ARTS & FARCES internet

The President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform has issued a report that calls for limits on the home mortgage interest tax deduction and deductions for employer-provided health insurance. The nine-member panel’s final report is due on 1 November.

The mortgage interest cap for a married couple filing a joint tax return is currently US$1 million. The panel advises that a much lower cap—US$350,000, or the maximum mortgage insurable by the Federal Housing Administration—would be more appropriate. Additionally, the panel calls for capping the deduction for employer-provided health insurance at about US$11,000 per year per employee.

The panel appears to be rejecting the idea of a consumption tax—in the form of a national sales tax or a European-style value-added tax—because it would hit the working poor much harder than any other class. A flat tax—which similarly falls disproportionately on the poor—is still in reportedly in play, according to David Rosenbaum’s account in the New York Times.

Even before Vannevar Bush began specification work on his memex, Paul Otlet was developing the first mechanical database: a rotating, wheel-shaped desk through which users could browse and annotate millions of index cards. Most surprising was Otlet’s concept of someday being able to access the database remotely using an “electric telescope” connected to the telephone lines.

boxes and arrows, the information architecture resource, has published the best overview of Paul Otlet’s work I’ve found. Truly fascinating.

It’s sometimes hard to fathom that Kurt Vonnegut turns 83 next month. And it’s sometimes hard to remember that he’s an In These Times senior editor. Editor Joel Bleifuss has assembled the entirety of Vonnegut’s work for the unabashedly progressive publication. The best bit, of course, is the well-worn Bleifuss pre-war-on-Iraq interview from January 2003; it’s held up amazingly well.

Since updating to the current release of the Expression Engine CMS that runs this website, the Atom feed is broken. I’ve tried to fix it myself (no luck) and I’ve requested support from the vendor (no support forthcoming). Perhaps it’s time to consider alternative content management systems.

Of course, if you’re subscribed to the Atom feed, this will be of no help whatever. So it goes.

UPDATE: Saturday, 08 October 2005 11:30AM CDT The Atom feed is working again, but I’ve had to revert back to the Atom 0.3 template. Thanks to Paul Burdick of the pMachine team for the work on the fixes.

I’ve been puttering around with various Linux distributions for what seems like forever. It was mostly an exerceise in frustration and just enough over utter futility to keep me in the game from time to time. While I’m certainly far from being an expert, I’m convinced Ubuntu is the future of software, for all of the reasons Shuttleworth cites. I’ve installed the operating system and applications painlessly and flawlessly on everything I’ve tried it on, including a six-year old laptop.