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8 Dec 2003The cost of DVD players is coming down: Walmart and Sears are selling them for $29 (loss leaders?) and portable players with built-in screen are $150. Reading up on the theories of relativity. Special Relativity assumptions:
From these two axioms are derived the Lorentz "shrinking" equations and the famous E = m * c ** 2. Some things I would like to understand better: The twin paradox: they say this is resolvable because one twin (the one on the rocket ship that returns) underwent some acceleration, but the stationary twin did not. And centrifugal force: If a weighted spring is swung around on a rotating platform, the spring lengthens. But how is that different from the platform remaining stationary, and all the bodies of the universe rotating around it? Would the latter situation "pull" on the spring? This is similar to the famous experiment of a rotating pail of water (the water rising up the edges). And electromagnetism: magnetism can be shown to be a relativistic effect of fast-moving electrical charges. I wish I had that proof down pat. 18 Nov 2003Several big corporate scandals in the news lately: AOL, Enron, Gateway, Worldcom, and others. Greedy CEOs ripping off the shareholders. There seem to be several common patterns: (1) Artificially inflating the stock price (and then selling stocks or options); (2) Outrageous salaries or perks or retirement; (3) Spending corporate $$ on personal things; or (4) Timing the stock-option-grant date to times when the stocks are low. The AOL-Gateway scam was interesting: Every computer that gateway sold included AOL, and AOL paid Gateway $200; and Gateway paid AOL $200. So their revenues were artificially boosted. Also, companies sometimes book the entire value of a multi-year sale all in the first year, to artificially boost revenue. Saw Finding Nemo. I love Pixar animated movies. There seem to be only three computer animation companies working these day:
One movie I'm not sure about is Antz (1998?) which was distributed by Dreamworks, but I'm not sure if it is from PCI or not. 13 Nov 2003Read Tennozan (1992, George Feifer) about the battle of Okinawa (April - June 1945). This is an outstanding military history book, focusing on one huge battle. The author says the battle of Okinawa (82 days) was the largest battle in US military history, considering the amount of ordnance, vessels, personnel, etc). The battle of Okinawa was larger than the more famous Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal; but Okinawa was overshadowed in the headlines by FDRs death, the invasion of Berlin, VE day, and Trumans new presidency. The book has a refreshing emphasis on the experiences of low-level combatants. The filth, the fear, the psychological trauma. It could use more illustrations. The book does a good job of presenting the Japanese and Okinawan perspectives. My overwhelming emotion while reading this book is that my generation missed a once-in-a-century experience, a powerful, growing, bonding experience. A safe, suburban, middle-class existence is so ... safe. I envy the camaraderie, the annual reunions. But is this just romanticizing what is really a wasteful, inhumane event? One soldier captured it well: "I wouldn't take a million dollars for the experiences, or pay a penny to do it again". After going thru a battle like that, the combatants must have supreme confidence in their everyday life: no challenge is too large, no obstacle too great. Either that or they are traumatized. The book does point out that, as in any war, only 1 in 20 soldiers saw actual combat. The other were support troops (logistics, drivers, medical, cooks, etc). I suspect this ratio is increasing as the centuries go by. Winston Churchill: Nothing is worse than war? Dishonor is worse than war. Slavery is worse than war. 30 Oct 2003Bought the Indiana Jones movie set on DVD. Boy, do those movies suck. Especially the 2nd and 3rd ones. The annoying child; the evil Nazis; the ladies running around in nightgowns; the incompetent enemy warriors; the chase sequences; the portrayal of 3rd world people as idiots. 4 Oct 2003Doing some electrical work on our house: Doing all the wiring for a room addition. I posted a technical question on a forum for professional electricians, and I got four responses all saying, more or less, "Dont try it: to dangerous; hire a professional". I posted a nasty reply ("electrical work is not rocket science") and a flame ware ensued. The moderator shut down the thread after 2 days. [I completed the job successfully, and resisted the temptation to return to the site to say "I told you so".] 15 May 2003Read a newspaper article today about the PSAT test. There was a grammar question that was challenged: Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that describe ... the challenges of African Americans. This graders originally were scoring this as "correct grammar", but after some protests, the question was tossed out because some said that "her" should be "it" because "her" is referring to "genius". I dunno, the sentence seems okay as it is. American grammar is not black and white: it is whatever authors are writing these days. 12 May 2003Read The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791, James Boswell). SJ lived 1709 - 1784. This particular edition is volume 101 of Everymans Library, a name I admire for its populist connotations. Johnson has lots of good quotes: A lexicographer is a harmless drudge.
Being a sailor is worse than being in jail. For it has all the drawbacks of jail, plus the risk of drowning.
A woman who preaches is like a dog walking on its hind leg: it is not done well, but you are surprised to see it done at all. Some aspects of life during the 18th century are interesting:
Johnson's writing style is a bit pompous: Long sentences; double negatives, rare words. But he does avoid idioms, slang, and jargon. He is very conservative and reactionary in his views; he belittles women; he supports the church of England; and opposes most reform efforts. He was not supportive of the revolutionary tides sweeping France and America. He may have been a great dictionary writer, but in hindsight, his values pale in comparison to the revolutionaries in America and France. There was an amazing group of men alive in London at the time of SJ: he was acquanted with Captain Cook, Adam Smith, Gibbons, and Joshua Reynolds. 11 May 2003Read a book about Greek archeology, and it cleared up up some of the Greek eras for me:
7 May 2003Read Forever Barbie (1994, M. G. Lord) a fascinating look at the doll by a sociologist. One chapter analyzes the social class occupied by the various barbies and how it has varied over time. She makes a distinction between the actual characteristics of a class and the supposed (or caricatured) attributes, e.g. long painted fingernails supposedly are common in the upper-class, but they are not. She says Barbie was originally (back in the early 50s?) a semi-erotic toy in Germany for adult men. She talks about anorexia, and says that most anorexia is caused by poor relationships between mother and daughter. She refers to a book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983, P. Fussel) which looks like a great read: half humorous, half sobering. Here is my own stab at the class system in the US:
30 April 2003Read Metamagical Themas (1985, Douglas Hofstader) by the author of Godel, Escher, Bach. This is a compilation of his Scientific American columns from 1982 to 1984. His columns are not as inviting or fun as Martin Garnders, because DH is much more obtuse and dense, more philosophical. He continually turns the discussion to artificial intelligence and recursion: as if those are the only topics he feels comfortable with. One neat thing in the book is the Prisoner's dilemma (from a guy named Axelrod): one version goes as follows: One person is selling diamonds to another: they are far apart and the deal is that the seller will leave the diamonds in a safe place, and the buyer will leave his cash in another safe place. They then both travel to the other safe place to retrieve the other's stuff. Each player has a choice: to be honest or not (to leave the stuff or not). Expressed as an abstract game: During each turn, each player must choose to cooperate (C) or not cooperate (NC) with the opponent. When both choices are revealed, the scoring goes as:
The goal of the game is to get the most points. It is an intriguing game, because in some ways it is a microcosm of real life: Cooperate, and society flourishes, but if you stab the other guy in the back, you get his wealth. In this book, he describes a computer programming contest, to come up with an algorithm that would do best at the Prisoner's Dilemma. Astoundingly, the winning algorithm was also the simplest! It is:
Translating this into real life: Give strangers the benefit of the doubt; but every time they are unfriendly, retailiate once and then forgive. Strangely, the strategy for a single round is different than for multiple rounds. For a single round, it is always better to choose NC, since that is the better choice whether the opponent chooses C or NC. It is only when multiple rounds are used that C becomes a viable option. DH also discusses the famous issue of whether thoughts and ideas are limited by available language. Can an illiterate person have the same thoughts as a literate person? Can a deaf-mute have the same thoughts as a person with their senses? It can be argued both ways: Clearly prehistoric man and illiterates and deaf-mutes have great thoughts. On the other hand, just being exposed to something as simple as the German word shadenfreude (joy at another's sorrow) can stimulate new thoughts and ideas. And DH also takes Donald Knuth to task for asserting that software (in particular, Knuths Metafont software) could generate nearly every font by simply adjusting parameters. But this is a tricky argument: You have to decide if you are talking about "book fonts" or arbitrarily crazy "display fonts". DH also discusses the