Remembering Rob

Small art

Toilet paper rolls and pencil tips make for small art.  And then there's eye-of-the-needle art which recently sold to a collector for $20 million!

The Conference Call

Yep.  Corporate life as we know it.

Bagel with Tax

New York tax officials in Albany have assessed an 8 cent tax on bagels that are sliced or eaten at New York bagel stores.

As reported in The Wall Street Journal:

"State tax officials, under orders from cash-strapped Albany to ramp up their audit and compliance efforts, have begun to enforce one of the more obscure distinctions within the state's sales tax law.

"In New York, the sale of whole bagels isn't subject to sales tax. But the tax does apply to "sliced or prepared bagels (with cream cheese or other toppings)," according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. And if the bagel is eaten in the store, even if it's never been touched by a knife, it's also taxed.

"Kenneth Greene, the owner of 33 Bruegger's Bagel franchises throughout New York, says the state demanded that he start charging taxes on all bagels, except for those that remain intact and are consumed off premises, and forced him to pay a 'significant' sum in taxes that the state estimated he owed.  Mr. Greene says the extra charge, about eight cents a bagel, depending on the local rate, filled his customers with boiling rage. 'They felt we were nickel-and-diming them. They thought we were charging them to slice a bagel,' he said.

"To clear things up, he posted signs at the cashier informing customers that it was Albany, not Bruegger's, to blame. 'We apologize for this change and share in your frustration on this additional tax,' the signs read."

This is from the same Albany bureaucrats who have recently taxed cigarettes to $10 a pack and are now proposing to tax sugar and salt to gain "tax windfalls" under the guise of public health.  Suggestion to Albany bureaucrats with nanny state syndrome . . . slice the salaries and benefits of the two million union workers in New York.

Presidential Vacation Forecast

LSD

The potential therapeutic benefits of psychoactive drugs like LSD seem to be making a comeback.  Swiss doctors and researchers are once again exploring the medical use of such drugs to help people with depression and chronic pain.

"Psychedelics can give patients a new perspective -- particularly when things like suppressed memories come up -- and then they can work with that experience," said Franz Vollenweider of the Neuropsychopharmacology and brain imaging unit at Zurich's University Hospital of Psychiatry, who published a paper on the issue in Nature Neuroscience journal.

Before LSD was  prohibited in the U.S. in the late 1960s, it found favor with many psychiatrists, the best known being Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.  Vanity Fair recently reported on the use of LSD in Hollywood in an article titled Cary in the Sky with Diamonds.

Last summer at a screening of the PBS documentary No Boundaries about the author Peter Matthiessen, he commented about his own use of LSD, and quipped that if he could get Sandoz LSD he'd do it agan

If you've never seen the National Film Board of Canada's documentary on the development and early use of LSD by Sandoz's Albert Hofmann and others, watch Hofmann's Potion.

Indeed

In God We Trust

All others pay cash.

Me Want

The Martin Jetpack

- 30 minutes flight time
- Uses regular gasoline
- Equipped with ballistic parachute
- Redundant systems
- Impact absorbing undercarriage
- 1,000 hours engine TBO
- Patented fan jet technology
- Complies with Ultralight regulations
- No pilot’s license required, but must pass Martin Aircraft flight training program

Journey through Canyons

Sublime.

Journey through Canyons from Metron on Vimeo.

Big Brother

These days it's almost an everyday occurrence to read about Facebook data privacy missteps, Russian hacking of U.S. government computers, Chinese hacking of Google's servers or, this past week, 25,000 private medical records showing up at the dump.

And then there's Google and the "search for the future."

In today's Wall Street Journal interview with CEO Eric Schmidt you can get a good idea about how your privacy will be managed in the near future.  And it won't happen because you asked for it.

'We're trying to figure out what the future of search is,' Mr. Schmidt acknowledges. 'I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type.'

'I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions,' he elaborates. 'They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.'

"Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, 'we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.' Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block."

Roughly, mind you.

Orioles 5 - Rays 0

The Orioles are 9 - 2 since Buck Showalter took over as manager.  They're still 31 games back from the first-place Yankees and tonight's shut out over the Rays helped the Yankees extend their lead.

But what's up with the prison issue uniforms?

How to exit aircraft

Morning Surf

"I have spent my life painting things and places I love. These shores have special meaning for me…. The coast is so beautiful and so diverse and so ever-changing that it would take several lifetimes for a painter to do it justice. However, it was my intent … to capture…my impressions of each place, each scene, each moment as it occurred in time…"

Ray Ellis

Taliban de Soleil

13's 600th*

See ya!*

 

Lamb Days of August

Happy August