A couple of years ago I jumped on the bandwagon and e-filed my first ever tax return.
A couple of weeks later I was an identity theft victim.
Coincidence?
I can’t prove the connection … I also can’t shake the suspicion.
Now, crooks have a new online hack: filing online returns that claim other folks refunds.
I good friend just got burned on this specific new tax hack.
Here’s what’s going on …
No, it’s not Hillary Clinton.
Fortune just released it’s list of the World’s Greatest Leaders.
The highest ranked woman snagged the #6 spot on the list …
Of course not … that’s silly.
OK let’s try a variant of the question: Does education make you smarter?
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I bet a lot of you would bet the over on that one.
Here’s what the researchers say …
If you do any banking online, you’ve probably gotten that message at one time or another.
Maybe it was when you got a new computer … or, when you used a friend’s computer to pay a bill.
You probably didn’t think much of it.
You just answered the security questions and paid your bill.
Bet you didn’t stop to wonder: How did Bank of Boise know that this wasn’t my usual computer?
Better yet, ask: How does the bank know when I am on my regular computer?
Well, now that I’ve aroused you curiosity, the answer is ….
Your computer has its own distinctive “device fingerprints” that make it identifiable on the Net as your computer.
I worry about stuff like this. So, I’d thought about this one.
And, my thinking was wrong.
Here’s what’s going on …
Driving into school yesterday, I was listening to a sportstalk show that was chatting about the tough times these days in college basketball.
Have to admit, that I hadn’t noticed.
But, apparently there is a lot of trash-talk going on.
According to RealClear Sports:
“The doomsayers cite a plodding pace, lower scoring (67.1 points per team per game this season, compared with 77.7 in 1972), and seven consecutive years of decreased Division I attendance.”
Here are the fixes that the pundits propose … and my ideas.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a local bruhaha.
One lady sent a snitty email late at night to a club mailing list.
One of the recipients – who had been sipping wine all night – took offense, and shot back a nuclear-rated reply… to the whole list, of course.
A major cat-fight broke out … wasn’t pretty.
.Got me thinking more generally about about late night emails …
And, by coincidence, the Harvard Business Review just published an article on the topic.
Watching March Madness games this weekend, an old quote scrolled across the screen and caught my eye.
It was attributed to legendary – albeit controversial old-school basketball coach Bobby Knight …
Kinda sums things up pretty well these days, doesn’t it?
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Recently, a poll finally asked a question that really cuts to the chase:
Which better describes how you feel about the way things are going in the world these days?
Started me wondering:
What’s up with a goofy idiom like “going to hell in a handbasket”?
You probably heard that Kraft is recalling it’s Mac & Cheese.
When I heard the headline, I assumed that it was because somebody finally figured out what the orange stuff was.
Not so, apparently some metal shavings got mixed with the goop … not exactly the way to add iron to the foodstuff.
The recall gave me a flashback to a post from last year … very much on topic … so I dug it up for a replay.
At the time, consumer groups were a bit concerned about the Mac & Cheese ingredients.
Uh-oh: Consumer mavens dissing Kraft’s dayglow mac & cheese …
Talk about a timely news item.
In class Tuesday, we were talking about food taste & quality.
My teaching point: when the food buyer isn’t the food eater, the buyer may be less sensitive to taste & quality.
My example: millions of mothers serve their little kiddies mac & cheese that glows in the dark.
A veiled reference to Kraft’s legendary mac & cheese … and, that odd color of orange that happens when those mysterious dry ingredients are stirred into the pasta.
Well, apparently the neon dish also caught the eye of a couple food crusaders who have embarked on a campaign against two of the dyes that Kraft uses to create its trademark color.
Here’s their rip and Kraft’s response …
In these days of Moneyball and Team Obama’s campaign technology apparatus that could pin down the ice cream flavor that somebody eats, this shouldn’t happen.
But, it does.
The GAO just issued a report saying that the Feds made an estimated $125 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) in so-called “improper payments” in 2014
Here are some of the ugly details …
OK, here’s a test for you …
Rank the the following by the odds that somebody who is in the group or who is exposed to the risk is likely to die.
Make #1 the highest risk of dying in the next year; make #7 the lowest risk circumstance
And the answer is …
Not so fast.
According to the Washington Post, ETS (the College Board folks) analyzed the results of a test given by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The test was meant to assess adult skill levels in 3 areas: problem-solving, literacy and “numeracy”..
ETS broke out the numbers for U.S. millennials, defined as people 16 to 34 years old..
The vast majority of American test-takers lacked a high school degree
The bottom line: in problem solving, U.S. millennials second from the bottom … edging out Poland,
* * * * * *
Of course, problem solving is a blend of quant skills (numeracy) and language skills (literacy).
How did our millennials stack up as poets and quants?
The shooting of 2 cops in Ferguson Wednesday night prompts the question again.
Below is a post from last December when the 2 NYC cops were shot dead.
At the time, some dismissed the assassinations as just the random act of a “crazy guy.”
Is this another “crazy guy” to be shrugged off?
Looks to me like the Ferguson cops were shot because somebody hated them
Why hasn’t Holder airlifted the FBI to hunt down the perps?
