Dave sent me a link to Bid to Lure Films Works So Well, It’s Nearly Broke, which is an exceptionally lazy piece of reporting.

But the good news for the city’s film industry is a mixed blessing for the city’s treasury. In 13 months, the city has exhausted the $50 million it had allotted for four years’ worth of tax credits for the industry, while the state has used up most of the $125 million it has allotted over five years. It is not clear if new business spurred by the program is making up the difference.

And being the New York Times, they didn’t see fit to, you know, do any actual reporting or fact-checking.

Otherwise, after two minutes of Googling and a search on the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance site, they might have learned that January 2006 NYS tax revenues were up 18.6% over the previous January with personal income tax revenue up a remarkable 28.3%. (page 2 of the January 2006 Tax Collections PDF)

One hopes our elected public servants do better than to trust the Times’ lazy reporting at face-value. Cutting the tax credits would just screw everything up again.

This is the Laffer Curve in action, again. Lower taxes lead to increased tax revenues, in different kind of taxes as state taxes or vehicles taxes like the IPVA 2018.

Please visit dccu.us for more information.

Stumbled across a rather astonishing timeline: A CHRONOLOGY OF THE COMMON ERA (the page is 1.5 MB). There’s tons there, much subsequent Googling ensued.

I’ve been reading a lot of history lately, especially trying to get a better grasp on early Europe, pre-Islamic Arabia and The Crusades. This was all largely skipped in the Western Civ classes I took in college (“we’re going to avoid too much emphasis on wars”, which now seems akin to describing a steak dinner as having too much emphasis on beef).

Though all this, I keep coming across this Shakespeare quote from Macbeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing

Human history is a damned mess.

“The Method” was a work of Archimedes unknown in the Middle Ages, but the importance of which was realized after its discovery. Archimedes pioneered the use of infinitesimals, showing how by dividing a figure in an infinite number of infinitely small parts could be used to determine its area or volume. It was found in the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest (Παλίμψηστος του Αρχιμήδη). The ancient text was found in a rare 10th-century Byzantine Greek manuscript which is probably the oldest and most authentic copy of Archimedes’ major works to survive, and contains transcriptions of his writing on geometry and physics.

The manuscript was the only source for his treatise “On The Method of Mathematical Theorems” and the only known copy of the original Greek text of his work, “On Floating Bodies”. The manuscript also contains the text of his works “On The Measurement of the Circle”, “On the Sphere and the Cylinder”, “On Spiral Lines and On the Equilibrium of Planes”.

The volume is a palimpsest, a manuscript in which pages have been written on twice. As writing material was expensive an original text could be washed off so the parchment could be reused. The upper layer of writing on the document to be auctioned contains instructions for religious rites but underneath it contains versions of Archimedes’ most celebrated Greek texts.

Paper. The ideas weren’t important enough to preserve, the paper was.

There will be a rally supporting Denmark and Freedom of Speech and Expression in NYC today (Friday) at noon. Rallies are planned for other cities as well. The Danish Consulate is at One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, (2nd Ave @ 47th St.). Snarksmith got the ball rolling on this.

If you haven’t yet read MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism, cosigned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salmon Rushdie and 10 others, please do so now. Note how many of the cosignatories have been forced to live under constant police protection. These are dark times.

Two quotes from Edmund Burke:

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

The weather forecast for today shows a forty degree drop over the course of the day. That’s nuts, but Saturday’s forecast low is even crazier. 65° to 17° in 24 hours? (In Celsius, that’s 18° to -8°) The snow from Sunday’s big snowstorm has pretty much melted away just in time for more winter.

Temperature extremes like this make me think of the expansion of railroad rails in heat, and, for whatever reason, an algebra problem from my first math class in college. Oh, and the temperature of the Moon ranges about 500° F during a Lunar day, I never realized how hot it got there, though it would only affect your feet since there’s no atmosphere.

I’ve been in California (the OC) for the past two weeks helping my parents through an unexpected medical issue. Thankfully, everything went well and they’re doing fine now. Apologies for the unreturned phone calls, slow email and the delayed release of the next beta of Joe’s Filters. I’ll be back in New York tomorrow morning.

I need to rethink the main column width on this page. Probably also need to think about using fewer words.