allocated out for you through the budgeting process.

With a significant adoption rate, if no one wants to fund the Department of Whatever, then the people writing the budget could well take that as a hint. Obviously that’s not a perfect rule – no one wants to fund the IRS, but you’re still going to need someone to handle tax collection & filing (at least until you manage to sort out the tax code & processes). But someone who advocates eliminating the Department of Education may be surprised how many people voluntarily earmark their taxes for Education. Or the military industrial complex may be shocked that donations don’t approach the 60% or 16% (depending on your point of view of “all spending”) of the federal budget that goes into the military and Homeland Security.

Absolutism

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by Lisa

I read an article from the NY Times stating: ‘Mr. Trump suggested that all Muslim immigrants posed potential threats to America’s security and called for a ban on migrants from any part of the world with “a proven history of terrorism” against the United States or its allies’. I know there’s a lot of interpretation in journalism, and I was curious what he actually advocated.

One quick Google later, I found the speech text on the candidate’s web site:

    “When I am elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world when there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we understand how to end these threats.”

If this is what the man actually said, then there’s no third-party misinterpretation to blame. “Areas” of the world is vague, but I get not using legally accurate terms in campaign speeches. Linguistic and legal nuances are not exactly gripping (and sometimes get ridiculed a la what-the-meaning-of-is-is). But where there is a proven history of terrorism against the US, Europe, or our allies??? No delta-time qualification in there, so the Irish are right out? Bonus, though, is he inadvertently sorted a huge portion of South/Central America with this generalization too. For the most part, it’s been decades there too, but “fuera yankis” and all that.

Actually, I’d find the proposal far less incendiary if he said “the immigration system is absolutely a mess. I propose stopping all immigration for six months while we figure out how to do this properly.”. Years ago, Microsoft had a run of significant bugs and took a coding holiday to perform a code review. Similar thing — yeah, it’s disruptive to shut down our business for some period of time while we make sure we’re doing the right thing … but it’s more disruptive to continue doing the wrong thing.

Problem is that what Mr. Trump probably means is more apt to be banning immigration from any country some arbitrary individual / board decides seems like it could be dangerous (or just to be safe – any individual immigrant who looks like ..). Which would be frighteningly institutionalized racism.

Homemade Marshmallow!!!

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by Lisa

We made homemade marshmallow using Alton Brown’s recipe (with hazelnut extract instead of vanilla). We built a fire pit out in our woods, and I wanted to make smores.

It got surprisingly thick while whipping it – I was worried that it would get too hard, and I may have stopped whipping it a little too soon.

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The end result, though, was spectacular. For future reference … they melt really quickly over the fire when they’re still fresh. Supposedly if you let them dry for a few days, they toast up better.

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We have a HUGE tray of marshmallows – supposedly they freeze well … so I used maybe 1/10th of them & froze the rest. This might be a lifetime supply … but I’m kind of looking forward to hot cocoa this winter with hazelnut marshmallows!

Serving Custom Error Pages From Apache

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by Lisa

At work, we are in the process of retiring an old password management web site. We want to direct users to the new site, and I don’t particularly want to handle each possible entry point an individual may have bookmarked. It seemed a lot quicker and easier to just move everything out of the directory and throw up a custom 404 page.

I am certain that I’ve used just “ErrorDocument ### /file.xtn” in Apache configurations to serve custom error pages, but when I set this up in our staging environment … I got the generic 404. Three days of Googling and reading Apache documentation later, and I have a configuration that actually serves a custom page when error 404 is encountered:

        ErrorDocument 404 /customized-404.html
        <Files "customized-404.html">
        <If "-z %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS}">
            RedirectMatch 404 ^/customized-404.html$

Voila, a pretty page that doesn’t in any way indicate 404 / not found / etc but rather says “hey, this web site is being retired. please go over yonder to manage your password.”.

Sometimes, math *is* hard

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by Lisa

A recent meeting included a call back to “math is hard barbie” — back in 1992, Mattel produced a ‘talking’ Barbie that (among other phrases) said “math class is tough”. They ended up recalling the doll – a process which I assume cost the company quite a bit of money. And bad press. As a sophomore in high school, I didn’t understand the controversy. I was concurrently taking both Algebra 2 and Geometry (allowing me to complete two years of Calculus at graduation), so I had some experience with math classes.

The thing that struck me — the actual phrase is not untrue. Sometimes math class was hard. As someone with hand-eye coordination issues, art class was hard too. As someone who is tone deaf, music class was really hard. People who take offense at someone declaring something to be ‘hard’ have themselves declared difficult things as somehow negative. Not worth doing. I understand that the offense was people familiar with existing stereotypes extrapolating the statement to mean “girls think math is hard and girls avoid difficult academic subjects” or “females think math is hard because their brains don’t work that way and males have an innate advantage”.

