OT: James Arthur, the perfect market and the perfect op amp

On Aug 17, 12:29 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 17, 2:34 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

I'll walk you through it.

snipped the elementary but irrelevant arithmetic

Oh dear, was that partisan?  Maybe you're right.  I suppose I
should've let some poly sci major predigest it for me on the Daily
Kos.

As usual, you choose to miss the point. The risk to the SS checks
should have been minmal, but the Tea Party niwits were grandstanding
in a thoroughly irresponsible manner, and Barack Obama had legitimate
anxieties about precisely how far they might go - anxieties that you
aren't likely to share, since you think that the sun shines out of the
seats of their trousers, and that's why your pontiifcations on the
subject are more than a little partisan.

Nice ramble. You've got no point. He had the money. He said
otherwise.

What could a few citizens concerned about Barack's spending--and who
support SS generally--possibly have done to affect August's checks in
any way? What? Was he afraid the Tea Party would spirit the binary
bits out of the Treasury's computer, put them in a knapsack of savings
and vanish into the night?

Enlighten us Bill.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took. I had a genius
professor. Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder. It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman. It shouldn't. Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care. He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics. That's what it boils down to.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took. I had a genius
professor. Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder. It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman. It shouldn't. Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care. He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics. That's what it boils down to.

The challenge with Sloman is to achieve very high ratios of
Sloman_Response/Original_Linecount. A few well-chosen words can send
him into hundreds of lines of droning.

I usually only respond to the first part of his posts, if that. It's
punishment to read all of them.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 18, 9:36 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took.  I had a genius
professor.  Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder.  It takes a lot of blabber
to distill aSloman.  It shouldn't.  Like above--basically, the
President lied, andSlomandoesn't care.  He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics.  That's what it boils down to.

The challenge with Sloman is to achieve very high ratios of
Sloman_Response/Original_Linecount. A few well-chosen words can send
him into hundreds of lines of droning.

I usually only respond to the first part of his posts, if that. It's
punishment to read all of them.

Sure. And by ignoring the bulk of the argument you can get to post all
sorts of snappy one-liners. They do demonstrate how shallow and ill-
informed your opinions are, but it's a bit late for you to do anything
about that.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 18, 5:40 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took.  I had a genius
professor.  Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

But you've still got a long way to.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder.  It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman.  It shouldn't.  Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care.  He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics.  That's what it boils down to.

You've failed to extract the gist of my argument, which was that
Barack Obama thoguth that the SS cheques might be in danger because he
was anxious about the level of disruption that the Tea Party
Republicans might be prepeared to create in Congress and in the world
outside of congress.

Since you have this happy delusion that the Tea Party Republicans are
concerned about the welfare of the US as a whole and are consequently
prepared to use extraordinarily robust political tactics in a
legitimate desire to change the President's worrying course, you can't
imagine that they'd sabotage the day-to-day workings of congress
merely to apply extra pressure.

The rest of us - presumably including Barack Obama - were less saugine
in the run-up to the debt limit increase, and there were legitimate
fears that the Tea Party idiots would go in for wholesale wrecking,
which might well have disrupted the mechanisms involved in getting out
the SS cheques.

As it turned out the Tea Party eventually blinked - but not before
they'd provoked Standard and Poor's into down-grading the US credit
rating.

In short, you think that the President was lying because you couldn't
envisage the kind of situation that he - and other people equally
sceptical about the rationality and judgment of the Tea Party faction
- perceived as a possible scenario.

This failure of perception doesn't entitle you to describe other
people's sincerely held - if possibly mistaken - beliefs as "lies". It
is conceivable that Barack Obama was lying for political advantage,
but it strikes me as much more likely that he perceived the situation
from a point of view that you can't share and had formed an opinion -
that you can't credit - that the SS cheques were actually in danger.

You believe quite a few things that I know to be outright wrong. Why
can't you understand that Barack Obama might believe something that
you "know" to be outright wrong?

