acroyear | Dec. 30th, 2010

Dec. 30th, 2010

Sam Harris: A New Year's Resolution for the Rich:

The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research. For instance, the billionaire Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently helped kill a proposition that would have created an income tax for the richest 1 percent in Washington (one of seven states that has no personal income tax). All of these funds would have gone to improve his state's failing schools. What kind of society does Ballmer want to live in--one that is teeming with poor, uneducated people? Who does he expect to buy his products? Where will he find his next batch of software engineers? Perhaps Ballmer is simply worried that the government will spend his money badly--after all, we currently spend more than almost every other country on education, with abysmal results. Well, then he should say so--and rather than devote hundreds of thousands of dollars to stoking anti-tax paranoia in his state, he should direct some of his vast wealth toward improving education, like his colleague Bill Gates has begun to do.

One truly misses the wisdom of Henry Ford, who when asked why he pays his workers so much, replied, "so they can afford to buy my cars."

Corpse Of Astronomer Tycho Brahe Exhumed | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | American Voices:

"The guy had a supposedly clairvoyant court-jester dwarf who sat under the table during dinner and a tame elk that would drink beer with you. Who gives a shit how he died? Let's celebrate his life!"

My "end of the year" meme is best not told in words, as there was much of this past year that has sucked, often in a way too personal for even a locked LJ post. So rather, my looking back at the best of 2010 is done in photos rather than words. I'm uploading them to FB and mirroring that on plurk every hour or so, but will collect them for LJ every few hours or so, to not flood LJ with a dozen posts a day. Yes, some of these photos will have been taken by

faireraven , and I'll try to credit her as I post them. :)

Here's the first, taken on my "playing hooky" hike through the C&O Canal last July, with Great Falls just a half mile or so off to the right.

This is evidence enough that you don't have to have a super-expensive DSLR to get a decent photograph, once you really get a handle on your camera's capabilities and a sense of composition and framing.