The rain
Do you think the rain will be good for the rhubarb?
I wish my mother's award-winning short story about Albert Einstein and her father were on-line somewhere.
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Do you think the rain will be good for the rhubarb?
I wish my mother's award-winning short story about Albert Einstein and her father were on-line somewhere.
Our technology project didn't work, despite Colin's amazing work at the physical layer and Emma's and Scott's amazing work on igniters to light candles. In a previous year, we were able to drive solid-state relays directly from a PC's parallel port. This year, we used the same exact solid-state relays but a different PC; its parallel port wasn't able to source as much current (I think I've seen web sites suggest that they can be limited to as little as 4 mA or able to provide as much as 50 mA, depending on which one you get) and so we weren't able to drive the solid-state relays directly. I had neglected to bring a TTL buffer chip because it had been unnecessary the last time we tried this.
It's too bad, because I also wrote a nice little C program to decode ASCII characters to 7-segment display representations and drive a 7-segment display with TTL levels on the PC parallel port. But when we connected the real live parallel port to the real live 7-segment display, the output voltages fell precipitously and the relays were not triggered at all.
For reference, writing a byte to I/O port 0x378 on a PC will cause that byte to appear on pins 2-9 of the DB-25 connector attached to the PC's first parallel port, using TTL voltage levels relative to the parallel port's logic ground, which, among other places, is available on pin 25. Pin 2 is the least significant bit and pin 9 is the most significant bit. (This is explained much better in other places on the Internet, complete with lots of pictures!) But if you actually want to drive anything with the parallel port, it's really a good idea to use a TTL buffer between the parallel port and your load.
I think a bunch of people took pictures of us trying to build this thing, so I'll try to post links to them if anybody puts them on-line.
Here are two other annoying things. First, DB-25 break-out boxes usually don't have preattached jumper wires. If you want to connect pins from a DB-25 connector into a breadboard, it takes a really long time! Second, USB digital I/O devices cost a lot of money even though they are seemingly extremely simple. (It's hard to see why a USB I/O device should cost more than any other USB devices that contains any digital logic and a memory. Seriously, I just want a USB interface chip, a shift register, and a buffer. Why does that cost more than some complicated USB interface that implements some other bus protocol on top of that?) PC parallel ports are cheap, but they are ideal for controlling external digital devices, except for the small amount of current they provide and the relatively small number of output lines they provide (just 8 unless you want to mess with status bits). USB could fix both of these problems easily, and indeed USB devices are available that do fix them, but, depending on the amount of assembly and the market at which the devices are aimed, they seem to cost from $30 to about $400. This despite the fact that USB digital interfaces seem already to be a large market and product category.
Come on. You could probably get a USB digital clock for $10 or $15 now. Why should access to the data lines inside cost extra? It's like all these other cases where you have to pay more for less -- like the extra cost of organic food, or raw food, or diet food. In this case, it must be based on the idea that people who buy peripherals that are fully enclosed are "consumers" and people who buy peripherals that are open and expose their guts are "professionals" or "hobbyists" who are willing to spend a bunch of money on a peripheral.
I guess they're right, at that.
Ever notice how the binary clocks are actually just regular digital clocks, minus the BCD-to-seven-segment decoder/driver chips? Regular digital clocks represent the time just the way the "binary clocks" do, and then they have a little extra circuitry to display the time on 7-segment displays instead of showing the actual bits in their memory registers. (They probably use something similar to an old 7447 or 7448 TTL chip.) Binary clocks just omit that step and show you the actual bits in their memory registers; you could make a binary clock out of a regular digital clock by just inserting probes in the right places and hooking up lights to them.
But, of course, you have to pay more for a binary clock than you do for a corresponding digital clock, because the binary clock is all cool and geeky. (You can tell because you can get them at ThinkGeek.)
I made a pilgrimage to Boston's North End on Sunday with the hope of being able to read Jane Jacobs there, and I managed to.
When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by throwing two older apartments together, and had equipped these with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a narrow alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North End, but no: more neatly repointed brickwork, new blinds, and a burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city district I had ever seen -- or have seen to this day -- in which the sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and amputated, but repaired and painted as neatly as if they were intended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for living were an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such enterprises as upholstery making, metal working, carpentry, food processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people shopping, people stolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold January day, there would surely have been people sitting.
I was about the only person sitting outside on Sunday, with my copy of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, reading about what the neighborhood used to be like. The North End has changed quite a bit since Jane Jacobs wrote in praise of it; as she suggests elsewhere in the book, a successful neighborhood like that seems to attract wealthy people who enjoy what it has to offer and can afford to outbid other people. Among other things, it's possible that a many of the current set of shops were built in imitation of older shops and to evoke nostalgia for past versions of the North End. There are a lot of relatively fancy Italian restaurants, seemingly many more per capita than Jane Jacobs recounts, and possibly they are there partly because the North End has become a real tourist destination. (North Beach in San Francisco is certainly like that; it couldn't support all those restaurants unless people from out of town thought of it as "the Italian neighborhood" and made a point of coming to San Francisco to eat in North Beach!)
I'm sure that the general architecture and street layout is much the same as it was in 1959 and that almost all of the buildings now standing in the North End were there then. The economic and demographic scene is surely much different. I get a sense of gentrification, although it isn't taken to the same extremes as elsewhere; here in the Mission, for example, they've been building pretty ugly condos, which I didn't see in the North End. The availability of money for mortgages, construction projects, etc., is totally turned around. (The Death and Life of Great American Cities talks about how commercial lenders wouldn't lend into the North End in the 1950s because it had a bad reputation, so people living there found alternatives to the major banks. Three minutes into my walk through the North End on Sunday, I saw a construction site with a big banner proclaiming that the project was financed by a large New York bank.) However, the themes of diversity and sidewalk use are still in evidence. In fact, I didn't even know how to get to the North End (I don't know Boston that well), so I decided to walk toward what looked interesting, and sure enough, it turned out to be the North End. However much the economic situation has changed and however well or poorly planners and builders have taken The Death and Life of Great American Cities to heart, the North End still looks like an interesting place, and you can still see that interest from afar, fifty years later.
At the party, Colin built a great seven-segment display out of the light bulbs, but, as I mentioned earlier, the computer wasn't able to provide enough current to drive the solid-state relays. Take a look at the picture if you want to get a clearer sense of what we were trying to put together. (The secret here was zip-ties and a foam core board.)
The IEEE Spectrum has a piece critical of the "AACS" DRM scheme being pushed as a replacement for CSS; I am quoted a whole bunch. Spectrum calls the technology a "loser" with respect to preventing copyright infringement.
Of course, even if we are right about whether AACS can prevent copyright infringement, that probably wouldn't seem like a reason not to use it to people in industry who are planning to adopt it.
[PayPal founder Peter] Thiel believes his company could ultimately compete with titans like AmEx, but the prize he has in mind is bigger than a place in the Dow. He hopes to make PayPal a vehicle of geopolitical liberation. "The ability to move money fluidly and the erosion of the nation-state are closely related," he explains. With a PayPal account, anyone on the Net can transfer value with greater anonymity than they could with a Swiss bank account. Hard to tax. Harder to regulate. Nearly impossible to control.
However,
You may not use PayPal in the purchase or sale of, or receipt of donations for, any obscene or sexually oriented goods or services. You may not use PayPal to sell drug paraphernalia, as defined in 21 U.S.C. 863. To be eligible for an account, you must be a resident of the United States or one of the approved countries [...]. We use many techniques to identify our users when they register on our site. You authorize PayPal, directly or through third parties, to make any inquiries we consider necessary to validate your registration [which] may include ordering a credit report and performing other credit checks or verifying the information you provide against third party databases. [W]e will also require your SSN or TIN if you send or receive certain high-value transactions or high overall payment volumes through PayPal.(from current PayPal policies)
There is also an enormous list of prohibited PayPal uses. You really should take a look at this list, if only to see how long it is!
The last thing Peter Thiel wants is for government regulation to intrude on his business. There are solid financial reasons - complying with banking laws is expensive - but his philosophical objections are at least as strong. [...] There are reasons to doubt that Thiel will shoulder the legal risks that come with provoking powerful foreign governments. For one thing, he wants to take PayPal public, and public companies tend not to exhibit the same regulation-baiting swagger as private concerns. Whether or not PayPal realizes his vision of liberated capital, though, he has no doubt that it's inevitable."I like to think of us as being at the forefront of financial liberation," Thiel says, sipping his wine thoughtfully. "But if we didn't do it, someone else would."
(Wired, op. cit.)
Oops!
I pronounce my last name to rhyme with "phone", and Fred von Lohmann pronounces his to rhyme with "Tron showman", so it was quite a remarkable thing to hear the Lufthansa ticket agent, when she had to call over to another desk to inquire about our reservations, refer to "Herr Schön und Herr von Lohmann" and pronounce our names correctly.
Now I am enrolled in the Portuguese class at ABADÁ! I am extremely happy about this; it's my first time in a formal language class since 1998.
In the past year I had the privilege of visiting, among other places, Asilomar, CA; Austin, TX; Berkeley, CA; Berlin, Germany; Boston, MA; Davis, CA; Des Moines, IA; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; Niterói, Brazil; Ottawa, Canada; Pasadena, CA; Providence, RI; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; Victoria, Canada; and Washington, DC.
I feel very lucky to have been able to visit these great world cities, and, more often than not, to have been able to look around a bit and see a little of how these places differ from one another.
Only recently there was practically nobody who got to see all these places in a lifetime, and even now there is practically nobody who gets to see them in a single year, so I am incredibly fortunate.
Although most of these cities are mainstream tourist destinations, they have different kinds and degrees of marketing, and different self-concepts, and they rely on tourism to different extents. For example, I suspect Asilomar, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Victoria, Rio, and Niterói are especially dependent on visitors and have an unusually high proportion of their economic activity derived from outsiders' activity. Cities like Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles may have a much higher absolute volume of tourism than (say) Victoria, but it is hard to feel that the tourist industry is such a vital or essential force.
These cities also differ in other ways -- for example, in their levels of segregation along racial and economic lines. (San Francisco is enormously segregated in both respects, whereas Rio has even sharper economic divisions -- albeit compressed much more in spatial terms -- and astonishingly absent racial divisions.) The power of different groups and institutions is visible to different extents; Berlin struggles to show off its past, Victoria at least pretends to, and Los Angeles and Las Vegas often seem to rush to bury or redevelop it. In Ottawa you can see the power of the Canadian policy of bilingualism; in Victoria it frequently looks like a dead letter. Davis practices ecology in a way that puts Berkeley to shame; Las Vegas, um, doesn't. (Berlin, too, has an amazing ecological practice in its way, compared with American cities of a similar size.) New York has heard quite a bit from tort lawyers and Rio still seems to be awaiting them.
I don't want to claim some kind of great perspective on world events or cultures. In my whole life, I have only spent one week outside of a first-world country and only spent one weekend in the wilderness, sleeping outdoors. (I later spent a second weekend sleeping outdoors, but that wasn't exactly the wilderness since it had toilets, restaurants, commuter rail service, a supermarket, and the fastest Internet access I've ever had...) I am just grateful to have seen the variety that I have seen, which is very much focused on cities, the way my life is focused on cities.
I often like to quote Cicero's pessimistic view of human isolation, or rather the view he attributes to Africanus.
Vides habitari in terra raris et angustis in locis et in ipsis quasi maculis, ubi habitatur, vastas solitudines interiectas, eosque, qui incolunt terram, non modo interruptos ita esse, ut nihil inter ipsos ab aliis ad alios manare possit, sed partim obliquos, partim transversos, partim etiam adversos stare vobis; a quibus exspectare gloriam certe nullam potestis.
There are many aspects of this that remain true even in the age of air travel and global communications. I think it's a common essay question for people reading the "Somnium Scipionis" -- is this true even nowadays, that people live in little spots on the surface of the Earth and are so far cut off that nothing could pass between them? And students are meant to say yes, in a way. But I'm also thinking of how Dar Williams sang (perhaps a little ironically, if you recall about the line after):
People found the city because they love other people
In case you aren't on seth-trips, please note that the Supreme Court has set oral argument in MGM v. Grokster for Tuesday, March 29, 2005. I'm in the process of making plans to attend.
Mako pointed out that Christian Bök's lipographic masterpiece Eunoia is now on-line for free. I encourage everybody to buy a print copy; it's a beautiful book in every way.
Oops. How about this?
Mako points out that Christian Bök's brilliant univocallic lipographic work of charming thinking is up, gratis, on chbooks.com! I would ask all Bök fans, or proto-fans, to buy a print copy. In all ways, Bök's work is at lipography's summit and shows what is most worthy in bookmaking: its authorship, layout, artwork, and binding all form a glorious unity of craftsmanship. To hold it is to know a sort of artistic joy.
Thinking about Bök, I want to start a campaign for authors' autonomy from politicians' whims, and for all of our rights to go about writing and all sorts of communication without asking for an imprimatur... but to run this campaign only using lipography.
Its first slogan is obvious:
CONSTRAIN WRITING, NOT AUTHORS!
As elsewhere noted, I have just had an actual nightmare about the cute Japanese video game Katamari Damacy.
No, it didn't have to do with copyright; it had to do with the compulsion to try to roll up everything in the world into a giant ball!
I'm not quite sure what to say about Berlin other than that I had an excellent trip and met many interesting people. I had the privilege of visiting the renowned Chaos Computer Club and hanging out with many of its regulars, as well as the Bootlab and the newthinking Linux Trend Store (Linux specialty store).
I wrote a multiple-page account of my trip in Portuguese for a Portuguese class assignment, so maybe in the near future I can pull that out and translate portions of it into English in order to post them here.
OK, my mailing list for people who want to camp out at the Supreme Court for the MGM v. Grokster argument with me is up.
Fulfilling one of Justice Scalia's concerns (in fact, relying on Scalia's own logic), a court has held that U.S. obscenity law is unconstitutional, relying on Lawrence v. Texas. Boing Boing has news and good links, including a direct link to the opinion from the Western District of Pennsylvania.
It is reasonable to assume that [the Lawrence minority] came to [the conclusion that the Lawrence majority opinion would invalidate obscenity law] only after reflection and that the [minority] opinion was not merely a result of over-reactive hyperbole by those on the losing side of the argument. In any event, there are other constitutional scholars who have reached the same conclusion, i.e., that the nation's obscenity laws cannot stand in light of Lawrence.
Another interesting idea that I take from this case is that Justice Department forum-shopping for obscenity prosecutions can sometimes backfire.
I've already mentioned the article "The End of Obscenity", which points out Lawrence as one reason that older obscenity jurisprudence may be in trouble.
Here's another observation, which I hope will be a separate post at some point. In a precedent-based legal system, the answer you get depends on the order in which you ask the questions. It seems pretty clear that obscenity is one area where asking the courts about different aspects of free expression and sexual autonomy in different orders could have yielded drastically different results, and it may still yield a wide variety of results depending on the order in which future questions are posed.
A simple example of this is the relatively higher social status of gays and lesbians in our society than commercial pornographers. There is a conceptual relationship (as Scalia rightly pointed out, although from the point of view of someone who disfavored the liberties of both groups rather than favoring them) between the sexual autonomy of gay people and the sexual autonomy of pornography creators (and audiences), because the suppression of both is related to the same kinds of supposedly traditional sexual morality. If you ask about gay people first, though, and then pornographers, the courts are now reluctant to be seen as reactionary bigots by giving the kind of short shrift to gay rights that they did back in Bowers. And then the pornographers, as Scalia observed, will benefit from the collateral effects of recognizing the importance of individual sexual autonomy and disparaging state power over sex in general. But if you asked the question the other way round, to a certain extent, it could go the other way: you might get a ringing opinion supporting state power over sex, which would at the least be helpful to the anti-gay amici when a case like Lawrence came up.
I have no idea whether this case out of Pennsylvania is the vehicle, but I hope some day we will say good riddance to Miller, that (um) obscene hole in the already unsteady edifice of first amendment doctrine. We've seen over and over again that holes in the first amendment's coverage constantly invite other holes; patching them up, conversely, strengthens the whole structure against every kind of attack.
For those of you who, like the woman in Dan Bern's "Estelle", have "believed collage was the greatest of all the arts", you might be interested in a cool collage conference coming up in Iowa in March.
Many of the briefs filed in MGM v. Grokster make me want to say things. Perhaps I will try to remember those things and say them after the Supreme Court has rendered its opinion.
The Business Software Alliance, in its 2005 legislative agenda document, deals briefly with at least two arguments by copyright skeptics. This response is particularly bold, or candid, on BSA's part.
Some have attempted to paint copyright piracy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I make a copy of a computer program, you still get to keep your copy, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing piracy offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the piracy rate, the larger the IT sector and the greater the benefits.
It's not unusual for a trade group to say that it wants its industry to be larger and more profitable, but it's amazing that the only refutation BSA offers to the notion that copying is a useful, productive activity is the idea that preventing copying will make the software industry bigger!
The most natural reading of "benefits" appears to be "profits", although it's always possible that BSA is saying that a larger IT sector would benefit its customers, which is not at all obvious.
Why should anyone other than the software industry inherently want the software industry to be bigger? Someone at Red Hat addressed this question head-on four or five years ago, saying that his goal was to make the software industry much smaller, and to provide greater benefits to software users and customers in the process. In his view, the software industry was much too large and was extracting much more money than necessary, partly because of limited competition and partly because of defects in its (for lack of a better term) business models.
The idea that helping a business sector get larger and richer is a primary duty of legislators or of the public is so peculiar that it bears trying to come up with a few parallel arguments.
Some have attempted to paint printing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I print a book, you can buy it from me, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing printing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the printing rate, the larger the scribes and bards sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint conjugal sexual intimacy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you and I have intimate relations, we both derive pleasure and a sense of togetherness, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing sex among committed partners offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the intimacy rate among committed partners, the larger the prostitution sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint recreational sports leagues as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you and I play baseball, we both get physically fit, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing recreational sports offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of noncommercial sports activity, the larger the professional athletic sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint making dinner for your family as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I cook you dinner, we both enjoy dinner together, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing eating at home offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of family dinner preparation, the larger the restaurant sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint classical chamber music ensembles as a victimless crime, arguing that "if we all perform Schubert together, we all improve our proficiency with our instruments and enjoy the music, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing chamber music offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of chamber music performance, the larger the professional orchestra and recorded music retailing sectors, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint the sale of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you buy medicine from me, you can use it to treat yourself, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing nonprescription medication sales offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of nonprescription medication availability, the larger the demand for physician consultations, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint reading books as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you read a book, you gain knowledge, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing reading offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of reading, the larger the television audience and hence the larger the advertising sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint gardening as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you grow herbs and vegetables in your garden, you can eat them, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing gardening offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of gardening, the larger the supermarket and agricultural sectors, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint painting as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you paint pictures, you can hang them in your house, and I can enjoy them, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing painting offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of painting, the larger the professional offset printing sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint children's games as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you and I play tag, we have fun, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing children's unstructured recreation offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of unstructured play, the larger the arcade sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint letting guests stay in your house as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you visit, I enjoy your company, you have a place to stay, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing hospitality toward guests and visitors offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of uncompensated or reciprocal in-home hospitality, the larger the hotel sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint ham radio as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you operate an amateur radio station, you and I can communicate across long distances, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing the prevalence of amateur radio operators offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of amateur radio communication, the larger the long distance telephone services sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint throwing parties as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you hold a party, we can celebrate together, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing partying offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of noncommercial parties, the larger the nightclub and bar sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint jogging as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you jog regularly, you improve your cardiovascular health, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing jogging offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of jogging, the larger the coronary care and heart medication sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint serfs becoming independent freeholding farmers as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you grow your own crops on your own land, you become self-sufficient outside of the feudal system, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing the emancipation of serfs offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of emancipation, the more substantial the payment of tribute by the serfs to their liege lord, and the more his dominions and his prosperity can expand.
Some have attempted to paint generating electricity as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you generate electricity, you can sell it to me, I can illuminate my house and refrigerate my food, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing the generation of electricity offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of electrical utility connectivity, the larger the tallow, oil, and ice sectors, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint making aerobics tapes as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you follow someone's workout routine, you become conditioned, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing aerobic conditioning offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of aerobic exercise, the larger the membership-based gymnasium and personal trainer sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint having a foreign pen-pal as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you correspond with me, we can learn one another's languages and improve our language proficiency, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing international correspondence offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of correspondence with foreign pen-pals, the larger the foreign language school sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint tooth-brushing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you brush your teeth regularly, you improve your dental hygiene, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing tooth-brushing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of tooth-brushing, the larger the dental prosthetic, dental filling, and dental surgical equipment sectors, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint not paying a capitation tax to the established church as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you are not compelled to support the established church, you can worship in your own way according to your individual conscience, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing the avoidance of compulsory payments to the established church offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of dissent from the established church, the larger the revenue the church can obtain, which permits it to expand and furthers the glory of God.
Some have attempted to paint manufacturing semiconductors as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you sell me semiconductors, I can build digital devices with relatively high speed and low power consumption, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing semiconductor manufacturing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of semiconductor use, the larger the vacuum tube sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to paint walking to work as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you walk to work, you arrive at work, you can do your job, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Reducing walking to work offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of walking to work, the larger the automotive sector, and the greater the benefits.
Some have attempted to suggest that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, arguing that, if all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is totally dissolved, they can do all acts and things which independent states may of right do, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case.Preventing the independence of the colonies offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: imposing taxes on the colonies without their consent allows the maintenance and expansion of the British Empire, and the greater glory and honour of his majesty George the Third, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., and the less autonomy the colonies attain, the greater the benefits.
Contact: Seth David Schoen