from: Tax Theory 101

(Cross Listed with Community Living 050, in the Revised New Syllabus of Remedial Courses)

Overheard on a beautiful day in the neighborhood:
"But it's not FAIR! Why should we have to pay so much money in property taxes to live here? We're already paying so much for the house itself, just for the mortgage. That ought to be enough."

"But what about roads, schools, the fire department? Your mortgage doesn't pay for any of that. Those are all expenses the town has to share out. It doesn't make sense to just have your own little personal road like a driveway -- they all have to connect, or what's the point?"

"Sure, the town pays for all that kind of stuff. But they're already paying for it. The schools are great, and the roads are ok too. That's why it's not fair we have to pay for it too."

The houses are supposed to be lovely in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, but I'm not sure the person quoted above is up for the commute. I think one has to take the Trolley, and that would be way too much dependence and collective action.

wet PDA

Just in case you were wondering, after Saturday's post:
1) Palm Pilots do eventually dry out

2) They have a reset button in the middle of the back. A person can push it with a bit of wire to force a reboot.

3) The problem with the laptop-PDA connection required rebooting *both* devices. This was the kind of hard-reboot of the laptop that removes my preferred "turn everything off" screen saver and goes back to the default screen saver with noises and moving pictures which I hateHateHATE. I need to remember to close the cover every time I reboot, in case it does that.

4) I had one plastic grocery bag in my backpack, which I put over my paperbacks and magazines, in case water leaked in from the zipper at the top. Water seeped in from underneath, through the cloth back of the pack. The magazines (trade journals, really) are pretty much a loss. I finished _The Copper Peacock_, in the bathtub, and concluded it was so far from Rendell's best that I wouldn't be reading it again. After all, when I want to reread Rendell short stories, I can do a lot better. So I gave it away less than a week after acquiring it -- I never thought I'd do that with Rendell, but there you have it.