Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

According to a GigaOm article Google Trends Predicts Hillary as Dem Nominee, “current Google trend lines show Clinton beating Obama and Edwards.” Unfortunately they neglect to compare any possible Republican nominees, or any other candidates for nomination, such as our infamous Ron Paul, who easily pwns Hillary’s search volume by orders of magnitude:

Can Ron Paul steal the Republican nomination? According to his Google trends graph, he can! Maybe democracy is coming…

Live from the Honolulu International Airport, I bring you the following conversation I shared with the Transport Security Administration about the photography of their checkpoint.

Me: Is there any specific written tsa regulation prohibiting photography?

TSA Captain: Yes there is. Phography is not allowed.

Me: Can I see this in writing?

TSA Captain: I can’t let you see that.

Me: Then how do I know it exists?

TSA Captain: I just told you.

Obviously there is a problem here; I don’t mind not being able to take photos (national security, yada yada) but TSA as a government agency has to at least inform the public of its regulations. How can anyone be held responsible for violating a regulation they could not possibly know exists.

I’ve got taxes to do, and I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between H&R’s Taxcut and Intuit’s Turbotax. As far as I can tell, they’re both roughly the same price, and allow you to electronically turn in your 2006 federal and state income taxes:

The confusion becomes worse when you realize that there are a number of “free filing” sites, as well:

• Tax ACT: Your totally FREE tax software
• eSmart Tax: Online tax filing software

All of this is confused by the large numbers of SEO spammers cluttering up search results in Google. I’ve done taxes before, but tax software should exist to make my life easier, not more difficult. Buying tax software should be like buying an operating system. Clearly, buying Vista is a bad idea. Buying Taxcut? We can’t be so sure.

Photo of Fireworks by Ron Richardson. Learn how to take your own pictures of fireworks!

If you think the space program isn’t doing anything for you, check out NASA’s gallery of 16 rare space photos:

“This incredible view of Earth’s aurora was captured by a 1991 Defense Department crew flying Discovery”

Is a picture this beautiful of the Earth worth the millions put into every shuttle mission? Definitely.