The creators of I Heart Taxes have a t-shirt that captures my feelings on taxes quite nicely (appropriately, t-shirt sales benefit the US Treasury):
I, like most Americans, think my taxes are fair
The site is a nice reminder that not all of us are stark, raving mad about our taxes being the lowest they’ve been since 1950.
(via A Whole Lotta Nothing)
Did you know that, when used on food packaging, words such as “healthy” and “low-calorie” have specific definitions regulated by the USDA and FDA? If you’ve ever been wandering the aisles of a grocery store and wanted to know exactly how a giant sack of potato chips can get away with being labeled “light,” wonder no more.
The guys from Salt & Fat have put together a really nifty mobile app which defines words and phrases used on food packaging. Here’s their notes for the phrase “all natural:”
This term is so ubiquitous as to be useless. It’s possible for products labeled ‘natural’ to actually contain ingredients you’d never find in nature, like high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated fats. Check the ingredients to be sure.
The app is accessible via any mobile phone with a modern browser (iPhone, Android, Palm OS, etc). Punch this URL into your phone (it doesn’t show you much on a computer) and check it out today:
Yesterday, I finally found some time to haul our spare change container off to the bank for conversion into cash money. The container, a vintage flour canister, had been overflowing for several weeks and a trip was long overdue. As I heaved the coins out of the car, I found myself thinking about how I had heard somewhere that the materials used to make the penny (copper-plated zinc) were worth more money than the penny itself. That nugget was quickly forgotten, however, when I found out our “throwaway” change was worth just over $370. Disco party time!
This morning, the penny returned to my thoughts when @linklogpointed to a blog post about the production costs associated with the penny and nickel: In recent years the penny has cost approximately 1.8 cents and the nickel approximately 9 cents to produce. Costs have exceeded the value of these two coins by over $100 million in prior years. That quote comes from the 2011 US Budget which includes a directive enabling “the Department of the Treasury to explore, analyze, and approve new, less expensive materials for all circulating coins.” Is this what Obama meant when he promised to deliver “change?” (sorry about that, I couldn’t help myself)
