Helpful: Gin recipes from Plymouth

We went out tonight shopping on Clark Street and got some presents, and some North Shore Gin! Local booze always tastes better. But Gin and Juice is so 1998. We found this instead from the Plymouth Gin website:


Silver Bronx
50 ml (1 shot) Plymouth Gin
1 dash Sweet Vermouth
1 tbsp Egg White (whisked)
25 ml (1/2 shot) Orange Juice (Fresh)
1 dash Dry Vermouth


Fill mixing glass with ice
Add the Plymouth Gin, vermouths, orange juice and whisked egg white (optional)
Shake well
Strain into a martini glass

Delicious.

Helpful: An Iraq War Vet for Mark Pera for Congress IL-3

Why is an Iraq War Vet working for Mark Pera - watch this video to find out.



Mark Pera for Congress '08 : Video Clips

NOTE: This has been reposted with the correct video link. Sorry if this shows up twice on your feeds.

Helpful: Amazon Wish Lists

It's easy to set up, easy to share, and who knows, maybe **COUGH COUGH** your friends and beloved family **COUGH COUGH** will get you some good stuff this year. Not that you weren't thankful for last year's gifts, of course.

Interesting: Major League Soccer salaries

I'm working on a long post about relegation and promotion for MLS, but in the meantime, I found a list of salaries for players in MLS.

MLS Players Union :: Player Salary Information

The total of all salaries this year is only $42,000,000.
Highest, LA Galaxy - $9.3 million
Lowest, Chivas USA - $1.7 million

In baseball in 2006:
Highest, NY Yankees - $192 million
Lowest, Florida - $14 million

Interesting: Surprisingly Doable

I saw this in the Red Eye a few days ago and couldn't believe it. Condos are so easy!

Adrants » That Hot Chic...And Chicago Real Estate Are Surprisingly Doable

Interesting: Homeless vets

Absolutely shameful.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More than 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States are military veterans, although they represent 11 percent of the civilian adult population, according to a new report.

On any given night last year, nearly 196,000 veterans slept on the street, in a shelter or in transitional housing, the study by the Homelessness Research Institute found.

Everyone says that the US is the richest nation in the world. Well, obviously not. If we can't use our trillions of tax dollars so that all people have at least their basic needs met, then shame on us. And if we can't agree that all people deserve to have their basic human needs met, no matter what their choice of occupation, then God help us.

Helpful: How to Be Interesting

Tonight, I went to an event that had a lot of people I didn't know. I wasn't very interesting, I think. I got bored, felt awkward, and left. Turns out, rather than being interesting, I should have been interested.

Oh,and I should also start collecting something. Do soccer jerseys count?

Not Helpful: UMC Judicial Council Shenanigans

Some inside baseball on the church front. At the big "C" church level, I'm part of the team that is fighting to open up the United Methodist Church membership, clergy ranks, etc. to people of all races, genders, sexual orientation, and any other status. The church has some contradictions to work out, namely:

1. The UMC constitution states that people should not be denied membership based on status
2. Sexual orientation was recently ruled by a regional church judicial body to be a qualifying status
3. Other regional judicial bodies have ruled that pastors can deny membership based on sexual orientation

Like in the US government, there is a supreme judicial branch, the Judicial Council. This summer at our Annual Conference, we in Northern Illinois approved a formal petition to the Council to address this contradiction, and to rule that discriminating based on status should be unconstitutional.

Result:
They punted, saying that we didn't pass our petition correctly.

This is bogus. All of our petitions were available for debate and were voted on. The Judicial Council is literally making up law as it goes.

Interesting: Record Disapproval

USATODAY.com: Meanwhile, Bush reached an unwelcome record. By 64%-31%, Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they 'strongly disapprove' of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.

Interesting: Mod styles

This would be better suited for another blog, but check out these styles from the year of my birth, 1977...




15 Minute Lunch: Strap in, shut up and hold on. We're going back.

Interesting: Halloween 2007

Great party, great location, great friends!

Picasa Web Albums - Matt - Halloween 2007

Interesting: Brokeback to the Future

Amazing.

Interesting: Chicago Fire win Game 1

Fire 1 - DC United 0.

