What if the IRS had discovered the quadratic formula?
(Hat tip to Vox.)
Tag Archives: Humor
A Mantis Walks into a Bar
How to assess the utility of a tool
Thought for the Day: 15 March 2014
What can I say? I’m a pragmatist.
SOTU Analysis
I didn’t hear 1 word Obama said. I couldn’t stop focusing on that interracial gay couple sitting behind him.
An under-the-radar holiday?
Last weekend my daughter was curious why the manger displays were still up. Christmas was over after all. Is it wrong for me to tell her and her brother that on January 2 baby Jesus comes out of his creche* and if he sees his shadow then he hibernates until next Christmas; if not, then he comes back at Easter**.
* “Creche” has not yet caught on with my kids. To them it is a “baby Jesus setup.”
** I didn’t get to complete this story. I started but then my wife realized where it was going and shut me down.
John Scalzi, Tax Frenzies and How to Hose Them Down
His whole post is worth reading but I particularly enjoyed this paragraph. John Scalzi (via Brad DeLong):
I really don’t know what you do about the “taxes are theft” crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally entitled, generally soft and pudgy asses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That’ll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools.
(The rest of the post is much more sedate. The bottom line is that he recommends you hire an accountant to do your taxes.)
“Maybe they were working phonetically and had a lisp?”
James Joiner (via The Weekly Sift):
Last night, NBC News ran a feature comparing students in the United States to their counterparts overseas, which, to be honest, isn’t very well. So poorly, in fact, that it appears the trickle down dumbing down has reached someone in the NBC infographic studio, as their art for the piece proudly proclaimed that we’re 26th in math, 17th in reading and… Wait for it… 21th in science. We suppose this could just be someone behind the scenes with a sense of humor, but with scores like those the odds are probably against it – not that we could figure the odds if we wanted to. Maybe they were working phonetically and had a lisp?
Something to think about when you enter the Apple store on Black Friday
IT’S A TRAP
By J.K. Appleseed
Last month, I invited Apple employees to send me funny stories, and they did not disappoint. (The invitation still stands, so please drop me a line!) Here are three of my favorites so far, plus a review.
This is my favorite:
Happy New Year
submitted by Qwerty
Five minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, a few blocks from Times Square, a homeless man with a dazed look in his eyes wandered into our Apple Store. The Geniuses on overnight duty eyed him warily as he zigzagged his way to the person checking-in customers. When a genius called out the next appointment’s name, that man stumbled toward the bar. Waves of odor washed over so hard that neighboring Geniuses had to hold their breath. You could smell a decade of the city on the man. He pulled out a brand new iPod touch and set it on the bar. We relaxed a bit. It all seemed legit. Then, he pulled out a jar of his own urine and set that on the bar beside the iPod.
Matt Taibbi: Forbes Calls Goldman CEO Holier Than Mother Theresa
I got a lot of letters from folks this week about an online column for Forbes written by a self-proclaimed Ayn Rand devotee named Harry Binswanger (if that’s a nom de plume, it’s not bad, although I might have gone for “Harry Kingbanger” or “Harry Wandwanker”). The piece had the entertainingly provocative title, “Give Back? Yes, It’s Time for the 99% to Give Back to the 1%” and contained a number of innovatively slavish proposals to aid the beleaguered and misunderstood rich, including a not-kidding-at-all plan to exempt anyone who makes over a million dollars from income taxes.
This article is so ridiculous that normally it would be beneath commentary, but there’s a passage in there I just couldn’t let go: