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Posted: 07 Oct 2006 10:05 pm Post subject:

Mike did you get my message about that I couldn't pull up my web mail from my domain on the college's computer network?

Posted: 09 Oct 2006 07:29 am Post subject:

I went to read it just now, after you mentioned it. I haven't been reading my email regularly because of an inconvenience where we recently got broadband from the cable TV company and the guy from the cable company cut one of my telephone lines for no good reason.

Here's your official notification of a change of email address for M. Lepore - effective immediately - use lepore3 at optonline dot net , and don't forget to type the 3 . My bestweb account will be cancelled in a couple days.

Does the web mail you tried have a field where you need to enter your pop3 address and your SMTP address? These are needed for an email reader to find the host. The email address and password aren't enough.

Posted: 07 Nov 2006 05:45 pm Post subject:

I just had the funniest conversation (funny if it weren't so tragic) with Verizon:

rep: How may I help you? Is this about a repair?

me: No.

rep: Well, I'd be happy to help you with anything at all -- ordering new services, billing questions, whatever. What can I do for you?

me: I want to cancel my account.

rep: I'm sorry, this office is closed in observance of the holiday. Please call back during normal business hours.

Posted: 21 Nov 2006 09:37 pm Post subject:

Heh! What happened to the pharmacy link? Now where the hell am I going to buy my Cialis?

Posted: 21 Nov 2006 09:41 pm Post subject:

I've been hanging out over at World in Common for a while. They don't seem quite so stuck up as thre WSMers do. IMHO Some of the same people on WiC and WSM

A lot of people have that bug of a magical big rock candy mountain. I'll bet that it turns a lot of workers off, IMHO.

Free access to me means free access to the means of production. Any idea where the term derived from and when?

dave

Posted: 23 Nov 2006 06:48 pm Post subject:

Where the term came from - all I know is, in the late '60s and early '70s I used to read the magazine that was then jointly published by two WSM parties, the World Soc Party US and the Soc Party of Canada. The publication always said "a world without money"; "free access to all that is produced." The publication had a Declaration of Principles containing this or similar language.

I believe it turns people off. It plays directly to the ever-popular expectation, "I already know what 'true socialism' is. It's a beautiful dream that could never happen. A perfect world that's against human nature." If socialists are going to demonstrate that something is practial, the last thing we would need is a program that says, "We know this plan will work because we feel intuitively that people in the future will think and act differently." That's not social science.

The WiC group was founded with the intention of including anyone with a non-state and non-market conception of socialism, regardless of all other differences, no matter how fundamental those differences are. I believe they have about three members who call themselves De Leonists.

Posted: 01 Dec 2006 07:41 pm Post subject:

Dave, remember those leaflets we used to hand out by the thousands on the street? They're selling on eBay now for about $5.00 apiece.

http://search.ebay.com/socialist-labor-party

I assume the sellers are finding some buyers, otherwise they wouldn't continue paying the eBay listing fees, and it looks to me like the sellers are operating in a repeating loop.

Posted: 01 Dec 2006 09:55 pm Post subject:

Not quite worth their weight in gold, yet.

I have still been hanging out over at WiC with Byron.

Posted: 06 Dec 2006 02:58 am Post subject:

Ten years ago this month, the death of Carl Sagan.

Posted: 16 Dec 2006 05:22 am Post subject:

Listen to this! In September I sent my 18-year-old daughter off to college, and she was like a kid, all Nickelodeon cartoons and so forth. Now after one semester, she came home today for Xmas vacation, and she talking about "cultural hegemony" and "patriarchal society"! I'm absolutely ecstatic!

Posted: 25 Dec 2006 12:04 am Post subject:

Mike, do me a favor, my mind is broken - how does the calc go to determine how high that you would have to hold something for it to be going 1.47 ft/sec (5 m.p.h.) when it hits the ground after it is dropped from that height?

Posted: 28 Dec 2006 02:56 am Post subject:

For some reason the hegemony word rolls around in their brains as if it means a god damned thing. Don't get too crazy excited.

I have been working on a math probem concernng acelleration under free fall. Of course it's 32 ft/ sec squared when measured in time elapsed. By how about in distance fallen? It looks like that velocity increases 2 ft/sec for every foot fallen. Does that seem right to you? Seems too simple for some reason.

What math would show that?

Posted: 28 Dec 2006 08:04 pm Post subject:

Kinematics for a constant acceleration includes five variables. They are: v_i = initial velocity, v_f = final velocity, a = acceleration (a constant), x = displacement, time = t. There are four kinematics formulas. Each of the four formulas includes four of the five variables and it has one of the variables missing. The kinematic relationship that includes both the final velocity and the displacement, and it doesn't include the unknown time value, is:

v_f squared = v_i squared + 2 a x

Dropped from rest, set v_i = 0 .

v_f squared = 2 a x

To input the fact the final velocity is some given number, and then find "how high", you must solve for x:

x = ( v_f squared ) / 2 a

Posted: 28 Dec 2006 11:10 pm Post subject:

The History Channel is stupid crap. Just to have some background noise I'm listening to this program which is seriously posing the question: are we assured that the end of the world will occur in a certain way because it was described that way by the ancient Mayan prophets? What a stupid question. Another stupid thing this channel does is speak of paranormal claims like haunted houses, or the government's secret flying saucer warehouses, with the same kind of phrasing that people ordinarily speak of purely factual matters, without the benefit of a moderating word like "allegedly". Irritating pandering to mass stupidity.

Posted: 31 Dec 2006 12:13 am Post subject:

Stupid! The web site revolutionaryleft.com has had, for a long time, a huge forum, thousands of topics, many moderators with their own categories, some excellent discussions of Marxist theory and history. Now, since about four days ago, the domain points back to the registrar because no one paid the small fee to renew the domain name. Stupid!

Posted: 02 Jan 2007 10:53 pm Post subject:

I wonder if a number would be a good domain name. All numbers up to four digits, such 9125.com seem to be taken already - the domain registrars themselves seized them just so they can resell them. Some five digit numbers are taken but not all. I saw a directory of Los Angeles hotels named 90210.com , but my own zip code .com seems to be still available. Then meaningful names in the subdomain field could be rented out to others, such as electronics.90210.com or communism.90210.com . Crazy idea or what?

Posted: 13 Jan 2007 09:27 am Post subject:

My post Dec. 31, I commented that revolutionaryleft.com (a forum much larger than this one) went offline. They are now back up but at a new location, http://www.revleft.com .

Posted: 11 Feb 2007 08:53 pm Post subject:

To the person who emailed me a few days ago and asked me to reply because, you said, "I need to check to see if my e-mail service is working on this old computer"

I send a reply, and your host got it, but your host sent it back to me with the error message:

Remote SMTP server has rejected address
550 - No mailbox here by that name.

Posted: 11 Feb 2007 10:32 pm Post subject:

It is now working.

John T.

Posted: 14 Feb 2007 10:36 pm Post subject:

Curses because the starter of my snowblower burned out with a puff of smoke at the worst possible moment. I had no choice but to drink a liter of schnapps and use a snow shovel.

Posted: 14 Feb 2007 10:52 pm Post subject:

Are prices going crazy or what? The furnace wouldn't make any heat or hot water one morning, which was my own fault because I didn't get it cleaned for a couple years. Clogged with dog hair and cat hair. Our regular plumber was too busy to come at a moment's notice, so we got another guy. In addition to cleaning the unit, he replaced two inexpensive parts, the gasket and the photocell. It took him about an hour, or maybe an hour and a quarter. $554.50 is what he charged.

Posted: 16 Feb 2007 04:08 pm Post subject:

John, Feb. 11th you said "It is now working." February 13th, same error message.

Your message cannot be delivered
Remote SMTP server has rejected address
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 sorry, no mailbox here by that name

Posted: 18 Feb 2007 08:34 am Post subject:

do not pay it. Mail him a check for $250 and on the bottom write "all accounts paid in full"

Posted: 19 Feb 2007 03:32 am Post subject:

I'm obligated to pay him because I knew the price when I gave him approval. I make bad decisions when I have to answer quickly, like if there's no heat in January and the furnace repairman asks for a go-ahead. In order to make a sensible decision I need time to think. Whenever I need to answer quickly, I do something stupid.

But all self-employed contractors in my region are doing this with prices. Doesn't matter whether it's a house painter or snow plower or chimney sweep, they all get paid between $300 and $500 per hour. Car repair is even worse. A broken alternator belt will cost you about $600.

Posted: 19 Feb 2007 03:01 pm Post subject:

The next time you have no heat give me a call. I will walk you through any repair over the phone and charge you only $100 per hour but if it's really an emergency I will have to charge you $300 per hour.

Posted: 22 Feb 2007 10:46 am Post subject:

An excerpt from William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave's mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air: he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries.

Posted: 22 Feb 2007 12:10 pm Post subject:

"Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?"

-- William Blake, in Visions of the Daughters of Albion

Posted: 22 Feb 2007 12:13 pm Post subject:

The Red Wheel Barrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

Posted: 22 Feb 2007 09:22 pm Post subject:

so much depends upon
the little red hen
pushing that wheelbarrow
that you can fry those white chickens

Posted: 23 Feb 2007 09:10 am Post subject:

Here's another one with the money. The guy who plows the snow for this subdivision of three houses. This is what he charges: $40 from each of the three families for their share of the subdivision driveway, plus $55 from each family who wants their personal driveway plowed, which is the other two families, since I have a snowblower. So he collects (3)(40)+(2)(55) = $230 for forty minutes work, which is equivalent to $345 per hour.

Posted: 23 Feb 2007 09:38 am Post subject:

Maybe I should create a forum category for light-hearted fun stuff. Then I could post favorite quotations from Immanuel Kant, essays about solar corona mass ejections, and other light-hearted fun stuff.

Posted: 28 Feb 2007 02:24 am Post subject:

Will Be back at a later date. Wife is once again in the hospital.

John

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 12:36 am Post subject:

The wife came home today. What put her in the hospital was a nasty infection in the same area as before. However, the doctor is positive that the infection will go away with anti-biotics. She also was diagnosed with type two diabetes. Mad

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 08:30 am Post subject:

I've read that there is scientific evidence that visualization exercises can also help the body's immune system. Such activities as meditating on the image of a golden and warm light filling one's body and working on repairing everything that needs to be fixed. The theory is that the immune system, and also the subconscious mind where visualization has power, have a common connection. They come together in the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary responses. A vivid image can affect some bodily functions that are usually considered involuntary (I can make my mouth get a sour feeling by visualizing that I'm sucking a lemon), and I believe that future science will prove that this effect goes further than people today realize.

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 10:56 pm Post subject:

John wrote:

Wife is once again in the hospital.

dave writes:

You both have all of the prayers that we atheists are capable of.

dave

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 11:19 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

I've read that there is scientific evidence that visualization exercises ...

dave writes,

yes I have heard of this. In fact I use something like it when I am hungry. I visualize myself getting up and going out the the refrigerator and getting something to eat, and then almost as if by magic I do get up and go get something to eat. This technique is responsible for me being about 80 pounds overweight, but I guess you couldn't have more substantial proof of the effectiveness of this technique than that.

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 11:32 pm Post subject:

English language unfair to atheists! It makes us sound uncaring, which is unwarrated.

A dialogue:

A: How about that terrible attack on September 11?
B: Yes, it was a horrible thing. Dreadful.
A: I'm going to pray for the victims! I assume you will too, right?
B: No. I won't.
A: What?! You won't pray for the victims? How could you be such an unfeeling ghoul?

You should see the heat I've gotten from being part of an old-fashioned everybody-kisses-everybody Italian family and my kids weren't baptized. I keep getting drawn into answering Pascal's Wager.

And yet during Hurricane Katrina, not one of _them_ so much as sacrificed a goat to Poseidon. (How could they be such unfeeling ghouls? :-)

I guess Pascal's Wager doesn't work both ways.

Posted: 02 Mar 2007 11:44 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 03 Mar 2007 06:41 pm Post subject:

Boy, I had a scare with the wife's blood sugar level last night that I had to call a nurse and ask what to do about it. She came through okay, after following instructions, and she is near normal today.

Mike, in the new society should there be a "bill of rights" that would actually protects everyone's point of view? Basically we are not carbon copies of each other though Mao Tse Tung tried to create such a society and everyone had the same grey outfit on. What I am trying to say outside of Leninist political enforcement is that there is discrimination in American society favoring one group's beliefs over another. But to turn it over to the other group's beliefs (I don't mean the belief in who owns the means of production) in the new society is just as discriminating.

John T.

Posted: 03 Mar 2007 09:22 pm Post subject:

I think the best form for a bill of rights would be to give a general principle first, and then the examples. Today the bill of rights doesn't give any general principle. It doesn't come right out and say that people are allowed to do anything they wish to do as long as they don't take away the the rights of others. This failure allows the government to outlaw anything except for the items on a small list. Let's say they were to pass a new law that anyone who eats a green apple on a Thurdsay shall get life in prison. The supreme court would review it, note that this outlawed activity isn't on the list of guaranteed freedoms -- it's not religion, it's not speech, it's not assembly, etc. -- and so the oppressive law would be upheld as constitutional. I'm saying it should be the other way around -- an activity should be legal automatically unless it can be shown that it infringes on someone else's rights. The supreme court performing judicial reviews should say: let's check the act of eating a green apple on a Thursday. Is it a form of killing? No. Is it a form of stealing? No. It doesn't impede the rights of others, so by default it must be legal. So the present procedure is backwards -- it merely lists a small number of things that we may do, and any kind of unifying formula is missing.

So, to answer your question directly, I would like to see such rights as expressed opinion and religion guaranteed by listing them among a long but partial list of examples of some of the activities that are guaranteed precisely because the rights of other people are not infringed by them.

Example of possible text structure: "Every individual shall have the absolute and unconditional right to perform any action unless it has been proven that the action infringes directly on the rights of other individuals. Accordingly, the following activities, which certainly do not infringe on the rights of other individuals, are among the activities that individual have the rights to perform...." Now here is where the list -- speech, religion, etc. -- should be be placed, as examples that illustrate the general principle.

Today the constitution fails in this respect. Because of this deficiency, 400,000 Americans are in currently prison for smoking marijuana. It's because the present bill of rights makes prohibition the default and permission the exception. The present form is logically as well as practically untenable, because it's not feasible to list everything that is to be legal. Are we going to have a constitution that says people have the right to have a barbecue, the right to eat carrots, the right to play soccer, the right to scratch an itch, etc., down through the millions of conceivable things that a person might have the right to do? The present bill of rights uses a pattern of providing a short list of permitted acts -- speech, religion, assembly, petition -- but no general principle -- and thereby leaves the impression that whatever isn't on that short list of permitted things can be considered a crime.

Posted: 03 Mar 2007 10:28 pm Post subject:

400,000 Americans are in currently prison for smoking marijuana

is this true?

Posted: 03 Mar 2007 11:52 pm Post subject:

I've seen that in the news several times over the years, but if it really turns out to round downward to 300,000 then I'm not swearing to the number. Also, 600,000 are arrested each year in the U.S. for possession of marijuana. norml.org often has information about it.

"... with liberty and justice for all!"

Pfffft!

Posted: 11 Mar 2007 10:09 pm Post subject:

For the next several days, I expect to be gone most of the time. (In my absense, I appoint the tin man, by virtue of his new heart.)

Posted: 17 Mar 2007 02:33 pm Post subject:

of course - a happy st. patrick's day to the greenman

dave

Posted: 18 Mar 2007 01:17 am Post subject:

And a Happy St. Patty's to both of you hearth and home. Hi Ho the derry oh, there's whisky in the jar-o. Cool

JT

Posted: 26 Mar 2007 10:07 pm Post subject:

what the heck is this?

quoting from 'Hudson River Valley Heritage' site at http://www.hrvh.org/collections/inst-intro.htm?inst=9 -- "1924 Walter Steinhilber, a painter, illustrator, and later Socialist Labor Party candidate, built an eighty-foot long, sixty-foot tall, sailing vessel called the Ark Royal. Steinhilber played the pirate chief who kidnapped and later won over the princess. The ship was burned at the end of the performance, to the amazement of the audience."

quoting from http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum/exhibitions/maverick/maverick%20export/WebPage-Full.00018.html -- "Walter Steinhilber, creator and producer of the Ark Royale, 1924" -- (see the funny guy wearing the funny costume in the funny photograph on that page)

Posted: 28 Mar 2007 06:54 am Post subject:

I'm going to take a sabbatical from the internet to persue a few personal interests, fix the car and house through the Spring and Summer. I will be back. I do have a lot of De Leon, Marx and Engles PDF files to read. Very Happy

Posted: 02 Apr 2007 08:26 pm Post subject:

Mike when you wrote about deleon it made me thik of the good old days when I used to hang out in one of the bungaloe colonies in Dutchess juction. Had a pot smoking partner named Carl Rutz I think. I would be babbling on and on about DeLeon and he would jump up and yell in glee: Who the hell are you talking about?? Ponce???!!!

Posted: 03 Apr 2007 09:08 am Post subject:

Yeah, and just like Ponce, the correct pronunciation of the last name is "day lay OWN." I've never heard anyone in the SLP pronounce it correctly. I never pronounce it correctly either, even after four years of Spanish in school.

A peeve of mine, Americanizing pronunciations of names. Amarrillo, Texas, with the L's incorrectly pronounced like English L's. What, do people in the U.S. have mouths that are incapable of saying "Ah mah REE yo"? Rio Grande is pronounced like "ree oh GRON day." Los Angeles is pronounced like "loss ON hay lace." Are people's mouths broken, and they can say that? And yet, they would never do that with French. Americans are careful to correctly pronounce the French name of every little thing in the kitchen pantry, lest they appear ignorant.

Americanizing the spellings of names is even more of a travesty. Friedrich Engels. Once I called him Frederick during a conversation with a coworker who came from Germany. Boy, did I get yelled at for that.

I wrote a "Letter to the People" in 1985 and told them I consider it an insult to change the spelling of international people's names to conform to U.S. expectations, so they should start writing Friedrich Engels. (They haven't acknowledged receiving my letter yet, but it's only been 22 years since I sent it, so I'll give them a little more time.)

Posted: 03 Apr 2007 03:16 pm Post subject:

Posted: 04 Apr 2007 10:03 am Post subject:

Speaking of things Irish, did anyone ever see the movie "Into the West?"

Geat great flick.

Posted: 04 Apr 2007 10:08 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

A peeve of mine, Americanizing pronunciations of names. Amarrillo, Texas, with the L's incorrectly pronounced like English L's. What, do people in the U.S. have mouths that are incapable of saying "Ah mah REE yo"? Rio Grande is pronounced like "ree oh GRON day." Los Angeles is pronounced like "loss ON hay lace." Are people's mouths broken, and they can say that? And yet, they would never do that with French. Americans are careful to correctly pronounce the French name of every little thing in the kitchen pantry, lest they appear ignorant.

Americanizing the spellings of names is even more of a travesty. Friedrich Engels. Once I called him Frederick during a conversation with a coworker who came from Germany. Boy, did I get yelled at for that.

dave writes:

We are products of our times and place.

I am sorry to say that if I know any word that would be understandable beyond our borders it's becuase that word has entered into the the American idiom.

For neither foreign language or playing a musical instrument do I have what they used to call aptitude.

I barely understand this language. During English class I had very little idea as to what was going on. First train wreck of my educational career putting accents on words. So fucking arbitrary. "Say the word and listen to what syllable gets stressed." Duh!! Also is a word like "fire" one syllable or two? The dictionary pronunciation says one. I hear and say two, especially when the word is said with any sense of urgency.