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 18, 5:33 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:29 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 17, 2:34 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
I'll walk you through it.

snipped the elementary but irrelevant arithmetic

Oh dear, was that partisan?  Maybe you're right.  I suppose I
should've let some poly sci major predigest it for me on the Daily
Kos.

As usual, you choose to miss the point. The risk to the SS checks
should have been minmal, but the Tea Party niwits were grandstanding
in a thoroughly irresponsible manner, and Barack Obama had legitimate
anxieties about precisely how far they might go - anxieties that you
aren't likely to share, since you think that the sun shines out of the
seats of their trousers, and that's why your pontiifcations on the
subject are more than a little partisan.

Nice ramble.  You've got no point.  He had the money.  He said
otherwise.

The money was there, at that time. That doesn't guarantee that he'd be
able to authorise the distribution of the SS cheques after the Tea
Party had gone into full-scale wrecking mode, which didn't seem
impossible at the time.

What could a few citizens concerned about Barack's spending--and who
support SS generally--possibly have done to affect August's checks in
any way?  What?

Don't ask me - ask Barack Obama, who happens to be a Harvard-educated
constitutional lawyer.

You don't claim to be a constitutional lawyer, so why do you think
that you can second-guess someone who is, and who also has access to
extensive and competent supporting staff?

 Was he afraid the Tea Party would spirit the binary
bits out of the Treasury's computer, put them in a knapsack of savings
and vanish into the night?

Probably not.

Enlighten us Bill.

You are the one who thinks he can read Barack Obama's mind, and is
consequently prepared to enlighten us on yet one more subject that the
objective observer would think that you didn't have a clue about.

Enlighten yourself - it is a long overdue operation. And I don't mean
consult some other Tea Party guru - their revelations don't seem to be
divinely inspired, unless of course you count Satan as a diety.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[josephkk]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took. I had a genius
professor. Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

That's the English Prof i want. Any texts written by that Prof?
I had the extraordinary fabulous luck to get to get not just one but three
supremo History professors. I switched from hating History to loving it
ever since.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder. It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman. It shouldn't. Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care. He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics. That's what it boils down to.

 

[josephkk]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:36:01 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took. I had a genius
professor. Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder. It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman. It shouldn't. Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care. He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics. That's what it boils down to.

The challenge with Sloman is to achieve very high ratios of
Sloman_Response/Original_Linecount. A few well-chosen words can send
him into hundreds of lines of droning.

I usually only respond to the first part of his posts, if that. It's
punishment to read all of them.

John

If it is punishment to do that, why do you do it? Are you a self-hater?

?-/

 

[josephkk]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:55:01 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/08/2011 12:08, Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 15, 5:49 am, Martin Brown<|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk
wrote:
On 14/08/2011 19:45, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long. Honesty maximizes profits. Politicians have no such incentive.

Pump and dump maximises returns for the senior executives if they can
time it just right.

That's truly cynical. Even if maximal for certain individuals, that
is not a maximal strategy for a company. Companies have reputations,
and it's in their long-term interest to protect them.

Doesn't matter. I worked at Tektronix and for a time very
closely with the sales force, since I was writing the
programs that paid them their checks and computed their
bonuses. I can't tell you how many times I encountered a
salesman who'd get their customers to order hardware (their
STS systems was a line I saw this done with on a number of
occasions) or just lie about the order.

Thing is, their bonuses were on order, not sale. So they'd
get paid right away. If cancelled, the idea is that it would
come out of some future order's bonus. But there were

Very dangerous. Our lot were at least on actual sales made and if they
hadn't jumped ship in the meantime they were expected to go and get the
last 10% on final acceptance from the customer.

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

The problem for the company is to make sure that the bonus scheme
actually encourages employees to do the right things and do them
correctly. I have lost count of the number of times that people were
motivated to do things that seriously compromised production by myopic
stock control bonuses that were quadratic on minimal end of year stock
holding. The whole company would seize up in January as supply lines
from other divisions on the same bonus scheme also deadlocked.

