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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (718839)	5/31/2013 11:02:20 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580148

The 20-25% in federal income taxes is actually rather high. IIRC, most people's effective federal income tax rate is around 10-15%, which makes sense (mathematically) when you look at the tax brackets. Of course, when you add in SS and Medicare taxes, then you end up with an effective federal tax rate of around 18-23%. But then you'd have to count deductions like state income taxes and home mortgage interest, which will then bring that figure down to around the mid-teens. All of this is tricky to figure out and really depends on which income brackets you are looking at and which tax breaks you want to count. That's why I'd rather rely on the "tax freedom day" measurement, since that is a good indication of how much the American public is being collectively taxed. For the typical middle income family, they're probably going to be closer to 20% than 25. If you had two earners making 75K (taxable)/each claiming the standard deduction ($11,900), the effective rate would be 19%. At 100K/each, it would be around 21%. So, 20% is a better figure -- I don't think you could get to 25% unless you were married filing separately. The point holds, however. We are vastly overtaxed and it certainly isn't historically low when half our incomes are going to one kind of tax or another. Some states, like TX, are better off, as they don't have personal income taxes. But they DO have sky-high real estate taxes.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (718839)	6/2/2013 7:52:36 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1580148

Michael Douglas Blames Cancer on Oral Sex ACTOR SAYS HPV IS CAUSE—NOT YEARS OF SMOKING AND BOOZING By Ruth Brown, Newser Staff newser.com Posted Jun 2, 2013 2:50 PM CDT (NEWSER) – Actor Michael Douglas says his throat cancer was not caused by years of heavy smoking and drinking—it was caused by a sexually transmitted disease contracted via oral sex. "Without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus," Douglas told the Guardian. "It's a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer. And if you have it, cunnilingus is also the best cure for it." A head and neck surgeon confirmed that cancer-causing HPV is a very real thing. "It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the HPV type 16 is the causative agent in oropharyngeal cancer," he said. However, the doctor questioned Douglas' assertion that oral sex could also help cure the disease. "Maybe he thinks that more exposure to the virus will boost his immune system. But medically, that just doesn't make sense."

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (718839)	6/2/2013 8:09:39 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1580148

Leading neuroscientist: Religious fundamentalism may be a ‘mental illness’ that can be ‘cured’ By David Edwards rawstory.com ( The good news is, there HOPE for you now, Ten! Now, if she can just cure Republicansim and Ayn Rand worship!) Thursday, May 30, 2013 16:17 EDT A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it. During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years. “One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology – we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance.” “I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults,” she explained. “I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness.” “In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm.” In the introduction to her book, The Brain Supremacy, Taylor noted that scientists needed “to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain.” “They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads,” she wrote. “Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are.” [Photo credit: Twitter/Kathleen Taylor]