This is of a bird I found in my house when I came home one day. A bit alarming, to open the door and hear something tapping on the inside of your windows.
Finally, an iris that bloomed a few weeks ago, in the morning sun.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Still Here
Just really busy. But here are some recent photos I've taken. This one is of Tracy's Jefferson Cup. It's silver plated - and was really tarnished when I took this picture. She's since polished it and it looks, well, like it ought. But much less interesting.
This is of a bird I found in my house when I came home one day. A bit alarming, to open the door and hear something tapping on the inside of your windows.
Finally, an iris that bloomed a few weeks ago, in the morning sun.
This is of a bird I found in my house when I came home one day. A bit alarming, to open the door and hear something tapping on the inside of your windows.
Finally, an iris that bloomed a few weeks ago, in the morning sun.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Curb Appeal
If there's one thing my house really lacks, it's curb appeal. It's a great little house, but there's not much to sell it as such from the road. I put in a bed along the front deck last year - that did a lot to help. But last week, Tracy, David and I put in another bed, right up next to the road.
The first step was removing the grass. That we did over the course of the last week and a half, a little bit at a time. We cut it off and carted it to the backyard, where we set it down as sod. Then we built up a retaining wall of sorts, since the yard slopes down from the street. Having built the wall, we got a truckload of manure and tilled it in to level off the bed (more or less).
On Saturday, finally having prepared the bed, we got flowers. We spent a while designing the bed - only to find out that most of the plants we'd planned on either weren't available or had already bloomed (and hence would be rather silly to put in right now). So we got recommendations on annuals (mostly) and brought home a good mess of plants. We laid them out, and then spent a good while putting them in. Here's the iris-side of the garden, from above(-ish):
The middle row of plants is a butterfly bush, a foxglove, 4 heliotropes in a box, and another foxglove. This part of the garden gets a good deal of sun, so we put the sun-loving plants on this side. There are marigolds, million-gold, heliotropes, some plant with purple-veined leaves who's name I'll have to look up, and petunias. There's also a red-flowering plant that's not blossomed, yet. Along the path (lower left in the picture) there are some impatiens mixed with the million-golds.
On the other side of the path we have more shade-tolerant plants: coleus in the middle (of different varieties) and million-gold and impatiens bordering. The Japanese maple I had in a pot on my deck is in the upper-right corner (barely visible) - it was right unhappy being on my deck, it would seem, so I'm hoping it'll like the new location better.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Taxation is not Stealing
Over here, FSK makes the assertion that taxation is stealing and that, in voting to authorize taxes, you and I (assuming you, the reader, haven't voted against all candidates who have authorized taxes) have conspired to steal from him. Here is my response, which I posted as a comment on his blog. It remains to be seen if he authorizes it. He authorized the comment, without comment of his own.
A logical argument is formed by taking one or more hypotheses, transforming them with the operations provided by logic, and producing a conclusion. Such an argument is sound if 1) the operations performed are valid and 2) the hypotheses are sound.
In your argument, you assumed quite a number of hypotheses - only one of which you state explicitly: "Suppose you believe you do not have the right to steal from me." More important the unstated hypothesis: "And further assume that taxation is stealing."
There seems to be some variance amongst dictionary definitions of the word "steal," but a fairly common theme is the illegality of the action, as in the entry in Wiktionary which states: "To illegally, or without the owner's permission, take possession of something by surreptitiously taking or carrying it away." Of course, "illegally" implies a legal framework, which, in the United States of America, permits the government to levy taxes upon residents of the country in order to provide its inhabitants with services. Since, moreover, the organization of our government permits the majority of its enfranchised citizens to vote on such issues, the laws are, by a perhaps circular definition, just.
If that argument is not entirely satisfying, consider an analogy. Your landlord does not steal from you when he or she comes to collect your rent. Rather, he or she receives his or her due for the services provided - namely lodging and whatever other services were specified in the contract you both signed at the commencement of the lease. Should you at some point decide that the rent is no longer acceptable, you have a simple, completely legal recourse: you can move elsewhere.
It is thus with taxes in a town, county, state, or country. If you find yourself at odds with the overwhelming majority who have voted to authorize the current system of taxation you can (in addition to lobbying for change) emigrate. That you will be hard-pressed to find a country on this planet in which there are no taxes suggests that your view of the - not illegality, clearly, but perhaps immorality? - of taxes is not universally shared.
A logical argument is formed by taking one or more hypotheses, transforming them with the operations provided by logic, and producing a conclusion. Such an argument is sound if 1) the operations performed are valid and 2) the hypotheses are sound.
In your argument, you assumed quite a number of hypotheses - only one of which you state explicitly: "Suppose you believe you do not have the right to steal from me." More important the unstated hypothesis: "And further assume that taxation is stealing."
There seems to be some variance amongst dictionary definitions of the word "steal," but a fairly common theme is the illegality of the action, as in the entry in Wiktionary which states: "To illegally, or without the owner's permission, take possession of something by surreptitiously taking or carrying it away." Of course, "illegally" implies a legal framework, which, in the United States of America, permits the government to levy taxes upon residents of the country in order to provide its inhabitants with services. Since, moreover, the organization of our government permits the majority of its enfranchised citizens to vote on such issues, the laws are, by a perhaps circular definition, just.
If that argument is not entirely satisfying, consider an analogy. Your landlord does not steal from you when he or she comes to collect your rent. Rather, he or she receives his or her due for the services provided - namely lodging and whatever other services were specified in the contract you both signed at the commencement of the lease. Should you at some point decide that the rent is no longer acceptable, you have a simple, completely legal recourse: you can move elsewhere.
It is thus with taxes in a town, county, state, or country. If you find yourself at odds with the overwhelming majority who have voted to authorize the current system of taxation you can (in addition to lobbying for change) emigrate. That you will be hard-pressed to find a country on this planet in which there are no taxes suggests that your view of the - not illegality, clearly, but perhaps immorality? - of taxes is not universally shared.
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