Almost like the word bare. When you combine it with another word like bare ass I hear and say one syllable, but when said alone it becomes two almost like the name of the aspirin. This is decidedly more pronounced in New England.

Consequently I gave up all hope of ever even trying to figure that non-sense out.

As to pronunciations of place nems though I do know that they are very localized.

Houston Street in NYC: house ton. I used to think that it was an upperclass affectation to avoid saying the name of a city in Texas but actually it was "house ton" before Sam of Virginia wandered on south, even before Sam was born probably.

dave

Posted: 16 Apr 2007 12:40 am Post subject:

The moon orbits the earth. The Earth is inclined on its axis so that as the Earth orbits the sun, the sun and the plane of the Earth's equator coincide on the two days of the equinoxes.

Is the orbit of the moon on the same plane as the earth's equator or on the same plane of the earth's orbit around the sun?

In other words, does the moon rise and set at the same relative position on the horizon all of the time or does it track north and south with the sun?

Posted: 16 Apr 2007 07:33 am Post subject:

The earth-moon revolution is almost in the plane of the earth-sun revolution, about five degrees off. The earth's tilt is a lot bigger than that.

Since all these worlds originally coalesced out of the same accretion disk of dust and gas, and since angular momentum is conserved, all planets, moons and meteoroids in the solar system move in (approximately) the same plane, which is called the ecliptic. The exception is the Kuiper Belt, which is a band of thousands of ice balls, including Pluto and its moon Charon, that makes an obvious angle with the ecliptic.

Actually, the plane of the earth's equator changes; in other words, the axis through the poles wobbles (precesses). In our own time, that earth's axis points to the star Polaris (the end of the handle of the Little Dipper), which is why it's the "north star", the only star that's always in the same place in the sky, every hour of the night, and every night of the year. The wobble of the axis goes around in a circle with a period of something like 60,000 years.

There's no apparent pattern to angles of planetary axes. These angles were randomied by off-center collisions, like billiard balls that move crazy after they collide off-center. Uranus rotates completely sideways, "rolling" on its equator as it revolves around the sun.

Posted: 16 Apr 2007 07:41 am Post subject:

You know what's really neat - Jupiter's moon Io. It's almost entirely made of sulfur, inside and outside. A completely yellow world except for the red and black speckles from a little bit of impurities and oxides. It's the only other volcanically active world in the solar system besides the earth. It's so volcanically active that all of the locations and sizes of the mountains and valleys change almost every day. The volcanoes shoot out lava of molten sulfur. Gravity is so small that the lava shoots hundreds of miles into the sky. Now, is that neat or what?

Posted: 19 Apr 2007 12:18 pm Post subject:

So the moon rises and sets more north and south on the horizon as the change in the seasons? What is off 5 degrees? the plane of the earth sun revolution and the plane of the moon earth revolution? What would the totallity of that of that be at the horizon? The disk of either the sun or the moon as measured at the earths surface both are the same apparent size. they both appear to be about the size of a dime held at arm's length from your eyes. About a half of a degree as I recall. Then can the moon set approximately 10 apparent moon diameters either north or south of the sun. Or can it be more? I'm thinking more. It seems like many times more.

Posted: 19 Apr 2007 10:40 pm Post subject:

"What is off 5 degrees?" -- The angle of the moon's path around the earth compared to the plane that contains the sun and all of the planets. It's just a trivium that I remember, but I don't know what the total effect that we see is. I notice where the sun's arc in the sky is, but I never even looked to notice the moon's path. It seems to be all over the place. The earth's tilt also figures into it somehow. Two tilted rotating balls revolving around each other as the pair of them revolves around another ball: isn't that about four relative angles? Ow, that makes my head hurt.

Posted: 20 Apr 2007 09:05 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

I notice where the sun's arc in the sky is, but I never even looked to notice the moon's path. It seems to be all over the place. The earth's tilt also figures into it somehow. Two tilted rotating balls revolving around each other as the pair of them revolves around another ball: isn't that about four relative angles? Ow, that makes my head hurt.

dave writes:

It seems like that to me as well, but I am trying to understand why.

I'll have to see if I can dig it up. But what you seem to be saying is that the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the plane of the Moon's orbit around the Earth are 5 deg. to one another perpenduclar to their line of intersection I suppose. If the planes are so close why does the moon seem to be all over the place and not the sun. I must ponder this, or is it an illusion like the apparent sixe of the moon at the horizon compared with overhead?

Posted: 21 Apr 2007 12:23 am Post subject:

I hope the solar system's grievance committee doesn't bring me up on charges for suggesting this, but -- maybe the answer might pop up if you go to wikipedia and search on the word "moon"....

Posted: 21 Apr 2007 01:29 am Post subject:

Okay, let's try this, to see if it makes sense.

The rotation of the earth is the only obvious motion that produces the daily path of the sun across the sky. The earth's revolution of the sun also changes it, but not noticably from one day to the next. Noticably only if you check back in a few weeks or months.

The path of the moon across our sky is a superposition of two relatively short-period cycles - the earth rotating, and the moon revolving around the earth. So the path changes more noticably from one day to the next.

Posted: 21 Apr 2007 12:29 pm Post subject:

di you see the moon last evening. The cresent with the earth glowed rest of the moon? It's called the old moon in the arms of the new.

I never realized the relationship of the phase of the moon to the time of day we see it.

The moon rises and sets about 50 minutes later every day. A full moon rises as the sun sets, and as it wanes it rises about 50 minutes nearer to sunrise so when you see the moon rise after sunset it is a waning moon. When the moon sets after sunset it is a waxing moon.

my wife told me this. If you see a cresent moon draw an imaginary line from the lower horn to the upper horn and a little bit beyond. If it forms the lower case "b" the moon is being born. If it forms the letter "d" it is dying. You will only see the dying moon near sunrise.

I have to ponder what you say, may a chapter somewhere on nautical navigation would explain it better.

Have you ever read the book "longtitude"? It's about a contest set up by perhaps the English govt. to see who could come up with a devise by which to derive the observer's latitude.

Posted: 21 Apr 2007 07:36 pm Post subject:

"a contest set up by perhaps the English govt. to see who could come up with a devise by which to derive the observer's latitude" -- No, _longitude_. Latitude is the easy one. Just wait until the sun is the highest it's going to get for the day, and that has to be noon, then take a look at the sun through a sextant, read off that angle, look up that angle and the calendar date on a chart, and the chart tells you the latitude. Longitude is much harder, because it required knowing the time difference between noon where you are now and noon back home, and clocks were too inaccurate to maintain knowledge of when is it noon back home. So they offered a prize to inspire someone to invent a clock that would merely gain or lose a few minutes during a long trip, instead of gaining or losing a few hours.

There's that old materialist conception of history. Nothing spurs the development of science as fast as when industry needs it. Once traders need to navigate, or land sales need to be surveyed, now the advances in astronomy and mathematics really take off.

The book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel, I never read it, but I'm familiar with the author's style. I reviewed her book "Galileo's Daughter" in great detail for my science books web pages - http://www.crimsonbird.com/history/galileos-daughter.htm .

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 03:37 am Post subject:

yes I meant longtitude. Time keeping devices were neck and neck in the race with devices that could accurately enough discern the phase of the moon enough to be able discern "universal" time by it.

The clock guy, once he figured out that larger sized time pieces were not the way to go. made pretty good headway.

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 10:36 am Post subject:

They got stuck on the idea that they had to use a pendulum, and the swaying of a ship changes its frequency. Then someone realized that a spring also has a natural frequency, in fact, any time the force that restores a displacement to its central position is linearly proportional to the displacement, the mathematical solution is a sine wave. Once you have that, you have a clock.

Grrr! The SLP, when producing literature in PDF format, often sets the option to disable text-select-and-copy with a password lock. Why would they do that? To quote from their literature I have to capture screens to image files and then OCR them.

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 10:50 am Post subject:

a mass bouncing on a spring:

radian frequency omega = 2 pi f
in terms of spring constant k and mass m:
omega = sqrt (k/m)

derivation:

Newton's second law: F=ma = m x''
Hooke's law: restoring force F=-kx
therefore ma = -kx

assume sinusoidal solution: x = sin omega t
differentiate twice: x' = omega cos omega t; x'' = - omega^2 sin omega t
substitute into ma = -kx: m (- omega^2 sin omega t) = -k (sin omega t)
cancel the sin omega t and the "-": omega^2 m = k
solved: omega = sqrt (k/m)

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 01:03 pm Post subject:

mike wrote:

Grrr! The SLP, when producing literature in PDF format, often sets the option to disable text-select-and-copy with a password lock. Why would they do that? To quote from their literature I have to capture screens to image files and then OCR them.

dave writes:

I have not found that. Do you have the latest acrobat reader?

Send me the link of a pdf from them that you have had probs with and I will see if I have the same.

dave

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 01:08 pm Post subject:

Even with a spring, they figured that the most accurate stationary clockes were large clock so they treid to make them big. The larger they got, the closer they got to the natural frequencyies of the ship rolling and tossing in the water so thise motions would interfere. By going smaller and smaller the effect of ship movements were minimized.

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 02:01 pm Post subject:

I have 33 gb for my main drive. It is about full and I have no idea what is
on there that I can delete. I have gone throught the add delete programs
and taken off the obvious ones that I don't need but there seems to be a
whole lot more than the total of the program files on the disk. I went to staples to see
if there was a program that helped to identify files that could safely be
deleted or moved to another disk. Not much help. Most of what comes under
disk clean nowadays is to wipe your disk so no one else can read the files,
but not much on actual managmanet. I do go to disk clean on the system tools and
do all of the chores there, to little effect. I could get a larger hard
drive but I suspect that it wouldn't be that long before I had the same
problems but on a larger scale. What to do??

thanks
dave

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 08:02 pm Post subject:

Now I think what I said about the clock spring is irrelevant. Clocks don't use springs for oscillation, do they? I think they use them to take off elastic potential energy a little bit at a time by means of a ratchet.