Skeptical Inquirer, a newsletter (now website?) that debunks psychics and paranormal phenomena. One test they did is to have a fraud performing fake psychic tricks to an audience: a large potion of the audience believed it. Then the audience heard a lecture about pyshic fraud, but the portion of believers declined only slightly. Finally, the performer himself revealed himself as a fraud and showed how the tricks were done, and the portion of believers still only declined slightly. He also mentions the famous astrology-debunking experiment where a professor gives a class their horoscope (12 varieties, depending on their signs) and asks them to rank how accurate it is. The average ranking is "very accurate". The professor then reveals that all horoscopes are identical. 29 April 2003Read autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (lived c 1500 to 1570; written c. 1562). For some reason I thought Ben Franklin wrote the first modern autobiography, but this book is pretty darn modern. And, I suppose many Romans must have written autobiographies. Cellini lived and worked in Florence, and is most remembered for a few statues (his bronze Perseus is most famous) but he also did lots of goldsmithing, jewelry, plates, metals, and salt cellars. 24 April 2003Read about a neat theorem: Picks Theorem: The area of any 2D
polygon, whose vertices have integer coordinate values (both X and Y are
integers) is equal to NI + ( NE / 2 ) -1 where NI = number of vertices
inside the polygon; and NE = number of points on the polygon. It is rather easy to prove:
9 April 2003Found a neat maze puzzle on the web: Form the longest non-intersecting chain of matchsticks within a 2x2 square. Angles are limited to multiples of 45 degrees. My solution has 14 links, but the site says 15 is the best:
5 April 2003Found a neat maze puzzle on the web: Theseus and the Minotaur: http://www.logicmazes.com/theseus.html. These are tough puzzles: You have to move thru the maze, and evade a pursuing robot-minotaur. I was able to do a few of the 15 puzzles, but not the hard ones. 26 March 2003Read a book about Greece that had a photo of the Parthenon, in ruins. The majority of the destruction came from an explosion when the Turks were there (circa 1850). I cant recall if they were just storing ammo there and it accidentally went off; or if it was deliberate. Reminded me of the way the Taliban in Afghanistan recently destroyed a large Buddhist sculpture, carved into a cliff. Or the way the Egyptians defaced the great pyramids (although they did leave the Sphinx alone, and it was Napoleons soldiers that did most of the damage). Or the destruction of the library at Alexandria (the date and culprits are not known with certainty). The biggest religious crime of all? Probably the Christian church's destruction of ancient greek and roman manuscripts in the middle ages. A true religion would have no problems protecting cultural artifacts, even if those artifacts represented another faith. There are some counterexamples: Italy protects the Pantheon; The UN and Egypt raised the Abu Simba temple (above the floodwaters rising behind the newly built Aswan High Dam); and the manuscript preservation described in How the Irish Saved Civilization. The word "quark" comes from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. He also created Bloomsday, June 16th. 21 March 2003Read Dante's Inferno (translated by R. Hollander). A very good translation: Reminds me of the translation of Odes of Horace I read awhile ago. It is a tough book to read because it has so many references to contemporary Italian society. On the other hand, it represents what our western forefathers were thinking 500 years ago, and in many ways forms the basis of our own civilization. The big quote, of course, is the inscription over the entrance to Hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. It finally clears up the difference between Limbo and Purgatory:
This is fascinating: because it shows that way back in the middle ages, skeptics where asking the same kinds of questions that I ask ("why would god send Hindus or Buddhists to hell?", "what happens if I sin, then die suddenly without confessing?") and the church came up with very detailed responses. Purgatory has levels, just like hell, based on the nature of the sin. The interesting thing is that all sins are divided into two categories: those serious enough to send you to hell (mortal), and those less serious, which get you to Purgatory (venial). 19 March 2003Read Backlash: the Undeclared War Against Women (1992, Susan Faludi). Its thesis is that conservative forces in US are rolling-back many advances made by women in the years leading up to 1985. The book is reporter-like, and consists mostly of anecdotes. The book is rather one-sided and is trying to make a point. The book would be better if it was more balanced, and had a bigger picture, perhaps including more history, and more examples contrary to the authors viewpoint. Certainly the anti-feminist movement was active active 1985, but cant the author find one example where the feminists had a victory after 1985? Read Conduct Unbecoming: Gays in the US Military (1993, Randy Shilts). Similar to the Backlash book: a compilation of anecdotes trying to prove a point. In this case: That gays in the military give loyal and useful service to their country. The book asserts that the military would benefit by changing its policies to permit gays. Read SNAFU: Great American Military Disasters (1993, Regan), a book about military disasters. The saddest one recounted was a dry-run for D-Day in May 1945, off the british coast. 1,000 americans were killed by German boats (shooting at troop transports) because British warships failed to protect the transports as planned. To minimize disruption to the US-British alliance, the survivors where sequestered in Wales, and the disaster was classified for 40 years! 16 March 2003What is the so-called IRS marriage penalty? It arises from the simple fact that a married couple, for many purposes, should be treated as a single individual. For instance, when signing a contract, or when paying taxes. On the other hand, if a married couple both work, they should have the option of paying taxes as individuals. In the current tax code, the married-joint rate is lower than the single rate; and the married-separate rate is slightly higher than the single rate. What are the goals?
But what rate should a married couple pay? Assume the rate for a non-married individual is, say, 20%. The table below summarizes what tax rates would be fair for married filers:
The big dilemma is in the "joint-both" box: the one that is < 20%. The difficulty arises trying to figure out how much of a tax break to put there. If you keep that rate high (say 20%) then 2-income couples are penalized when they get married; but if you lower that rate too much (e.g. 10%) then a 1-income couple gets a windfall (their taxes go down after marriage). The joint rate, of course, does not vary based on whether 1 or 2 spouses are working. So the upper right box is also lowered below 20%. That is the "windfall" that 1-income couples get. Keeping the joint rate high does not penalize the 2-income family much, because they can always file separately. The "penalty" in this case is that the 2-income couple is forced to do more paperwork. The current tax rates for separate is slightly higher than single: I'm not sure what that is, but it certainly seems unfair. This dilemma does not arise if we had a flat tax rate: it only arises because of the progressive tax system we have. 13 March 2003Read All The Pretty Horses (1992, Cormac McCarthy). A western coming-of-age novel. Reminded me of Lonesome Dove (by Larry McMurtry). It starts out good, but gets a bit far-fetched in the second half. 25 Feb 2003Read The Human Pedigree (1975, A. Smith). A book I never thought I'd see in the USA. It discusses eugenics in a balanced, moderate tone. Of course, the author is British (it seems eugenics and Israel are taboo in the USA). The book is rather thorough, addressing animal husbandry, Nazis, hereditary diseases, genetic engineering, and ethics. The author predicts that eugenics will become commonplace someday in the future, although he distinguishes "positive eugenics" (encouraging offspring with positive traits) from "negative eugenics" (discouraging offspring with negative traits) and suggests that positive eugenics will be acceptable, as long as it is not accompanied by negative eugenics. As an example of positive eugenics, he cites sperm banks and genetic engineering; as an example of negative eugenics, he cites force sterilization. He says that in the 1920s and 30s, many prominent scientists were in favor of Eugenics, but after WW II it became politically taboo to speak of it. The most controversial chapter in the book, of course, was the chapter on intelligence and whether it is inherited or not. The book points out that attractive people do not dominate the gene pool: he says that 99% of the girls at a party will get married and have kids. Read Memoirs of a Geisha (1997). A big hit when it was published. An okay novel: a