D'kian

Paper currency can collapsesin a variety of ways. for example, if people will stop taking it then it loses all value as a medium of exchange, so it has collapsed. Also if inflation is high enough to make it worthless, or through a government action called "devaluation." I've lots of expereince with the latter, as the Mexican government has devalued the currency again and again. In the 80s currency exchange cotrols were instituted, but at least not restricted. So there was a "controlled" rate for the dollar and a free rate. The "controlled dollar" was cheaper, but you had to beg the government, which at the time owned all banks, to sell you any. After the banks were re-privatized (they were nationalized in 82 and sold to private investors in the early 90s), the controls continued, but less obtrusively and with less need. Then in December 1995 president Ernesto Zedillo's government casually, almost furtively, anounced the limits by which the peso was allowed to "float" (ie lose or gain value) against the dolalr would be widened. This set off a massive devaluation of the peso because the mexican governmetn owed a lot of debt in dollar isntruments internally. Back in 82, along with the nationalization of banks, dollar accoutns were covertly converted to pesos right before a devaluation was anounced (ie the money was stolen). So this time investors wanted their greenbacks right now. You know what happens when demand outstrips supply. It got really ugly. Long story short, the peso went from around 3.5 pesos per dollar to 10 pesos per dollar. Inflation grew to two figures within a year, and interest rates shot upwards of 90% on loans and mortgages (houses were lost on a semi-massive scale; it kept from becoming truly massive because th market for foreclosed real estate was essentially zero, therefore the banks prefered to renegotiate debt).

Isaac Asimov once described WWI as a massive outbreak of stupidity. That's a very fair assesment. Consider the infamous Zimermann Telegram. It offered Mexico financial aid in exchange for invading the US in order to recover the territories lost in the Mexican american war of the XIX Century. Sounds good, right? Wrong. For one thing the one sole arms supplier in the Americas was the US. So, sure, America would sell Mexico weapons to invade America with? Ok. So how about getting weapons from Germany or other European countries? Well, Germany was using everything it produced. Other European nations were doing the same. But if some could ship weapons to the Americas, they'd have to get past the Royal Navy, at the time the pre-eminent naval force in the world. That's it, right? Not quite. The Zimermann Note was sent from Germany to the United States! Encoded, of course, and specifically to the German ambassador in the US, who forwarded it to the German Embassy in Mexico City. NIce going. Ok, it was the Brits who decoded it, not the Americans. In any case security sucked. And lastly, if we needed anything else, Mexico was in the midst of a civil war, known locally as the Mexican Revolution. By then things had more or less settled down, but Pancho Villa and others still carried out guerilla warfare inside the country. Not the best time to go to war against a bigger, richer neighbor. And that was just one diplomatic maneuver.

Well, let's see: Germany held parts of Belgium and France. No way it would agree to any cease fire which didn't include some gains. France had territory under German occupation, so no way it would just quit and allow the Germans to take bits of France. Great Britain entered largely because of Belgium, so see what I said about France. Russia did withdraw. At that point the Germans might have acquiesced to a cease fire because they then could move troops to the Western Front. As for America, there was one good reason to enter the war. Look up the Zimmermann Telegram. That kind of meddling cannot be allowed to just pass.

Yes, because it takes little effort to call the police and get the victim some help. Which is what you should do in such a situation, whether or not you're carrying a gun at the time. It depends. What is the risk to yourself of trying to bring the shooter down? What is the risk to yourslef in finding the nearest exit? Do you have to turn your back on the shooter at all? I was robbed at gun point a few years ago. I carried no weapon at the time (still don't). Had I carried a gun, I probbaly wouldn't have used it. But then that was a concrete situation, where I knew all the facts, made plenty of observations (and you'd be amazed how much you can observe in such a short time), made decisions and walked away with my life and most of my money still on me. Looking back on it the safest time to draw a gun, had I carried one, was when the robbers were getting away. At that point shooting them would have been a retaliatory act. And I say this even though I'm fairly confident their gun wasn't loaded (I just don't bet my life on being fairly confident).

I call such thinking the "Foresight is 20/20" school of history. One can read the history of a major event, such as WWI, then ask one's self: who benefitted from it? Why not? It's a useful excercise. from then one could deduce some sort of conspiracy. But proof of a conspiracy requires more than showing some group or nation banefitted from the event. One such requirement is what they expected to get from it beforehand. And people just aren't that good at predicting the future. One fact about WWI is no one anticipated the scale of the war, the time it would take or the massive casualties that resulted on all sides. It was a curious kind of war. It was sort of an in-between war: between XIX century war techinques and modern warfare. On one hand you had heavy and fairly accurate artillery, machine guns, poison gas and, by the end, automatic rifles. On the other soldiers were restricted to however fast they could advance on foot. By that time the cavalry, thus far the traditional means for making a rapid advance, had just been rendered obsolote by the machine gun. Nothing easier than to mow down a bunch of large targets out in the open from the safety of a trench. Moving men on trucks was an even worse idea, I don't think it was ever tried (only behind the lines). And there were no large transport aircraft to drop paratroops behind the enemy's lines. Advances were slow and bitterly fought in the trenches. This gave both sides the time to build more trenches and barbed wire obtacles to fall back on. it also kept making the front wider to an unbelievable degree. What ended the stalemate was the development of the armored tank and the success of the Royal Navy, with some help from Entente forces, in keeping Germany under-supplied from abroad. It's common in war for the civilians to suffer privations, as everything is routed first to the front. But at the end of the war even German soldiers were starving. No one ever starts a war thinking he will lose. But also no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. The Germans had a very good plan for overpowering France. They'd flank the French by going through Holland and Belgium (and too bad for the Dutch and the Belgians!), then turn towards Paris, which tye expected to capture. Three things went wrong. 1) The Germans did not go through Holland for political reasons and 2) the French and British resisted a hell of a lot more than the Germans had anticipated. 3) there were British troops fighting them in France. Germany had anticipated great Britain would remain neutral, even after going through her Belgian ally like a hot knife through butter Had the Kaiser at the time known how the war would play out, there's no way in Hell there would have been a war.

Highschool science education is highly simplified, and in many cases rigght down simplistic. At that I had an excellent highschool chemistry teacher, but even she never explained why a carbon-carbon double bond is weaker than a carbon-carbon single bond. That's a very good question, isn't it? The basic genetic blueprint for all mammals, including humans, is female. If you administer estrogen and other "female" hormones to any male mammal, it will develop mammary glands and, depending on the species and age, other secondary female characteristics. The mammary glands won't produce milk because the male lacks the hormonal infrastructure to make them work. But if you then administer prolactin and other hormones, they will produce milk. What turns the normal XY embryo male is testoterone, the "male" hormone (I use the quote marks because while sex hormones vary by sex, theya re present in both sexes). The male fetus, as it develops, produces testoeterone in small amounts from its developing testicles and adrenal glands. This also means if you administer testosterone and other "male" hromones to a female, it will develop male characteristics, such as an enlarged clitoris and, in humans, facial hair and thickening of overall body hair. So, in some cases there are anomalies. Some otherwise normal XY people are insensitive to andorgens ("male" hormones). They produce testosterone in-utero, but don't react to it. Such people do not develop a penis, their testicles remain witin the body (exactly where a woman's ovaries would be) and, since they produce small amounts of estrogen, will develop as females. The XXY combination is rare, but it happens. Such people tend to be of subnormal intelligence and somewhat ambiguous sexual characteristics, but I'm not sure of the details. I think the condition is called Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome, but I may be wrong. There are other kind of anomalies that lead to people born without discernible sexual organs. In such cases the common medical practice used to be to surgically build a vagina and to use hormone replacement therapy at puberty and for life, raising the kids as girls. There were some very tragic outcomes from these kinds of practices. Finally there's a vast are of just plain ignorance when it comes to the human brain. We just don't know enough about it, yet, to determine whet makes a male brain and what makes a female brain. Small influences in-utero can have large consequences later in life. Genetic abnormalities remain to be discovered. Point is for the vast majority of the people looking at their genitals at birth, or at their last gene pair (XX or XY) tells you what they are. But for a small percentage the normal rules simply don't apply. So it would be wrong to dismiss the transgendered due to the kind of chromosomes they have, and in some cases the kind fo genitals they were born with.

I deal with people in the dairy industry. What they say is milk gets to the processing plant within 12 to 36 hours of being collected, then it goes through within hours. Pasteurized milk may take a few days to reach market, however, depending on relative locations. UHT milk may take weeks, as it will keep longer. Some pasteurized milk is shipped in bulk to other plants to make cheese, butter, cream, etc. Anything lasts longer if it's refrigerated, but that may mean any period from hours to weeks depending on what food we're talking about. As a rule, processed foods last longer.

FYI raw milk spoils quickly. That's why pasteurization was such a big deal, even before large-scale refrigeration. In Europe and Latin America it's common to find milk treated at ultra-high temperature (UHT), which lets it sit unrefrigerated and unspoiled for up to 6 months. Raw milk spoils because it's a rich breeding-ground for all sorts of bacteria. As far as I know it doesn't keep longer than two or three days.

You do know the Y chromosome usually carries the genetic coding for a male, but not always, right? There are plenty of well documented cases of XY females and XX males. There are such things as androgen insensitivity syndrome and other genetic conditions that render an XY or XX a moot point. Not to mention anomalies like XXY or XYY combinations.

That's the easy one. Just anwer truthfully and put down "Human."

I like it! Perhaps you've got a link to larger images?

I say the same thing about Baccarat I do play slots a little. Some of the newer video-based slots are fun for a while, say however $10 lasts on a penny machine. And I like Wheel of Fortune if I get a spin. Moslty I play video poker and BJ. Next trip, now just a few short weeks off, I'll try a serious craps session. You know there are free alcoholic drinks, too, right? On the upside the casino floor is the one place where a cocktail waitress won't mind a soda order; she gets tipped either way.

Thus far I've counted only one item blaming the Colts' traditional late season slow-down for hteir Superbowl defeat. But I've been busy and haven't had time to read many postmortems. I don't think so. They played well enough in the playoffs, very convincing wins. I think people are just sore the Colts dind't provide the undefeated season drama. For that matter, it may be for the best. Imagine if they'd reached the big game undefeated and lost the Super Bowl, like the Pats did 2 years ago. That must be worse. BTW in the last 15 years I think we can safely anme Brett Favre and Peyton Manning as two of the best QBs of that period. Altogether they've won two Super Bowls, the same as Ben Roethlisberger. Tom Brady, also among the best of this era, has won three. More on that later.

I just thought of something. The actors who played Andrei ni WTL and Roark n TF were also too old for those roles. I think Gary Cooper was in his mid 40s when he played Roark. So maybe...

I hear some minibars use RFID tags in the merhcandise, read by a reader on the minibar, and add a charge to the room bill as soon as something is pulled out. If so, then replacing the stuff just woulnd't work anymore. As to the example, while one would be replacing the merchandise, one would not be paying for the service. If you don't want to pay minibar prices, don't take anything out fo the minibar. Suppose you stop for gas and go to the convenience store for a coke. You wouldn't refuse to pay, drive to another store, buy a cheaper coke and give that back to the convenience store. Again, if 7-11 is too expensive, shop elsewhere. BTW I think minibar prices are too high. But I imagine enough people make use of them to make them profitable. Otherwise hotels would lower the prices or remove the things altogether. They are a considerable expenditure, after all. There's an initial investment, depreciation, cleaning, restocking, repairs, replacements, and they use power. Ohm the example above would be ethical if you took some cookies from a friend's house and then replaced them. You are giving back the exact same value, regardless of whether you paid less for yours. It's like borrowing a cup of sugar, assuming people still do that.

Personally I agree. But going by Hollywood's biases, she doesn't stand a chance. Back when she was an ocassional guest on Sports Night, playing a reporter named Bonny if memory serves, she'd have been a shoo-in. Of course back then she hadn't played a character of Cuddy's caliber. BTW speaking of her character in House, I like that she keeps House around despite all the agravation simply beacuse he's too good a doctor not to have in her hospital.

I haven't seen that ep, but that's Dr. Cuddy in essence. The actress who plays her, Lisa Edelstein, does a great job, too. However an actor is only one half of a TV or movie character. The writing is the other half (the direction figures, too, but writing trumps it). The most important thing as regards characters in any script is to write them well. No actor can make a character more than he's written out to be (ask Alec Guiness). The unfortunate part is that Lisa Edelstein is too old to play Dagny

Oh, I saw it. All of it. I just don't believe what I saw. I mean, there are three thigns you can depend on: death, taxes and the Saints suck. Ok, realistically the Saints are not the worst ever NFL team. Neither are the Lions (!). THat honor belongs to the Atlanta Falcons, notwithstnading their 98 Super Bowl appearance. This year the Falcons did something the franchise had never done: they had two consecutive winning seasons for the first time. Even the Saints, under Jim Mora, managed to do that before the Falcons. Anyway, if the world makes any kind of sense, the Saints ought to follow the 85 Bears into partial obscurity. Well, NO did prove something I've been pondering for a long time: the best time for an on-side kick is when the other team doesn't expect it. Naturally such times there's no reason for it. But I think that play completely stunned the Colts for the second half. My guess is we'll see a few third quarter on-side kicks next season. it will be the Wildcat for 2010.

So Friday after making a very early trip 60 miles out of town and eventually returning, I had to get to another town 100 miles away. Except the main highway was closed due to flooding and the usual 2 hour trip took for hours, plus another four hours returning. Then I stayed awake at work until 3 am. I mention this because it looks like the Saints won the Superbowl, and just can't possibly be so. I'm awaiting for the hallucination to clear, hopefully by tomorrow, and then I'll read the paper.

Actually, all the blame. Ultimately the head coach is responsible for the performance of his team. You'll notice I didn't bring up Craig Morton again.

Well, the Pro Bowl (yawn) has come and gone. Much as I miss football, I didn't watch. But we still ahve to wait for the ratings and such before determining whether the new schedule was successful or not. Anyway, next week we get football back. This year's game has some interesting coincidences. The obvious one is that the Saints face Peyton Manning, son of long-time Saints' QB Archie Manning. the latter was one of the best QBs NO ever had (well, one of two good QBs they ever had). But there's more. Current Saints QB Drew Brees started his career with the Chargers. The Chargers, you may recall, wanted to draft Eli Manning in '04, but didn't when Eli made it clear he wouldn't sign with San Diego. They traded his pick to the Giants and drafted Phil Rivers, who replaced Brees as a starter when Brees was injured in a game against Denver. Ok, this is tenuous at best. The story would ahve been better had the Chargers drafted Eli Manning to replace Brees, but the connection is there. It would be bad for the Saints to be beaten by the son of their old QB, certainly. But that would not be the worst kind of defeat. No, that dubious honor goes to Dan Reeves. Mr. Reeves, you may recall, coached the Broncos for a long time, taking them to two Superbowls with John Elway as QB. they lost both. Later on he took the Atlanta Falcons to the Superbowl where they faced Denver, with John Elway as QB. The Falcons lost. I can't help but think Reeves must have said to Elway after the game "Now you win a Superbowl?"

Tips for security: 1) Carry very little on you or with you. Try not to carry any gels or fluids. 2) Before going to the security line, place all keys, wallet, loose change, pens, cell phone, etc insde your carry-on. Also remove the cell phone clip from your belt. Make sure you leave nothing in your pockets. 3) In line loosen your belt and shoelaces. 4) Do as the security people say. Don't argue with them, it just wastes time and arouses suspicion. That's it. This gets you through faster. My carry-on usually holds just the following: a book and two magazines, ear plugs (foam), a small bottle of tylenol, a small tin of sugarless candy, a small bottle of antacid tablets, a toothbrush and a small toothpaste tube, a folder with travel documents (hotel, plane an car reservations/tickets, plus maps coupons, travel guides, receipts and such), passport and visa in a small leather folder, and sometimes small souvenirs. On me I carry a wallet, card wallet, check book, cigarettes, lighter, a pack of tissues, a pen, cell phone and a container of artificial sweetener (I favor jackets with lots of pockets).

The texans have an excuse. The Jaguars not so much. The Panthers are as old as the Jags, and they've been to the Superbowl. The New Browns have a partial excuse. On the other hand, think how long it took the 70s expansion teams, Tampa and Seattle, to reach the big one. Tampa nearly did it in 5 years, but lost that NFC championship to the then LA Rams (who then lost to the Steelers). So Detroit not only has no excuse, they have no team, no future and no prospects. The team should move to LA. Thay may find money to build a team there.

I wanted a Jets vs Vikings Sueprbowl. Oh, well. (Actually I wanted Chargers vs Vikings, but that was not going to happen, was it?). New Orleans goes to the Superbowl. The phrase looks, sounds and feels wrong. Almost like the phrase "Rational philosopher Emannuel Kant," only more absurd. Anyway, that leaves the follwoing teams who've never been to the big game: Houston Texans Jacksonville Jaguars Detroit Lions The list also includes the Cleveland Browns. Now, that's true, but the info on the list is somewhat missleading. The Browns which ahve played in the NFL for a long time actually moved to Baltimore, changed their name to the Ravens and abandoned their Cleveland history forever. OSme years later an expansion team was awrded to Cleveland. It took the name of the old team and its history. Well, you can take the name, but the not the history. So as far as I'm concerned the old Browns have gone to the Superbowl (and won it) while the New Browns ahven't. Anyway, The Jets got off to a great start. Alas, they forgot a game has two halves, not just one. They were shut out in the second half entirely. Of course by the late stages of the 4th quarter they tried to do in 3 minutes what they couldn't do in 27 minutes, and of course they failed. The NO vs Minnesota game was more balanced. If you look at the box score, you'd swear not only that the Vikings won, but that they crushed the Louisana upstarts. Until, that is, you see the turnovers. Worse yet, two of those were inside the Red Zone. Favre or no Favre, you won't win if you give up that many balls and two scores. Also, late in the 4th, with the game tied, the Vikings had plenty of time, two timeouts and were almost within easy field goal range. At that point, they turned conservative and ran the ball. The former Aint's read that and stopped them. Even then they were within their kickers extreme range when they commited a 12 men on the field penalty, which drove them out of range. BTW Favre tried to call a time out to avoid the penalty, but that play came after a Vikes' time out and you can't call two consecutive time outs. trying to do so is also a penalty. So they were screwed either way. In the end the better teams won. Now we get two weeks without football (the pro bowl doesn't count) where every pundit, comentator, coach-looking-for-work and stadium hot dog vendor will predict who willwin. When they are not doing the, hopefully, last chapter of the off-season Favre soap opera, that is. There may also be a rehash of the controversial calls and non-calls by the officials int eh Saints-Vikings game. I do want to know why NO wasn't called for roughing the passer on Favre's last play.

Of course. Remember Ronald Reagan's comment on government's relationship to business: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it." Think about it. How best to increase power over people than to make them dependent on you?