Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
No, by well-educated I mean professionals - accountants, lawyers, medics etc. Cyprus was full of them working bar, waiting, or worse being exploited in strip clubs. (It wasn't like London where an attractive woman could make good money doing exotic dancing a couple of times a week - these girls were often being forced to have sex with customers). Charlie. How did you establish that the girls in the strip clubs were well educated russian girls? Regards, Wayne ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Russia
Dan M wrote: And how can we trust communist statistics? By secondary measure, of course. :-) If you want to argue that things were worse than the official statistics under the USSR, you won't find a debate opponent in me. But, after the USSR fell, a lot of data became available. The person who wrote the paper in question is an old lion of polisci, and has a great reputation. And, he is publishing in a very anti-Communist journal. So, I'd be shocked if he just took stock communist statistics without using secondary data. It could be that the fall wasn't as great as he portrayed, but men use to live longer, on average, than 60 years. Over 70 or so years of Communist rule, demographic errors of that magnitude become to big to miss. But I think you are aware of Heinleins' (RA and V) estimation of the population of Moskow under commie rule. They estimated it at 500-600 thousand, when communist official numbers were kind of 3 million. If errors that big could exist, then nothing can be trusted at all. OTOH, maybe the West isn't better, with the estimation of GDP that is based on the size of the housing market :-) Alberto Monteiro PS: WTI at 35. It's the end of the world. We will surely miss Bush. :-/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Russian strippers [was: Russia]
Wayne Eddy wrote: Cyprus was full of them working bar, waiting, or worse being exploited in strip clubs. (It wasn't like London where an attractive woman could make good money doing exotic dancing a couple of times a week - these girls were often being forced to have sex with customers). How did you establish that the girls in the strip clubs were well educated russian girls? (lines added. those that might feel offended please delete this message) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Probably they didn't speak when their mouths were full. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
On 19/12/2008, at 7:44 PM, Wayne Eddy wrote: How did you establish that the girls in the strip clubs were well educated russian girls? By the cunning method of living in the same building as them, and talking to them during the daytime. Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Charlie Bell Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:54 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?) No, by well-educated I mean professionals - accountants, lawyers, medics etc. I thought that was the case, but thanks for the clarification. Cyprus was full of them working bar, waiting, or worse being exploited in strip clubs. (It wasn't like London where an attractive woman could make good money doing exotic dancing a couple of times a week - these girls were often being forced to have sex with customers). Well, as you know, that's particularly repugnant to me, both as the husband of an abuse victim (who later specialized in social work in working with victims) and as the father of daughters. I have heard about this sort of thing with uneducated poor Eastern European women, but not about it happening to the well educated. It's not that the evilness of this forcing is less if a woman is undereducated, but this strikes me as countering the proposal that education is the ticket out of poverty and exploitation. One question comes up, and you may or may not be able to answer it. Were the professionals allowed to work menial jobs but not professional jobs just because of local laws, customs, prejudices, etc., or do you think that the education system in Russia has fallen to the point where, for example, you'd never want to have a Russian surgeon operating on you? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
On Dec 19, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Dan M wrote: No, by well-educated I mean professionals - accountants, lawyers, medics etc. I thought that was the case, but thanks for the clarification. Cyprus was full of them working bar, waiting, or worse being exploited in strip clubs. (It wasn't like London where an attractive woman could make good money doing exotic dancing a couple of times a week - these girls were often being forced to have sex with customers). Well, as you know, that's particularly repugnant to me, both as the husband of an abuse victim (who later specialized in social work in working with victims) and as the father of daughters. I have heard about this sort of thing with uneducated poor Eastern European women, but not about it happening to the well educated. It's not that the evilness of this forcing is less if a woman is undereducated, but this strikes me as countering the proposal that education is the ticket out of poverty and exploitation. One question comes up, and you may or may not be able to answer it. Were the professionals allowed to work menial jobs but not professional jobs just because of local laws, customs, prejudices, etc., or do you think that the education system in Russia has fallen to the point where, for example, you'd never want to have a Russian surgeon operating on you? Dan M. One thing I know at least *used* to be true is that a fairly large portion of the population of former Soviet countries tended to be quite well formally educated, quite often on the master's or doctorate level, enough so