July 2007 Archives - Christopher S. Penn : Awaken Your Superhero | Christopher S. Penn : Awaken Your Superhero

Too many cameras…

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 31, 2007 in Blogging, Random | 8 comments

I just realized after ordering a new Nikon D40 that I have too many cameras.

Kodak DX6490
Canon SD450
Nikon Coolpix L2
JVC PV-GS120
Sharp something or other
Sanyo VPC-CG65
Nokia N91

On the bright side, they all work. One of these days, I’ll open a used camera store or something.

How much fully functional but not often used stuff do you have laying around?

Taxes, taxes

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 30, 2007 in Politics | 16 comments

Food for thought. When I mention that Sweden has a very high personal income tax rate, the nationalistic American response is, “Ha! In America, it’s the land of opportunity. Low taxes, capitalism, and opportunity for everyone!” (chances are, if you read this blog, you’re not the typical American, so I’m not counting your responses in this)

I just got my pay stub for this month. Out of every dollar earned, I pay 43 cents to Uncle Sam in the form of Federal and state taxes, Medicare, and Social Security. That gives me 57 cents on the dollar to spend. Then add in

property tax
sales tax
meal tax
utility tax for electricity
home energy tax for heating and cooking
water tax (they call it a fee for service, but face it, it’s a tax)
sewage tax
telephone tax
911 mobile tax
excise tax on the car I drive
gasoline tax for the gas I put in the car…

… and I figure that I get to *use* about 14 cents on the dollar on a good day. I’m grateful to my fantastic employer, the Student Loan Network, for providing 100% healthcare coverage, or I’d be dropping another $300 – $600 per month for healthcare.

How, exactly, is this low taxation?

As for opportunities, several people made the statement that America is still the best place for opportunities, to which I’d say in the 20th century, that may well have been true, but with Internet connectivity approaching near ubiquity in some countries (Europe’s 3G network puts the US to shame, and South Korea’s gigabit to the house is just frighteningly fast) opportunities are increasingly portable. In order to maintain its competitiveness in the 21st century, America has a lot of work to do to reduce government waste and invest in its citizens as other countries are doing.

Food for thought: $447 billion spent so far in Iraq. Regardless of your politics, that would pay for every college student in America to go to a four year public university for free for all four years. It’s not that we don’t have the resources in America – it’s just that we lack the will to do what is necessary to ensure our continued prosperity and to hold those we elect to office accountable for their choices.

The Mother of All Pingbacks

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 29, 2007 in Blogging, Uncategorized | 57 comments

Working off an idea from John Wall and David Meerman Scott, here’s a massive list of everyone who has left me a comment on my blog (or in some cases, a pingback). This list was compiled from the MySQL database that powers my WordPress blog, with the query:

SELECT DISTINCT `comment_author` , `comment_author_url`
FROM csp891_comments
ORDER BY `comment_author` ASC

I stuffed the output into Excel, did a little cleanup, and here we are. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the past few months to make this blog what it is.

Updated: The DoFollow Plugin is also enabled. Google Juice for everyone!