Maybe they were just predicting the U.S. economy:

In 2012, every business, including sole-proprietorships, will have to issue a 1099 to anyone from whom it buys $600 worth of goods or services. The IRS’s Tax Advocate Service says, “For example, if a self-employed individual makes numerous small purchases from an office supply store during a calendar year that total at least $600, the individual must issue a Form 1099 to the vendor and the IRS showing the exact amount of total purchases.”

When I try to explain this to business groups, they invariably reply, “No, that can’t possibly be right. You mean if I buy $600 worth of paper from Wal-Mart in the course of a year I have to get their IRS number, the address of the corporate accounting office, send them a 1099 and another copy to the IRS?” Yep. That’s exactly what it means. “What does this have to do with health care? What is wrong with these people?”

I don’t know, but the Tax Advocate Service estimates 40 million businesses will be affected. And no money was appropriated to cover the cost.

Source: Greg Scandlen, Consumer Power Report

Another of my letters-to-the-editor that will never be published, so you can read it here. This one was sent to Scientific American regarding their November 2009 issue.

Imagine my dismay, therefore, when this month's issue arrived with a cover article promising "A plan to get all energy from wind, water, and solar power by 2030." This is nonsense. One can be strongly in favor of greatly expanding renewable energy resources without supporting this illogical and impossible "plan."

Just to take two issues:

(1) The authors have "assumed... that most fossil-fuel transportation can be replaced by battery and fuel-cell vehicles." This is unsupported by any engineering reality. I suspect battery-powered vehicles will do a good job of replacing the four-door sedan for urban commuters. But without a fundamental breakthrough in battery technology, batteries will not be powering over-the-road trucks, or locomotives, or oceangoing vessels. Confusing "the transportation sector" with "automobiles" is an amateur error, and I would have expected better from these authors.

(2) In a single sentence, they declare that hydrogen, generated by electrically-driven hydrolysis, will fuel aircraft. No, it won't. Even tossing aside the incredible inefficiencies in manufacturing, transporting, and storing liquid hydrogen, the energy density of liquid hydrogen is only one-seventh that of gasoline or jet fuel. Ask today's airlines if they could survive with vastly more expensive fuel, but flights limited to only a few hundred miles.

It is certainly possible to greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels -- especially through a renewed commitment to clean, safe, abundant nuclear energy -- but the authors are not making that argument. By promoting an absurd vision for deriving "100% of the world's energy, for all purposes... from wind, water, and solar resources," the authors have actually done the clean-energy movement a disservice.

Which is nothing compared to the self-inflicted loss of credibility suffered by Scientific American. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Fair point. The events in Iran are horrible, and I'm personally hoping to see a "Tehran Spring" that leads to regime change without further loss of life. It's got nothing to do with partisanship.

But I know that a lot of Twitterers normally sprinkle hashtags like '#tcot' (Top Conservatives on Twitter) and '#tlot' (Top Liberals On Twitter) into just about every post they make. Not sure if that's a good habit, but it's certainly not necessarily "R (Republican) opportunism."

So I ran a quick search.twitter.com for '#tlot #iranelection' and, as expected, found thousands of hits.

So I followed Grayson's tweet with a question:

The reply was immediate:

Wow. That's quite a reaction. Nothing about the question I asked. Just a quick dismissal of me as someone not worth listening to, for "obvious" reasons.

Now, I've met "Spacey Gracey" around town, and I've read/watched some of her work. I respect her craft, and probably agree with her politically more often than she might expect. And even when I disagree, I like listening to opposing viewpoints. Occasionally, I learn something. (Refusal to listen to opposing viewpoints can turn Twitter, or anything else, into a vast echo chamber, devoid of learning.)

I suspect from her public positions that Grayson voted for Obama last year. I didn't... but I didn't vote for McCain either. I'm completely disgusted with both major political parties, and think that the rabid partisanship of the post-2000 election is a major contributor to the problems our country faces now.

But, based on a single fact I pointed out — that liberals as well as conservatives are Twittering about the Iranian uprising — Grayson has apparently stereotyped me as a mouthbreathing Neanderthal whose biggest complaint about Sarah Palin is that her husband lets her wear shoes.

Her privilege. But not what I'd expect from someone who claims to be "an experienced and thoughtful writer."

With the United Auto Workers in the news lately, I happened to have a National Science Foundation grant proposal on my desk, and was struck by the similarities in their logos!

