B.C. Two-Hander

The Seattle Trip, Part 3



On Saturday, we headed up to Vancouver, B.C. to pay a visit to Michelle's aunt, grandmother, and cousin. We arrived around noontime and met everyone in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. Suburb might not be the correct term, because Richmond is actually something of a suburban Chinatown. I've been to a few other suburban Chinatowns before, and they are pretty interesting. They take the look and feel of an urban ethnic neighborhood and apply it to the suburban strip mall. One of Toronto's Chinese suburbs, Markham, even has its own multi-story full-enclosed Asian shopping mall.

We all met up for Dim Sum at Kirin Seafood Restuarant. The Dim Sum experience at Kirin is fairly upscale. They don't have waiters pushing around carts and calling out dishes as they pass each table like a peanut vendor at a baseball game. The decor was definitely several notches above your average Chinese restaurant, with nice tablecloths, carpets, and wood paneled walls. The food was very good, though the selection was somewhat limited, at first. We were told that three of the dishes we ordered: turnip cake, rice porridge, and egg custard, three dishes that I thought were pretty much standard Dim Sum fare, weren't available. In the end, they managed to bring us the egg custard and the rice porridge. The egg custard was delicious and easily the freshest I have ever eaten. It was still warm and soft when it arrived at the table.

After Dim Sum, we all headed to the Capilano Fish Hatchery, located just north of downtown Vancouver in North Vancouver. Vancouver is an amazing city, and I will hopefully get to spend a lot more time wandering around it sometime. Unfortunately, it lacks a north/south freeway, so driving through it takes forever. Still, if you don't have enough time to stop and enjoy Vancouver, at least you can get an idea of what the city has to offer. The southern part of the city has kilometer after kilometer of interesting shops and restaurants along Granville St. As you get closer to downtown, the view of English Bay, high-rise apartment towers, and the mountains to the north overwhelm your view. The compact and lively downtown abruptly turns into Stanley Park, a beautiful and heavily wooded urban park that covers the entire peninsula that sticks out into the bay on the northern edge of Vancouver.

The fish hatchery was interesting. Prior to my visit, I thought a fish hatchery was a place where fish were farmed for human consumption, but that's not really what goes on. Fish hatcheries actually capture fish that are on the verge of spawning (in this case, salmon) and take over for the fish, removing the eggs from the females and fertilizing them with the sperm from the males. They take care of the baby fish until they are ready to go out on their own, then they release them into the river and they swim out and live their lives in the ocean, then come back to the river when its time to spawn. The whole idea behind this is to increase the survival rate of the offspring, thereby increasing the number of adult salmon swimming around in the ocean and eventually, into the stomachs of grizzly bears or sushi connoisseurs.

The highlight of the hatchery visit for me was my new t-shirt. I have developed a strong appreciation of the art of the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest and I've been looking for a t-shirt that depicts some of their artwork for a while.



After the hatchery, we visited the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Park. This place is basically a tourist trap, but the suspension bridge is pretty neat, though not really worth the price of admission. The bridge is a footbridge that spans the width of the Capilano Canyon. It's no place for those who are afraid of heights, and the bridge sways enough that you almost think that you are taking your life into your own hands as you walk across it, even though it's perfectly safe. The other main attraction was a set of walkways that allow you to walk around the forest 20-30 feet above the ground.





We then headed back to Seattle. Fortunately, the traffic was much lighter going though Vancouver on the way back. On the way into Vancouver, we saw some Toyota Prius taxicabs, which I took as more evidence that Vancouver is a pretty hip and innovative kind of city. On the way back, we saw a Toyoya Prius taxi with rims and a drop-down LCD screen for the passengers. Next time you need to arrive in style in the Vancouver area, look no further than Coquitlam Taxi.



We got back to Seattle around 8pm, had some dinner, and headed back to Fremont for some drinks at a bar called Norm's. Norm's is cool because it's a dog-themed bar, it's smoke-free, and it has some good beers. Of course, almost every bar in the Pacific Northwest has good beers. I enjoyed a Deschutes Brewing Co. Black Butte Porter. One of the unfortunate parts of this trip was it allowed me to taste the beers that I haven't tasted in several years, since it's hard to find a lot of craft beers outside of the area in which they are brewed. Beers like Black Butte and Full Sail Amber Ale had been elevated to ambrosia-like status in my mind, since I remember enjoying them in Oregon six years ago and I haven't tasted them since then. In actuality, they are very good beers, but they didn't overwhelm my taste buds as much as I had hoped. In their defense, I didn't manage to have either one drawn from a tap while I was in Seattle. I've always found that draught beers taste better than bottled beers, providing that the draught is being drawn from a fresh keg.