Computer disk. If you want to delete something but not sure if it's safe, one strategy is to rename it and then let it sit there for a while. Old name software-utility, new name junk-backup-today's-date-software-utility. Go a few months without any problems? Then you can probably delete it. Other method - move it to a CD, in a directory of its own, make a read-me.txt file to remind yourself where it originally was: "the folder 'junk' on this cd was originally at location c:/windows/my program files/horseshit . Moved to cd on today's-date.

Now, as long as you don't do that to the files needed to boot-up, okay. How do you know if you need the files to boot up? This isn't completely safe, but a partial answer to that: look at the folder in 'my computer' and click view-details. This displays the file date. How old is the file? When was the computer purchased? Does the date tell you that the computer came with the file, or perhaps it got added years later. If you have automatic update turned on, even a file with a new date could be a system file, so there is still some danger. But don't touch files or olders where the date shows that it was there when the computer was first manufactured. Exception - folders named 'prodigy' or 'america online', etc. - I just say a few curse words and then delete them.

Are you familiar with your startup routines? In most cases you click start - run - type the word msconfig, hit enter, click startup. The checked boxes are the programs that load automatically when you boot. I see some Epson stuff, even thought I threw out my Epson printer years ago. That warns me that I probably have some junk on the disk, so I use search to find Epson, or see if the 'program files' directory has a subdirectory named epson.

Are you familiar with the registry? You can go into the registry editor just to look, not changing anything, because changing something can be dangerous if you don't know the effects. click start, run, type the word regedit, click enter. Open the folder named hkey_current_user. under that, open the folder named software. do NOT touch the delete key on your keyboard. See a bunch of brand names? I see adobe, canon, macromedia, etc. Also some brand names I don't recognize, which could mean that some spyware has gotten in there somehow.

One final thing. Now I'm looking in the directory c:\Documents and Settings\Lepore\Local Settings. It has subdirectories named "temp" and "temporary internet files." They didn't show up in 'my computer' at first because they are system folders, but i make them show by going into the 'local settings' folder, click tools, folder options, view, and checking the box 'show hidden files and folders.' Now these two folders show up in 'my computer'. I look at what files are in them. I see that the cleanup routine in system tools has failed to clean up the files in these temp directories. how do i know? click on the 'last modified' column header to sort by dates. I see a file "Walmart' and it's date is 2004. Hmm, my wife and kids must have been shopping online at walmart. I know I have done cleanups since then. The cleanup failed to remove this junk. I delete all such files. These temp directories only have cache purposes and are never essential.

Posted: 22 Apr 2007 10:41 pm Post subject:

I'm also using a USB external hard drive now. But only for backup of my c: drive, and also my daughter's computer's c: drive, not for offloading things that we want to save. The external drive was under $100 for about 180 Gbytes. I have spent so more than that on CD-RW's which have soft surfaces and only worked a few times before they became defective and I had to throw them away. The drive isn't super-fast, and it takes about four hours to copy the whole c: drive, so I drag everything from c: to e:, watch it start copying, and go away somewhere.

Posted: 23 Apr 2007 11:28 pm Post subject:

duh!! I found a 14 gb video file on the drive. Do you think that had anything to do with my problem?

dave

Posted: 28 Apr 2007 06:46 pm Post subject:

Posted: 29 Apr 2007 11:34 am Post subject:

I don't remember if I had posted this before or not, that I have started a yahoo discussion group to discuss Marx' Value Price and Profit. dave

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Marx-ValuePriceProfit/

Posted: 29 Apr 2007 04:19 pm Post subject:

I posted something in the new yahoo group last night.

Hey, you know what my web site needs? A feature on SLP history entitled "Embarrassing Moments". Let's see what it could cover. Petersen ravings about the greatness of the Bolshevik government. The expulsion of that dangerous renegade Nathan Pressman. The decision to take a stand against the war in Vietnam ... I mean the part about the war ending in 1973, and deciding to publicly take that anti-war stand around 1977. What else?

Posted: 29 Apr 2007 07:55 pm Post subject:

Some New De Leon editorials added to the site today:
http://www.deleonism.org/deleon-editorials.htm

Including [and why I chose them] ...

Uncle Sam and Brother Jonathan
one of those where De Leon point out that, sure, the capitalist works, in the same sense that a pickpocket works.

Father Gassioniana #19
I selected this because people say that nobody forces the worker to work for the capitalist. Explains that the force is in the nature of the age's tools: He says, "Toolless Man being the slave of Nature, it follows that the tool having come into existence, the toolless individual becomes the slave of the tool-holding individual."

"It Won't Happen"
Some speculation about whether a socialist society would have inheritance.

"Impregnable Socialism"
About the Law of Value.

Posted: 02 May 2007 09:12 pm Post subject:

Dave, for example, the pdf version of 'Two Pages from Roman History.'

http://slp.org/pdf/de_leon/ddlother/two_pages.pdf

Can you do either a save as txt or an edit > select all > copy? I can't do it. Adobe reader says: File > Document Properties ... Content copying or extraction: not allowed ... Security method: password

Posted: 03 May 2007 12:51 pm Post subject:

I didn't realize that they would not set it up so that it could be quoted. Have you notified them? Anyway, ocr it or get a pdf to text freeware program

http://www.tucows.com/preview/402625

Posted: 03 May 2007 03:17 pm Post subject:

Okay, I just downloaded that tucows freeware, and maybe in a couple days I'll get around to trying it.

As for notifying them, not in so many words, but sort of. When the National Secretary has suggested to me, why don't I just point all my links to literature to the SLP site, I told him it's because I like to be able to copy quotations, so therefore I'm converting my own files to plain text.

You said 'notify' as if to wonder if they knew about it. It never even occurred to me that they might not know. I had assumed it was a policy intended to prevent modified versions from getting into distribution.

To tell the truth, I do make some modifications. After scanning some transcripts of four of De Leon's public addresses, I deleted the bracked comments like [applause] and [laughter], because including them looks embarrassingly amateurish, and it's it's not part of what the speaker said.

Posted: 04 May 2007 10:01 pm Post subject:

In the future I intend to add more features about the history of the socialist movement.

I just added a long article -- Arnold Petersen, The Soil and Roots of the Socialist Labor Party (1940).
http://www.deleonism.org/cgi-bin/text.cgi?j=hd000003

Some crap in there, as he goes on and on about the politics of the Catholic Church, much of which is either irrelevant to the subject or could have been better presented with just a few concise sentences.

I added the article for the info about the old Socialistic with the -ic Labor Party.

Posted: 07 May 2007 05:07 pm Post subject:

Mike and Dave,

I am at the library again. My computer broke and so did my car--the wheel hub fell off while changing the brakes. The car came first for repairs and I will be on-line later on.

John T

Posted: 07 May 2007 10:28 pm Post subject:

John, you just can't stay away because I'm so adorable.

Posted: 12 May 2007 01:30 am Post subject:

What?

Actually, I can't stay away since I learned a lot here. You and Dave have been great in answering questions that I have asked. Cool

Posted: 20 May 2007 12:25 am Post subject:

Mike a while back you came up with a neat conversion of text resulting from OCR converting from txt into HTML and then back again to take the line breaks out of it. Do you recall what it was that you proposed? I can't make it work and it worked perfectly the last time that I used it after you had suggested it.

Posted: 20 May 2007 07:22 am Post subject:

Using notepad or wordpad, make an HTML file that can accomodate any text being inserted into it. Name the file something.htm or something.html. Display it in a browser, that is, typing the "web address" as c:\something.html , assuming it's in the root c: directory, or c:\your-folder-name\something.html if it's in a folder. Do a "select-all and copy" from the browser screen. The text without any line breaks will now be in your clipboard. "Paste" it to a new file.

Posted: 20 May 2007 07:36 am Post subject:

This should be faster, making it unnecessary to do the steps of select-copy-paste..... When looking at it in the browser, click on "file", "save as", "save as type: text file (*.txt)", file name: new-name.txt .

Posted: 20 May 2007 07:42 am Post subject:

If you need to do it many times, we can rig you up with a batch file to execute, to automatically insert the HTML stuff before and after the text, doing that every time you click an icon.

Posted: 29 May 2007 05:58 am Post subject:

I think this is interesting .. Arnold Petersen representing the SLP was apparently required to give a statement to the FBI in 1964 because Lee Harvey Oswald had written to the SLP to obtain literature. This document, part of the records of the Warren Commission.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/pdf/WH26_CE_3085.pdf

Posted: 29 May 2007 10:23 am Post subject:

No "chickens coming home to roost" there.

Posted: 15 Jun 2007 08:14 am Post subject:

I have no time to talk about socialism this week. Only enough time to follow all the forums discussing the symbolism in the last episode of The Sopranos.

Posted: 25 Jun 2007 07:36 pm Post subject:

Announcement: The PROFILE screen has a software bug. What did I do now? If you click profile, in order to change your email address or password, set a "signature", etc., you will see a blank white screen. That's like a photograph of a polar bear eating vanilla ice cream in a snowstorm. A white screen. Until I can find the problem and fix it, the only way to change your profile is to tell me to do it for you manually.

________________________________________________

HELP ... ANSWER NEEDED QUICKLY!

Do you know anything about wood finishing?

I have to do repairs to the flooring of the porch, which is pressure treated 2X6 pine. The insurance company (followng a "replacement cost" policy) will only pay to replace the demaged boards. I told them that I want to replace all of the boards on the floor (8 feet by 40 feet) because I would never be able to get a color match between new lumber and the adjacent old lumber that has been exposed to sunlight for twenty years as well as being treated with miscellaneous wood finishes over the twenty years. Then they suggested that they will pay for sanding the entire surface, so that all of it will be the color of new lumber, then all of the boards can be given the same wood finish simultaneously. My question is, will the new and twenty-year-old lumber really match after being sanded? (Also, I'm thinking about water pressure cleaning).

