Saturday, February 13, 2016

WILPF on the Road (was Tax Time)

Carol's road trip continues.  She and Ellen Thomas are enjoying a brief stopover in rainy River City before heading north to Seattle.

They've been traveling north from southern California, stopping all along the way (most recently in Corvallis) to meet with people regarding Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

People usually just say "wilpf" which is actually pronounceable.

I've been paying bills and taxes left and right.  Ever since I had a dependent in college I've been filing early in the year instead of April, like I used to.  I'm back to having a Schedule C and tracking expenses, so that 1099s work easily.

That's 2016 however.  2015 was relatively easy and more or less a repeat of 2014 (talking taxes here, regional, state and federal).

The WILPF campaign is connected to the long-running Countdown to Zero, which as been ticking away for some years.

That Zero is not a reference to Ray Kurweil's Singularity. but rather to a strategic military goal of moving humanity past the suicidal stage.  Some top military minds, not just peace-niks, have been working on the problem for quite awhile.

The so-called Intelligence Community has nothing better to do either (Valerie Plame narrated the above movie), especially counting the cadres of officially retired personnel.  Not surprisingly then, the work is bearing fruit in some areas.

A goal of "zero" remember, refers to eliminating the threat of Weapons of Mass Suicide (WMSs), most of them nuclear.  A main enemy is carelessness, awkwardness, and general incompetence, an enemy hard to overestimate.  Evil is indeed banal.