Re: Incoming!
At 10:41 PM Friday 12/19/2008, Julia Thompson wrote: On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 08:08 AM Thursday 12/18/2008, Julia Thompson wrote: On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 09:02 PM Wednesday 12/17/2008, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Shoe-fly pie. Your fly is open. No it's not. I'm not even wearing pants. Possibly TMI Maru Oh. That reminds me, I need to get a couple of kilts out of the washer and hang them up to dry Julia Not exactly. I was wearing sports-type shorts with an elastic waistband rather than a fly . . . Well, I was in Whole Foods in Austin on No Pants Day and a certain individual I know spotted me there and said, Way to celebrate No Pants Day! And I looked at him funny, and asked him when he'd last seen me in something other than a kilt. (Only one of the two kilts in question was mine. We have matching black Workman model kilts. Probably disgustingly cute or something like that.) Julia If the forecasts are correct by this time tomorrow I will need to dig out the winter gear again . . . though at least the week of almost-constant rain will be ending . . . . . . ronn! :-\ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
On Sat, 20 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 10:41 PM Friday 12/19/2008, Julia Thompson wrote: On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 08:08 AM Thursday 12/18/2008, Julia Thompson wrote: On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 09:02 PM Wednesday 12/17/2008, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Shoe-fly pie. Your fly is open. No it's not. I'm not even wearing pants. Possibly TMI Maru Oh. That reminds me, I need to get a couple of kilts out of the washer and hang them up to dry Julia Not exactly. I was wearing sports-type shorts with an elastic waistband rather than a fly . . . Well, I was in Whole Foods in Austin on No Pants Day and a certain individual I know spotted me there and said, Way to celebrate No Pants Day! And I looked at him funny, and asked him when he'd last seen me in something other than a kilt. (Only one of the two kilts in question was mine. We have matching black Workman model kilts. Probably disgustingly cute or something like that.) Julia If the forecasts are correct by this time tomorrow I will need to dig out the winter gear again . . . though at least the week of almost-constant rain will be ending . . . And -- according to my local forecast, a cold front is coming through sometime between this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I wish it would just make up its mind what temperature it's going to be Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
On Dec 20, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Julia Thompson wrote: If the forecasts are correct by this time tomorrow I will need to dig out the winter gear again . . . though at least the week of almost-constant rain will be ending . . . And -- according to my local forecast, a cold front is coming through sometime between this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I wish it would just make up its mind what temperature it's going to be Julia And the day or two of fog we get after each cold front is only entertaining up to a point. The effect an actual dense fog has on people's driving behavior in Texas has to be seen to be believed. (They can mostly deal with rain, up to a point. Snow or ice, forget it. :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: What is wealth?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of David Hobby Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 7:11 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: What is wealth? Dan M wrote: ... O.K., let me try. There is such a thing as concrete wealth. Wealth lets an individual do things that they want to do. So a person's individual wealth would be roughly defined relative to some standard as the ratio of the utility of what they can do to what they could do in the standard state. I think this is closest to what I think. But, I think that this is a fundamental and difficult enough concept to start slowly with some obvious examples. First, I was think of and will focus on the wealth of nations, communities, the world, more than individual wealth. ... So, historically, a richer nation would have vast areas of fertile farmland that could be harvested year after year to provide food for people. That wealth could be stolen by force, but absent of that, the wealth existed there. So, Italy was far wealthier than a corresponding area in Siberia, because far more food could be grown. ... involved) is somewhat arbitrary. But, the availability of human effort expended in something other than subsistence farming is not subjective; it can be objectively measured. ... Dan-- O.K., you agreed mostly agreed with me, and I mostly agree with you. Some of it is a matter of interpretation: We're both taking the usual meaning of wealth, and trying to clarify it. I had planned to get the total wealth of a country but adding up the individual wealth of its inhabitants (and of its institutions, too?). So starting with individual wealth made sense to me. Do you think