Your tax dollars at work, and books

1. I was in line at Raley's, behind a woman my age with a 5-6 year old kid. With food stamps she got 2 deli sandwiches and 3 candy bars. Then with cash she got two bottles of vodka and a pack of cigarettes. I'm sure glad that we the taxpayers are able to help out such underprivileged individuals.

2. Was able to get another $25 Amazon gift certificate through my rewards card. I told myself I would be responsible and get a new flash drive, but I couldn't help myself. I ordered..."Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton, "Wildwood Dancing" by Juliet Marillier, "The Forest of Hands and Teeth" by Carrie Ryan and "Graceling" by Kristin Cashore.

3. Dinner tonight was freshly-grilled herb-and-garlic chicken breast on a sweet French roll with mayo, mustard, BBQ sauce, lettuce and tomato. Mmmm...

4. 15 DAYS TIL SPRING TRAINING!

5. From NRO, via Michelle Malkin:

I haven't gotten my letter from the Census Bureau yet asking me to make sure I fill out the questionnaire. But when I do fill it out, I'll use it to send a message.

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it.

Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

So remember: Question 9 — "Some other race" — "American". Pass it on.

6. Neat link about plate tectonics in the past and future.