Posted: 27 Jun 2007 08:50 pm Post subject:

That's funny I was just down your way the day before yeasday and drove right up the Taconic past the exit for your pace. By the time I realized which one I should have gotten off it was to late. it was too damned hot to bother with doing anything about it so I jsy kept right on a going.

Now let me tell you just how to fix that problem:

You tear up what needs to be torn up, put down new, and then get an ice chest full of ice and put a half gallon of Jack Daniels right down in the middle of all that ice. Pull up a chair with the ice chest between you and the wood. Every 15 minutes drink one shot of Jack until you cannot see the difference between the old boards and the new. You may have to repeat this process for about three days in a row, but I guantee you after that you will not be able to notice the difference.

In truth, I would not do a damned thing but put down new boards and then when you go out, look at the new boards and not the old ones.

dave

Posted: 27 Jun 2007 10:01 pm Post subject:

I don't know anything about fixing the profile problem but sanding the new wood and old should have the same color. That is if the old wood is not faded too deep into the wood. Insurance companies just won't pay for entire replacements. It's a profit thing ya know.

Posted: 27 Jun 2007 10:18 pm Post subject:

I know the software problem now. On all of my domains, which share the same reseller account on one hosting company, (some) php files have lost their ability to detect parameter in url's. For example, if the url is program-name.php?xx=5 then when the program runs the variable named $xx should have the value 5. It still works for perl programs but now fails for (some) php programs. I reported it to the owner of the server.

Posted: 27 Jun 2007 10:22 pm Post subject:

You know that old joke about cutting hair, take a little more off the left side, then you have to take a little more off the right side, repeat until the person has no hair. I'm afraid I'll start doing that with wood stain. If one set of boards is too light and so I stain it, then it's too dark so I stain the other boards, then that's too dark so I add more stain to the first set of boards, and I keep repeating the process until all of the wood is black.

Posted: 30 Jun 2007 10:10 pm Post subject:

I think I finally fixed the problem with the "Profile" link.

Posted: 05 Jul 2007 12:13 am Post subject:

This month we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the July 1947 flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

Posted: 24 Sep 2007 12:27 am Post subject:

On October 4, 1957 - the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.

(It will also be my daughter Darcy's 19th birthday.)

Posted: 05 Nov 2007 09:47 pm Post subject:

My computer is in the repair shop. I'm on my teenage daughter's computer right now, but it's not convenient. I may be able to check in here a few times before I get my own machine back, but no guarantee.

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 04:56 pm Post subject:

Dave, did you see the revleft members discussing how much they hate the way you won't use the "quote" button?

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73535

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 05:03 pm Post subject:

My shopping list for getting my snowblower ready for the next few snowstorms:

vodka
rum
scotch
sambuca
peppermint schnapps
root beer schnapps
cinnamon schnapps
replacement auger axle bolt

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 06:35 pm Post subject:

That puts you right on completion schedule for mid-May. You old rascle, I know you too well.

Posted: 09 Jan 2008 01:45 am Post subject:

Before I forget, let me wish you people a happy National Gorilla Suit Day (January 31).

[Created in 1964 by Don Martin writing for MAD magazine]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=national+gorilla+suit+day

Posted: 10 Jan 2008 05:40 pm Post subject:

How about that Jerry Springer show? When the woman in the raccoon costume was fistfighting with the woman in the alligator costume over the affections of the man in the dolphin costume, they kept crashing into the the juggler and making him drop all of his dishes.

Posted: 11 Jan 2008 08:34 am Post subject:

Mike's diary --

What things did I buy today from Williams' Lumber Store?

Makita cordless drill, $119.99
6-inch Phillips driver bit, $5.99
5-gallon gasoline can, $16.99
hex nuts 1/4-20, quantity 12, 35 cents each
stop nuts 1/4-20, quantity 12, 12 cents each
70W spiral fluorescent bulbs,5-pack, $12.99
4-pack, 60W incandescent bulbs, $1.79
65 W indoor flood lamps, quantity 4, $2.99 each
12-pack, kitchen cabinet shelf brackets, $2.99
aluminum/vinyl door weather strip, $5.99

Observation: Although the digit "9" appeared in the prices too frequently to be explained by chance, and although price fixing is a felony, the police did not make any arrests.

Posted: 22 Jan 2008 08:49 pm Post subject:

Mike,

Is there a way to download all of the pdf files from a certain directory on the net?

http://humanservices.vermont.gov/boards-committees/hsb/decisions/FH-10002%20Order.pdf

Is there a way to download:

"http://humanservices.vermont.gov/boards-committees/hsb/decisions/FH-*Order.pdf"?

Posted: 22 Jan 2008 11:12 pm Post subject:

I could easily write you a dos batch file that would do it. I would also have to include a little utility program called graburl.exe that can download any file from anywhere, size 34K.

Posted: 22 Jan 2008 11:36 pm Post subject:

If you could do that I would highly appeciate it.

Also, it looks like at the SLP myspace page that they took down the ability to post new topiscs. I looked to post a new one after posting one last week and don't see the option available.

Thank you.

Posted: 23 Jan 2008 05:58 am Post subject:

http://www.mathmistakes.com

interesting site

Posted: 23 Jan 2008 06:17 am Post subject:

Okay, this will download all 2,155 pdf files in that web location.

This can't be used as-is on any other directory because it includes only the specific file names for this directory. In other words, there's no "wild card" asterisk character available.

Make a new empty directory on your own machine for these items.

Download the following three files by clicking the right mouse button and then and selecting "save target as" for each of these three lines:

http://www.deleonism.org/temp/dave.bat
http://www.deleonism.org/temp/test.bat
http://www.deleonism.org/temp/graburl.exe

On your machine, go into that directory with windows explorer.

Double-click on test.bat . This will download only the first three pdf files as a test to verify that the method works.

Did three new pdf documents just appear in windows explorer? Does clicking them makes the documents display correctly in the pdf reader? If so, the method works. Then you can go ahead download everything.

Double-click on dave.bat
That will download all 2,155 files.

(You may also want to save a copy of graburl.exe in a permanent place because you may find it useful for lots of things in the future. It allows your machine to download anything on the web, whether it's file type txt htm gif jpg pdf mov mp3 or any other, as long as the webmaster didn't set the permissions to block the action.)

Posted: 23 Jan 2008 06:44 am Post subject:

Posted: 23 Jan 2008 09:44 pm Post subject:

Try this link instead of the math mistakes link I gave

http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/glossary1.htm

YES the program worked jst fine. I was able to find the info that I was looking for.

Thank you.

Posted: 24 Jan 2008 02:36 am Post subject:

I'm a good computer hacker, huh? I was just looking at Norad's launch codes for the nuclear missiles. Is that all the president is required to do?

Posted: 24 Jan 2008 02:56 am Post subject:

The star Serius, to find it go to the constallation Orion and then it's slightly down and to the left. Serius is the brightest star in the sky. Saying this confuses some people because Venus is the brightest object in sky (after the sun and moon, of course). But Venus is a planet and not a star. Damn, I miss smoking the pipe the most after I've had a few drinks. I'm going to stick to my vow to avoid smoking, but I can definitely feel the sacrifice. And that reminds me of a joke ....

Posted: 24 Jan 2008 03:08 am Post subject:

A monk joins monestery where they take a vow of silence. They're allowed to say just two words every seven years. For seven years, he doesn't say a word. Then the headmaster of the monestery calls him into the office and tells him that he may say two words. He says "bad food." The boss says, "Okay, I'll look into that. No promises." Not a word is spoken for the next seven years. After the monk has been there for a total of fourteen years, the boss tells him that he can say two more words. He says, "Cold floor." The boss replies," Um, okay, I'll report that cold floor thing, not sure if they can do anything about it, but thanks." Then not another word is spoken for the next seven years. In the monk's twenty-first year at the monestery, the boss tells him that he may say two words. The monk says, "I quit." The boss says, "So, you're quitting, eh? Well, I''m not surprised. Ever since you got here, you've done nothing but complain."

Posted: 24 Jan 2008 03:21 am Post subject:

So you remember my old mountain hikin' and campin' buddy Bryce, I just found out that he retired after being the head of the mathematics department at the New York Military Academy for twenty years, and then he started a new position with the mathematics department at Marist College. The rapport I always had with Bryce was unusual in that we didn't agree about social issues so much, and he thought my socialism was nuts, but we shared a strange selection of topics, like conversing about the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles.

Posted: 24 Jan 2008 04:53 am Post subject:

A thousand thanks, "mil gracias", for the pointer to http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/glossary1.htm. Yes, there's a lot there to chew on.

Posted: 26 Jan 2008 02:02 pm Post subject:

Mike I tried to set up a new account as a test of the latest procedures. All went fine, I typed in the access code and got a message that the activation link was being emailed to me at my yahoo address. I have waited several minutes and nothing has come in so far. I will check it later today.

Posted: 26 Jan 2008 02:58 pm Post subject:

an hour later still nothing

Posted: 26 Jan 2008 06:46 pm Post subject:

Let's give it more time. Let me know. If it never comes please try another name. It's possible that my host had a rare failure for a few seconds.

Unfortunately it doesn't keep a record of the mailing of the confirmation request. Nothing logged out that I can look at.

Using another browser I registered a test account and received the confirmation request a few seconds.

Posted: 27 Jan 2008 05:50 pm Post subject:

I tested it two more times. I can't see any problem with it.

Posted: 28 Jan 2008 12:52 pm Post subject:

maybe it didn't like sending to an existing emal address. I will check it some other time. Thanks, Dave.

Posted: 07 Feb 2008 04:25 pm Post subject:

I'm multitasking: watching the preparations for the shuttle launch at www.nasa.gov [one of the few web sites where typing the www is required], on TV the movie Gun Street [1961], figuring out the chords to Sweet Betsy From Pike on my daughter's electric piano, and watching the beautiful ice storm out the window, with long ice droopies hanging from the needles of the fir trees.