The second and final leg of the series is November 1, and the scoring is cumulative, so if the Fire win or tie, they go through to the semifinals.

Great game!

Helpful: Sales Taxes on services

In Illinois, sales taxes only apply to the sale of goods, not services. So you pay 9% on a Big Mac, but 0% on your personal trainer, stock broker, or lawyer.

The Governor tried to address this by rolling out a General Receipts Tax, which would get at some of those services, but he is so inept and politically bankrupt right now that service industries crushed him.

Meanwhile, check this out:
Taking a quick look at census business data:

Top 6 sectors for Cook County (by % of total payroll spending)
15% Finance
13% Professional, Scientific, Tech
11% Health Care
10% Manufacturing
7% Wholesale Trade
6% Management of companies

That means that #1, #2, #3 and #6 of our top sectors (making up 45% of our economy) pay little to no sales tax. Include them, but reduce the rate, and you can get it passed.

Interesting: Why I hate protest marches

Ezra Klein hits it right on the head.

I think it's almost certainly wrong that we're not overwhelmed by the volume of tragedy in the world -- there'd have to be something genuinely wrong with you to be able to absorb the current moment in some coherent way. So what many of us do is pick and choose. But once an issue is selected, there's no real step two. Marching doesn't work. Exhortations to write a letter or shoot an e-mail seem increasingly hoary, particularly as the process is taken over by organized pressure groups able to flood legislators with millions of e-mails. Volunteers are generally misused, and even when a campaign tries to construct a movement out of them, it can backfire, discrediting the whole enterprise (see Dean, Howard, and those $%*^*# orange beanies). The utter inadequacy of contemporary methods of protest and social action has been well established -- it's even been recast as narcisstic.

What to do instead? Let me know if you come with anything.

Helpful: GTD on HP

You know I love me some GTD - now the David has a regular column on Huffington Post with GTD tips. Hey Carrie - read that book!

David Allen: Think Smarter By Capturing Your Ideas - Living Now on The Huffington Post

Interesting: Red Card

A great blog about the Chicago Fire, my local MLS soccer team. The Fire beat Beckham and LA Galaxy on Sunday to make it into the playoffs. Game 1 against DC United is Thursday!

Helpful: Backup your data

We have about 50 GB of music, movies, etc. in our iTunes catalog. That's hundreds of CDs from high school and college, hundreds of downloaded albums, podcasts, speeches, and videos of our cat. We had them all stored on an external hard drive, which we bought about 4 years ago.

Last Monday, the external hard drive crashed. It's worthless, and the data is irretrievable from the drive.

But there's a happy ending to this story.

A month ago after reading a series on Lifehacker, Cindy and I talked about our backup situation, and I signed us up for Mozy, an online backup service that charges $55/yr. for unlimited storage. Once I signed up, I selected the music drive and copied all of the files to the Mozy server. It took two weeks for the full backup, but once it was done, it automatically updated the backup whenever we added new music or files.

After the crash, I bought a new drive, selected the music files on Mozy, and started to upload them back to the new drive. It will take two weeks for the full transfer, but that is a short time to wait considering the vast amount of music on the line.

Important data must be in at least two places to be safe, and preferably, one of those places should not be in your house. Whether you have Mac or PC, Mozy is a great solution.

Not Helpful: Pennies per gallon

Crazy how getting one small detail wrong can lead to such problems. Last night in my transportation finance class, we discussed the federal and state gas taxes.

Problem 1) Taxes are calculated in cents per gallon, so as gas prices rise, the tax collected remains the same. If prices increase enough and drivers choose more fuel-efficient cars or drive less, fewer gallons are purchased and thus fewer taxes are collected. The wear and tear on roads may be reduced, but not enough to make a difference.

At the same time, oil companies make increasing profits because the taxes are a fixed cost, not a variable one. Assume the current $.18/gallon federal tax rate and gasoline that costs $1.00 to produce. The oil company can make a profit of 10% by charging $1.31 for each gallon. In that case, for a total sale of $1.31, the government collects $.18 (13.1%) in taxes, and the oil company makes $.13 (10%) profit.