Coincidence? Deep dark conspiracy? Or a graphics artist reselling the same work to multiple clients?

We complained that our tap water looked and tasted rusty. So, during a multi-year drought, here's what the City of Atlanta Water Works did about it... they sent out a guy in a truck to open up the fire hydrant on our street.

Wasted untold hundreds (thousands?) of gallons of water. Now the water coming out of our sinks is dirtier than ever.

We're drinking filtered water ourselves, and have bought a second water filter for the Cat Cave. Sad... Atlanta used to have some of the best tap water around. Now it's been filters and bottled water for us for years.

Personally, I'm a fan of the "One man, one vote" philosophy as embodied by Lord Havelock Vetinari... he is the Man, he has the Vote. I want that job!

Short of that, it's Election Day, and ballots get long and complicated. Here are my simple rules to figure out how to vote once you make it to the polling place:

• If there are any candidates you actively support, from any party, vote for them. That's usually not a problem; that's why you went to the polls in the first place.
• Don't be afraid of "throwing your vote away" voting for a third-party candidate. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

But there are zillion other races on the ballot. You can drastically simplify your choices now:

• Don't cast any votes for anyone running unopposed. (This seems to be incredibly prevalent in Atlanta and Fulton County.)
• If there is an opposed race where you don't know anything about any of the candidates, vote against the incumbent.
• If there are any amendments that include the word "authorize," vote NO unless you've done your homework.
• Any races not covered by these rules, leave blank.

There! Franchise exercised, you can exit the polls and enjoy your felonious Starbucks and Krispy Kreme!

I got into a discussion about Georgia Tech academics the other day, when I mentioned how difficult the undergraduate curriculum was. The other person (who graduated from a state university that shall remain nameless) retorted with "Well, Tech doesn't even have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa!"

That's true. We don't. And I started digging into why.

From the "Stipulations" on the ??? Web site:

Grades earned in applied or professional work shall not be counted in computing the grade-point average for purposes of eligibility. Applied and professional work shall be understood to include those courses intended primarily to develop skills or vocational techniques in such fields as business administration, education, engineering, home economics, journalism, library science, military science, physical education, communications, secretarial studies, speech, and applied art and music.

Well, excuse the hell out of me.

I actually don't have an engineering degree, although I've worked in an engineering capacity more than once during my career. But I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech and a helluva engineer, even if my diploma says theoretical physics. (Summa cum laude, thank you very much.) And these pantywaist literature majors from Swarthmore and Vassar Dickinson have the temerity to lump engineering courses in with P.E. and "secretarial studies"?

Scroom.

If those are their rules, we don't need a ??? chapter. They are clinging to a worldview and a set of rules that are increasingly irrelevant, if not downright harmful.

The "Two Cultures" debate goes back a lot further than C.P. Snow, but I'm tired of this attitude that engineering (and the associated "hard sciences" and mathematics) are somehow superfluous for the truly educated. There's not an engineer alive who would say "Sorry, I can't read." But if you propose a math problem any harder than splitting the check at lunch, I bet half the English department at Duke would throw up their hands and say "Sorry, I can't do math."

(Of course, I suspect most of them also can't write a clear English sentence at gunpoint, but this isn't a post about deconstructionism.)

The classic "liberal arts" major (which is what the self-perpetuating ??? aristocracy is claiming to be the ideal) has a lot to be said for it. Studying classical history, the Great Books, a bit of Latin and Greek, and the rest of the underpinnings of Western civilization made a good background for a young man (for it was always men, back then) to go into the City of London or to Wall Street and manage institutions that were based on the strengths and foibles of individuals. If you knew a bit about how Caesar managed his campaigns, or Lee managed his lieutenants, you had a better chance of managing your Midwest regional vice president and making sure he made his numbers for the quarter.

Now, however, businesses are based on more than that. Internet speed means you'll be making decisions in far less time than Caesar or Lee enjoyed. Global connectivity means you will be managing staff in Bangalore that you may have never met. And, of course, your white-shoe Wall Street firm has a back room of "rocket scientists"—in reality, bright science and engineering majors—developing a dizzying array of financial derivatives such as credit default swaps that allow you to pyramid your profits to the sky.

Oops. Did someone mention "credit default swaps"?

I think there was some math involved there. Didn't you say you couldn't do math?