Java Memory Allocation Myths

IBM developerWorks has a great article about modern JVM memory allocation performance. While early versions of the JVM were notoriously slow, the 1.4.2 HotSpot VM new Object() code path is faster than even the best C malloc implementations. J2SE 6 has support for escape analysis, which is an interesting technique for optimizing memory allocation by detecting objects that can be allocated on the stack or even in registers.

She's Having a Baby

A woman in Arkansas has just given birth to her 16th child in 18 years. Four of those kids are twins, so that means that she's gone into labor 14 times in the past 18 years, or roughly once every 15 and a half months. If you figure nine months of per pregnancy, it means that she has been pregnant for about ten and a half of the past 18 years. All of the kids have first names that begin with the letter J, just like dear old Dad. The mother is only 39 years old and has gone on the record saying that she'll be willing to accept more pregnancies if the Lord decides that it's in the cards, so she'll probably keep on popping them out until she reaches menopause or her uterus explodes, whichever comes first.

The ironic twist is that Michelle has a co-worker with the same name as the father (different spelling) who absolutely loathes kids.

Wrapped Up

Part of the reason for our recent trip to Seattle was to visit the Salish Lodge and Spa. Our wedding gift from our hosts, Melissa and Brian, was a treatment at this spa, located about thirty miles east of Seattle. This was my first visit to a spa, so I didn't really know what to expect. Upon our arrival, the receptionist showed us to the locker rooms, but didn't really explain what we were supposed to do. In my locker, I found a robe and slippers so I figured that I should change, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to wear under the robe, if anything. I asked the receptionist, and she told me to wear whatever I was comfortable with. That didn't really answer my question, so I just left my boxers on to be safe.

The treatment started with a foot washing and massage, then we got onto beds covered with a mylar sheet and had mud from the dead sea rubbed all over our bodies. A strategically placed towel kept our private areas under wraps, so the boxers were not actually needed. After getting covered in mud, we were then wrapped up in the mylar and towels and they put on some heat pads to keep us nice and warm. As we basked in our mud cocoons, they gave us a nice scalp massage and washed our hair with some sort of peppermint shampoo. This was probably my favorite part. The peppermint was really strong and I loved the way it made my scalp tingle.

I wish they would have kept us in our cocoons a little longer, because it felt really nice and relaxing. We rinsed off the mud and peppermint shampoo, then got back onto the beds and got full-body massages with hot stones. The stones were pretty neat, though they didn't retain their heat very long.

On the whole, I enjoyed the mud wrap experience, but it's not something that I'll be rushing out to do again anytime soon.

The spa is located at the top of Snoqualmie Falls. As you can see by this photo, the falls are spectacular.



There is a short but steep trail that goes from lodge down to the bottom of the falls, which we hiked after our visit to the spa. The water was rushing over the falls so quickly and forcefully that the cloud of mist that formed where the water hitting the river below made it feel like it was raining at the downwind observation deck that was located above the top of the falls.

I was always amazed by the vegetation you see in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The ground is covered in ferns and the tall trees have moss growing up their trunks and out onto their branches.



Moss growing up the sides of trees is not all that impressive, I suppose, but it always reminds of the beautiful forests of Pacific Northwest.

We made it down to the bottom of the falls, but the view from the observation deck wasn't so great. Had we climbed off of the boardwalk and down to the river, as we were advised not to do, we would've had a better view, but there was some kind of fashion shoot was going on when we got there. We couldn't really tell what it was for. There were two models, one guy and one girl, but as Michelle noted, they were smiling too much to be real fashion models.

North by Northwest

We took a long weekend and headed out to Seattle last Thursday. I was very excited, I really fell in love with the Pacific Northwest when I spent the summer of '99 in Portland. This was my first visit to the region since leaving Portland, and while I had been to Seattle before, I only spent about a day there.

We stayed with Michelle's sister and her boyfriend, who live in a house in the Wallingford neighborhood, which is a few miles north of downtown. On a clear day, their front yard affords you with views of the Seattle skyline, the Cascade Mountains, and the Olympic Mountains. There aren't too many clear days in Seattle this time of year, but we managed to catch a glimpse of all three during our visit.

On Friday morning, we all headed up the street from breakfast at a place called Julio's. I ordered huevos rancheros, which I found somewhat uninspired, but nourishing. After breakfast, our hosts went to work and we walked down the street to the Gas Works Park.



The gas works was once used by the city to convert coal into natural gas, but is no longer operational. Instead of tearing down all of the machinery, they decided to preserve some of it and turn the land into a park. It gives the park a really cool post-apocalyptic look. The park is located on the shore of Lake Union and offers some great views of downtown Seattle.

From the gas works, we headed over to Fremont, which is supposedly Seattle's funky, ex-hippie neighborhood. It definitely had that kind of vibe going on, though not as much as I would have expected.

They have their own spaceship in Fremont



They also have a troll under a bridge, which is pretty funky



Fremont is also the self-proclaimed center of the universe, in case you weren't aware

It also features a huge statue of Lenin, which is more than the People's Republic of Cambridge can say. Still, I would have expected a town where you will see multiple VW microbusses on the road every day to have a little bit more substantial and eclectic counterculture haven. I didn't notice a single head shop or Marxist bookstore in our walk around Fremont.

Of course, what Fremont lacked in loony left weirdness, it made up for in hospitality. I made a purchase at Jive Time, a small used record store, and the clerk was without a doubt the least-jaded used record store clerk I have ever come across. He actually seemed happy that I wandered into his store and paid $8 for a used copy of a CD that I just noticed is selling for $23.99 at Amazon.

Up next: A visit to the spa.

The Big Least

How bad is Big East football this year? Consider this quote from Bob Snyder's column in yesterday's Post-Standard:

Of seven I-A teams still winless this season, three - UB, Army, Florida Atlantic - have been the foils for 31 percent of the Big East's I-A victories.

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

Acerbic Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp does not always make very convincing arguments, but his constant criticism of everyone in the Detroit sports scene, especially the underachieving Lions, proves the old adage about a stopped clock; if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you'll eventually look like you know what you're talking about. He called Charles Rogers out for being indifferent, immature, and a colossal waste of time, money, and a number two draft pick in his column today, just hours before the news of Rogers' four game suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy hit the wire. Charles Rogers has made it clear by his actions on and off the field that he wants to challenge Reggie Rogers for the title of the worst player the Lions have ever drafted whose last name is Rogers.

Yay, Big Guy!

I watched the Michigan-Michigan State football game on Saturday more attentively than most I watch most football games, not necessarily for the game itself, but for the commentary. A couple of weeks ago, I learned about the Brent Musburger Drinking Game, and I found it to be hillarious. Michigan-Michigan State was the first Musburger-announced game I watched since learning the rules of the game, so my ears were on high alert for any number of Musburger-isms. While I was disappointed that I never heard him utter the phrase: "Gary, my man" (though I did hear a "Garry, my friend" - not sure if this counts), I loved the way he called the fumble that MSU's defensive tackle Domata Peko returned for a touchdown. Musburger let out a "Go, big guy!" when Peko crossed the 10 yard line with one man to beat and exclaimed "Yay, big guy!" after Peko hurdled the last Michigan defender into the end zone.

I don't know why I'm mentioning this, other than I found it hillarious at the time and still find it quite amusing. Perhaps Musburger is looking for a second career as a cheerleading coach? Yaaaaaaaaaay Big Guy! I think the lesson for all sportscasters, especially the ones who work on TV, is that when you don't have anything useful to say, it's better to just be quiet and let the pictures on screen do the talking.

Growing Family

We are proud to announce our new car, a 2005 Toyota Prius. We took delivery of the 175 inch, 2890 pound bundle of joy on Friday after work. Mother and the as yet unnamed car are resting and doing fine.

Iconoclastic Title

Without a doubt, the coolest title for any religious leader in the world today is that of His Holiness Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. He could be thought of as the Pope of the Eastern Orthodox communion, but that analogy may not be entirely apt. I don't know that he has as much power over the church as the Pope. He's probably more like the Archbishop of Canteburry, in that he is the spiritual leader for a group of closely related religions. I did a little more reseach on the Patriach of Constantinople and learned that his full title is actually His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. I'd like to see his business cards.

