The Associated Press reports on an MRE makeover: Army unveils a new menu for soldiers.

We won’t really know if this stuff is worth eating until Badtux‘s gourmet beak chomps down on it and decides if it is worth swallowing. If you missed his earlier work go over and search for “MRE”. He also did heroic work on supermarket frozen pizzas.

The new Forbes list is out and Warren Buffet is #1, the richest guy in the world.

More on his feelings about taxes:

In October, Buffett issued a challenge to members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, saying he would donate $1 million to charity if the collective group (or a significant number of them) would admit they pay less taxes, as a percentage of income, than their secretaries.

Days after issuing the challenge, Buffett appeared before Congress to encourage it to keep the estate tax. Armed with a few Forbes 400 issues, he told the hearing that “dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise.”

Buffet believes that people and businesses need to earn their money, not simply accumulate it over time.

If you run in the Iditarod and finish among the top 20 there’s some cash at the end of trail, but there are other awards along the way.

Lance Mackey won the Spirit of Alaska Award by being the first into McGrath. PenAir gave him a spirit mask and a $500 credit on his air freight bill.

The Dorothy Page Halfway Award awaits the first team into Cripple and $3,000 in gold nuggets.

The First to the Yukon Award is waiting in Ruby. It’s 3,500 5,000 one-dollar bills and a gourmet meal.

The Gold Coast Award is for the first musher to reach Unalakleet. They get a trophy and $2,500 in gold.

The overall winner gets a new pickup truck and about half of the total prize money, in the $80-90K range.

Truth be told, if you aren’t one of the first three or four into Nome, you are probably out of pocket for the race unless you have sponsors. Just think what it costs to feed 16 sled dogs who are working hard for two weeks.

In case you were wondering, when I was in Alaska, I was not aware of a business that was unable to deal with gold as readily as greenbacks, including bars.

The sixty days of madness that is the annual session of the Florida legislature has begun. If you aren’t a corporate lobbyist you must live in fear and trepidation of the “sausage” that gets produced.

Thanks to the recession, the burst housing bubble, the collapsed tourism market, and the weather and disease related problems in agriculture, they are starting out with a projected $3.5 billion shortfall. I’m guessing that the real number that will be reported near the end of the session is more in the $5 to $6 billion range. Anything that is not directly related to a business lobbyist is up for slashing, as most of these clowns are running for office in the Fall.

Naturally the rest of the planet will be entertained by the “family values” bills that attempt to incorporate evangelical doctrine into the laws of Florida and new tax cuts to prove how “fiscally responsible” these clowns are. It is going to be another disaster so keep your head down if you live in the Sunshine State.

The headline says Fla., Mich. Delegate Battle Heats Up, but the reality is a loser. They have maneuvered themselves into a brokered convention, and they don’t like it. Everything was supposed to be over on Super Tuesday, but the voters wouldn’t cooperate. Now they want to talk about dealing with the “problems” of Michigan and Florida.

People are saying that a new vote should be held, but who cares? I don’t. If they hold another vote I can’t participate because when the Democrats told me to get lost, I did. Why would any Democrat who voted in the January primaries in Florida or Michigan want to help the DNC out of the hole they dug? They’re talking to Charley Crist, the guy who signed the bill that created this problem!

They have lost Florida, so stop annoying people.

The Associated Press has a piece on the proposed piece of legislation: Firearms database won’t work, study says.

This isn’t just about firearms, this is about a problem with all of the lists and databases the Hedgemony is building as they keep moving towards Total Information Awareness™ – they are making things more difficult by amassing too many data points, hoping that the answer to all their questions will magically appear.

This particular legislation would require every new firearm to be test-fired and a sample of the bullet and casing entered graphically into a massive database. The concept is that if a firearm is used, you scan the bullet and the database will provide the serial number of the weapon. It doesn’t work. The test rounds are fired to be collected with only the marks from the barrel on them, crime scene bullets go into bodies through clothing, often striking bone or fragmenting. If you manage to retrieve a whole bullet and get a good scan, you are looking at a probabilities percentage for a match. The larger the database, the more probables you will have to look at. In the current system you have scans from weapons and bullets used in crimes, which increases the weight of any match. If you add a few million other weapons that have only been used in target shooting, you will be looking at hundreds, if not thousands of possible matches. Where are the people to do this?

Like everything else, they keep amassing data without increasing the people needed to make the data useful. They have no one to edit the lists to remove the garbage. They keep avoiding the hard work of doing the job right, while wasting time and money on projects that might make sense in another century.

Here’s the current leader board:

1 Mitch Seavey (33)
2 Lance Mackey (6)
3 Jeff King (11)
4 Kjetil Backen (42)
5 Paul Gebhardt (69)
6 Jim Lanier (4)
7 Aaron Burmeister (14)
8 Sebastian Schnuelle (68)
9 Jessie Royer (3)
10 Sigrid Ekran (24)

Obviously Jessie leads the women and is back in her accustomed place, Sebastian, also from Whitehorse, carries the Yukon flag. Rohn Buser (37) as moved to 21^st place to continue to lead the rookies.

With Silvia Willis (40) 12^th, DeeDee Jonrowe (39) 13^th, and Aliy Zirkle (17) 19^th, if there were any lingering doubts after the reign of Susan Butcher, sled dog racing is not a “boys club.”

Lance Mackey won the PenAir Spirit of Alaska award for being the first into McGrath, but he knows that he needs an hour lead on Kjetil Backen to be truly ahead because of the difference in start times.

Rachael Scdoris (55) is in 72^nd place.

The first 10 are at or just beyond Takotna, while the back of the race is in Rohn.

Current leader board:

1 Lance Mackey (6)
2 Jeff King (11)
3 Kjetil Backen (42)
4 Paul Gebhardt (69)
5 Zack Steer (26)
6 Hans Gatt (38)
7 Gerry Willomitzer (7)
8 Hugh Neff (16)
9 Mitch Seavey (33)
10 Rick Swenson (61)

Hans Gatt and Gerry Willomitzer are leading the charge for Canada, and both are from Whitehorse in the Yukon, which has a sled dog on a snow pile in it’s coat of arms.

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