Posted: 08 Feb 2008 03:41 pm Post subject:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/4-sweet-betsy-from-pike/1449419939

Posted: 08 Feb 2008 03:41 pm Post subject:

I am not trying to avoid being here but one thing I am trying to do is get people interested in this website and discussion. It's really ironic that people would rather talk about what movie or rock star did or said rather than discussing social change or socialism.

John T.

Posted: 08 Feb 2008 10:41 pm Post subject:

I've done nothing to promote this site. I've never distributed any announcements. If I wasn't so lazy we would probably have a big gang here.

You oughta hear me play that song with the electric keyboard on the "pipe organ" setting.

Now that's a total of three songs I can play on the piano: The Internationale, Nantucket Sleighride, and Sweet Betsy From Pike.

Here's a trivia question. See if you guys know the answer without looking it up. When a space flight lifts off from Cape Canaveral, after its tail end gets away from the launch pad tower, why does the guy with the microphone always say "tower clear", "we have cleared the tower", or something like that? I know the real answer.

Posted: 08 Feb 2008 10:52 pm Post subject:

I was informed that a new documentary film about Pete Seeger is scheduled to be aired on PBS on the night of February 27.

Posted: 09 Feb 2008 03:42 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 09 Feb 2008 04:22 pm Post subject:

I will now reveal the answer to my trivia question.

The job of the people who work at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida goes up to the point when the engines have started properly and the vehicle leaves the launch pad. When they guy says it has cleared the tower, the job of the people in Florida is done. At that moment, the entire responsibility is switched over to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Kinda like when the political mandate for socialism marks the end of control of industry by the capitalist corporations and the beginning of control by the workers' organizations.

Maybe Dave's proposed amendment should just say, "We have cleared the tower!"

Posted: 09 Feb 2008 04:30 pm Post subject:

I just notice strange connections. Did you ever notice -- Betethoven's 5th symphony begins "dit dit dit dahhhhhh", and that sound of three short tones followed by one long tone is the Morse code for the letter V, and V is the Roman numeral for 5. I was about ten years old when I noticed that. Creepy, huh?

Posted: 09 Feb 2008 04:39 pm Post subject:

I did not know that and that was interesting to learn. I've been over at Noahide Nations forum since I am a Noahide:

http://www.noahidenations.com/content/index.php

They got more people that post than here but yet no one posts that often. The forum will sit for months without a post. I made a bunch of post there. Some deal with the SIU and others relating to topics at hand. I've been getting a few responses. Let's see what happens. Very Happy

John T.

Posted: 10 Feb 2008 09:10 am Post subject:

What is Noahide -- religious theory?

Posted: 11 Feb 2008 03:14 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 11 Feb 2008 10:18 pm Post subject:

Is Noahide a particular religious group, the same way we could speak of Hasidic or Lutheran, etc.? What's the word -- denomination?

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 02:02 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 08:09 pm Post subject:

Is this your own guide to action? Are you cautious to refrain from worshipping idols and so forth, by keeping the list of laws in mind?

Posted: 13 Feb 2008 04:00 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 05:43 am Post subject:

but then you could ask, is the "creator" that is being worshiped simply the messenger of another creator, and so on. Definitional religions by their very nature are subject to logical flaw - is it a (the) deity that is being exaulted or the definitional system? But whatever floats a person's boat pretty much is fine by me for that person.

Dave

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 01:02 pm Post subject:

Interesting point Dave but the Jews and other monotheist would say that there is no other creator. Messengers are just messengers and that all that we see, hear, taste, and touch are nothing more than messages received. The belief is that G-d is formless and lives outside of space and time which is what they believe hence no image of Him could be created and worshiped. Another interesting thing is that most people have the idea that we were fashioned after G-d's personage. In Judaism He is actually formless. The say that man's human form was based on the angel's form which come in a variety different shapes. What does it mean that we are created in G-d's image. This is the best answer that I found...
The statement that we are created in the image of G‑d means that we were formed as a reflection of His G‑dly attributes and characteristics. This cannot be taken to mean that we literally look, feel or think like G‑d does, because He has no form and is not limited in any way. Rather we are like a one dimensional reflection of a real object.

John T.

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 02:14 pm Post subject:

John:

Interesting point Dave but the Jews and other monotheist would say that there is no other creator.

dave:

That's just it, all anyone can do is to say and to belive that what is said The worship part - is that worship of THE creator or of what appears to be a creator, or you think or belive is a creator. You never can know except that you believe (or not) so. ISTM anyway.

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 02:20 pm Post subject:

In response to a whole lot of crabbing at the socialistsunmoderated list I have set up a yahoo list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SocialistsModerated

I have it set that anyone can post but that the messages have to be individually approved by me.

Mike and Joh, would you please #1 see if you can post to the list from a non-yeahoo address. And if you can't please set up a a yahoo account foryourselves and start occassionally posting to that list.

You can look at the archives of the group so you don't have to sign up for the posts to go direcly to you address ( I think)

TY
Dave

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 03:18 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 07:04 pm Post subject:

Dave, I registered just now. I have a yahoo address for posting forums, but don't email me there. You want a post but I don't have anything to say just now. You say something I'll answer it.

John, why do you say it's overrun? It says total number of posts so far: zero.

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 07:21 pm Post subject:

Oh, I'm sorry I was looking below in politics and government which has a lot of posts. I now see there is no messages. I am not use to this other than message forums. Now what to write? Shocked

John

Posted: 14 Feb 2008 10:09 pm Post subject:

Hmm - I don't know what that 'politics and government' thing is. It looks like random messages yanked out of somewhere else.

Posted: 15 Feb 2008 12:26 am Post subject:

Thank you John and Mike. Mike what I was getting at is for you to try to post something to the post address from a NON yahoo account and see if it works, or does it have to be from a yahoo address?

dave

Posted: 15 Feb 2008 06:11 pm Post subject:

A post to a yahoo group never has to come from a yahoo address. What matters is whether the address is joined (subscribed) and whether the list is set to require the post to come from a joined address.

I think your first post to the group has those confused. First you said you want a test post from a non-joined address, then you said you want a test post from a non-yahoo address. Those are two separate things.

I don't want to post by mail because I don't want yahoo to know my primary email address, which they would automatically detect from the FROM header.

Posted: 16 Feb 2008 11:44 am Post subject:

I have no idea what you are talking about, joined non joined etc. But I see why you don't want to post from your primary address. I thought that you had the ability to make up a junk account?

Anyway, would you post to the list, in a non-yahoo addess if you have that ability, in a yahoo address if you don't an explaination that clears up the confusion in my post that you refer to?

Thanks,

Today is Patty and my 23rd wedding aniversery. I've neve done anything for 23 years except breathe.

Posted: 16 Feb 2008 11:53 am Post subject:

This is the text of a motion that I recently put before the Rutland District Court. It's just an indication of what has preoccupied my mind for the last two and one half years:

++++++++++

Defendant’s Application for Declaration of Mistrial

To the Honorable William Cohen:

Violation of Right to an Attorney

In February 2007 during the course of the underlying trial I asked for a postponement in order to obtain an attorney. The court would only give me a one week postponement with the requirement that the attorney that I did obtain be ready for the resumption of the trial at the end of that one week. During that week I wrote to the court explaining the difficulty that I was having because of the court’s requirement that the attorney be trial ready at the end of the week, and requested additional postponement which the court failed to grant.

In court, at the end of the one week, I again explained my difficulty in obtaining council given the court’s requirement that any attorney that I did obtain be trial ready on that scheduled day. The court again would not grant a postponement. I was forced to proceed without an attorney during that session of court. *

Remarkably after that last session in February 2007 the court did not reschedule the remainder of the trial until August 2007, and that was for a trail date of November 15, 2007. The court then scrubbed that trail date apparently just the day before because the court had doubled booked my case with a jury trial.

It is now mid-February 2008, no trial has been held, and a case conference has been scheduled for March 20, 2008.

Two things are very inconsistent here – the court’s insistence that I have only one week to be back in court with an attorney ready at the end of that time to proceed with the remainder of the trial – and the court’s subsequent allowing the case to languish on its back burner mid-trial for almost a year.

This discrepancy very strongly suggests that in fact there was no justice directed underpinning for the court’s mandate that I return to court with a trial ready attorney in just 7 days, that it was an abuse of discretion.

In anticipation of any “waiver” argument that the prosecutor may raise: where the admonishment of the court was that I was entitled to an attorney at any stage of the proceedings – that admonishment must be taken at face value. It must be taken to mean that a defendant can waive assistance of counsel during one portion of a trial but can resurrect that right at a subsequent portion of that same trial. I invoked my right to an attorney even prior to the beginning of the defense case. The court determined that I was entitled to obtain an attorney at that point. The court could not without abusing discretion condition that right upon me showing up just 7 days later with an attorney who was trial ready for a trial in progress, especially when it was a bench trial. It would be of no matter whatsoever that I may have in fact have done a decent job during the portion of the trial that I was made to proceed without an attorney. Where the constitutional right to an attorney is concerned a showing of actual prejudice is not required. **

Violation of Right to a Reasonably Continuous Trial

The case is almost entirely a contest of memory based witnesses testimony. Even assuming that a judge as trier of fact might have the professional ability to pick up a case mid-trail after a year’s intermission – that assumption cannot apply to witnesses upon which the trial depends.

The complaining witness gave her direct testimony in December 2006, gave cross-examination testimony and defense direct testimony in February 2007. During February 2007 the prosecution had other witnesses give direct testimony which was subjected to cross examination during the same session.

After the court announced that the only additional witness that the defense would be able to call was myself, the court adjourned without date. As previously described the court in August 2007 scheduled the trial to resume November 15, 2007. But that day was bumped because there was a jury trial scheduled for the same time that did not settle. On October 23, 2007 I even wrote to the court in regard to the unnecessary delay.

