Road rage...

Recently, LJ friend eastexpert posted a link at the BBC reporting on a 'Pay-as-you-go' plan for highway taxes, where the government's vigorish would be collected on the basis of mileage driven (to replace existing fuel and road taxes), at rates "varying from 2p per mile for driving on a quiet road out of the rush hour to £1.34 for motorways at peak times." Of course, in order to make the system work, every car in the country will have to be equipped with a device that records where the car has been and at what time.

In chasing down a link from another of eastexpert's posts, I ran across a related article (here, but in Russian) about how Oregon is considering a similar plan, explaining that - in Oregon's case at least - the reason for the shift away from fuel-based taxes to mileage-based tax is overly excessive adoption of fuel-efficient cars by drivers. (Dig it: Oregonians don't consume enough fuel to fill the tax coffers!) If the pilot program goes through, look for GPS to become a standard device on cars in Oregon and other "progressive," tax-hungry jurisdictions.

(I mean, c'mon, the obvious attraction of being able to further manipulateincentivize citizen behavior - the Oregon plan also would penalize drivers for rush-hour traffic on major arteries - and to have a fairly detailed record of car movements - to combat terrorism, naturally - is probably going to make this attractive to a lot of states, if not the Feds.)

It would appear George Orwell's vision of 1984 wasn't wrong; he was just off by a generation and a couple of orders of magnitude.

Cheers...

Ice skating in June...

Not really, but it feels that way.

I've been chasing paper with a vengeance all day, and was prepared to go all night, if necessary, but for the fact that I don't think it will help all that much.

When taking a break from chasing paper, I've been trying to get a good handle on the techniques described in David Allen's book Getting Things Done, and today was the first day of actually getting past my standard tactic of writing a to-do list for the day and then trying to slog through it.

One of the epiphanies I experienced in reading GTD is the recognition that much of the time, you really don't have too much control over your own time (even if you're a freelance operator like me), as demands are constantly being made on your time by coworkers, bosses, and clients. His system tries to address this natural state, within a framework of pursuing projects that are broken down into steps, one step of which one is supposed to be pursuing at any given time (even if just to wait for someone to do something else).

In any event, I got a long-term translation due in about 10 days (which I would like to start working on this Thursday, if the paper chase lets me), which ought to help considerably in making June a reasonable month, invoice-wise. I also ordered my Baikonur ticket for July and reserved my room in Houston for next week's gig.

Just call me Mr. Productivity.

I think I have one major piece of the paper chase nailed. (It's the second that's giving me conniptions.) I think I will go talk to the accountant tomorrow morning (in fact, I know I will, as I also arranged an appointment with him today!).

Cheers...