Category: Uncategorized

Sinkhole of bureaucracy

Vogon from the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy exist in pennsylvania.

This is one of the weirdest workplaces in the US government — both for where it is and for what it does. Here, inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government’s own workers. But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper.

Detroit special economic zone

Besides paying a flat 5% tax on income and corporate revenues, areas designated Economic Freedom Zones would carry no capital gains taxes, see reduced payroll taxes and be suspended from meeting certain environmental protection regulations, among other changes.

special economic zones for areas hardest hit. why not? if he is right, something good will come of it, if he is wrong, we can say shut it libertarians. win-win.

Losing a plane in 2014

all this endless nattering about “flight 370” makes you wonder what the us military really knows. i’d be shocked if they didn’t have the capability to track any object of that size anywhere in the world, but won’t reveal it to tip others off. just consider the commercially available data from skybox. military hardware is typically a few orders of magnitude more advanced.

either way, this will be one of the last times we lose track of something of that size. it’s an embarrassment, really, size of the ocean notwithstanding.