If the trial did resume, defense would be presenting its witness(es) at least a full year later than the prosecution presented its witnesses. There must be at least a presumption that this one year difference between the time of the testimony of the prosecution witnesses and defense witness would be prejudicial to the defense because of reasonably expected deterioration of the clarity of recall during that time. Normally when an entire trial is delayed at least there is a balance in that the prosecution’s witnesses are subject to the same delay. That would not be the case when the court hears prosecution witnesses at one point and hears defense witnesses over a year later.

The Vermont constitution prohibits unnecessary delay. In this case there has been over a year of unnecessary delay of a trial in progress, all but one week attributable to the failure of the court the schedule a timely trial.

Conclusion

The court allowing just seven days for me to appear with an attorney ready for the resumption of the trial, one the one hand, and the court thereafter allowing the case to languish on the docket mid-trial for over a year, on the other, presents a record such that under no circumstances could a possible guilty verdict be upheld upon appeal. The only appropriate remedy at this point would be the declaration of a mistrial, which I respectfully demand

Dated February 11, 2008

David A. Searles

*During that session the court made two additional errors prejudicial to the defense:
#1 the court would not allow me to call any of the witnesses that I had subpoenaed who had already testified for the prosecution, except for the complaining witness (and that ruling was not made until after I had finished with the complaining witness). #2 the court ruled, essentially out of the blue, that when the case did resume that the defense would be able to call no more witnesses except for myself if I chose to testify.

**However I was certainly prejudiced by not knowing, as apparently a lawyer may have, that the court more than likely would not allow me to call prosecution witness as defense witnesses, or that the under the circumstances that the court would not allow me to call any additional defense witnesses other than myself.

Posted: 16 Feb 2008 03:35 pm Post subject:

That is a lot to worry about Dave. BTW, I have no idea what to post on the SP Moderated Forum unless you want to start off with your Constitutional Amendment and build on that. Very Happy

John T.

Posted: 16 Feb 2008 07:12 pm Post subject:

Dave, it's good that you can do legal work like that. Most people would have trouble just writing a business letter to Land's End about a defective shirt, and here you know how to write legal briefs and file appeals.

The most complicated thing I ever did was to be a plaintiff in Small Claims, in the case of Lepore versus {the guy's name}'s Auto Body.

When I say "joined" in reference to a yahoo group, I mean the individual has clicked on the button that says "Join this group". Then yahoo software replies something like, "Okay, you can join. Do you want to read the group messages online or do you want to have them mailed to you? If you say mailed, what address do you want to use? If it's one of the following addresses that we already have on file for you, select it, or add a new email address to be associate with your log-in. By the way we will spam you to death unless you turn off the check mark in the following box." (That's not their exact words)

Posted: 17 Feb 2008 01:07 pm Post subject:

John, yes go ahaed and start discussing the amendment proposal. I'll follow. Mike, Now I seem to understand. A person can join a yahoo list even if they do not have a yahoo account, is this right?

Dave

Posted: 17 Feb 2008 05:06 pm Post subject:

Actually I followed your post. Could you, would you post what that Amendment is so that it is there in black and white.

Posted: 17 Feb 2008 05:48 pm Post subject:

Posted: 19 Feb 2008 04:48 pm Post subject:

Dave, could you, would you post that Constitutional Amendment here. I've been searching for it and I cannot find it. Better yet have it in your sig.

John T.

Posted: 20 Feb 2008 03:45 pm Post subject:

Thanks Dave for posting the Amendment Proposal. I have made use of these discussions and have posted the proposal over at the Noahide forum which has 86 views now and one response. I am hoping to dispel the myth that Socialism is totalitarian. There is one who thinks slavery should be legal again so the slave can pay off his/her debt and earn their freedom. Rolling Eyes

Hopefully we can get people excited about the Proposal to the Constitution, the SIU and how democratic Socialism would truly be.

However, I don't think there would be very many Noahides who would join the SP-USA due to some things that the SP stand for or demands. The economic issue may attract Noahides to Socialism but the moral aspect would dampen anyone from joining. I won't join. I would like to see things more concentrated on the economic side of things but I know thats not gonna happen. I do think social issues have to be dealt with by the people at large but to make them a mandate for a political platform needs to be reconsidered. That's my opinion.

John T.

Posted: 21 Feb 2008 05:03 am Post subject:

I was outside in the cold for four hours, taping the lunar eclipse with my camcorder.

Posted: 21 Feb 2008 11:33 am Post subject:

As of now it is -4 degrees F. I know it has to be a lot colder up there where you are at. Were you, by any chance, singing "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd while shivering? Razz

Posted: 21 Feb 2008 11:44 pm Post subject:

No, I was singing that old song by Dean Martin ....

When the moon hits your eye
like a big pizza pie,
That's amore.
When the world seems to shine
like you've had too much wine,
That's amore.
Bells will ring,
ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling,
And you'll sing Vita Bella.
Hearts will play,
tippy-tippy-tay, tippy-tippy-tay,
Like a gay tarantella.

Posted: 24 Feb 2008 06:17 pm Post subject:

Average daily temperture at a location is defined as the mean of the high and low temperatures for that day.

Assume you have a thermometer accurate to one degree.

Hi 80, low 70, mean 75.

Hi 80, low 69, mean 74.5?

does this violate the rules of significant digits? In one respect it does but in another, when I know that the person did not attempt to measure beyond the extent of the thermometer, it seems justifed.

And do we presume that when we read a typical liqid in a glass tube thermometer that the measurement is accuate plus or minus a half degree?

How about averging the averge temperatures over a year, with such a large sample, doesn't it seem justifed to report the average in tenths?

Something like saying that the typical household has 2.4 children. Of course we know that no one has .4 of a child and the 4 tenths does seem justifed if your are talking about calculatinghow many children there will be in a a large sampe like children in a school district.

Posted: 24 Feb 2008 09:17 pm Post subject:

Hahaha - there's really an organization called CRAP - the acronym of the Communist Revolutionary Action Party.

http://communistrevolutionaryactionparty.blogspot.com/

Posted: 25 Feb 2008 12:07 am Post subject:

You know what's useful? http://answers.yahoo.com/
Ask any question at all, and people will often answer it within a few minutes.

Posted: 03 Mar 2008 08:44 pm Post subject:

This is odd, the New Union Party has stopped using that name, and yet they are still buying advertising under that name. A google ad, as of today, says:

Posted: 05 Mar 2008 03:48 am Post subject:

Sick sense of humor? youtube video: Wendy's hamburger advertisement: Soviet fashion show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAKtYGJZSM

Posted: 05 Mar 2008 04:10 pm Post subject:

Sick? Aw, c'mon Mike it was funny. What was more funny was the Leninist response.

Posted: 05 Mar 2008 11:31 pm Post subject:

I found that humorous youtube link in the "trashcan" area at revleft. Someone started a thread to post the link and a moderator immediately trashcanned it. Now we know where to find goodies at revleft -- by looking through the material that moderators judged to be unacceptable. Hey, that's also the say the mass media was in the USSR -- the banned ideas were the ideas worth checking out. There are several ways in which the administration of revleft is similar to the administration of the USSR.

Posted: 06 Mar 2008 09:26 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 06 Mar 2008 08:44 pm Post subject:

I came across this while looking through the Sci Fi channel website. I always did enjoy Star Trek and lo and behold there is an few independent film makers who are filming episodes.

http://www.starshipfarragut.com/

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

I was surprised that the New Voyages had a few of the original Star Trek personnel like Sulu and Chekov playing themselves.

John T.

Posted: 06 Mar 2008 09:42 pm Post subject:

Wow, those are great! I've been a Star Trek fan since the original series. I didn't know people could make productions like that "as long as no one profits", and it's surprising to see that people are doing all that work. I'll have to download all their files soon.

Posted: 08 Mar 2008 08:48 pm Post subject:

Oh, no - another thing to distract me. I found a place called physicsforum.com where I can talk to people about the sciences. I just spent about three days over there.

Posted: 13 Mar 2008 06:54 pm Post subject:

At the Yahoo Group: Socialist Moderated, there are questions asked at the bottom of the page which asks "Questions in Politics." I thought why not and answered a few of the questions. It's just incredible that the number of questions asked always refer to Liberals as Socialist or Obama and Hilary being Socialist. So, I pointed out that error and try to explain what De Leonist Socialism was. I got very few thumbs up but many thumbs down. I also noticed a lot of racist were answering along with Republicans and Libertarians. Did it do any good to explain? No not one bit. I think way too many common people in the U.S. have a daily diet of AM radio talk shows and Fox News. I also noticed that those employed tend to blame other workers, those out of work and getting assistance, and those with disabilities as being the "real" problem rather than the the practices of Capitalism in which they try to defend.

John T.

Posted: 13 Mar 2008 08:21 pm Post subject:

Sometimes I feel that I'm not the same species as other people. Being told someone else's opinion a thousand times doesn't make me even a tiny bit more likely to believe it. I take an argument apart into its assumptions and its reasoning, and either I agree or I disagree. Maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong, but either way it's not based on how many times I have heard it said. But what the hell is wrong with everybody? If the media tells people something over and over, that's all that is required for them to believe it. In the news reports on some armed group fighting for a cause, if the media calls those people freedom-fighters a thousand times then the public believes they're freedom-fighters, but if the media calls them terrorists a thousand times then the public believes they're terrorists. If the media tells people "you are interested in hearing about Ashley Simpson's nose job", then they obey and they are therefore interested in Ashley Simpson's nose job. Either people will start to think for themselves or there can be no, i repeat: no -- no further social progress -- people can continue live under the threat of war and fascism and poverty for the next million years.

Posted: 28 Mar 2008 10:12 pm Post subject:

Here is a very simple math puzzle. See if you can solve it!

It drove me crazy for about an hour before I figured it out!