Charlie Don't Surf

If your CD collection has a gaping hole between Manfred Mann and Marilyn Manson, your prayers have been answered. ESP Disk, the seminal 1960s record label that cut to wax many of the first recorded statements of free jazz pioneers, has started reissuing their catalog on CD. I didn't know that ESP Disk got into rock and pop music after the original free jazz movement started to fizzle out in the late 60s, so I was surprised to see a reissue from 1974 by none other than Charles Manson. I already knew that Manson is, like many psychopaths, a failed artist, but I never knew anyone ever released any of his music. All royalties from the purchase of Charlie's album go to the son of one of his victims. No word on when any of the tracks from "Lie" will be available on iTunes.

Giant Squid

It was reported a couple of days ago that a team of Japanese scientists have captured a giant squid for the first time (on video, that is). I've been fascinated by the giant squid ever since I saw the remains of a giant squid tentacle on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum as a young boy. The squid that was captured on video was a mere 26 feet long, which is small, at least by giant squid standards.

County Line

I've been listening to an album entitled "Field Recordings from the Cook County Water Table" by Brokeback. It's a cool recording, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. It just dawned on my that the first county that was able to identify, with the exception of the county where I grew up, was Cook County. I'm pretty sure that I learned where Cook Country was located (in Illinois, encompassing all of the city of Chicago and some outlying areas, in case anyone wasn't aware) from an episode of Punky Brewster, but I'm not entirely sure. I seem to remember an episode where Punky had to go to the hospital. Before cutting to a shot of Punky in her hospital bed, they showed some stock footage of a hospital in Chicago that had Cook County somewhere in its name. I don't have any other interesting stories for how I came to learn the names of any other counties. By the time The O.C. began its run, I already knew where Orange County, CA was. Of course, I've never actually watched the show, so it wouldn't have helped me anyway.

US Error Ways

I' m a bit of an armchair aviation analyst, so here's my unsolicited view on the US Airways/America West merger. US Airways is strong on the east coast and almost nonexistent elsewhere. America West is strong in the southwest and almost nonexistent elsewhere. Unfortunately, I think that the new airline is less than the sum of its parts. Neither airline has a significant presense in the center of the country. Without a hub or focus operation somewhere between Pittsburgh and Phoenix, it's going to be hard to cater to business travelers in a large section of the country, except on routes to their hubs in Philadelphia, Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Phoenix (and possibly, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, and Ft. Lauderdale, current US Airways focus cities).

This leads me to believe that the new airline is going to focus on point-to-point traffic between key markets and their hubs and focus cities on the east coast and in the southwest. Cherry-picking routes that are popular with business and/or leisure travelers is a technique that all of the low-cost carriers have exploited to some extent. While there are probably still some routes that have the potential to make some good money, most of these routes are already covered by Southwest, jetBlue, AirTran, and even the other legacy carriers. This me-too approach is unlikely to pay dividends for US Airways.

In my opinion, US Airways most valuable asset is not their slots at LaGuardia or Reagan National, it's their east coast feeder system. There are numerous small to medium sized towns from Maine to Florida where US is either the only carrier to the dominant carrier. For the most part, these airports do not fit into the low-cost carrier's business models. US Airways can operate in these towns without having to compete airlines like Southwest, who will drive down prices.

Finally, there is the question of what will happen to US Airways international network. The major carriers have been focusing most of their expansion plans on international routes because they have a better chance at making money on them then in the oversaturated domestic market. US Airways hasn't announced any new international flights or destinations, so I would assume that they are planning on maintaining their current routes. Without acquiring any new equipment, their prospects for overseas expansion are very limited, which will prevent them from getting an additional boost from international expansion.

This isn't the first time US Airways has purchased a low-cost carrier based on the west coast. Back in the late 1980s, US Airways, then known as USAir, purchased California-based Pacific Southwest Airlines in the middle of an acquisition binge. Within a few years, they had dismantled almost all of their west coast network. I don't know if this merger is going to work out any better.

Coffee Talk

Remeber back in the late 90s when a lot of people thought that Starbucks and Bill G. were trying to take over the world? Those days are long gone, of course. Old habits die hard, however. Syracuse is not the hippest town on earth, and if you don't believe me, think about this, downtown Syracuse got its first Starbucks coffee shop a couple of months ago. I visited this store yesterday for the first time. I'm not coffee or caffiene addict, but I like to have a cup of coffee a couple times a week. My coffee shop of choice has always been Freedom of Espresso, a local joint right across the street from the new Starbucks. While I have managed to suppress my Starbucks-hating reflex, I never really considered crossing the street. I took the moral high ground by telling myself that I like the coffee at Freedom better, it's cheaper, etc., but really, I had no idea if any of this was true.