Here’s the original post …
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Today, we’ll be serious, not sarcastic.
As everybody should know by now …
“Without provocation, an attacker ambushed and killed officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos while they sat in their marked patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Area of Brooklyn … ‘They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform,’ Police Commissioner William Bratton said at a news conference.”
Earlier in the day, the killer posted a photo of a silver handgun and a message on Instagram in which he talked about killing police officers “in retaliation for the deaths of Garner and Brown.”
Let’s think about that for a moment …
I’ve always wondered that … especially since NJ is the only place on Planet Earth that won’t let you self-pump your own gas.
Nope.
Gotta wait for the attendant to notice you’re there and do it for you.
Of course, the attendants don’t look like the guy in the picture.
Nope.
They all look like folks who should be reported to Homeland Security.
My point: having attendants should push gas prices up, right?
A common hypothesis is that there are a lot of gas storage facilities along I-95.
Cheaper supply?
That doesn’t square since there isn’t much gas drilled in the local area.
OK, so what is it?
I may have stumbled on the answer …
Before you answer, let me feed you a couple of hints.
According to a government report:
In September 2013, a New York resident, believed to be the world’s oldest living man, died at age 112.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, as of October 2013, only 35 known living individuals worldwide had reached age 112.
You’re thinking a pretty low number, right?
Well, let me rephrase the question: How many Americans does the Social Security Administration think are over 112?
The answer may surprise you …
OK, time to weigh in on Hillary going off the grid while Secretary of State …
Interesting article in the DailySignal – a right-leaning organization …
Basic conclusion: Hillary’s not alone …lots of government employees use personal email accounts to transact government business.
To be more precise – the survey says – about 1/3 of government employees conduct some or all of their government business.
So, why is it a problem Hillary did it, too? Shouldn’t she get a pass since so many other government employees do the same?
Here’s why not …
It has been 10 days since I placed a “free shipping” order with Amazon.
Why is that important”
There are a lot of indicators bandied about to ‘prove’ how well or poorly the economy is doing.
There’s GDP, unemployment, CPI, and many, many other metrics.
Sometimes they provide a consistent view of the economy … sometimes they contradict.
Well, I’ve stumbled on the Ultimate Economic Indicator. An indisputable measure of economic activity …
A couple of weeks ago, the Administration and its friends were touting that unemployment claims had dropped to historically low levels … proof positive that the pork-laden, 2009 Stimulus Spending Program worked … albeit 4 or 5 years after the program ended.
There has been a lot less chest-pounding the past couple of weeks. Wonder why?
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the latest — and perhaps, the most significant challenge to ObamaCare.
In a nutshell, the essence of the case is whether the ObamaCare law provides for insurance subsidies to folks buying health insurance through the Federal Insurance Exchange.
The argument centers on very specific – and very literal wording in the law.
To “motivate” individual states to set up their own insurance exchanges, the law law says that subsidies would only be provided to people who buy their health insurance thru state exchanges. No provision was made for subsidies thru the Federal exchange.
ObamaCare supporters are arguing that the wording was a “drafting error” and that the legislative intent was to provide subsidies regardless of whether the insurance was bought thru a state or Federal exchange. That’s somewhere between revisionist history and boldface lie.
Failing that argument, the fallback line of reasoning is that bad things will happen ObamaCare if it’s implemented the way it’s written.
That may be true, but this is a legal issue not a social issue.
Conservatives argue that the intent was clear (to bully states into creating exchanges) and that the law needs to be interpreted as written, not based on what might have been intended.
Of course, Chief Justice Roberts violated the latter point when he let the law fly when the individual mandate was challenged — coining the penalty to be a tax.
I expect the Justices to find for the plaintiffs and against ObamaCare.
Here’s where the irony creeps in …
This is getting very weird …
Last week, I posted the story of a woman who was about to be executed in Georgia for successfully plotting with her boyfriend to off her husband.
At the last minute, her execution was postponed because of bad weather … though, it wasn’t obvious (to me) what weather has to do with a lethal injection being done indoors.
The execution was rescheduled for this Monday.
Once again, things didn’t go as planned …
Since it’s tax time, I thought you might like to see a recap of how much dough (some) Americans fork over to the government …
Americans pay a tad over $5 trillion in taxes to the Feds, States and Local Governments.
Technical note: In government parlance, the taxes are called “revenue”.
By taxing authority
Drilling down, the $5 trillion is split roughly 50%-30%-20% to the Feds, States and Locals, respectively
Here’s more detail …
Since, I started preparing my taxes this weekend, I got curious …
Pew Research says that overall, 33% of Americans say they do their own taxes while 56% say someone else prepares their taxes.
A majority of Americans (56%) have a negative reaction to doing their income taxes 1 in 4 say they hate doing them.
Among those who dislike or hate doing their taxes, most cite the hassles of the process or the amount of time it takes:
About a third (34%) say they either like (29%) or love (5%) doing their taxes.
Here are some details re: the “likers” and lovers …
I thought about this one last nite watching the Hoyas give Kansas a run for their money.
I often say that electricity, the EZ pass, and the 3-point line make my list as the top 3 inventions ever …
You know all about the first two.
Here’s the story behind the third: basketball’s 3-pointer …
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