Dickensian odyssey undertaken by a poor orphan in 1920's - 30's Japan: rising from poverty to the top ranks of Kyoto geisha society. But the book is written by a New Englander, who merely has good Japanese friends and a degree in Japanese art history. Although the story was gripping and revealing, I kept wondering how a 1990's American male could write an authentic story about a 1930's Japanese female. He can't. I'd rather read a real geisha autobiography. Heard about a new product that Microsoft is selling: an operating system called Windows Media Center. It runs on computers equipped with (a) a TV tuner (inputs cable TV coax); and (b) a remote control receiver. The OS, in addition to functioning as a normal computer, will display TV shows on the screen in real time; and can record shows to hard disk (like TiVo) and replay them at a future time. At long last, the wasteful duplication in american homes (TV and computer) may be at an end. On the other hand, it may not resolve all duplication: First, the TV tuner card may not be powerful enough to display HDTV shows. Also, computer monitors tend to be around 20" diagonal, whereas people want their TV monitors to be 32"to 52" diagonal. Finally, games are mostly distributed only on a console (not a PC) so game players will still be required to buy the console in addition to the Media Center computer. And, of course, Microsoft caved into Hollywood and incorporated Digital Rights Management (DRM) into the system, so if you record a TV show on computer A, you cannot replay it on computer B. Specifically, you can burn a recorded TV show to DVD, but it will only play on the computer used for burning. 19 Feb 2003Read The Map that Changed The World (2001, Simon Winchester). Not quite as good as his previous hit The Professor and the Madman, but still good. The storylines are similar: A lone man, unappreciated, toiling in England long ago on a lonely task, academic in nature. Only after he is dead is his work appreciated. This story is about a surveyor in England who studied the soils of England and created a detailed (and beautiful 6' x 8') map of England showing where each strata (on the surface) was located. Although others before him had noticed the layer-like nature of strata (esp in mines) this guy (William Smith) was the first that (a) noted that the strata can be defined and identified by their fossil content; (b) he personally surveyed a huge area of land and recorded where the strata pierced the surface; and (c) He published the map. 31 Jan 2003Read an article in Discover magazine about A New Kind of Science (Stephen Wolfram). The author is a wealthy recluse, creator of the successful Mathematica program. The thesis of his book is that computer modelling opens-up whole new realms of science: areas that were not previously explorable with conventional formula-based mathematics. He gives lots of examples of how computer models (especially recursive "automata") can model reality, even complex reality. Somewhat like fractals or chaos theory. Read an article about the Anthropic principle. This is a fascinating, if ultimately hollow, concept. It has several formulations (reminds me of the 2nd law of thermodynamics):
The Anthropic principle is closely related to the discussion about the probability of humans coming into existence: One argument goes as follows: Humans exist. For humans to exist, many conditions must be satisfied (temperature, environment, sunshine, earths situation, big bang, etc). The probablity of all these necessary conditions, considered together (multiplied) is infinitesimal. And some people would add at this point: Therefore God exists and God created humans. This argument is most commonly heard in reference to the Big Bang: The amount of matter in the universe is "just right" to support a gradually expanding universe (hence, human life). Any more matter and the universe would have collapsed back on itself; any less matter and the universe would have exploded outward. Naturally, creationists have seized on the Anthropic principle and use it as one of their argumnets. I don't buy this argument: it is to conceited. There are lots of other ways of looking at it:
The Anthropic principle is closely related to the Doomsday Hypothesis (which is also favored by creationists) . The Doomsday Hypothesis says that the odds of humans becoming extinct soon are very high. The logic goes as follows: If you look into our past, we can see hundreds of events that must have happened for humans to come into existence (species mutating, climate change a certain way, temperature at such and such, food sources arising, oxygen forming in the atmosphere, etc). Literally hundreds of things that - if they did not happen - would cause human life as we know it to not be present today. The fallacy of the Doomsday Hypothesis is that evolution is very chaotic and random, and a small fraction of the mutations push forward into niches. So if conditions on earth in the past, at some turn, were inhospitable to human ancestors, then - yes, humans would not have evolved, but something else - perhaps something like humans - would have evolved. I think that Dawson covers this counterargument in some of his books. 30 Jan 2003Consumer outrage: Three years ago L bought me a watch, an expensive watch: a Seiko kinetic. You know: shaking your wrist automatically winds it. This is the "new" kind of kinetic (the ones from 20 years ago just wound a spring): as you shake your wrist, the watch gets charged electrically. Wow! I thought: Never need to wind it. Never need to buy another $10 battery. Guess again: This watch stores the electricity in a capacitor (kind of like a rechargeable battery) and the capacitor wears-out every 3 years. Replacement cost: $40. Let me repeat that: This $600 watch, that I have to charge with my body motion, requires me to spend $40 every three years. A battery-operated watch only requires $10 replacement battery every 3 to 6 years. What a rip-off. What I can't figure out is if this was a deliberate tactic by Seiko to make money, or was it just incompetence in their design? Read an article in Discover magazine about the Hormesis principle. It postulates that, in many cases, small doses of harmful substances (e.g. radiation or poison) are actually beneficial to the recipient. The notion is that small doses may stimulate the body to protect itself, and thus strengthen itself. I think flouride, vitamins, exercise may be examples. Hormesis is somewhat controversial, first because there is some dispute about whether it is wise to encourage people to take small amounts of poison; and second because hormesis has been championed by the homeopathic community, which does not have the respect of the medical establishment. 27 Jan 2003Read The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955; Patricia Highsmith). Shw wrote 4 sequels, so it must have been very popular in its time. The book is a very unusual murder/suspense story without the mystery (we know who the murderer is). The book as a pronounced gay theme which is unusual for 1955 (reminds me of Suddenly, Last Summer). Speaking of 1950s: Splendor in the Grass (a movie I would like to see some day) gets its title from a poem by Wordsworth: That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind. Started to read A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry), Booker prize short listed, set in India, Oprah book club selection. I read the first half, and it looks great. I need to finish it someday. Read The House of Sand and Fog, another Oprah selection. Violates my rule #3 of movies: Everyone is a victim. Trying to figure out a simple way to explain calculus to S. I came up with the following diagram:
10 Jan 2003Read a a book about the Thresher submarine sinking in 1963 (?) with 129 men on board. Then in 1966 the Scorpion was lost in 11,000 ft near the Azores (99 men). I think these were the only two nuclear submarine disasters. Analysis of the accidents shows they were due to construction defects caused by poor quality control due to haste to build due to the cold war. The Navy was desperate to crank out lots of submarines quickly, so testing and QA took a back seat. The Navy could have learned from Adm. Rickover's nuclear program: with its heavy emphasis on testing, analysis, and quality assurance. These accidents remind me of the incident from around 1960 when a US bomber flying over Spain accidentally dropped several (un-armed) nuclear bombs. The recovery effort was pretty amazing: They hauled a way tons of dirt; and they even had to hunt for 1 or 2 in the Mediterranean (it's a miracle they found them). Read a book on the Trieste (I think there were 2 or 3 versions) which went to the bottom of the Mariana trench in 1961. The sphere occupied by the humans was 5" think steel; with Plexiglas windows 10" thick. Ingenious design: The majority of the structure is a tank of diesel fuel (impervious to pressure issues) which is less dense than seawater, so was the primary mechanism to return the craft to the surface. The iron ballast (10 tons??) was secured in a way that would ensure it could be dropped in an emergency: It was