Two Choices: Taxes

As this is an election year to end all election years,  I have decided to put upon myself the No one Wins situations.  This supplement is a classic that is strangly being ignored this year, taxes.  The idea of the government taking some of a citizen’s hard earned money to fund different departments, devisions, and in some cases, individuals.  Everyone has an opinion in this issue, everyone.  The only groups that seem to exist are the ones who wish more, and the ones who wish less.

Keep in mind that I did not put down the people who wish no change.  It is ommitted because there truly are no people who believe that the taxes must stay the same.  Those who do say that are liars.

More taxes.  More Taxes.  MORE TAXES.  When people hear this, read this, see this, they hear money going away.  What this means is that there is less freedom in their pocket to do what they will.  They are stuck with rent/ mortgage, food, insurance, and a few else.  What are they going to do when they don’t have enough money to save up for a future for their children, or just for a moment when they truly need it?

However, without taxes, we do not have roads, public schools, health care, mass transit, though in The US it means little and null because we are CAR CRAZY.  We would not have Welfare and Unemployment, and if you have ever experienced either, you know why it is needed, even though the system needs a refit and rehaul.  WIthout taxes we wouldn’t have Social Security, MediCare, and MedicAid.  Without taxes we would have to do all of the work ourselves.

Though is that truly a problem?  Making people work for what they need is what a Capitalist nation works, isn’t it?  The Market regulates itself, companies will take care of their employees right?  In Some situations yes, but in some, no!

So what do we do, more taxes, less taxes?  Either way no one wins at all because people won’t be happy.  “I have no more money “  “The Government is out of funds “  Which one do we pick.

Two Choices, No One Wins: Guns

Recently there have been a string of shootings at universities in the United States of America.  And being a citizen of this fine country I find the rates of these incidents increasingly disturbing.   Since the deadliest school shooting our country has ever seen at Virginia Tech in april of 2007, we have had seven separate incidents, all but one of them occuring in a secondary edcuation environment, and one in an elementary school.  Just having these incidents is frightening, but a more frightening aspect of this situation has appeared in newspapers, blogs, and of course the internet social networks.  The idea of arming the public to protect themselves from another incident.

 Being far from a scholar of self protection and public protection, I will take the perspective of a layman with access to Wikipedia and other online resources to support my arguments.   I will take both sides of the argument and  develop the legitimacy of both to allow the reader to understand both sides.  I will not say which is the correct choice because there is no correct choice, there too many variables in the system for me to make a decision.

No, No one can arm themselves.  Using information taken from Wikipedia, an online resource, and Reuters.com , we can see that the more weapons we have the higher rate in homicides per 100,00 inflicted by firearms.   Also the more people there are with weapons, the more likely the use of weapon will occur due to probability.  Also it allows the option of using a weapon instead of your mind to handle a potentially violent situation, and pulling a trigger is much easier than reasoning with an insane individual.  And anyway, it’s the polices job to take care of dangerous people

 Of course we should be allowed to defend ourselves!  The second ammendment is right to bear arms, in event of a tyrannical regime.  Even though the second ammendment is a little out of date, it is still within our constitution, and it must be upheld.  Also, a weapon allows an individual to fight back if there is no other option.  A maniac screaming at you with a knife charging at you, and your backed into a corner, or a deluded lunatic with an uzi? Words would do very little in a situation such as this, and would probably do more harm than good.  Only being armed and prepared would save your life in a situation such as this.  And police might not arrive in time or even be readily available.

 These are the arguments that I have heard on both sides, and I have not been able to decide which one is right.  The only thing that I have decided is that if we pick either one, we potentially endanger ourselves and those around us, either by someone to gun us down without us giving so much as a struggle, or an over eager protector of the public shooting someone who is acting suspicious.  Two Choices, No One Wins.

The Joy of making something alive!

As I am sitting here at my desk typing to all of you, my apartment is filled with this sweet winey smell. That smell is coming from a six gallon plastic drum with a hole on top filled with water, honey, and yeast. Yes individuals, I am making the brew of the gods, I am making mead. Rumored to being the first fermented beverage made by man, it has fueled warriors of old, Egyptians, Greeks, Woad Warriors, Soldiers of Rome, Native Americans, and hundreds of other groups of people. This drink came from making honey water, just honey and water placed in a cask out in the open. Then bees came, and pollen, dropping wild yeasts into the container causing and irreversible event to take place: Fermentation.

Now before we continue, we must understand what fermentation is. Fermentation is the digestion of sugars, specifically simple sugars like glucose, into alcohol! This process in beer takes two to three weeks, in distilled products two weeks, in wine months, and in mead it all depends on the ingredients.

We are on the middle of week 2 of the fermentation process, and we nearly lost the batch last weekend because it stopped fermenting. For whatever reason, the yeast stopped eating the sugars in the honey, and just died. We put in rejuvenation powders, a product purchasable at any home brew store, and the fermentation took off twice as fast. This tells me that it should have gone in at the beginning of the fermentation process.

I feel as though we are coming to the end of the process because the smell from the drum has changed from a yeast, beer fermentationy type smell to a wine like odor, that tangy fermented smell that makes you go “ah, that’s wine.” And really that’s what mead is, a honey wine. Its not carbonated like beer, its not distilled like any hard liquor, it just ferments, and is drinkable after that. Simple, huh?

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