Yesterday's visit to Starbucks pretty much confirmed what I already knew. Their coffee tastes good. Of course, I don't think it's too difficult to make a cup of coffee that tastes good. As long as you're make it strong, don't use any stale ingredients, and don't put in any flavored syrups, it's pretty hard to make a bad tasting cup of coffee. My two complaints are the same that I have about every Starbucks I've ever visited; their "small" size is too big and they serve their coffee too hot. Freedom of Espresso's small size is actually small, and the coffee is not so hot that you have to let it cool down for a few minutes before drinking it. Plus it's cheaper.

While I'm on the topic of coffee, I have to say that while I didn't think Kicking and Screaming was that great of a film, it has two redeeming qualities. The first one is the way it used coffee to symbolize of Phil's [ Will Ferrell ] descent into madness. The second was a better than expected acting performance by Mike Ditka. I still wouldn't pay money to see if (I saw it on a flight), but if you do see it, at least you've got coffee and da coach to look forward to.

Take My Wife, Please

One thing that I've always found mildly annoying is the way people refer to members of their family using phrases like: "my wife", "my brother", "my son", etc. in the presense of people who already know the real names of these people. This seems to happen the most in work environments. I once had a boss who always referred to his wife by her name, but always referred to his children chronologically (my oldest, my youngest, etc.) He had more than two kids though, so it often made things kind of clumsy, i.e. "I was at my second-oldest's soccer game last night..." Now that I'm married, I'm trying not to fall into this habit, but it's hard. I've broken this rule at least once on my blog, though I don't know if I everyone who reads this is on a first name basis with my wife (Michelle). So far, I'm one for two today at work.

Hated Music

Paul Flahetry / Chris Corsano Duo
Metropolis Book Shoppe - North Syracuse, NY
Wednesday, September 21st

The sax and drums duo could be considered the string quartet of free jazz. Like the string quartet, the sax and drums duo focuses on the most important instruments in the genre. I'll admit that I am biased in favor of reed instruments, but I think it's fairly obvious that the saxophone is the most important instrument in free jazz. The sax can really tap into a range of sounds, colors, and emotions that can only be topped by the human voice, in my opinion. Free jazz appeals to listeners on such a visceral level that it only makes sense that the saxophone is its sharpest tool.

Flaherty definitely draws his inspiration from the first generation of free jazz saxophonists. He alternated between the alto and tenor horns tonight. He played both with a big sound and a lot of vibrato, but not a lot of resonance. His notes didn't hang around. He played most of the night at full steam, but showed an impressive amount of lyricsm the few times that he explored more placid sonic terrain.

Corsano's drumming was even more aggressive than Flaherty's playing. He too showed his softer side with some really interesting effects, including a lot of bowed cymbals and something similar to the metal "bowls" that I've seen guys like Tatsuya Nakatani use, which brought some eastern influence into some of the music.

While I enjoyed the show, I wouldn't rate it as one of the better concerts I've ever seen. The free improv sax and drums duo is probably one of the more challenging musical contexts you can work in. If the players are not on the same page, it's going to be pretty obvious. To make matters worse, everyone in the audience is going to be comparing your stuff to the classics of the genre while they listen. These guys put on a great show, but the music was a little bit too one-dimensional and the communication between them wasn't always as strong as it could have been.

Honeymoon('s Over) in Vegas

My wife was out in Las Vegas this weekend. She saw a lot of newly married couples, as one would expect. One of couples that she saw was actually two couples, twin sisters who got married at the same time. She didn't find this incredibly shocking, but I can't stop thinking about it. How do you think that they managed to pull it off? I guess it's possible that it was a big coincidence; twin sisters happened to get engaged at about the same time and decided to get married together. I guess that is possible, but it doesn't seem too likely. I wonder how their husbands (who did not appear to be twins) felt about the whole thing. When the first guy proposed, did his girlfriend accept his proposal but tell him that they were going to have to wait for her sister to fall in love and get engaged before they could start planning their wedding? I guess I will never know, but I wish all four of them the best.