held on by electro-magnet, so if the craft's batteries failed, the ballast would drop and the craft would return to the surface. One puzzling thing that was not explained was how wires and pipes passed through the 5" thick steel without introducing a leak. The same question holds for normal subs: Numerous things penetrate the pressure hull (propeller shaft; wires to antennas; wires to sonar; periscope, etc) .. how can they be leak-proof? I submitted a book review to Amazon.com, criticizing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (Peter Mathieson), a very biased account of a shoot-out between FBI and Indians in South Dakota. I have no problem with the author having his opinion, or even being biased - what bothered me was that the author is an ambitious capitalist who makes his living selling books, including aggressive marketing campaigns. Yet in the Crazy Horse book he sympathizes with the native Americans and their non-materialistic attitudes. He bites the hand that feeds him: " The natives live in harmony with nature ... Oh, by the way, will you purchase my book for $35?" I submitted some movie reviews to IMDB.com. They have some movie rankings (best 100 movies, etc). Their ranking is interesting: rather than just take the average score (submitted by viewers) they also take into account the number of votes/scores that were submitted for each movie. This is called a Bayesian ranking, and assumes that an average with a large number of votes is more accurate than one with a small number of votes; and that averages with a small number of votes are farther away from the middle than they will end up: adjustedScore = A * averageScoreOfThisMove + B * averageScoreAllMovies;
A = numVotesForThisMovie / ( numVotesForThisMovie + averageNumVotesAllMovies);
B = averageNumVotesAllMovies / ( numVotesForThisMovie + averageNumVotesAllMovies);
5 Jan 2003Read about Huey Long, the Louisiana governor 1920s-30s, who was immortalized in the book All the Kings Men (Robert Penn Warren). Turns out Huey Long was a great populist (reminds me of Will Rogers) and had no compunctions about sharing the wealth. In 1935 he was thinking about running for President and created a proposal called Share The Wealth. Here is how he described it in a radio address: Number one, we propose that every family in America should at least own a homestead equal in value to not less than one third the average family wealth. The average family wealth of America, at normal values, is approximately $16,000. So our first proposition means that every family will have a home and the comforts of a home up to a value of not less than around $5,000 or a little more than that.
Number two, we propose that no family shall own more than three hundred times the average family wealth, which means that no family shall possess more than a wealth of approximately $5 million—none to own less than $5,000, none to own more than $5 million. We think that’s too much to allow them to own, but at least it’s extremely conservative.
Number three, we propose that every family shall have an income equal to at least one third of the average family income in America. If all were allowed to work, there’d be an income of from $5,000 to $10,000 per family. We propose that one third would be the minimum. We propose that no family will have an earning of less than around $2,000 to $2,500 and that none will have more than three hundred times the average less the ordinary income taxes, which means that a million dollars would be the limit on the highest income. 4 Jan 2003The Boxer Rebellion in China (approx 1890) was so called because of the "Society of Harmonious Fists". 3 Jan 2003Found a company, 321Studios, that sells a software program to copy DVDs. $99. They apparently took advantage of the CSS algorithm that was cracked by "DVD john". Naturally, Hollywood is suing them. They say the copied DVD is often as good as the original: but the originals are sometimes dual-layered (9 GB) whereas the typical home DVD burner can only produce a single-layer DVD (4.7 GB) so in those cases the image quality is degraded. 2 Jan 2003He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. - Of Marriage and Single Life. Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 1 Jan 2003Watched a hilarious TV series on VH-1 called "I love the 80s". A bunch of comedians and minor artists make ironic comments about popular shows, songs, fads, and styles of the 1980s. Targets included pet rocks, "where's the beef", gary coleman, Top Gun, the brat pack, etc.
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