Rational Crank

Have you heard of the “fair tax?” Throw away all taxes and just institute an across the board sales tax on everything. It sounds like a good idea at first, right? The problems arise when you stop to really think about it. Forget about the problem with the actual legislation. It doesn’t eliminate the IRS as promised just changes the name. It doesn’t eliminate state income taxes, local city sales taxes, lodging taxes, or even federal gas taxes as promised, just adds to them. It would encourage the expansion of a nearly impossible to monitor underground economy. And it has built into the actual legislation a system of rebates basically neutralizing its “non-progressive” selling point. Forget about all that. Let’s take a few seconds and look at the basic idea itself. Is the basic idea really fair? As I see it the “fair tax” falls short do to one basic flaw. It mixes essentials (things we all need to exist) with nonessentials. Here are four scenarios that will help you understand why this i...

My friend who is participating in the dowsing test emailed me. Here is part of the email: Please bear in mind that we are testing a specific and limited form of dowsing - I have never made any claims regarding dowsing for water, underground cavities, or anything other than ferrous metals - in fact, I am very skeptical about these other types of dowsing. We could also test the subterranean flowing water type of dowsing in another experiment, but it would require a different, and more complicated, test setup. I'd also like to build a dowsing machine to totally remove human subjectivity from the process, but this too is for later. Do you have a date or place in mind? We need to make this into a fun interesting event! My response: You are correct. First priority is that the test must be fun. I propose that all the guests at the party state which result they think will prevail, Skepticism or Dowsing. They are each given something to identify their position (preferably a silly hat). Each...