From hart at pglaf.org Wed Aug 9 10:13:53 2006
From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart)
Date: Wed Aug 9 10:14:00 2006
Subject: [gweekly] Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0608091012440.32160@pglaf.org>
pt1a1.806
pt1b1.806
Weekly_August_09.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 09, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
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I had a crash during editing, please let me know if I missed any fixes,
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*
For now I am leaving PT1a and PT1b combined.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
20,619 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites
18,973 Project Gutenberg US [+ 52] [NOT Including PG Australia]
1,024 Australian eBooks [+ 24] [NOT Included in above line]
330 Gutenberg Europe [+ 0] [NOT Included in above lines]
369 PG PrePrint Site [+ 1] [NOT Inclucded in above lines]
20,696 Grand Total [+ 77]
20,696 [I added a few we missed last week....]
[via our automated program, versus by hand]
[Please note we have several counting methods,
and they often differ by several book that we
have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.]
[Pleast note there is some duplication between
these various collections. voluntgeers needed
to take these duplications into account.]
~7% of the way from 20,000 to 30,000
75,000+ eBooks at the PG Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
[Please note that the four collections totals are eBooks that originated
as created, edited, proofread, formatted, etc., by Project Gutenberg and
its 50,000 volunteers, while the Project Gutenberg Consortia Center with
75,000+ eBooks contains entire eBook collections from other sources, all
the production statistics given here are for some 20,000+ eBooks created
by the various teams of Project Gutenberg volunteers, for which we share
the responsibility of maintaining. The Consortia Center eBooks were and
are the responsibility of the donating eLibraries, and we would be happy
to forward any suggestions for correction to those eLibraries, but those
eBooks must be editing by the donating parties, as per their requests.]
*
***582 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,628 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~263 eBooks per Month for ~67.00 Months
2,548 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites
34 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,872 total from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
[Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers]
[Note, PGDP mostly included in US eBooks]
[Note, PGEU has its own Distributed Proofreaders
whose total closely matches their grand total]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005
[Including PG Australia]
We Are Averaging ~363 eBooks Per Month This Year!!!
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 82 eBooks Per Week In 2006
77 This Week
77 This Month [Aug]
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~12.5 years from Jan. 1994 to Jun. 2006 to go from 100 to 20,100
It took ~32 months, from 2003 to 2006 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.8 years from Oct. 2003 to Jun. 2006 from 10,000 to 20,000
Not counting the addition of The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center,
through whom over 100 other eLibraries have donated their collections.
*
[Daily PrePrints stats at http://preprints.readingroo.ms/]
Please note that sometimes it takes a few weeks for entire
collections to fully appear in the PrePrints Section, thus
the count sometimes jumps by a large number when the files
are eventually completed and added in. Also note that the
PrePrint files are just that, PrePrints, and thus may move
later to other locations, including the main collection or
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, etc. For example,
on June 14, 200 WAP compatible cell phone eBooks appeared,
and will likely be moved to other collection points later.
The entire process of working out the details just to send
them to the PrePrints Section took well over a month.
Even with the speeded up process of the PrePrints Section,
it still takes a certain amount of time to collect and put
such a large collection online in a proper manner.
*
[Ignore for the moment]
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene
that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B.
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart@pobox.com and gbnewby@pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
FREE INTERNET REFERENCE SITE
LivingInternet.com provides a 700-odd page reference about the Internet
"to provide living context and perspective to this most technological
of human inventions", and has received input from many people that helped
build the Internet. It currently receives about 3 thousand visitors a day,
many from educational institutions. Now in its 7th year of operation.
http://www.livinginternet.com/
TEXT TO SPEECH
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hardware player, as well as any MP3 player - The choice is yours.
http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk or http://www.dolphinusa.com
***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***
pt1a1.806
pt1b1.806
Weekly_August_09.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 09, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart@pobox.com or gbnewby@pglaf.org
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***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements
General Catalog of Old Books and Authors
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm
which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all
PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information
about them and their authors where you can find more.
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***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders
In the first 07.00 months of this year, PG produced 2,548 new eBooks.
