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| Lake Washington, Kirkland |
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| Horses in a park in Redmond, WA |
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| From the window of a plane! |
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| Me around 2010. Taken in a studio. |
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| Winter in Washington state |
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| Also from window of a plane |
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| My daughter's piano concert |
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| A shed in a park in Redmond, WA |
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| Serenity now! |
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| The Sofa I miss now.. |
Date: April 1,2026
Washington, USA
There are two important news items that might affect life of immigrants in Washington State.
If you are a millionaire, you will have to pay 9.9% income tax in Washington state starting in 2028. Washington has been one of the states that do not impose state income tax. According to Seattle times, there are approximately 21000 millionaire households in the state.
Federal judges are considering the appeal against the restrictions put on the automatic birthright citizenship clause in the US Constitution by Trump administration. Children born to Illegal aliens and temporary visitors within USA will not become US citizens upon birth according to the Trump administration reform.
Addendum:
There are many varieties of taxes that an individual has to pay depending upon which state they reside in. Here are a few that I have encountered while living in USA in five different states.
Federal Income Tax
State Income Tax
County Income tax
City Income tax
School District tax.
Pennsylvania is an example of one state that imposes some of the taxes mentioned above.
What caused the sudden inclusion of geometry puzzles in the previous posts ?
The reason is that I noticed similar puzzles online on the web. However, the online site didn't provide the solution. Therefore, I looked carefully at the figures and noticed the concealed triangles with right angles included. That sent my mind to my high school math and out popped the famous Pythagoras ( pronounced Pie-tha-gora-s ) theorem!
I only remember a few things from my school and college days and this theorem happens to be one of the things I remember.
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If the inner square in yellow touches the outer rectangle in grey horizontally at 7 cms from the bottom right corner and vertically 2 cms from the bottom right as shown in the figure above, what is the area of the inner square?
Answer: 53 cm^2
Hint: see the method used in previous post.
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The inner square touches the outer square at the mid-point of each of its four sides.
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Answer:
A square, by definition, has 4 equal sides and it's area is defined as the square of its side.
The outer square has an area of 100 which implies that each of its four sides is of length 10 because 10^2 is 100.
Pythagoras, from ancient Greece, came up with a relationship between the sides of a triangle that has a right angle between two of it's sides. The formula says:
Hypotenuse ^2 = side1^2 + side2^2
(^2 is the sign for squaring)
Note: The hypotenuse is the longest side of the triangle opposite the right angle.
Why do we need this formula?
Because, we need to find the length of one side of the inner square. Each side of the inner square is a hypotenuse in the four triangles surrounding the inner square! Therefore the Pythagoras theorem applies. Let us choose the rightmost triangle at the bottom (see diagram above)
Hypotenuse ^2 = 5^2 + 5^2
Hypotenuse ^2 = 25 + 25 = 50.
5 is the length of each of the two sides that form a right angle in the triangle because the inner square touches the outer square at mid point of its sides.
And because hypotenuse is the same as a side of the inner square, the answer is that the area of the inner square is 50 !!
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However, recently I spent some time thinking upon this formula and the mystery unfolded. The formula doesn't seem that mysterious now. If you draw a square with each side equaling 2r, which contains four equal squares with each side r , then the area of the circle with radius r inscribed within will be slightly bigger than the area of three of these squares. Actually, the area of this circle will be 3.1416 times the area of a single square of side r! That is the original formula we mentioned in first para, where the number 3.1416 is represented by the special character π.
With this information we can deduce the areas of squares and circles much easily. If we know the area of square then the area of the circle inscribed within is 78.54 % of the area of that square.