If the production cost of gasoline is now $3.00 with the same $.18/gallon tax, and the oil company charges $3.53, the government gets $.18 (only 5.1%) and the oil company gets $.35 (10%) profit.

Add in inflation and other increasing costs for road construction and maintenance, and you end up with rapidly shrinking highway and transit funds, plus increased oil company profits.


Problem 2)

In Illinois, More than 50% of state gas taxes are shared with municipalities, counties, and regions, so every level of government is dependent on automobile driving. Not only that, since the revenues are collected based on gallons purchased, there is an incentive to encourage auto-centered development and low gas mileage. Hello strip malls!

Interesting: Stuff You Never Hear In Church, Part One

Let Holy Covenant defy your expectations of church.

Join us this Sunday for Suce$s and Money: What Am I Working For?
This is part one of a six-part fall sermon series designed to open our eyes, challenge our preconceptions and speak to real issues in our lives.

That's this Sunday, Sept. 16 at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. All are welcome!

Holy Covenant United Methodist Church
925 W. Diversey, just east of the corner of Diversey and Sheffield
www.holycovenantumc.org




Fall Sermon Series: "STUFF YOU DON'T HEAR IN CHURCH"



9/16 - Succe$s and Money: What Am I Working For?
9/23 - Politics and Social Change: How Would Jesus Vote?
9/30 - Addiction and Dependency: Alcohol, Drugs and Pornography
10/7 - Religion Beyond Belief: A U2 Eucharist!
10/14 - Real Sex: Making Love (For Gay and Straight Alike)
Holy Covenant United Methodist Church
925 W. Diversey Pkwy.
Chicago, Illinois 60614

Helpful: SiCKO

Please watch this movie. Thanks.

SiCKO - The Official Site - In Theaters June 29th

Interesting: Lollapalooza 2007 Part 3

Yeah, yeah, so I never posted Day 3. I've been busy ok? Besides, Day 3 was my least favorite of the weekend, it was brutally hot, and by now, I kind of forgot everything. So, you can check out the setlists here:
Lollapalooza 2007 - A Day in the Life

I will say that Pearl Jam was surprisingly good. I had never seen them live before, and hearing 60,000 people sing "Alive" was pretty sweet. As expected, Ed Vedder brought out the political kung fu in force, with some anti-war songs, a piece with an Iraq War vet, and an original ditty knocking BP Amoco about their aborted plan to increase ammonia and other pollution into Lake Michigan. Brilliant.

This Saturday, we went to the Hideout Block Party, and stayed for about an hour. The show took place in a city parking lot next to a bunch of smelly garbage trucks. The line for food was 40 minutes long. And by the time we could get close to the stage to hear The Frames, everybody was talking so loud we could hardly hear anything. So we bailed. Sorry Andrew Bird - your new CD is very cool and we'll have to catch you later.

Interesting: The Entire Kuzma Family on TV

Everyone but me, that is.

Here are all four parts of my brother, Mom and Dad on "Don't Forget the Lyrics."

Lucas Kuzma - Don't Forget the Lyrics - Part 1
Lucas Kuzma - Don't Forget the Lyrics - Part 2
Lucas Kuzma - Don't Forget the Lyrics - Part 3
Lucas Kuzma - Don't Forget the Lyrics - Part 4

How close is your relationship to Quincy Jones?

Interesting: U2 Eucharist rocks Chicago church

Hey, check out this article about my church! Our next U2 service is next month. You are invited.

U2 Eucharist rocks Chicago church

Interesting: Becks!

I haven't written too much before of my love of soccer, but I just had to get on the blog this morning and put up clips of David Beckham from last night's Galaxy game vs. New England in the Superliga tournament.

Beckham is by no means the best player in the world, but he is by far the best player in the US, and it showed immediately in Becks' first start. His vision of the field is just so good, and even though his ankle is still gimpy, he moves and thinks more quickly than everyone else, if that makes sense.

There were a few times when he was in the middle of the field, surrounded by players, and the ball would come to him, and every time, he would immediately get rid of the ball perfectly to his teammate. He never gave the defense a chance to tackle him or push him around, so he ended up without any further injury -- very important when you're being paid $50 million a year.

Oh, and then there's this:


And this:


Excellent.