The Diet:

Breakfast
• 1 quart of iced tea, prepared the night before and allowed to cool to room temperature before adding ice. (I like to start the day hydrated.)
• 1 cup Uncle Sam Cereal, served with non-fat milk, berries (straw-, black-, rasp-, or blue-), and 1 packet of sucralose.

Lunch
• Salad, prepared before work: Spinach or lettuce, cubed smoked turkey lunch-meat, cheese (reduced-fat feta, cheddar, or blue), nuts (pecans, almond slices, sunflower kernels, or peanuts), sometimes berries, and home-made vinaigrette.
• 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, mixed with half a box of raisins. (I sometimes make this my mid-morning snack, if I have an opportunity.)
• Two reduced-fat low-moisture Mozzarella string cheese sticks.
• 1 quart of iced tea, left over from breakfast.

Mid-afternoon Snack
• 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, mixed with the other half of the box of raisins.
• Water.

Dinner
• An identical salad, prepared with lunch that morning.
• Water
• 2 cups of low-cal yogurt (if I’m still hungry).

root	ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/wodim
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt-get
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/reboot
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff

This allows a few commonly used commands to be executed without a password.

I did the calculation just now. My 20 gallon gas tank has enough potential energy to put 9 pounds of bacon into the Asteroid Belt.

131 megajoules * 20 / G / ( (mass of sun / 414,703,838 km) - (mass of sun/ 149,597,887.5 km) - (mass of earth / radius of earth)) in pounds

You can change anything you want about the federal tax code, but your changes must be revenue-neutral. No starve-the-beast proposals.

* * *

My suggestion.

–> Let A be the annual income a full-time (40-hour/week) minimum-wage worker would make.

–> Let B be the annual income of the median worker. (50% of Americans make less than him, 50% more.)

–> Let C be the income of the 67-percentile worker. (66.7% of Americans make less than him, 33.3% more.)

Replace current federal taxes with the following:

1) Increase the EITC (earned income tax credit) to a very large level. Make it 0 at zero income, maximum at A, and get down to 0 again at B.

2) Income tax of 50% on all income greater than C, minus philanthropic donations.

3) A huge tax on carbon emissions. On the order of $10 per gallon of gasoline, with an carbon-equivalent tax on coal, diesel, natural gas, etc.

4) A general policy that negative externalities are taxed equal to the indirect cost to society. Carbon emissions are the biggest part of this at the moment, but I like the idea of pollution taxes greater than the cost of totally cleaning up the pollution. And a big tax on non-reusable goods.

* * *

UPDATE: Hey, there’s a website for revenue-neutral carbon taxes!

So I watched it. Four nested flashbacks. Yeah, I’d vote for it, were I a voter. Although I did like “Blink.”

Black-crowned Night Heron

#!/usr/bin/env python

# Randoms - Copyright 2008 Hal Canary
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
# files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without
# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
# copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
# conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
# OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
# FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

import Tkinter
import os
import base64

def genrandint():
    'Generates a random integer between 0 and (2^32)-1'
    x = 0
    for i in range(4):
        x = (x << 8)+ord(os.urandom(1))
    return x

def randstring():
    'generate a 142-bit password consisting of A-Za-z0-9'
    return base64.b64encode(os.urandom(18),'Zz')

def genrand128int():
    'Generates a random integer between 0 and (2^128)-1'
    x = 0
    for i in range(16):
        x = (x << 8)+ord(os.urandom(1))
    return x

def generaterandletts():
    'generate a 131-bit password consisting of a-z'
    s = ''
    for i in range(28):
        x = ''
        while x == '' :
            y = ord(os.urandom(1)) # 0-255
            if y < (256//26*26):
                x = chr((y % 26) + 97)
        s = s + x
        if i%4 == 3:
            s = s + ' '
    return s

class Application(Tkinter.Frame):
    'a window that displays text'
    def __init__(self, master=None):
        Tkinter.Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.grid()
        self.createWidgets()
        self.winfo_toplevel().resizable(width=False, height=False)

    def createWidgets(self):
        self.textBox = Tkinter.Text(self,height=4,padx=5, pady=5)
        self.textBox.grid()
        self.textBox.configure(state='disabled')
        self.quitButton = Tkinter.Button(self, text="Quit", command=self.quit)
        self.quitButton.grid()        

    def addText(self, pos, string):
        self.textBox.configure(state='normal')
        self.textBox.insert (pos, string)
        self.textBox.configure(state='disabled')        

app = Application()
app.master.title('Randomness')
app.addText('1.0', 'Integer: %d\n' % genrandint())
app.addText('2.0', 'Integer: %d\n' % genrand128int())
app.addText('3.0', 'String: %s\n' % randstring())
app.addText('4.0', 'String: %s' % generaterandletts())
app.mainloop()

Compiled version for windows