Apparently Killington, VT is so fed up with the tax situation they want to become part of New Hampshire. My understanding is that NH does have relatively high property taxes (although they have no income or sales tax) but they must feel that at the very least those taxes are being used more wisely. I wish Marlborough, MA would do the same.

Secession activists say the town’s restaurants, inns and other businesses send $20 million a year to the state capital in sales, room and meal taxes, but the state returns just $1 million in state aid.

I just think the funniest thing is that Killington doesn’t even border NH.

It’s official, the only person who I would have even considered voting for if I was forced to vote for a member of the Democratic Party dropped out today after some disappointing losses. I hope Al Gore is happy that he turned his back on his old running mate to endorse a real winner. I guess normal, experienced, well-spoken candidates with integrity and consistent viewpoints on major issues are not warmly embraced by Democrats these days.

It looks like Howard Dean has started his slide off the political stage with a third place finish in Iowa. Some people credit this to some of his misstatements or flip-flopping on issues, but I tend to think it’s coming down to what some Republicans had realized some time ago that he doesn’t appear likely to beat Bush. Kerry on the other hand, strikes me as someone who appears more presidential (I don’t know a better way to put it), and could give the Republicans more of a run for their money. It will be interesting to see how Clark impacts the race in New Hampshire since he didn’t campaign in Iowa. It will also be interesting to see who Coon Dog votes for.

Welcome to a world in which the phone becomes a computer, and the computer a phone. Sports Soccer is using voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) technology, which allows the transport of voice, data and video over the same network. And as the various kinds of communications become intertwined, the sum is greater than the parts.

I found this article fairly interesting, mostly because it talks a bit about the products I work on, and where the industry might be headed.

This site is a pretty good analysis of the Matrix Trilogy. Don’t read it (or the rest of this post) if you haven’t seen the movie yet – read this article (Schulte sent me) as a refresher instead. I was glad I wasn’t the only one walking out of the theatre disappointed with the lack of questions answered.

Imagine you make a movie and suddenly your hero has telecinetical powers: He stops 4 incoming war machines just by thinking it. Wow, that is a twist.

And how did the Wachowskis decide to resolve this riddle in Matrix Revolutions?

Neo: “Tell me how I stopped 4 sentinels by thinking it…”
Oracle: “The power of the One extends beyond this world. It reaches from here all the way back to where it came from: The Source.”

Ahem, excuse me?

A somewhat interesting bit on what seems to be one of America’s favorite complaints.

… George W. Bush isn’t the first U.S. president to use it. Dwight Eisenhower, and Gerald Ford were both apparently “noo-kyoo-ler” men. Jimmy Carter, who did graduate work in nuclear physics, pronounces the word nook-ee-uh.

Not that it sounds any less incorrect, but I’d be willing to bet there are more than a few “partisan complainers” who hate Bush’s pronunciation, but manged to overlook the flaw in Nobel Prize-winning Democrat Jimmy Carter.

It’s good to see some people taking a second look at technical patents these days.

I saw Martin Fowler speak on Thursday at the New England Java User Group. He seems to know a lot about a wide array of topics in the software world. Since he has a blog now I’ll probably get to reading it more frequently. I was also happy to hear he was a fan of my preferred IDE Eclipse. It’s pretty impressive that he’s considered expert in UML, Refactoring, Design Patterns, and Agile development methodologies.

You read so many articles with random facts and figures from this source or that. NationMaster.com has a pretty interesting site with a lot of different statistics gathered in one place, and provides tools for creating your own graphs and such. Very neat. Their sources are listed here.

This phrase seems to have two totally different meanings, depending on who you ask. On the one hand it means Republicans support Dean because he embraces some of their ideals (presumably fiscal conservatism?). The other meaning is that Republicans hope he wins, because he’s too far left as to be unelectable.

In searching to learn more about the topic, I came across this article which was pretty interesting.

Over the past few decades, the electorate has become much better educated. In 1960, only 22 percent of voters had been to college; now more than 52 percent have. As voters become more educated, they are more likely to be ideological and support the party that embraces their ideological label. As a result, the parties have polarized.

The conclusion of the article still suggests that moderates have the best chance of winning today, but one can only wonder if the parties will continue to polarize far enough that we end up with a true idealist in office – either a third party candidate or a far right- or left-winger.