I minored in history at Georgia Tech, back when that was technically impossible. (I actually never got a "minor" designation; I just took a bunch of courses, and read one heck of a lot outside of class.) I think every educated person should understand the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire and the connection between Columbus's voyages and the Renaissance. And he (or she!) should have read and thought about and written about some Shakespeare, and Cervantes, and Tennyson. (And Kipling, dammit!) And we should all be competent in at least one foreign language. (I'm not, and I wish I were.)

But every educated person should also be able to solve a series of linear equations, or guesstimate the power consumption of a server rack, or give a layman's explanation of private-key cryptography. Technical problems are important in today's world, and top managers don't have the luxury of just saying "let the geeks figure it out." Because that road leads to credit default swaps, or multi-millions of dollars wasted on failed SAP implementations, or cancellation of nuclear power plants that would emit less radiation than the coal-fired plant you build instead.

So the ??? types don't think our "applied and professional" courses are good enough for their precious honor society? Well, I'm not terribly impressed with what the ??? keyholders have done to our financial system, or our government, or our educational system. Maybe it's time to give the engineers a chance.

Because a "liberal arts" education is no longer enough. If young men and women want a well-rounded education that prepares them for the real world we're living in... they should major in Mechanical Engineering. That's the liberal arts degree for the 21st century.

What are you doing Sunday night?

If you're in Atlanta, and not spending the Memorial Day weekend on the beach, I'd like to invite you to the first-ever Tech High School graduation.

The official history: Tech High was born out of the determination of respected, successful business, community and educational leaders in the metropolitan Atlanta area to deal with the student performance needs of Atlanta and the shortage of highly skilled workers in Georgia. Seed capital came from a generous donation from the partners at Noro-Moseley, then TAG adopted Tech High as a target for donations. Don Chapman, a Georgia Tech graduate, Atlanta native and successful entrepreneur, took the early leadership of the Tech High Foundation, raising several million dollars to establish THS as a charter school within the Atlanta Public School system to deal with the student performance needs of Atlanta and the shortage of highly skilled workers in Georgia.

The unofficial history: The Atlanta Public School system is a expensive disgrace. It's too big to fix, but it's not too big to humiliate. By taking the same students as APS (charter schools, unlike magnet schools, don't get the luxury of admissions tests and admissions standards), but without the soul-killing bureaucracy that dominates APS, we could demonstrate in microcosm that the problem isn't the students... it's the system.

We initially thought that applying technology would be the solution, hence the name Tech High. "Laptops! Eight o'clock! Day One!" It turned out that we were getting ninth-grade students scoring at the fifth-grade level in reading and math. So some of the more ambitious technology projects were put on hold in favor of some old-fashioned fundamentals. Yes, you have to do your homework. Yes, you have to wear a uniform (nothing exotic: khaki pants, and any solid-colored shirt with a collar and no words on it). Yes, you have to shut up when the teacher is talking. Yes, we're going to hire teachers who actually give a damn about the students.

It makes a difference.

We started with a ninth-grade class of 100 students in the 2004-2005 school year. About half of those students are still with us, and we've added one class every year... so, this year, THS was a full four-year high school with our first-ever senior class. We've survived an eviction by the city of Atlanta (after we spent $600,000 to renovate the SciTrek building, they kicked us out, but have left the space vacant for three years). We survived a boiler explosion in the 1920s-vintage school building we're now occupying on Memorial Drive. We even survived the recent tornado, which made a direct hit on the school. And the reason is the students.

These kids are awesome. We don't dwell on their backgrounds but, as one parent described her son "He's not just the first person in our family to go to college, he's the first in our entire church!" They've busted their tails on their schoolwork, and it shows.

There are years when the entire dinosaur herd of the Atlanta Public School system (50,000 students) sends one graduate to Georgia Tech. In our first senior class of 43 students, Tech High School is sending three.

We have another graduate with a full ride to Emory. We have other graduates going to Mercer, to the University of Georgia... we already have 40 out of the 43 accepted to college, and we're not done yet. These kids are embarked on productive, fulfilling lives that wouldn't have been possible had they been warehoused in the APS "schools" immersed in crime, violence, and despair.

Our first graduation ceremony is Sunday afternoon, at 5:00, at the Ferst Center (Georgia Tech campus). It's free and open to the public. If you live in Atlanta—or if your company hires employees in Atlanta—come see a demonstration of hope. Come see the future.