that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the competition for the few professional jobs then available even worldwide was such that it was another strike against recent immigrants from former Soviet countries almost everywhere else. It's still true that among former Soviet-bloc emigres of a certain age, you'll find quite a few of them have higher level degrees of some sort, in some cases more than one. I think it was sort of an artifact of the Soviet system that university education was both inexpensive and one of the few things people could readily spend money on, plus to some extent a sort of nationalistic pride. It may be that those degrees are slightly less reflective of actual academic accomplishment than they are elsewhere, but I would say not by much, if at all. Nowadays, I think the driving factors are radically different, since the state-sponsored higher education system was one of the things that collapsed in the post-Soviet era, so the people emigrating to other countries *now* are much more likely to be at most high school educated, considerably poorer, and considerably more desperate. Which, to me, sort of explains how a lot of young women from former Soviet countries now work as models if they're lucky, and get drawn into the sex trade if they're not so lucky. It's definitely not a nice side of humanity that leads to them being exploited, and I don't have to like it (and, trust me, I don't!), but I do understand how it happens .. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Privacy and web analytics
I just blogged on privacy and web analytics... and included a plug for this list. http://www.nickarnett.net/2008/12/19/privacy-and-third-party-analytics/ Short version is that it seems to me that people raise the privacy flag when it adds more heat than light. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Admin: Moving the list
As I mentioned in passing the other day, I'm planning to move everything off the server I operate at home and on to a hosted solution. Soon, I'll move the list to www.nickarnett.net, which is hosted at Bluehost. After I've done that and moved some other stuff there, I'll move the mccmedia.com domain name also. I'm trying to do this with as little list disruption as possible. But don't be surprised if you see activity related to the move. Sorry about the domain name switch, but I'll make that as painless as possible by forwarding the current list address to the new one until I take down the current server. The archives will be disrupted. I couldn't find a hosted solution (at a reasonable cost, anyway) that gives me access to the archive directories. That means there's no easy way to move the old archive to the new location. I'll probably start by just having two archives, split on the date that the list moves. But I'm working on some tools that should improve the archive in other ways while consolidating it. I now have all of the current archived messages in a database... and I'm going to dig up older archives from my, er, archives and add them. Thus, we'll end up with a more complete archive -- and a way I can run a lot more statistics, which might be fun, at least. I was hoping to find an open-source discussion platform that would allow me to easily import the archived messages, so that we would have the benefits of a mailing list and web forums... haven't found such a thing yet. I considered using a wiki for that purpose and still might go that route. Your suggestions are welcome, of course. By the way, one benefit of the move should be higher availability. Things have been stable lately, but we are susceptible to power and network outages in ways that a hosted solution shouldn't be. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Admin: Moving the list
From: Nick Arnett narn...@mccmedia.com I was hoping to find an open-source discussion platform that would allow me to easily import the archived messages, so that we would have the benefits of a mailing list and web forums... haven't found such a thing yet. I considered using a wiki for that purpose and still might go that route. Your suggestions are welcome, of course. Hi Nick, if you do decide to go the wiki route, you should try www.wikidot.com I've been using it for a few months. It is a really good host and it you get 5 x 300MB sites for free. Regards, Wayne Eddy. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Admin: Moving the list
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Wayne Eddy we...@bigpond.net.au wrote: Hi Nick, if you do decide to go the wiki route, you should try www.wikidot.com I've been using it for a few months. It is a really good host and it you get 5 x 300MB sites for free. I'm happy with Bluehost (except for the lack of back-end access to Mailman archives)... the issue is more to do with which technology to use for archiving. They offer several kinds of wikis... I was tempted by MoinMoin because it is Python-based. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Admin: Moving the list
Original Message: - From: Nick Arnett narn...@mccmedia.com Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:59:01 -0800 To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: Re: Admin: Moving the list I'm happy with Bluehost (except for the lack of back-end access to Mailman archives)... the issue is more to do with which technology to use for archiving. They offer several kinds of wikis... I was tempted by MoinMoin because it is Python-based. Which allows you to run the list while showing your computer the full Monty? Dan M. mail2web.com What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
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 . . . . . . ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
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 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