The other newlywed story that she told me involved a couple who, while still in their wedding attire, got into a profanity-laced argument in front of a hotel/casino on the strip. Arguments are part of any healthy relationship, of course, but you would hope that a newly married couple could manage to make it at least a couple of days before dropping f-bombs on each other in public.

I would love to see a study of couples who tie the knot in Vegas and see how their divorce rates compare to couples who get married in more traditional venues. My guess is that it would probably be about the same, but who knows.

Taxpayer Pride

All this talk about the estate tax has made me think that maybe what this country needs is a little bit more taxpayer pride. I'm not joking (entirely), so hear me out. For as long as I can remember, we've been listening to politicians tell us how stupid the government is and how taxes are for suckers. I can't help but think that this has something to do with all of the negative sentiment against the estate tax harbored by people who have little to no chance of ever being affected by it. Americans have shown that they overwhelmingly favor some of the trappings of a welfare state, as long as they don't have to pay for it. Who knows where we would stand if we knew the true cost/benefit breakdown? Maybe some taxpayer pride can help us figure that out.

I remember visiting a friend in Washington, DC several years ago. We visited several of the Smithsonian Museums (or should I say, Smithsonians Museum?). As we were leaving the National Air and Space Museum, I made a quip about our tax dollars at work. In this case, I didn't mean it in the usual pejorative sense. I meant this is a great museum and I'm glad that our some of our tax dollars are used to fund it and all visitors can enjoy it free of charge. My friend, who has no conservative leanings whatsoever, didn't pick up the taxpayer pride that I was exuding and accused me of being a Republican or perhaps something even worse. If dyed-in-the-wool liberals can't appreciate taxpayer pride, I don't know who can. Still, there may be hope. P.J. O'Rourke, America's best (only?) conservative satirist had a good idea during a public radio pledge drive a few years back. He suggested that liberal listeners (and what other kind of public radio listeners are there?) look at their pledge as a tax on intelligence. They are obviously more intelligent than other people because they listen to public radio and they obviously love taxes because they are liberals, so its a win-win situation. Politicians love to appeal to our vanity, and while there are a lot of people who will probably never be receptive to a taxpayer pride message, there are plenty of voting demographic du jours (indoor soccer moms?) waiting to be told how to think about any number of issues.

Eventually, taxpayers are going to have to face the facts. Tax dollars aren't just funding the Cadillacs for welfare moms initiative, 24-hour abortion clinics, and other much-derided social programs. They actually fund some things that a majority of Americans support. I'm not expecting any taxpayer pride to show itself until some of these more acceptable and vital uses or tax dollars are put in jeopardy. Our current economic situation makes it very likely that we're going to be faced with a temporary refund adjustment sometime in the not-too-distant future. When that day comes, we'll see how much taxpayer pride we truly have.

Death and Taxes

I read an op-ed piece written by Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins about the proposed repeal of the estate tax. The debate about the estate tax is very interesting. Pro-estate tax people, like Gates Sr., often cite statistics about how most Americans will never accumulate enough wealth to be subjected to the estate tax. This is true, but I think it's missing the point. The point is, should the government be taxing the estates of the wealthy? Should I manage to amass a significant fortune, I don't plan on leaving my heirs with a big pile of cash so they can sit around and do nothing. I think a lot of people share this sentiment, but I don't know if this is something that the government should try and legislate. Besides, the wealthy can always manage to find ways around the tax code and unless the tax rate is raised to 100%, people with large enough fortunes will still be able to leave significant sums of money to their heirs.

Gates Sr.'s claim that the repeal of the estate tax would cripple our nation's charitable sector strikes me as somewhat alarmist. It may be true that some people donate large sums of money to charities to avoid paying estate taxes, but I think the majority of wealthy donors would donate their money even if there was no estate tax. Gates Sr.'s saves his best point for the end. I agree that there are far too many successful people who say "only in America" out of one side of their mouth while bristling at the suggestion of paying taxes to cover the expenses that it takes to make keep our economic engine running. Which brings me to my final point, I hate debates about taxation. We've gotten to the point where candidates can promise to slash taxes and maintain or increase the level of government services with impunity. I'm no fan of excessive taxation, but it does take money to keep this place running smoothly. In the estate tax debate as with all tax debates, I will that there were more people in the government and in society looking at the big picture so we might be able to reach an informed decision.