I saw plenty of that kind of thing in California when they were stupid
enough to still have an inventory tax. The retailers would put on sales
each year end, often below what they paid for the goods, just to get rid
of it before tax inventory day (Jan 1st). It jacked up supply chains and
everything. A classic example of stupid tax policy.

If some fool can be persuaded to buy the company at
the top of the market then they carry the can when things turn sour.
The stock markets are so short term these days that no-one plans for the
long term future of the company except in Japan.

That strategy doesn't last long. If you have a group of looters who
cash out the company's good name, the company quickly falls. (Assuming
Obama doesn't bail them out.)

Goodwill is valuable, a long time in coming, and quickly lost.

Cripes.

I've been personally involved in starting three companies,
one of them with a peak of perhaps 60 employees in it. That
one secured venture capital, by the way, so I got some early
experience with that process there and plenty more later on
(2007 was my last, close-up and personal experience with the
venture community.)

I have to speak up for the US venture capital industry here.

We did once meet some very good high tech VCs/business angels who were
tied in to well known US high tech companies and my university. I will
not name names. Their brief was to find ground breaking new ideas in the
UK at the seedcorn stage and give them enough money and management to
get off the ground with a view to a later IPO. They had a timescale of 5
years and were prepared to back things no UK banker would touch.

At the time UK's 3i were only interested if you were already big enough.

It's like this. The venture capitalist sees a tiny window in
the sky, called an IPO. Your business is a rocket to them,
that can reach that tiny window -- maybe. They want you to
fuel up and launch. And, hopefully, if all goes right, you
might actually direct the rocket (business) well enough to
hit that IPO just right (accounting looks good on paper) so
that they get maximum return as soon as possible. Once they
have bailed out of the rocket, they really don't care if it
has any fuel left. It's kind of a one-way ticket, so to
speak. It goes up, and where it comes down they don't care.

They are not all quite that bad (or rather weren't in my day).

Yes they wanted an IPO but they were prepared to wait a while and
preferred things that either crashed and burned or grew up quickly to
businesses that bumbled along without either growing or failing. The
admin costs otherwise rapidly end up being dominant.

It's all about getting in and out. Not about long term
health.

Unfortunately that is true of the stock market and particularly true of
the so called "absolute return investments" aka hedge funds. They will
happily destroy other shareholders value if they can make money by doing
it (usually by circulating unsubstantiated market rumours).

And that's venture. Executive staff? Can be just as bad, at
times. I've seen cases where the president sells off
everything they can and simply high-tails it to Florida where
the bankruptcy laws make it possible to own something like
100 acres and god-only-knows how many millions of dollars in
the house, completely immune against all claims. Florida
shields a damned lot of wealth from bankruptcy.

We don't have anything quite like that in the UK although you do get to
keep your primary residence I think. I hope never to find out.

People who look at companies as family and look out for the
long term are likely to get eaten before they can reach that
old age and collect on that reputation.

Unfortunately the market is all about short termism these days. Your
company is only as good as the bottom line on next quarters accounts. No
room for strategic vision any more.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[josephkk]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:33 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:26 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:


Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 02:04:53 -0700, Rich Grise
richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:54:02 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
John Larkin<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

and europe; look at the debt crisies in europe. Did any government
economists do anything to prevent these? On the contrary, governments
and their financial ministries caused all these messes.

No, greed and total lack of any moral integrity caused the mess! The
problem is that big companies no longer value their customers. Letting
(big) companies do what they want leads to mass destruction.

You blame companies for grotesque government benefits and borrowing?

They fail to realize that companies can't steal from you, but only sell
you their products. If you don't like the company, you can simply not
buy their crap. With government, you don't have that option. But they
worship the ground that the bureaucrats slither across.

Cheers!
Rich

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense.
Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually
3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?



Typical Larkinism BS. 2" X 4" are the rough cut dimensions, right
after being saw from logs. You can still buy them that way from a local
sawmill, but very few people want to use them that way. They want
milled lumber that's easier to handle, and less likely to cause injury
during construction work. You might enjoy having hundreds of splinters
in your body to become infected, but most people don't.

