Just how long is the tax code? This long:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Too intimidated to fill out your tax return without help? Join the club.
At nearly 4 million words, the U.S. tax law is so thick and complicated that businesses and individuals spend more than 6 billion hours a year complying with filing requirements, according to a report Wednesday by an independent government watchdog.
I haven't said much about President Obama's recent appointments that others on the right have been having fits about, because, well, the president gets to pick. That's the deal. I agree with all those critics that these appointees will make some very boneheaded policy moves, but they're the president's policies. Whoever he appoints -- these people or someone else -- will carry out those policies, so I don't see that there's much to gain from a big fight over them.
Here's a Malthusian curve ball for you:
The world’s seemingly relentless march toward overpopulation achieved a notable milestone in 2012: Somewhere on the planet, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the 7 billionth living person came into existence.
Just what the world needs -- a nagging fork:
The fork contains a motion sensor, so it can figure out when it's being lifted to the mouth. If it senses that you're eating too fast, it warns with you with a vibration and a blinking light. The company believes that using the fork 60 to 75 times during meals lasting from 20 to 30 minutes is ideal.
[. . .]
Gee, do ya think? We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists:
A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.
Texas is getting a lot of attention for it's $8.8 billion surplus, created mostly by a boom in salex tax revenue (people spend more in a healthy economy) as well as taxes on oil and natural gas revenues. Mary Katharine Ham at Hot Air points out that Texas isn't the only state with a sunny fiscal outlook:
We certainly go our own way, don't we?
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — While some national lawmakers eye new limits on access to guns in the wake of last month's school shooting in Connecticut, two Republican state senators are trying to expand who can carry guns and where in Indiana.
I don't know why I get a kick out of this little story, but I do:
MERRILLVILLE, Ind. - A World War II veteran from Indiana who served in France during the war has been reunited with his Army-issued duffel bag nearly seven decades after it went missing.
The New York Times did an analysis of hiring for top White House positions in the Obama administration and found that it "skews male."
Here's the kind of epic battle in which there are no innocent bystanders, just lucky ones:
Target has Amazon in its crosshairs. Fed up that customers scan the store’s aisles with one eye on their smartphones, and often end up making purchases online for less — a practice known as showrooming — the big-box retailer Tuesday promised to match Amazon’s prices year round.
[. . .]
Hey, way a couple of years, and there may spring up a "birther" movement on the left, too:
Ted Cruz may have the aura of a future presidential contender, but is he even eligible to run?
More people than ever are likely to be classified as mentally ill in the next few years, but not because more of us are really going off the rails. The definition of what mental illness is keeps getting expanded:
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - 360 people a year. That's nearly one person a day. That's how many die from drunk driving accidents each year.
In December, The National Transportation Safety Board recommended all states require what's called 'ignition interlock devices'.
Here we go again. While I still think teaching cursive writing is important and losing it as a skill would make us poorer (see here), I'm not sure this is a good idea:
So, this 46-year-old Chicago resident wins $1 million in the lottery and then dies of cyanide poisoning, which apparently is suspicious enough to warrant an investigation even in the Windy City. What caught my eye was the fact that his death was originally ruled to be "from natural causes":
Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects, economists say, as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel.
Robert Samuelson asks a very reasonable question: If we can't kill farm subsidies, what can we kill?
Indianapolis Monthly has an in-dept look at Mike Pence's politics and the gubernatorial campaign he waged. It has this not-terribly-original observation:
In case you want to keep track of proposed legislation in the new session of the Indiana General Assembly, you can go here. It shows what the bills are about and who's sponsoring them, and it updates when votes are taken.
I don't find this as alarming as I guess I'm supposed to:
Books aside, if you asked a college freshman today who the Greatest Generation is, they might respond by pointing in a mirror.
