Category: Random Thoughts

What doesn’t fit elsewhere

“If you’ve seen one redwood tree…

…you’ve seen them all.” Ronald Reagan may or may not have actually said that. It’s a matter of some debate. In case you need one more thing to worry about, time may be running out to see the mammoth old-growth redwood trees.

Before the California Gold Rush, the majestic trees that can live as long as 2,500 years, flourished on 2.2 million acres along the northern California and southern Oregon coast. That’s down to 1.6 million acres, all but seven percent of that is second growth, however. Only 150,000 acres remain in fragmented patches. Almost two centuries of commercial logging, development, road building and agriculture, and yes, fire suppression have drastically reduced the numbers of the massive trees. And the future is not bright for the second growth.

Native Americans regularly burned the forests to clear out undergrowth. Thick bark protected the ancient trees. Modern fire suppression has allowed forest debris and skinny second-growth to surround the old-growth that survived clear-cut logging. The climate change that so many, including the EPA deny, means fiercer and more frequent fires.

But as St. Ron did, in fact, say, “I saw them; there is nothing beautiful about them, just that they are a little higher than the others.”

The Redwood National Park is one of the least crowded of our National Parks.

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Colorado’s Mile(high) 419.99

You may have wondered how “420” came to be code for marijuana consumption. It originated in 1971 with a group of high-school slackers in Marin County, California. (Side note: there’s a really good place to eat in San Rafael.) The term has become so pervasive that since Colorado legalized pot-for-fun in 2012, milepost 420 markers have been disappearing at an alarming rate from Interstate 70. As a remedy, the Department of Transportation has replaced the marker with milepost 419.99.

Although Idaho has not legalized marijuana, they’ve had the same problem on U.S. Highway 95, just south of Coeur d’Alene. Who knows why that’s happening in neo-Nazi country? Idaho can handle only one decimal place, though, so they marked the highway as milepost 419.9.

(Originally published 2016)

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Celebrating Tax Day

As you no doubt know, your tax return must be filed by April 15. When that due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the filing deadline is delayed until the next business day. If you’re wondering why tax day is the 17th in 2018, you’re probably not familiar with Emancipation Day, a legal holiday in Washington D.C. Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862. This Act freed the more than 3,000 slaves in the District of Columbia. (Slavery was outlawed in the rest of the nation by constitutional amendment in 1865, after the end of Civil War. Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995.) Emancipation Day became an official D.C. holiday in 2005.

War is expensive. Also in 1862, President Lincoln created the position of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay for the war. The tax was abolished ten years later. Income tax was legislated again in 1894, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. The 16th Amendment, providing for a tax on income was ratified in 1913. The rate was 1% and increased to 7% on incomes above $500,000. (The equivalent of $12.6 million in 2018.) With the onset of the Great War a couple years later, the rates doubled.

And here we are. One wonders about Donald Trump’s tax returns. Is money laundering taxed as ordinary income or does the more favorable “carried interest” rate apply?

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What the World Needed

Are you embarrassed by the quality of the food photos you’ve posted to Facebook? The folks at the App Store want you to know they have solutions: new apps for your smart phone, specifically designed to help you improve pictures of what you are eating or drinking. Your couscous and beet salad not lit just right to impress your friends? There’s an app for that. The artistic design in the foam of your coffee beverage not highlighted just so? There are apps with filters to help you create your own style.

From the same folks who brought us Y2K.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

A popular trope from environmental zealots has been to tell us about a plastic-garbage patch the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean. Turns out that’s just another attempt to scare us with misinformation about the coming environmental apocalypse. It’s not the size of Texas; it’s the size of TWO Texases. And it’s growing faster than anyone thought.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has attracted so much attention that scientists now use the shorthand GPGP.

Read all about it here.

Marine Conservationist Charles Moore displays a toothbrush found in the Central North Pacific Ocean whilst holding a banner which reads ‘Is This Yours?’ This is part of the Ocean Defenders Campaign in which the Greenpeace ship Esperanza MV sails to the Pacific Ocean, sometimes referred to as the North Pacific garbage patch, to document the threat that plastic poses to the environment and sea life.
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