that the wealth of a (inhabited) country would be different than the sum of the wealths of its inhabitants? Well, there is always the wealth in the publicly owned infrastructure, oil and mineral wealth on public lands that need to be added. But, my argument for looking at the state instead of the individual was mostly the same as Plato's reasons for writing the Republic as he did. I think that a country that has more than enough food for its people may be wealthier than a country where everybody has just enough. Even if they can produce the same total amount of food. Sure, people can be a source of a country's wealth. But starving peasants may not be worth that much, wealth-wise. So there's more to it then just food production? Yes, definitely. But, I think the first step is the ability for the average workers to produce more food than is needed to feed their family unit. If, for example, it takes 100 families working to feed 105 families, then there is only 5 families that can be engaged in any trade except subsistence farming. If, as it is true in the US, less than 1% of the labor force is required to produce food, then the rest of the labor force is able to produce other things. Clearly, the US is far wealthier when it has a 5% surplus harvest than a country that produced a 5% surplus harvest because there was war the previous year, and a lot of townspeople died. (An interesting site on this is http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/WellBeing/farmhouseincome.htm Particularly the table farm household income by source. Here you see most farm households farm part-time, and have most of their income come from other sources...like friends of mine who have 50 head of cattle on their ranch, but live in town 5 days a week and hold two jobs). Unless you want to define free wealth and bound wealth. The free wealth of a land of starving peasants may be almost zero. Most of it being bound up in maintaining the large number of inhabitants. A suitable plague could release the bound wealth of the country by reducing the population. There are several terms that are typically used. They are national income, national per capita income, and disposable/discretionary income. Clearly, Monaco, although its citizens are wealthy, has far less economic clout than the US. But, clearly, the average Chinese citizen is far poorer than the average Australian, even though China has 4x the GDP of Australia. Then, we have to consider disposable income. Since China has so many people, a significant fraction of the country is still barely above subsistence, even with the increased GDP. Indeed China is particularly susceptible to global recessions because its income is so tied to exports (only 35% of Chinese GDP is domestic consumption vs. 70% for the US). Before the Great Depression, the US was by far the biggest exporter, as well as the biggest holder of world debt. It was the hardest hit country in the Great Depression. I've been reading articles that hint that there is causality here, and that China (and to a lesser extent Germany and Japan) are particularly susceptible to downturns. The US hoped to export
ElectricMotoUnicycle?
http://greenupgrader.com/1307/the-uno-electric-motorcycle-or-motorunicycle/ Ingenuity! xponent Freeway Eyecatchers Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
At 10:13 AM Saturday 12/20/2008, Bruce Bostwick wrote: On Dec 20, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Julia Thompson wrote: If the forecasts are correct by this time tomorrow I will need to dig out the winter gear again . . . though at least the week of almost-constant rain will be ending . . . And -- according to my local forecast, a cold front is coming through sometime between this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I wish it would just make up its mind what temperature it's going to be Julia Still in the 60s here, though I've already closed the windows. Expected to be in the upper 30s by morning, and maybe as low as 20 (°F, for Alberto, et. al.) Monday or Tuesday morning . . . And the day or two of fog we get after each cold front is only entertaining up to a point. Fog? Yep, we've been having that, too . . . The effect an actual dense fog has on people's driving behavior in Texas has to be seen to be believed. The worst fog I have ever seen was one night between Windsor and Toronto, where literally all that was visible was a few feet of the road right in front of the car. And all the natives were flying by at 70 or 75 mph . . . (They can mostly deal with rain, up to a point. Snow or ice, forget it. :) I suspect that it's worse in Utah the first time it snows. Apparently over the summer everyone forgets how to drive in snow. At least here it's rare enough that people treat it as unusual and take more care. Also, when snow is likely schools cancel class and other things shut down so there are fewer people trying to get through it (though for the women who go into labor during the storm and need to get to the hospital on the top of the hill . . . ) And to tie-in to another thread: that is one of the times people around here rely on their TV-band radios . . . . . . ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
