Dave Barry: How your taxes turn into manure

Taxpayers: It’s almost April 15, and you know what that means. It means the Miami Dolphins already have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

But it’s also time to file your federal tax return. Yes, this is a pesky chore, but remember that paying taxes is not a ”one-way street.” When you send your money to the government, the government, in return, provides you with vital services, such as not putting you in prison. The government also uses your money to pay for programs that benefit all Americans, such as the Catfish Genome Project.

I am not making this project up. According to a group called Citizens Against Government Waste, the United States Congress (motto: ”Hey, It’s Not OUR Money”) is giving $871,854 to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama so they can develop a better catfish. Now if you ask me, the way to improve on the current model of catfish is to make it look less like a hostile life form from the Planet Klorb, and more like Nemo. But the goal of the Catfish Genome Project, as I understand it, is to create a bigger, stronger catfish, a Shaquille O’Neal catfish that can stand up (so to speak) to global competition from foreign catfish.

Perhaps you wonder why this project is being financed by taxpayers, as opposed to the catfish industry. The answer is that the Catfish Genome Project is crucial to achieving a vital national goal that we all share: reelecting the Alabama congresspersons who stuck it in the federal budget.

When the old Lenin becomes unwanted he just swims away. (Cool photo.)

This is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. What would happen if you conducted a wine tasting with the bottom shelf wines?

Carlo Rossi’s “Vin Rosi” (1.5 l, $3.99, 9.5%) I drank on an empty gut, just like a wino. Sadly, it wasn’t strong enough to counteract the offensive lack of flavor. It had all the zest of a rhubarb pie sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool, with a mulchy aftertaste that faded fast.

This is what Florida politics looks like.

My goodness, all this drawn-out brouhaha about how Florida Democrats did or didn’t really stick their feet in it this time by going along with the Republican-dominated legislature’s scheme to move up the state’s primary. But it’s just the latest episode in the ongoing saga of this state’s hapless Dems since they lost both executive and legislative branches back in the 1990s. The only reason there are any at all in office statewide now is because the Repubs pulled a howler of their own in ‘04 by saddling themselves with Katharine Harris running against Senator Bill Nelson; the Florida Secretary of State who helped pull off the Great Election Robbery of 2000 turned out to be such a ditzy disaster that by comparison Lil’ Bush comes across like Winston Churchill. But I digress. My point is that after observing local Democrats at close hand for years now, I must say the “circular firing squad” (as their Broward County chairman has put it) they formed over this past February’s notorious primary is — yawn — just par for the course when you know the context.

Orlando Sentinel: Anti-evolution bill clears another hurdle. Ugh.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday gave a partisan passing grade to the bill critics say is designed to challenge the teaching of evolution in Florida classrooms.

Sen. Ronda Storms, a Tampa-area Republican and former teacher, is carrying the bill at the behest of religious groups who lost a close vote to amend Florida’s science-teaching standards earlier this year. the Academic Freedom bill, as it’s known, says teachers can’t be discriminated against for teaching ideas contrary to the theory of evolution.

Storms said it was needed because teachers are “muzzled” from bringing up problems with the theory by administrators who “give you bathroom duty, they give you bus duty, you don’t get a planning period … so that their unhappiness is expressed.”

The panel passed the bill 6-3, with Democrats expressing some reservations that it could prompt lawsuits for violating church-state separation, and was a stealth attempt to inject religion in classrooms.

Education is changing.

It’s not that we won’t continue to have and use PCs in schools, but the market and intellectual momentum clearly lie elsewhere.

So forget about personal computers: the future of education probably lies with digital games.

I really like the photo accompanying this article about McCain.

There are almost one million names on the US Government’s terrorist watch list. What use could a list of that size be? The number of false positives must be huge!

In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.1

At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July. If there were really that many terrorists running around, we’d all be dead.

Spore keeps looking better and better.

It’s no secret that YouTube has embraced user generated video since its inception. Armed with a video camera and an Internet connection, anyone is able to contribute. We’re seeing more and more videogames starting to incorporate user generated content into the gaming experience — so we often ask ourselves, why not similarly empower gamers to share their experiences with each other?

Enter Spore, the much anticipated game from Electronic Arts and Maxis, which lets players create their own alien creatures, import their creations into the game world, and upload video of their creatures’ moves directly to YouTube from within the game.

Nerdfotainment

What do we know about nerds? Well, we know a lot. They need a project, are systematic thinkers, and they love puzzles and games. This brings me to a whole pile of entertainment that has shown up over the past ten years. All of which, I believe, is specifically designed for the nerd demographic, since all of the content shares a common characteristic: it’s terribly complex and nerds enjoy making it more so.