Except that's not true. They do *NOT* plane 1/4" off every side to make a
dimensional 2x4 (1-1/2x3-1/2), or 3/8" off the top and bottom and 1/4" off the
sides (why would lumber >2x6 be different than <=2x6?) to make a dimensional
2x8 (1-1/2x7-1/4).

At ONE TIME, a 2x4 was smaller than 2x4 because of planeing, but they start
out smaller than 2x4 now. Of course you can have lumber custom milled anyway
you want it. ...if you can afford it.

You seem to be immune to the concept of standard dimensions. Or maybe you

are not really understanding the concept of standards.

?-(

 

[Bill Bowden]

On Aug 16, 10:37 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 17, 1:57 pm, Bill Bowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:



On Aug 15, 9:23 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 16, 1:02 pm,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

On Aug 14, 9:16 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Lowering the prime rate in a recession so that it is cheaper for
everybody to borrow start-up capital, thus making it likely that more
people will expand their businesses or start new businesses is the very
antithesis of "constantly diddling from afar".

But isn't that what happened in 2003 when the housing bubble began?
The rates went so low that everybody went shopping for a house.

The Bush tax cuts also fed into the economy at that point. Reduce
everybody's taxes and they have more money to spend, and one of the
ways to spend it is on a better house. Bush's claimed motive for the
tax cuts was to stimulate the economy.

So, if Bush managed to stimulate the economy and create a bubble with
tax cuts, why can't Obama do the same? We could use another bubble
about now.

That's not what I said - as I pointed out later in my post, in the
part that you snipped without marking the snip - the bubble came
later. Bush's tax cuts may have raised house prices, but it wasn't a
dramatic rise and can't be described as a bubble. The bubble was blown
up - and burst - by the ninja bank loans which didn't get going until
a few year later.

Sure, and the ninja loans were a product of the "Community
Reinvestment Act" CRA that forced banks to make risky loans in an
effort to avoid "redlining". Another democratic idea that doesn't
work.

-Bill

Maybe Rick Perry (another governor from Texas) will bail us out after
the next election?

Since he is a Republican - these days - the chances are vanishingly
small. The simple rule is that Republicans screw up the economy, and
the Democrats glue it back together, usually accompagnied by a
Republican chorus that is busilyy claiming that they doing it wrong by
failing to starve enough widows and orphans.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/08/2011 05:02, josephkk wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:55:01 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/08/2011 12:08, Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

The problem for the company is to make sure that the bonus scheme
actually encourages employees to do the right things and do them
correctly. I have lost count of the number of times that people were
motivated to do things that seriously compromised production by myopic
stock control bonuses that were quadratic on minimal end of year stock
holding. The whole company would seize up in January as supply lines
from other divisions on the same bonus scheme also deadlocked.

I saw plenty of that kind of thing in California when they were stupid
enough to still have an inventory tax. The retailers would put on sales
each year end, often below what they paid for the goods, just to get rid
of it before tax inventory day (Jan 1st). It jacked up supply chains and
everything. A classic example of stupid tax policy.

There was no inventory tax in the UK. This was a classic example of
rewarding specific employees for doing things that *damaged* the
companies productivity and profitability to maximise their own bonuses.

It was a classic example of "What you measure gets controlled".

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 18, 1:38 pm, josephkk <joseph_barr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:36:01 -0700, John Larkin



jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took.  I had a genius
professor.  Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder.  It takes a lot of blabber
to distill aSloman.  It shouldn't.  Like above--basically, the
President lied, andSlomandoesn't care.  He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics.  That's what it boils down to.

The challenge withSlomanis to achieve very high ratios of
Sloman_Response/Original_Linecount. A few well-chosen words can send
him into hundreds of lines of droning.

I usually only respond to the first part of his posts, if that. It's
punishment to read all of them.

John

If it is punishment to do that, why do you do it?  Are you a self-hater?

He doesn't do much of it - just skims until he find a bit onto which
he can tag a smart-ass comment. Some of them are remarkably stupid,
even by his depressingly low standards.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Aug 18, 2:11 pm, Bill Bowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info>
wrote:

On Aug 16, 10:37 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:



On Aug 17, 1:57 pm,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

On Aug 15, 9:23 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Aug 16, 1:02 pm,BillBowden <bper...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info
wrote:

On Aug 14, 9:16 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Lowering the prime rate in a recession so that it is cheaper for
everybody to borrow start-up capital, thus making it likely that more
people will expand their businesses or start new businesses is the very
antithesis of "constantly diddling from afar".

But isn't that what happened in 2003 when the housing bubble began?
The rates went so low that everybody went shopping for a house.

The Bush tax cuts also fed into the economy at that point. Reduce
everybody's taxes and they have more money to spend, and one of the
ways to spend it is on a better house. Bush's claimed motive for the
tax cuts was to stimulate the economy.

So, if Bush managed to stimulate the economy and create a bubble with
tax cuts, why can't Obama do the same? We could use another bubble
about now.

That's not what I said - as I pointed out later in my post, in the
part that you snipped without marking the snip - the bubble came
later. Bush's tax cuts may have raised house prices, but it wasn't a
dramatic rise and can't be described as a bubble. The bubble was blown
up - and burst - by the ninja bank loans which didn't get going until
a few year later.

Sure, and the ninja loans were a product of the "Community
Reinvestment Act" CRA that forced banks to make risky loans in an
effort to avoid "redlining". Another democratic idea that doesn't
work.

James Arthur has been arguing this for years, but it seems to be a
myth devised by right-wing Republicans as a stick with which to beat
the Democrats.

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

"Legal and financial experts have noted that CRA regulated loans tend
to be safe and profitable, and that subprime excesses came mainly from
institutions not regulated by the CRA."

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

josephkk wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:33 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:26 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:


Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 02:04:53 -0700, Rich Grise
richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:54:02 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
John Larkin<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

and europe; look at the debt crisies in europe. Did any government
economists do anything to prevent these? On the contrary, governments
and their financial ministries caused all these messes.

No, greed and total lack of any moral integrity caused the mess! The
problem is that big companies no longer value their customers. Letting
(big) companies do what they want leads to mass destruction.

You blame companies for grotesque government benefits and borrowing?

They fail to realize that companies can't steal from you, but only sell
you their products. If you don't like the company, you can simply not
buy their crap. With government, you don't have that option. But they
worship the ground that the bureaucrats slither across.

Cheers!
Rich

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense.
Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually
3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?



Typical Larkinism BS. 2" X 4" are the rough cut dimensions, right
after being saw from logs. You can still buy them that way from a local
sawmill, but very few people want to use them that way. They want
milled lumber that's easier to handle, and less likely to cause injury
during construction work. You might enjoy having hundreds of splinters
in your body to become infected, but most people don't.

Except that's not true. They do *NOT* plane 1/4" off every side to make a
dimensional 2x4 (1-1/2x3-1/2), or 3/8" off the top and bottom and 1/4" off the
sides (why would lumber >2x6 be different than <=2x6?) to make a dimensional
2x8 (1-1/2x7-1/4).

At ONE TIME, a 2x4 was smaller than 2x4 because of planeing, but they start
out smaller than 2x4 now. Of course you can have lumber custom milled anyway
you want it. ...if you can afford it.

You seem to be immune to the concept of standard dimensions. Or maybe you
are not really understanding the concept of standards.

He just likes to bitch. As the mills improved theior saws, they had
to mill less to somooth the lumber. So, they reduced the spacing in the
saws to reduce the waste. I wonder if he's ever seen a real sawmill?


--
Subject: Spelling Lesson

The last four letters in American.........I Can
The last four letters in Republican.......I Can
The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats

End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2012

Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:48:41 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

josephkk wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:33 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:26 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:


Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 02:04:53 -0700, Rich Grise
richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:54:02 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
John Larkin<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

and europe; look at the debt crisies in europe. Did any government
economists do anything to prevent these? On the contrary, governments
and their financial ministries caused all these messes.