It took us from Jul 1971 to Mar 2001 to produce our first 2,548 eBooks!
That's 31 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 Years!!!
77 New eBooks This Week
142 New eBooks Last Week
77 New eBooks This Month [Aug]
364 Average Per Month in 2006
266 Average Per Month in 2005 Counting 216 PGEu
248 Average Per Month in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
336 Average Per Month in 2004
355 Average Per Month in 2003
203 Average Per Month in 2002
103 Average Per Month in 2001
2548 New eBooks in 2006
3186 New eBooks in 2005 Counting 216 PGeu
> 2970 New eBooks in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
4049 New eBooks in 2004
4164 New eBooks in 2003
2441 New eBooks in 2002
1240 New eBooks in 2001
====
17,628 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001
That's Only 67.00 Months!
~263 books per month!
20,619 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks
16,927 eBooks This Week Last Year
====
3,769 New eBooks In Last 12 Months
[Incl. PGAu, PGEu & PrePrints]
1,024 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia
[This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted
at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ]
330 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Europe
369 Items in Project Gutenberg PrePrints
~75,000+ Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
You may also want to look at Project Runeberg [Scandinavian]
http://runeberg.org
*
Project Gutenberg began operation on July 4, 1971
Project Runeberg began operation on December 13, 1992
Distributed Proofreaders began October 22, 2000
[Became an official PG-US site in 2002]
Project Gutenberg of Australia began in August, 2001
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center started in 1997]
[Became an official PG-US site in 2003]
Project Gutenberg of Europe started January 12, 2004
[Posted first books February 26, when we met in Brussels
to address people at the European Union Parliament.
Project Gutenberg PrePrints Started January 25, 2006
http://preprints.readingroo.ms
*
PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE:
Since starting production in October 2000,
Distributed Proofreaders has contributed
8,872 Books to Project Gutenberg.
34 added this week.
For more complete DP statistics, visit:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php
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*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
The PGCC collection at http://www.gutenberg.cc has doubled
in size from the listings below, but we don't have exactly
matching collection sizes yet for a new breakdown.
The number of individual eBooks now exceeds 75,000.
*
PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings
of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as:
[This list is being updated as the moment, you can get
the entire list on the collections pages at gutenberg.cc]
Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files
Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files
The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files
DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files
eBooks@Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files
Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files
Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<<
Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files
Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files
Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files
Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files
PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change
Renascence Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files
Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files
Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files
Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files
CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files
=======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files=====
Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 Total Files
These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of
their donors: some are one file per book; some have a
file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a
single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons
I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the
overcounting or duplication of numbers.
If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~45,714 Unique eBooks
If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~34,286 Unique eBooks
*
The new overall collection size, which has reduced the
need to account for duplications and eBooks with files
for each chapter, etc.
75,000+ Unique eBooks
***
Please also note that over 25,000 eBooks are listed via
The Online Books Page, of which over 6,300 are from PG.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar
listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is
happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries,
made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up
any current information.
You can try a new IPL service at:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended
its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which
has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page.
Still looking for more Internet Public Library info.
***
Today Is Day #217 of 2006
This Completes Week #31 and Month #07.00 [364 days this year]
1R47Days/21 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year]
9,304 Books To Go To #30,000
[Our production year begins/ends
1st Wednesday of the month/year]
82 Weekly Average in 2006
61 Weekly Average in 2005 [Counting 216 PGEu]
57 Weekly Average in 2005 [Not Counting PGEu]
78 Weekly Average in 2004
79 Weekly Average in 2003
47 Weekly Average in 2002
24 Weekly Average in 2001
42 Only ~42 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers List
[Used to be well over 100]
[This listing usually from the previous week]
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***
Statistical Review
In the 31 weeks of this year, we have produced 2548 new eBooks.
It took us from 07/71 to 05/01 to produce our FIRST 2548 eBooks!!!
That's 31 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 YEARS!!!
FLASHBACK!
Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #1954
Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ###
A "C" Following The eText # Indicates That This eText Is Under Copyright
[Note: books without month and year entries are now in new catalog format
Mar 2001 The Poor Clare, by Elizabeth Gaskell[E. Gaskell#9][prclrxxx.xxx] 2548
Mar 2001 Half a Life-time Ago, by Elizabeth Gaskell[E.G.#8][hlflfxxx.xxx] 2547
Mar 2001 Rustler Round-Up (Bar-20), C.E. Mulford[Mulford#1][hcrruxxx.xxx] 2546
[Title: Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up (Bar-20)]
[Author: Clarence Edward Mulford]
Mar 2001 When God Laughs, and Other Stories, by Jack London[gdlghxxx.xxx] 2545
>From Sand Hill to Pine, by Bret Harte 2544
Polyuecte, by Pierre Corneille 2543
[Translator: Thomas Constable]
Mar 2001 The Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen[Henrik Ibsen #5][dlshsxxx.xxx] 2542
Mar 2001 Character, by Samuel Smiles [Samuel Smiles #6][crctrxxx.xxx] 2541
Father and Son, by Edmund Gosse 2540
Mar 2001 The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russell Wallace V2[2malayxx.xxx] 2539
(See also: V1 #2530)
Mar 2001 Poems and Tales from Romania, by Simona Sumanaru [patfrxxx.xxx] 2538C
[Author: Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart]
Mar 2001 The Pocket R.L.S., by Robert Louis Stevenson [#39][pkrlsxxx.xxx] 2537
Mar 2001 Amphitryon, A play by Moliere, Tr. by Waller [M#2][amphixxx.xxx] 2536
Eugene Pickering, by Henry James 2534
Mar 2001 Round the Sofa, by Elizabeth Gaskell [#8][rndsfxxx.xxx] 2533
The Half-Brothers, by Elizabeth Gaskell 2532
An Accursed Race, by Elizabeth Gaskell 2531
Feb 2001 The Malay Archipelago, by Alfred Russel Wallace [1malayxx.xxx] 2530
Feb 2001 The Analysis of Mind, by Bertrand Russell [analmdxx.xxx] 2529
Feb 2001 The Women of the French Salons, Amelia Gere Mason [frsalxxx.xxx] 2528
Feb 2001 The Sorrows of Young Werther, by J.W. Goethe [#31][sywerxxx.xxx] 2527
Feb 2001 The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Charles Johnston [patanxxx.xxx] 2526
Feb 2001 John Ingerfield etc by Jerome K. Jerome [#25][jhnngxxx.xxx] 2525
My Lady Ludlow, by Elizabeth Gaskell 2524
Feb 2001 The Memoirs of Victor Hugo, by Victor Hugo[Hugo#2][vhugoxxx.xxx] 2523
A Dark Night's Work, by Elizabeth Gaskell 2522
Lizzie Leigh, by Elizabeth Gaskell 2521
Feb 2001 The Man, by Bram Stoker [Bram Stoker #3][thmanxxx.xxx] 2520
Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi, by David Livingstone 2519
[Title: A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi
and Its Tributaries]
*
Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet?
If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of
6,533,604,659 that would be 20,696 x 65,336,047 = ~1.35 Trillion !!!
With 20,696 eBooks online as of August 09, 2006 it now takes an average
of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.74 from each book.
[1% world population x #eBooks] 65,336,047 x 20,696 x $.74 = ~$1 Trillion
[Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.]
[By the way, the US "popclock" is about to turn to 300 million people.]
[Just turned 299.4 million this week!]
*
A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.49 Value Per Book To 100 Million
With 20,696 eBooks online as of August 09, 2006 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.48 from each book.
This "cost" is down from about $.59 when we had 16,927 eBooks a year ago.
Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people.
At 20,696 eBooks in 35 Years and 01.00 Months We Averaged
590 Per Year
49 Per Month
1.62 Per Day
If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of
6,533,604,659 that would be 20,696 x 65,336,047 = ~1.35 Trillion !!!
With 20,696 eBooks online as of August 09, 2006 it now takes an average
of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.74 from each book.
[1% world population x #eBooks] 65,336,047 x 20,696 x $.74 = ~$1 Trillion
[Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.]
[By the way, the US "popclock" is about to turn to 300 million people.]
[Just turned 299.4 million this week!]
*
A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.49 Value Per Book To 100 Million
With 20,619 eBooks online as of August 02, 2006 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.49 from each book.
This "cost" is down from about $.59 when we had 16,842 eBooks a year ago.
Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people.
At 20,619 eBooks in 35 Years and 00.75 Months We Averaged
588 Per Year
49 Per Month
1.61 Per Day
At 2471 eBooks Done In The 210 Days Of 2006 We Averaged
11.8 Per Day
82 per Week
366 Per Month
If you are interested in the population of the world or of the U.S.
you might want to know that these numbers, official as they appear,
are just just estimates, and perhaps not as accurate as we hope.
However, for those keeping track of how quickly the U.S. reaches a
300 million population level, and who noticed the passing of 298M,
just two weeks ago. . .the U.S. is already 1/6 the way to 299M, so
it will probably be 10 more weeks to 299M and 22 more to 300M.
Recently the U.S. Congress, pertaining to district reapportionment,
who gets to vote for which Congresspeople, decided that many of the
districts were undercounted by 5%, perhaps then later deciding that
all districts had been undercounted by 5% [can't recall details].
*
The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks'
production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon,
starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 4th was
the first Wednesday of 2006, and thus ended PG's production
year of 2005 and began the production year of 2006 at noon.
This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week.
***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
UC TO JOIN GOOGLE'S BOOK SCANNING PROJECT?
The University of California is reportedly in talks with Google to join
its controversial book-scanning project. The university is already
participating in the Open Content Alliance (OCA), which is also working
to digitize vast numbers of books but with a different approach. Rather
than scanning all books, copyrighted or not, unless copyright holders
request that a book be left out of the program, the OCA has taken the
approach of only scanning copyrighted books whose owners have given
explicit permission. The university and Google did not disclose details
of the negotiations, but questions arose about how the institution's
participation in the two projects might be reconciled. Brewster Kahle,
director of the Internet Archive, which was a founder of the OCA,
wondered if perhaps Google would move its project to a more open model,
closer to that of the OCA, because, as he said, "there is no point in
scanning these books twice." Daniel Greenstein, director of the
University of California system's California Digital Library, said the
issue is fundamentally not about specific companies or organizations
but about the university's mission to support public education and
explore new roles for libraries in the digital age.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 August 2006
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/08/2006080301t.htm
CHILD ONLINE IDENTITY CARD DEBUTS
An online identity service for children has debuted in the United
Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Conceived by U.K.
businessman Alex Hewitt, the NetIDMe system requires parents to apply
for ID cards for their kids and to supply a credit card as
verification. Another person who knows the child must countersign the
application. Once an ID is established, users can communicate with
others online with the assurance that users who say they are children
are not in fact adults who prey on kids. The service, which costs 10
pounds per year, is only effective if both communicating parties
participate. Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and
Online Protection Centre, said that this effort, like any other that
works to verify the age and identity of Internet users, will help
prevent children from becoming victims of online predators. Detective
Chief Superintendent Tom Porter of the Scottish Crime and Drug
Enforcement Agency noted that Web users should nonetheless be cautious.
"We would advise all parents and young people to...ensure no personally
identifiable information is shared with online strangers."
BBC, 2 August 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5238992.stm
CHINA CLOSES LIBERAL WEB SITE
Government officials in China have taken another step in limiting what
Internet users in the country can access, causing an uproar among
intellectuals and others critical of the Communist Party. During the
past week, access inside China to the Century China Web site has been
cut off, prompting a petition that accuses the government of trying to
control public opinion. More than 100 outspoken individuals--both
inside the country and abroad--have signed the petition, which was sent
by e-mail to the media. The petition states, in part, "The shutdown of
Century China is just another instance of the Chinese government
suppressing the freedom of its people." It also describes the Century
China Web site as "the one spiritual home we had in the cyberworld."
CNET, 2 August 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6101267.html
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STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
Concerning the recent miniumum wage and estate tax legislation.
There are ~6.25 million minimum wage workers in the United States.
On the average each ones works under 2,000 hours per year.
250 days times 8 hours = 2,000 hours.
50 weeks times 40 hours = 2,000 hours.
Obivously there are more days off than just weekends, so this is
a very conservative estimate for these purposes.
At $2 per year increase in pay, this about about $4,000 each.
6.25 million times $4,000 = 25 billion dollars.
After a 3 year phase in period.
26.25 billion if you count in the extra dime, which will be
eaten by inflation before the first year of phasing in.
Now let's count the other side of the coin.
If the estate tax repeal only effects the richest 1% of the US,
that is about 3 million people. Given that people are dying on
the average at the rate of well over 1% per year [the average
life-expectancy would have to be 100, for it to be 1%, and it
is more like 75, for those dying today, though we might have to
take into account better health care for the wealthy, since the
US is the only developed country without a national health care.
So, to be VERY conservative in our estimation, we will figure on
a 1% per year death rate among the 1% wealtiest Americans.
That's 30,000 people per year who stand to get estate tax repeal.
At just 1 million dollars each that is 30 billion dollars.
. . .
When you look at your own estate, or that of your parents, might
be that you will realize that the estates of the top 1% are many
times larger than yours and yours is still a reasonable fraction
of a million dollars.
Now perhaps you can visualize why the legistlation was defeated.
1. The estate tax releal would kick in right away.
2. The minimum wage raise was already eaten away by inflation.
3. The minimum wage figures are in pre-tax dollars, workers do
not get nearly that much in their pockets.
4. The estate tax is in post-tax dollars, they keep it all.
5. The great fortunes of the Rockefellers, etc. were made with
income tax rates as high as 93%, and passed on with estate tax.
/
>From "Media Matters"
The states with the greastest discrepancies between exit polls
and votes reported were Republican states.
[Some say this is just because Republicans are more private.]
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
[Sorry, this was supposed to go in last week, still learning system.]
The House passed a bill finally raising the minimum wage from $5.15
over a 3 year period to ~$7.25, but only for the quid pro quo of an
extra repeal of the estate tax on the very wealthy.
In reality, the poor are not even really getting a raise, they are
merely getting an inflation offset, while the rich are getting the
millions they now have passed on from generation to generation for
the formation of the same kind of "Landed Gentry" aristocracy that
ruined Europe and caused the American and French revolutions.
Let's see: "You give us billions in tax cuts for the very wealthy
and we will give you ~$2 an hour in inflated money that gives your
salary less buying power than was available 50 years ago."
"That's what common folk call:
"Robbing Peter to pay Paul."
Robin Hood would call it:
"Robbing the poor to give to the rich."
MORE DOUBLESPEAK
The Senate refused to repeal 100% of the estate tax that had been
vilified as "The Death Tax," by embattled White House guru Karl Rove,
but in the end it will cost the real taxpayers just as much, as the
deal is being engineered by repealing what may be all timber company
taxes to win over Senate votes from timber rich Washington State.
All in all The Estate Tax is being repealed for all but the richest
1% or less in the country, and it should be mentioned that that 1%
owns half of everything that can be owned in the United States.
Source: The Washington Post
[I wonder how rest of the country would react to all this if that 1%
actually lived on their blocks, and owned half the land, half the cars,
half the stocks, bonds, cash, boats, etc. while the next 2% owned half
of what was left, and the next 4% owned half of that, etc. . .leaving
only a few percent to be earned by 90% of the block's residents???]
*QUOTES OF THE WEEK
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
It will eventually be determined that there has been an overall
pattern of divulging the personal information of U.S. citizens.
By the way, I think evidence of this was in the media last week.
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
*
By the way, for those interested, the official U.S. population
estimates just passed 298 million, though many say estimations
of this nature leave out as much as 5% of the population, with
the obvious exclusion of the 11-12 million immigrant workers
now being mentioned so much in the news.
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
[This one is getting a little out of date, as the US population
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
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pgweekly_2006_08_09_part_1.txt
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