Category: Rants
Jersey Tolls
“New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Tuesday asked legislators to act quickly to tackle chronic state fiscal woes by increasing tolls on some of the nation’s busiest highways every four years starting in 2010. Corzine unveiled a proposal during his Tuesday State of the State address to the Legislature to increase tolls 50 percent in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022.
The increases would be used to help cut state debt and pay for transportation work, and include adjustments to reflect inflation in the years tolls weren’t hiked. After 2022, tolls would increase every four years to also reflect inflation.” -AP
This is a very, very, very bad move. As a resident of New York, I should not be paying for New Jersey’s budget problems with exponential toll increases. Yes, I am using your roads and do understand a toll, but the fares should not be increased by 50% every 4 years. This is horrible for the economy because increasing tolls affect other businesses, such as common carriers. Also, with the weak dollar and inflation, people will be paying more for tolls, but in 2022, the dollar will be worth even less – so this would be an even more devastating impact. Corzine suggested that if tolls are not increased, a 30% sales tax would be an alternative. So this means little kids without jobs buying video games now need to be extorted?
Two possible solutions, and you don’t need to be a politician to figure them out: If you cut spending enough, that should solve the problem without increasing anything. Another solution would be to increase the gasoline tax. It is not right that Jersey gets to have gas that is 30-50 cents cheaper than the rest of the country. If anyone needs to make up for the budget deficit, it should be the Jersey residents who are getting a nice break on gas, while every other state resident is getting taxed up the ass.
Tolls go up, that is understandable – and even if it increases to adjust for inflation, that is fine. But this proposed plan is outrageous.
Facebook App Abuse
Some applications are great, some are terrible, others are pointless. Many people complained that Facebook has become cluttered with applications. True, but this doesn’t bother me – you do not have to use them. What does annoy me is applications that resemble spam utilities or social viruses and do not function without people spreading them.
Take the “Are you stupid” application, for example. I get an invite to it and want to check it out – only to find out that you can’t even use it unless you invite 20 people. If you press “skip” it’s like “OMG you didn’t like invite 20 people, die!” Suppose I don’t want to invite 20 people? This isn’t right and is complete abuse of the open programming API, to generate more popularity for someone’s app. If you make a good application, it will become popular. Take Jetman, for instance – that was the biggest application success I’ve seen. You don’t see its creators forcing you to invite people before you can play. This new concept is nonsense and must be stopped, before it becomes a precedent for all new applications. This concept is no different than a virus – but it uses people to spread and function. I guarantee you that someone will exploit these applications in the near future to hijack Facebook profiles and and mess with people.
Another application which is really annoying is the Movie one. I keep getting 500 notifications that “Person X” (who I don’t talk to or even care about) has just scored 90% on the horror movie quiz, and I should challenge them. I’m pretty sure the person had absolutely no intention to send that message to people he or she has not spoken to in years, nor do I want to receive it. But apparently, whenever you do something on that application – it automatically sends spam to promote its use.
Ludaaaaaaaaa
February 18, 2008
Music, Rants
No Comments
Portfolioso
Updated 2/22/08! You should reread it because I added a lot of things and corrected my 5AM lack of grammar.
On Friday, Ludacris came to my school for a concert and I only went because the school paid for me to stand around and
do nothingwork with security, otherwise I absolutely would not have spent a dime on this trash. (Actually, I expect to be paid back with a usurious amount of interest on that $30 – if you haven’t noticed, the economy has gone to shit and I need money, and FUSA has a habit of not paying concert workers back until around May). In economics terms, the opportunity cost would be forgoing my usual Friday night activities for a free ticket (Mineskies would be so proud that I used EC11 material on my blog). Well let me tell you, it pretty much spoiled my night. Not only did Luda show up excessively late (yes, I understand concerts are usually not on time – that’s normal, but this was extreme), his performance lasted a whopping 55 minutes to an hour. You know what else is crap? The school paid $85,000 out of their $33,000 concert budget to pay for an asshole to throw the microphone down after less than an hour, insult the audience (many of whom enjoyed it and cheered) and run out to go to the NBA all star game. I wasn’t even paying attention to the concert that much because it was so much more entertaining to watch drunk, scantily-clad freshmen trip down the bleachers and puke in garbage cans. All of a sudden, I looked up and wondered why people were storming towards the exits. Someone from Bridgeport did not pull out an automatic and shot the place up, as we all assumed, but Luda ended the concert so nonchalantly, I did not notice. Compare that to the pyrotechnic finale at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert… JEEEEZ.The concert was one of the most pointless, stupidest things I have ever seen in my life. Ludacris used like 4 words/ phrases the entire time. All he did was call all of the girls there hos (many of whom probably are, but that’s beside the point). The fact that the whole place was screaming every time he called them hos was sickening. Some key phrases of the night included: “You’s a ho” and “Where all my weed smokers at,” “hold up yo lighters,” “fuck dat side,” and “when I move you move.” Let me tell you something? I don’t give a shit when you move, I’ll move when I damn well please, not when you tell me to. Okay, maybe I’m being just a bit too harsh – it’s only a
songspoken, DJ’d talentless piece of crap.This guy is so full of shit it’s not even funny. First he asks the crowd who is broke, and most people (being college students in need of money) scream. A few minutes later, he continues on with some lyrics “If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home.” Well, everyone should have just walked out, because that was just pointless. But apparently, in order to get anywhere in this society, you need status and money. It’s so awful. This is why there are very few good people left because of this trash.