They (whoever “they are”) say that the only thing that you can be sure of are death and taxes. Well, now there’s a bit more to fear on the tax side. From the fiends at The fiends at the Inquirer have discovered that revenuers can now use Google Earth to detect those of you defrauding your various governments of their hard sought tax dollars. As seen in the Inquirer,

A PROVINCIAL revenue agency down in Argentina is using Google Earth Pro to find tax dodgers. With this approach, the taxman for the Buenos Aires province detected 1184030 square feet of undeclared property.

If it weren’t enough to actual find the deadbeat properties, there are a few more tricks the eneterprising taxmen can employ:

A list of alleged debtors is published by the provincial Public Revenue Service on the web, but as is usual in him, he pressed for more. Google’s Earth Pro subscription allows the agency to import site plans and property lists, and export high-quality images. It also allows to transfer “up to 2,500 locations by address or geospatial coordinates from a spreadsheet” and includes measurement tools -square feet, mile, acreage, and the like- by point and clicking on the screen.

Ah, so what you may say as you quaff down another espresso. Well the “so what” is that other governments IRS Agents will likely pick up on this little convenience and add it as a tool in their auditor’s briefcase. Look up, the Taxman Cometh.
You can read of this diabolical development for dollars at The Inquirer by visiting them at this link here.

There’s a few generally accepted things you can guess you should not do in while driving in your car, among them:

• Never clean some freshly caught fish whilst driving in you car
• Be sure not to apply eye makeup and drag race down a major highway
• When approaching a large puddle of unknown depth after a flash rainstorm, never hope that your car is either tall enough or the puddle not too deep.

Finally, do not use your laptop computer while drivingin your car. Apparently a gentleman was driving down the wrong side of the road while using his laptop, perhaps he was blogging? In any event, the gentleman was a computer teacher and his four door sedan collide with a Hummer. The couple in the Hummer escaped with some bruises, the computer the chap in the car was using was fine and still operating after the crash. The computer using teacher died though.

You can read the reports at CBS news here or at The Inquirer here.

It’s Monday afternoon, admit it, YOU want to be home with a big plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies in front of you. Instead your at work. And your at work reading Beck’s Cafe.

Okay, how about some riddles to get your brain back in gear?

The Riddles

1. What happened in 1961 and will not happen again until 6009?
2. Whats full of holes but still holds water?
3. You have a dime and a dollar, you buy a dog and a collar, the dog is a dollar more than the collar, how much is the collar?
4. Johnny’s mother had four children. The first was April, the second was May, and the third was June. What was the name of her fourth child?
5. There was an airplane crash, every single person died, but two people survived. How is this possible?
6. Why is George Washington’s official birthday celebration held on February 22 when he was actually born on February 11?
7. A man left home running. He ran a ways and then turned left, ran the same distance and turned left again, ran the same distance and turned left again. When he got home there were two masked men. Who were they?

The Answers (no peaking!)

1. The year reads the same upside down
2. a sponge
3. a nickel, the dog costs $1.05
4. Johnny!
5. because they were married
6. The U.S. lost 11 days when they changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar during when Washington was alive. So Washington celebrated his birthday eleven days later to make it a year after his last birthday
7. The catcher and umpire

(Material courtesy of AzKidsNet)

Sometimes the pain of Gender Dysphoria just…hurts

The feeling of inside loneliness is so extreme you can’t even think sometimes. You feel like you simply aren’t there. It’s like your watching yourself move. You just wish that this strange background noise would go away and that you were just “here” or “present” again. Every attempt to cope comes with a bagfull of complications that makes the word “choice” almost absurd ; the trans-persons choices to cope are all pyrrhic.

Worse perhaps, your pain gets reflected onto your partner. Your partner; your damn best friend, becomes collateral damage. They start to hurt like someone abducted you and there was no note left behind. Just a cruel emptiness. The concept of the transgender person “still being there, just look on the inside of us” is simply not true. We aren’t there for them and we can’t even hardly be there for ourselves many times. Our partner’s feelings of helplessness to rescue us without destroying themselves makes their lives as nearly as unlivable as the transgender person’s becomes. Our partners just wish we were present again. They just wish we were here again.

Wish You Were Here

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange
a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
year after year,
running over the same old ground. What have we found?
The same old fears,
wish you were here.

(pink floyd, “wishing you were here”, 1975)
(Wishing You Were Here music video, Pink Floyd Live)

The latest report from Technorati shows that, as of November 2006 there were 57 MILLION blogs in existence with 100,000 new blogs being created per day. That’s alot of writing. Don’t you wonder if any of this matters?

As a writer I do wonder at times and I’m always happy when I find that something I wrote sparked a comment, made someone laugh, or cry, or think differently, or even opened up a conversation that wasn’t there before (whether I agree with the viewpoints expressed or not). It’s all good. I think I would still write even if I didn’t self-publish.

But sometimes don’t you wonder if any of this writing and self-publishing matters? Well I’m here to tell you it does. Check out these tidbits. I’m going to put some of the content from these news reports in my post because you never know when the report might come down. The common thread here is that these mere bloggers are being watched. Why are they being watched? Because people are reading their blogs, hearing their viewpoint and they are thinking.

• Egypt arrests another blog critic: Police in Cairo have detained a blogger whose posts have been critical of the Egyptian government. Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, was detained along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger late at night…In recent weeks, bloggers have been exposing what they say was the sexual harassment of women at night in downtown Cairo in full view of police who did not intervene. Mr Siyam’s host on Saturday night, Muhammad Sharqawi, was detained for several weeks earlier this year. (see the post for as long as it remains up at Natasha Tynes, “Mental Mahem” by visiting her story HERE.

• Egyptian blogger jailed for four years for insulting Islam: In a landmark case for freedom of expression in Egypt, a young blogger has been jailed for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, drawing angry condemnation at home and abroad.Abdel-Karim Nabil Suleiman, 22, a former law student at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in Alexandria yesterday after being arrested last November over eight articles he posted on his blog. (see the post for as long as it remains up at The Guardian, by visiting the story HERE.

• Bloggers Harassed by Authorities: The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) is raising concerns over what appears to be growing harassment of individuals who use online blogs to express views and share information in Malaysia. The IFEX member says the government’s policing of the Internet is reaching a critical stage that needs to be recognised and confronted by free expression advocates.In the past two months, three bloggers have been questioned by authorities for posting information on their personal web diaries. On 14 March 2005, Mack Zulkifli was questioned in his home by police officers and unidentified government officials who asked him to help them “understand the latest developments of weblogs,” according to the independent online news service Malaysiakini.com. (see the post for as long as it remains up at The International Freedom of Expression eXchange, by visiting the story HERE.

• French blogger harassed by right wing dynasty: A French blogger, Christoph Grébert, is going to court this afternoon to defend himself of accusations of defamation brought against him by the city of Puteaux, a wealthy suburb of Paris.His crime? Writing about what’s happening in his city, taking pictures of construction sites, and commenting on the latest city council (public) meetings. (see the post for as long as it remain up at The European Tribune, by visiting the story HERE.

So blogging, in fact writing, does appear to make a difference. Let’s hope that for every voice silenced 100 more spring up.