Three kids go to a candy store. Each kid has 10 cents. The sign says, "candy bar, 30 cents." The three kids combine their money, buy the candy bar, and divide the candy equally. Then the cashier realizes that the price of the candy bar was supposed to be changed today to 25 cents. The cashier has overcharged the kids by 5 cents, and is supposed to refund 5 cents to them. But how can he refund 5 cents to three kids? He decides to do this with the 5 cent refund: give each of the three kids a penny, and pocket the other 2 cents for himself. Now let's account for all of the money. Each kid has paid 10 cents, but got a penny back, so each kid has paid 9 cents. Since there are three kids, and each one paid 9 cents, the kids altogether paid 9X3=27 cents. Adding that 27 cents that the kids paid to the 2 cents that the cashier pocketed, that's a total of 29 cents. The mystery is: why doesn't it add up to 30? Where did the other penny go?

If you give up, I'm putting my solution online here:
http://crimsonbird.com/lepore/puzzle-answer.htm

Posted: 30 Mar 2008 09:21 pm Post subject:

I'm not saying I can't do math but me and numbers don't get along. I do really well with words and grammar but I never could figure out why I had such a hard time with numbers. There was may a time I understood directions and how the calculations would go but every time I would miss an addition or subtraction of a number in the process and get the wrong answer.

Over the months I have improved on playing the bass guitar and have picked up on reading the music for it. I still have a long ways to go but I'm getting there. Very Happy

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 02:51 am Post subject:

I'm careless with math. I generally know how to set up what I want to solve, even with some tough science and engineering problems, but then I'll write 8 times 6 is 86 or some damn thing.

I took classical guitar lessons for ten year, from ages 7 to 17. You ever hear some Bach on the guitar? But then I forgot a lot of it! Now I even have some difficulty reading sheet music if it's not in the key of C.

Now I'm trying to teach myself to play the keyboard, but I can still only play three songs.

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 03:05 am Post subject:

The kids paid 27 cents for a 25 cent candy bar, The two cents that the clerk pocketed was from this differnce.

Something like surplus value. It's not the easiest to see it right off.

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 06:51 am Post subject:

Dave - the challenge is: how do you now take account of everything in such a way that you have the sum 30 that they came in the door with?

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 10:52 am Post subject:

They tendered 30 cents and were given change of three cents. They effectively were charged 27 cents for something that was priced 25 cents. (Item price 25 cents. 2 cents to the clerk.) 3 cents in change from the 30 cents. 25 + 2 + 3 = 30

The 2 cents (commission) is part of the 27 cents the kids ultimately were charged.

It's a false premise question - the supposition that somehow the two cents is supposed to span the three cent difference between what was tendered (30 cents) and what the ultimate price was (27 cents).

Very good exercise. I wouldn't doubt that it came from a logic textbook.

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 04:14 pm Post subject:

Last day of March and I still made a fire in the wood stove this morning. Cold in here when I woke up.

Right. For some reason people will keep trying to add the 27 to the 2, instead of adding the 27 to the 3. I think this puzzle it's related to "leading" questions. You can make people believe something false just by asking questions in a certain way.

I once saw a documentary about this. In an experiment, they asked people questions like: "In that video we played for you last month, when you saw the part where the truck hit the building, can you remember whether the truck was blue or green, to settle a disagreement about what color it was?" -- Then people would then "remember" which of those colors "saw" -- But the correct answer would have been: the video didn't show any truck hitting any building, it only showed some people who spoke about it.

It's scary the things people can do with other people's minds.

Posted: 31 Mar 2008 09:49 pm Post subject:

The felony trial is Friday. Looks good but I don't want to get over-confident.

I'm starting to wonder if my friends in the SP are 1000th as interested in the amendment proposal as I am as a way of drumming up interest.

Possible plan B.

As the name of an idependent nominating committee:

Commonwealth Party?

Industrial Commonwealth Party?

Or how about ----

Labor Commonweath Party?

Article Five Party?

Constitution Party is taken.

American Delta Party????

For the moment I am in love with this name. Seems like I should get an old blues guitar and head out on the road! American Δ !!

But using the symbol won't work becuase it looks like a slice of pie and we might get in trouble with Don McClean but then again his is American Π so why not take American Δ?

Posted: 02 Apr 2008 06:08 am Post subject:

495 years of DeLeonism in America

How shall we celebrate?

4/2/08

On this date in 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in present-day Florida.

Posted: 03 Apr 2008 06:27 am Post subject:

Here's an interesting thingy. The lawyers for Pathfinder Press, publishing department of the so-called Socialist Workers Party (U.S.), wrote to marxists.org and demanded removal of certain texts on which Pathfinder owns the copyright. I found this out a few weeks ago when I went to look at George Novack's 1942 book, 'Introduction to the Logic of Marxism', and found that it contained only the table of contents and a notice that the text had to be removed.

But here is another site that contains copies of the letters exchanged between the ambulance-chasers and marxism.org, and also contains the deleted texts, all available in a zip file for convenient downloading.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1602/textosmarxistas/trottext/trottext.html

Posted: 03 Apr 2008 04:03 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the head ups on this and I did download and unzip those files which some was interesting to see. I have to go but I thought this was interesting what Trot had wrote:

Only the conscious and organized working class can send a strong representation into the halls of parliament to look out for proletarian interests.

Posted: 05 Apr 2008 01:03 pm Post subject:

4/4/08 5:00 p.m. Rutland District Court
State of Vermont v. David Searles

On the felony count of assault with a dangerous weapon, the jury found not guilty.

On the misdemeanor count of assault, the jury found not guilty.

Posted: 05 Apr 2008 05:05 pm Post subject:

I am very glad that things went really well Dave. I won't be posting for a few days. I am putting in some hours a work.

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:24 am Post subject:

from: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/a-numbers-guy-quiz-on-probability-313/?mod=fpa_blogs

1. Suppose 1,000 athletes are tested for drugs. One in 10 have used the drugs, and the test has a 1% false-positive rate (and the false-negative rate is negligible). If an athlete from this group tests positive, what is the probability that she has used the drugs, to the nearest percentage point?

2. You know that a certain family has two children, and that at least one is a girl. But you can’t recall whether both are girls. What is the probability that the family has two girls — to the nearest percentage point?

3. You know that a certain family has two children, and you remember that at least one is a girl with a very unusual name (that, say, one in a million females share), but you can’t recall whether both children are girls. What is the probability that the family has two girls — to the nearest percentage point?

4. In baseball, suppose the American League champion is better than the National League champion, such that it has a 55% probability of winning each game against the NL champ. Then the NL champ nonetheless will win a best-of-seven-games series four in 10 times. What is the smallest odd number, X, for which a World Series between these two league champs that is best-of-X will ensure that there’s a 95% probability of a just result — the superior AL champ winning?

5. Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind each of the other two, a cow. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, to reveal a cow. He then says to you, “Do you want to change your choice to door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice, assuming you prefer cars to cows?

6. Suppose that 60% of eligible voters in Scranton, Pa., prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. If you randomly select five of these prospective voters and they tell you their true preferences, what is the probability that exactly three of these five support Clinton?

7. In a large set of financial data — for instance, the revenue of Fortune 500 companies in each of the last 50 years — what proportion of the financial figures should you expect to begin with the digit 1, to the nearest 5 percentage points?

8. Which number is greater, the number of six-letter English words having “n” as their fifth letter or the number of six-letter English words ending in “ing”?

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:28 am Post subject:

1. Suppose 1,000 athletes are tested for drugs. One in 10 have used the drugs, and the test has a 1% false-positive rate (and the false-negative rate is negligible). If an athlete from this group tests positive, what is the probability that she has used the drugs, to the nearest percentage point?

DAS: This looks too simple. I say 99%. If a person tested posiive there is a 1% chance that it is false positive so the reamining 99% are correct. It seems to me.

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:30 am Post subject:

2. You know that a certain family has two children, and that at least one is a girl. But you can’t recall whether both are girls. What is the probability that the family has two girls — to the nearest percentage point?

DAS:

50%

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:32 am Post subject:

3. You know that a certain family has two children, and you remember that at least one is a girl with a very unusual name (that, say, one in a million females share), but you can’t recall whether both children are girls. What is the probability that the family has two girls — to the nearest percentage point?

50% ?

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 04:53 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:00 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:08 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:11 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:23 pm Post subject:

"5. Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind each of the other two, a cow. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, to reveal a cow. He then says to you, “Do you want to change your choice to door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice, assuming you prefer cars to cows?"

ML:

It's not relevant that you already picked something and may change the choice. This is the same situation as if you hadn't even begun to think about it. One door and own cow have been eliminated, so there are two permutations: (car, cow) and (cow, car). No matter what you do you have a 50 percent chance.

DAS

On this one I am pretty certain that you are incorrect Mike. This is known in mathmatics, believe it or not, as Monty Hall's conjecture. It has been shown in repeated computer simulations that it is to your benefit to change your choice mid stream. I used to know why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 05:26 pm Post subject:

Mike can you write me another capture program. This time the directory is

http://www.libraries.vermont.gov/supct/supct.html

and I want to capture the decsions two levels down.

Thanks

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 07:33 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 07:35 pm Post subject:

The Monty Hall problem makes no sense to me. I don't understand how they got their answer.

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 11:10 pm Post subject:

I will come up with a list of file names.

As to Monty's problem.

I think that the explaination is somehow incorrect.I think that it raises your odds to switch, from one in three to one in two.

Posted: 08 Apr 2008 11:15 pm Post subject:

I looked at the file names, pain in the ass to make a complete list.

I had wanted to capture the files in order to better be able to search their contents. Any ideas?

Posted: 09 Apr 2008 02:10 am Post subject:

Ideas

1. See if you find any instructions on their site that says "you can access our records by FTP". If so, we might be able to use the FTP command mget (multiple-get).

2. If the files are public records, you could email the admin of their computer center and ask if there's a way to acquire all files named anything.txt