With Eternal Life, Nothing Is Certain But Taxes

   
August Is National Sandwich Month

Tucson Weather Today

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Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. Buffett is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and as the third wealthiest person in 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.

Warren Buffett said: "If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

In my opinion, Warren Buffett is absolutely right.

Keep in mind, however, that I also believe that Henry David Thoreau was absolutely right when he said that "books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations." If I possess, tucked away somewhere within the cellular storage area of my brain -- in the matrix of my mnemonic-dependent memory -- the entire contents of all the books I have read in my lifetime, then I am certainly wealthy beyond all belief and imagination.

Me and Warren Buffett -- both of us wealthy in our own lights.

How 'bout that?

While reading from the rather rambling (often chaotic) chapters of Darren Greer's novel Still Life With June I came across a reference to being pissed off. And it struck me that pissed off was a strange way to indicate that the speaker is annoyed, nettled, miffed, riled, peeved, steamed, or displeased. What does 'pissed' have to do with anything? Where did the term come from?

I looked and looked, all over the Internet. The best ideas as to its origin came from a Random House website titled The Mavens' Word Of The Day. It did not answer my specific question, but it did offer some interesting conjectures.

Oh well . . .

You can't always get what  you want.

Now that pisses me off.

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TRIVIA

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, August 5, in 1861, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln imposed the first United States federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

Congress repealed Lincoln's tax law in 1871, but in 1909 passed the 16th Amendment, which set in place the federal income-tax system used today. Congress ratified the 16th Amendment in 1913.

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WORD FOR TODAY

taxation
noun
1.
a. The act or practice of imposing taxes.
b. The fact of being taxed.
2. An assessed amount of tax.
3. Revenue gained from taxes.

A tax (from the Latin taxo; "rate") is a financial charge or other levy imposed upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many administrative divisions. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labor equivalent.

According to Black's Law Dictionary, a tax is a "pecuniary burden laid upon individuals or property owners to support the government."

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Neil Alden Armstrong

(Aug, 5, 1930 -Aug. 25, 2012)

Neil Armstrong was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon.

Loni Kaye Anderson

(born August 5, 1945)

Loni Anderson is an American actress who is known for having played the role of Jennifer Marlowe on the CBS television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and for playing Jayne Mansfield and Thelma Todd in television movies.

J. Wesley "Jesse" Williams

(born August 5, 1981)

Jesse Williams is an American actor and model, best known for his role as Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC Television series Grey's Anatomy. He also appeared as Lena's boyfriend Leo in the film sequel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. In 2012, he starred in the horror film The Cabin in the Woods.

Maureen Denise McCormick

(born August 5, 1956)

Maureen McCormick is an American actress, author and recording artist. She is most widely known for her career as a child actress, during which she portrayed Marcia Brady on ABC's The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974.

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It is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.
--Albert Camus

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

   

2/27/13

     

Tucson Weather Today


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HISTORICAL CLIP


On this day, February 27, 1860, President Abraham Lincoln posed for the first of several portraits by noted Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady. Days later, the photograph was published on the cover of Harper's Bazaar with the caption, Hon. Abram Lincoln, of Illinois, Republican Candidate for President.

A relatively new art form, the photograph (or daguerreotype) showed an unusually beardless Lincoln just moments before he delivered an address at Cooper Union that day. The address, in which he articulated his reasons for opposing slavery in the new territories, received wild applause and garnered strong support for his candidacy among New Yorkers.

Brady went on to photograph Lincoln several more times before Lincoln's death in 1865.

Lincoln was not the first presidential candidate, or president, to be photographed -- that honor went to John Quincy Adams in 1843.

John Quincy Adams

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WORD FOR TODAY

canon
noun
-  A general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.
-  A member of the clergy on the staff of a cathedral, esp. a member of the chapter.

A piece of work - usually in reference to literature - that was written by the original author. Spin-offs, fan fiction, and any work not written by the original author of that fictional universe is considered non-canon.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Joanne Woodward

 

 Born Feb 27, 1930
Age:  82 years old

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress and producer of television and theater. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award-winning role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Woodward was married to Paul Newman from 1958 until his death in 2008.

She appeared with husband Paul Newman in ten featured films: The Long, Hot Summer (1958) Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) From the Terrace (1960) Paris Blues (1961) A New Kind of Love (1963) Winning (1969) WUSA (1970) The Drowning Pool (1975) Harry & Son (1984)—(directed by Newman) and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)

Ralph Nader

 

 Born Feb 27, 1934
Age:  78 years old

Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an New York University panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.

Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008.

Elizabeth Taylor

 

 Born Feb. 27, 1932
Died Mar. 23, 2011

Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty, and distinctive violet eyes.

National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Butterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theater.

Howard Hesseman

 

 Born Feb 27, 1940
Age: 72 years old

Howard Hesseman is an American actor best known for playing disc jockey Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati and schoolteacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class.


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A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
--Oscar Wilde
    

Happiness Is Just A State Of Mind

    

Tucson Weather Today

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How happy is the little Stone
by Emily Dickinson

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears --
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity --

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HISTORICAL CLIP

On this day, February 12, in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Lincoln, one of America's most admired presidents, grew up a member of a poor family in Kentucky and Indiana. He attended school for only one year, but thereafter read on his own in a continual effort to improve his mind. As an adult, he lived in Illinois and performed a variety of jobs including stints as a postmaster, surveyor and shopkeeper, before entering politics. He served in the Illinois legislature from 1834 to 1836, and then became an attorney. In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; together, the pair raised four sons.

When he won the presidency in 1860 by approximately 400,000 popular votes and carried the Electoral College, he was in effect handed a ticking time bomb. South Carolina led other states in an exodus from the Union that began shortly after his election. By February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had also seceded. Soon after, the Civil War began. As the war progressed, Lincoln moved closer to committing himself and the nation to the abolitionist movement and, in 1863, finally signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The document freed slaves in the Confederate states.

Lincoln was the tallest president at 6' 4. As a young man, he impressed others with his sheer physical strength--he was a legendary wrestler in Illinois--and entertained friends and strangers alike with his dry, folksy wit, which was still in evidence years later.

Exasperated by one Civil War military defeat after another, Lincoln wrote to a lethargic general if you are not using the army I should like to borrow it for awhile. An animal lover, Lincoln once declared, "I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." Fittingly, a variety of pets took up residence at the Lincoln White House, including a pet turkey named Jack and a goat called Nanko. Lincoln's son Tad frequently hitched Nanko to a small wagon and drove around the White House grounds.

Lincoln's sense of humor may have helped him to hide recurring bouts of depression. He admitted to friends and colleagues that he suffered from intense melancholia and hypochondria most of his adult life. Perhaps in order to cope with it, Lincoln engaged in self-effacing humor, even chiding himself about his famously homely looks. When an opponent in an 1858 Senate race debate called him two-faced, he replied, If I had another face do you think I would wear this one?

Lincoln is remembered as The Great Emancipator. To Confederate sympathizers, however, Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation reinforced his image as a hated despot and ultimately led John Wilkes Booth to assassinate him on April 14, 1865. His favorite horse, Old Bob, pulled his funeral hearse.

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WORD FOR TODAY

emancipation
noun
-  the act of freeing or state of being freed; liberation
-  informal  freedom from inhibition and convention

Emancipation is any of various efforts to procuring political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group, or more generally in discussion of such matters. Emancipation stems from ex manus capere ('take out the hand').

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Abraham Lincoln

Born Feb. 12, 1809
Died April 14, 1865

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic and financial modernization.

Lorne Greene

Born Feb 12, 1915
Died: Sep 11, 1987

Lyon Himan Green, better known by the stage name Lorne Greene, was a Canadian actor and musician.

His television roles include Ben Cartwright on the western Bonanza, and Commander Adama in the science fiction movie and subsequent TV Series Battlestar Galactica. He also worked on the Canadian television nature documentary series Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, and in television commercials as a dog food spokesman.

Christina Ricci

Born Feb 12, 1980
Age:   32 years old

Christina Ricci is an American actress. Ricci received initial recognition and praise as a child star for her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), and her role as Kat Harvey in Casper (1995). Ricci made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with The Ice Storm (1997), followed by an acclaimed performance in Buffalo '66 (1998) and then The Opposite of Sex (1998), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

She continued her success with well-received performances in Sleepy Hollow (1999), Monster (2003), Penelope (2006) and Black Snake Moan (2007). In 2006 Ricci was nominated for an Emmy award for her role as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy. In 2011–12 she played Maggie Ryan in the television show Pan Am.

Charles Darwin

Born Feb. 12, 1809
Died April 19, 1882

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact.

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If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower