Got a boat to take the family out on the water? You’d better pay your taxes, through the nose! Got an ostentatious yacht? Well, if you spent enough millions on it, the State of New York feels your pain and wants to help you out.
This is not an April Fool's joke, I'm not making this up. I wish I were.

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Oh, what a sad story, the Germanwings flight that crashed into the Alps turns out to be a suicide + mass murder. The copilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and blammo!

The last thing you want to hear when flying is the pilot pounding on the cockpit door shouting, Let me in! 

and it would be the last thing you hear. Amitabha.

wow, this blog is up to 2700 posts!
Wish it had 2700 readers.

From 王丹的臉書：

微信上看到的。不知道是不是真的。不許笑：

全國第十二屆人代會統計出人大代表中最爆笑的人名：
劉產、賴月京（這兩個還是男的） 、范統、姬從良 、夏建仁、朱逸群、秦壽生（虧他父母想得出） 龐光、杜琦燕、魏生津、喬厚根、沈京兵、杜子騰。

排名第一的：史珍香。

Can anyone explain to me why the US has money to incarcerate over two million people, many for decades, but cannot afford to educate people for four years?

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今天得到寶了! A real windfall today! This should keep me busy! A Tayal-Chinese dictionary, plus verbal history recorded in Tayal, translated into Chinese. Tesing Losin spent over thirty years compiling these. It’s wonderful that work is being done to insure that ancient minority languages survive; such reference books are invaluable for that survival.

Mhway Watan Kahat balay!

The very first dot com was established thirty years ago today, on March 15, 1985. There’s a lot of junk on the internet, to be sure, but it has enriched our lives in ways nobody imagined even twenty years ago.
Just imagine, this blog wouldn't exist without the web.... okay....

Hope you all enjoyed your Friday the 13^th yesterday. Keep in mind that today is not only Telemann’s birthday, but it is also Pi day, a very special Pi day: “this Saturday, March 14, 2015, 9:26:53 a.m. will be celebrated as ‘Super Pi Day’ - extrapolating pi to its first 10 digits: 3.141592653.”　Keep that in mind.

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An update on the amazing story of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Agafia Lykov, living in Siberia 250 kilometers from the nearest settlement. My mother’s teacher, Augusto Centeno, told her to study Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches for ‘modes of existence.’ Agafia Lykov certainly has her own. 十七世紀，沙皇彼得大帝改革俄羅斯正教會，老教派/ старообря́дцы/Old Believers拒絕接受，因而受迫害。他們往野外山區逃，不肯與俗世來往。一九三六年老教派信徒Karp Lykov/ Карп Осипович Лыковы帶家人遁入西伯利亞山區，從此與外界隔絕。四十二後，蘇聯地質學家開直升機勘探，發現離最近的居落兩百五十公里的地方居然有農田，從此Lykov家人又與外界見面；兩個在山中生的孩子長到將近四十歲才第一次見到世人。現在只有么女Agafia/ Агафья獨居老家。

我家母的老師Augusto Centeno教母親細讀Turgenev著A Sportsman’s Sketches/「獵人筆記」尋求其中的modes of existence，Agafia一生寫出一篇獨特的生存模式。