No, greed and total lack of any moral integrity caused the mess! The
problem is that big companies no longer value their customers. Letting
(big) companies do what they want leads to mass destruction.

You blame companies for grotesque government benefits and borrowing?

They fail to realize that companies can't steal from you, but only sell
you their products. If you don't like the company, you can simply not
buy their crap. With government, you don't have that option. But they
worship the ground that the bureaucrats slither across.

Cheers!
Rich

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense.
Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually
3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?



Typical Larkinism BS. 2" X 4" are the rough cut dimensions, right
after being saw from logs. You can still buy them that way from a local
sawmill, but very few people want to use them that way. They want
milled lumber that's easier to handle, and less likely to cause injury
during construction work. You might enjoy having hundreds of splinters
in your body to become infected, but most people don't.

Except that's not true. They do *NOT* plane 1/4" off every side to make a
dimensional 2x4 (1-1/2x3-1/2), or 3/8" off the top and bottom and 1/4" off the
sides (why would lumber >2x6 be different than <=2x6?) to make a dimensional
2x8 (1-1/2x7-1/4).

At ONE TIME, a 2x4 was smaller than 2x4 because of planeing, but they start
out smaller than 2x4 now. Of course you can have lumber custom milled anyway
you want it. ...if you can afford it.

You seem to be immune to the concept of standard dimensions. Or maybe you
are not really understanding the concept of standards.


He just likes to bitch. As the mills improved theior saws, they had
to mill less to somooth the lumber. So, they reduced the spacing in the
saws to reduce the waste. I wonder if he's ever seen a real sawmill?

My Grandfather Godwin had a water-powered saw mill... all kinds of leather
belts running everywhere ;-)

...Jim Thompson

[On the Road, in New York]
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:08 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 17, 12:26 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

I learned a lot in a bunch of other classes: physics, psychology,
economics, materials science, thermo, engineering drawing, and
especially beginners tumbling.

Chemistry and English were annoying wastes of time. I took advanced
math courses, ditto.

English was one of the best courses I took. I had a genius
professor. Taught me lots about analyzing prose, i.e., distilling
messy stuff into clear thought, extracting inferences and
implications.

I'm still learning brevity--that's harder. It takes a lot of blabber
to distill a Sloman. It shouldn't. Like above--basically, the
President lied, and Sloman doesn't care. He admires it, thinks it's
skillful politics. That's what it boils down to.

English was one of the worst classes. Other than the TA was a braless T-shirt
wearing hippy uber-leftist, well, the TA was an uber-leftist. It was clear
from the first day that the way to pass was to pass oneself off as a leftist.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:02:51 -0700, josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:55:01 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/08/2011 12:08, Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 15, 5:49 am, Martin Brown<|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk
wrote:
On 14/08/2011 19:45, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:30 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should
let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an
honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in
their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very
long. Honesty maximizes profits. Politicians have no such incentive.

Pump and dump maximises returns for the senior executives if they can
time it just right.

That's truly cynical. Even if maximal for certain individuals, that
is not a maximal strategy for a company. Companies have reputations,
and it's in their long-term interest to protect them.

Doesn't matter. I worked at Tektronix and for a time very
closely with the sales force, since I was writing the
programs that paid them their checks and computed their
bonuses. I can't tell you how many times I encountered a
salesman who'd get their customers to order hardware (their
STS systems was a line I saw this done with on a number of
occasions) or just lie about the order.

Thing is, their bonuses were on order, not sale. So they'd
get paid right away. If cancelled, the idea is that it would
come out of some future order's bonus. But there were

Very dangerous. Our lot were at least on actual sales made and if they
hadn't jumped ship in the meantime they were expected to go and get the
last 10% on final acceptance from the customer.

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

The problem for the company is to make sure that the bonus scheme
actually encourages employees to do the right things and do them
correctly. I have lost count of the number of times that people were
motivated to do things that seriously compromised production by myopic
stock control bonuses that were quadratic on minimal end of year stock
holding. The whole company would seize up in January as supply lines
from other divisions on the same bonus scheme also deadlocked.

I saw plenty of that kind of thing in California when they were stupid
enough to still have an inventory tax. The retailers would put on sales
each year end, often below what they paid for the goods, just to get rid
of it before tax inventory day (Jan 1st). It jacked up supply chains and
everything. A classic example of stupid tax policy.

Vermont had a town inventory tax. The Town of Essex Junction had an inventory
tax, but the town of Wiliston (across the river) didn't. Like your example,
the tax was based on inventory on a certain day (Jan 1, IIRC). I always
wondered why IBM didn't move all their inventory from their Essex buildings,
across their bridge, to their Wiliston site once a year. ...or keep the
inventory in another state.

They finally told Essex to remove the tax or they'd remove themselves. THey
mostly did both (building their 300mm fab in NY).

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:51:30 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/08/2011 05:02, josephkk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:55:01 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/08/2011 12:08, Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:43:12 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

People look out for themselves, often, more than they do
their employers. If the calculations work out in their favor
to make a quick buck and leave, they will do that. If it
works out better to keep the job, they will do that, too.

The problem for the company is to make sure that the bonus scheme
actually encourages employees to do the right things and do them
correctly. I have lost count of the number of times that people were
motivated to do things that seriously compromised production by myopic
stock control bonuses that were quadratic on minimal end of year stock
holding. The whole company would seize up in January as supply lines
from other divisions on the same bonus scheme also deadlocked.

I saw plenty of that kind of thing in California when they were stupid
enough to still have an inventory tax. The retailers would put on sales
each year end, often below what they paid for the goods, just to get rid
of it before tax inventory day (Jan 1st). It jacked up supply chains and
everything. A classic example of stupid tax policy.

There was no inventory tax in the UK. This was a classic example of
rewarding specific employees for doing things that *damaged* the
companies productivity and profitability to maximise their own bonuses.

It was a classic example of "What you measure gets controlled".

If you don't want something tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize
it. That's why we have so few jobs and so many poor. ...why governments are
growing and the private sector is shrinking. Why the UK has riots...

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:09:32 -0700, josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:33 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:26 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:


Les Cargill wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 02:04:53 -0700, Rich Grise
richg@example.net.invalid> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:54:02 GMT, nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
John Larkin<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

and europe; look at the debt crisies in europe. Did any government
economists do anything to prevent these? On the contrary, governments
and their financial ministries caused all these messes.

No, greed and total lack of any moral integrity caused the mess! The
problem is that big companies no longer value their customers. Letting
(big) companies do what they want leads to mass destruction.

You blame companies for grotesque government benefits and borrowing?

They fail to realize that companies can't steal from you, but only sell
you their products. If you don't like the company, you can simply not
buy their crap. With government, you don't have that option. But they
worship the ground that the bureaucrats slither across.

Cheers!
Rich

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense.
Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually
3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?



Typical Larkinism BS. 2" X 4" are the rough cut dimensions, right
after being saw from logs. You can still buy them that way from a local
sawmill, but very few people want to use them that way. They want
milled lumber that's easier to handle, and less likely to cause injury
during construction work. You might enjoy having hundreds of splinters
in your body to become infected, but most people don't.

Except that's not true. They do *NOT* plane 1/4" off every side to make a
dimensional 2x4 (1-1/2x3-1/2), or 3/8" off the top and bottom and 1/4" off the
sides (why would lumber >2x6 be different than <=2x6?) to make a dimensional
2x8 (1-1/2x7-1/4).

At ONE TIME, a 2x4 was smaller than 2x4 because of planeing, but they start
out smaller than 2x4 now. Of course you can have lumber custom milled anyway
you want it. ...if you can afford it.

You seem to be immune to the concept of standard dimensions. Or maybe you
are not really understanding the concept of standards.

You seem to have a problem with literacy. Not, by any means, the first time.