I worry that we’re selling people false hope by refusing to tell them that something is hard. At some point, you’re going to encounter reality. I studied theoretical physics – gravitation, specifically gravitational phenomenon brought about during binary black hole collisions. Had someone told me it was going to be a super easy way to earn money – head into a computer lab for a few hours a day, drink some coffee, do a little typing, and head home … wow, what a shock my first day would have been. Why don’t we work on teaching people that a lot of things are hard. And each person makes their own effort:reward analysis. Raising chickens is a lot harder than picking a carton up at the grocery store; but if you like fresh eggs, or if you like to ensure the welfare of the animals providing your eggs, if you want to avoid using fossil fuels to transport your food, or if you just want to be involved in the process of generating your food … you decide to get some chickens. If you want to understand the mechanisms of the universe, you learn the math and physics. You do the research.

Multi Party System

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by Lisa

I’m eternally hopeful that a viable third party will emerge from the chaos that is the American political landscape. Movements with sufficient momentum (e.g. the tea party who think taxation with representation is just as bad as taxation without) get absorbed into one of the two traditional parties. And while I am still certain a viable centrist party would provide a truer picture of American’s actual will, the Republican primaries serve as warning against dividing the electorate among dozens of parties.

In the UK, there are hundreds of parties. A good dozen of them are represented in Parliament. But there’s no national vote for Prime Minister – if no party garners a sufficient majority in Parliament, then parties agree to work together (a coalition government) until a sufficient majority is created. And failure to abide by the agreement can force a PM out of office. Unless a plurality of Britons chose to elect the same party, the most extreme views of any party are tempered by the views of their coalition partners.

In the US, however, there is a nation-wide vote for head of the Executive branch. What would an American election look like with a dozen viable political parties? The Republican primary has shown us – last cycle and again this year. The lesson from last cycle is that a dozen people researching and publicizing the worst about each other diminishes them all. If half a dozen people spent six months digging into every single action or interaction you’ve had in your lifetime and assembling a worst-of list … I doubt anyone would look good. But this year the lesson is more dangerous — splitting your electorate in so many pieces allows an individual who is not the majority’s preference … a charismatic individual, an individual with divisive enough views to appeal to a “their” segment and  a small fraction of other voting segments … to win the election. If 120 million people vote in the presidential election, but split their votes across a dozen parties, someone could win with thirteen million votes. 89% of voters don’t want the person in office, but there they sit.

I still wish for a viable centrist third party, but many party systems are probably best left to Parliamentary systems.

Update On The Hoop House

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by Lisa

There have been wild temperature fluctuation, so we haven’t actually gotten plants into our greenhouse yet! But there have also been some MAJOR wind storms – 50+mph – and I can say the structure is holding up well. I had to add some binder clips to each support – four wasn’t enough and they’d pop off as the plastic would get blown around. Which meant we had several binder clip scavenger hunts – but adding a few extra clips seems to have alleviated this issue.

The other problem I’ve experienced is that one side would get pulled out from the mulch & bricks that were holding it down. Temporarily solved this by using soil instead of mulch on that side to hold it all down, but I am certainly going to buy a greenhouse plastic that is two feet wider. It would be easier to mount the material along the side if there was more overhang.

Great again?

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by Lisa

We’ve been seeing a lot of political ads and campaign rallies – and I am constantly struck by Trump’s slogan. Make American great again. I know there are people who dispute it because “we’re already great”. Whatever, never been a big fan of exceptionalism in any country. What I want to know is … to which “great” time period does he want us to return? Just before Obama – embroiled in two military offensives that were doomed from the start? The 90’s – wait, that was Clinton. 80’s – run away deficits and a nuclear arms race? The 70’s with the oil embargo? The 60’s – well, they’ve got good music, good drugs … but they’re also about as close to nuclear annihilation as we’ve ever been, a president who was assassinated, and a lot of racial turmoil. The 50’s – not the TV fantasy, but the reality – Brown v Board of Education was a good step, but the actual desegregation process was ugly. Outside of schools, it isn’t like Rosa Parks sat down and ended segregation. Women – well, we were allowed to vote, but didn’t have a lot of options that provided economic independence. Maybe back to before women could vote? Or how about when people could be legal possessions? Maybe he thinks we went wrong breaking away from England and we should request our colony status back?

His slogan, at least to me, has an a priori assumption that you are a white dude. Old white dudes gave up a lot — more voters mean less power per vote, more people vying for jobs means it is harder to get a job, independent women mean you need to be more cognizant of your partner’s needs. Young white dudes didn’t get to experience the “great” before, but I could see wanting to return too. But, seriously, half of the country isn’t a dude. Some other significant percentage isn’t white. Maybe you’ll get lucky and a large proportion of white dudes will show up to vote. But how can you govern an entire country when your entire platform is focused on the needs of maybe 40% of the population?