From hart at pglaf.org Wed Aug 16 09:28:28 2006 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed Aug 16 09:28:37 2006 Subject: [gweekly] PT1 Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0608160927490.15508@pglaf.org> 47 U.S. and 46 Oz. g 330 eu [+0] 370 pp [+1] Newton's Principia Mathematica in raw scan 8,910 dp - 8,872 = [+38] 1,070 au {+46] 18999 US 19000 -42 = 18,968 18,921 last week = [+47] 19,062 - 42 = 19,020 - 18,968 = 52 Three ways to count Subtract last week # - 42 reserved - total 48 via marcello G 43US 21 Au 9am tues * Please see revised counting format below, comments requested. * pt1a2.806 pt1b2.806 Weekly_August_16.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 16, 2006 PT1*** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******* WARNING! I had a MAJOR crash just now when following a link to TIME Magazine where it would appear something took control of my hard drive. . .I had just time to yank the physical connection, so I had to use a recovery file to get back to the Newsletter you see below. I will try to check everything, but it is usually a days long process, and I have only an hour. For now I am leaving PT1a and PT1b combined. Please also let me know if you think these Newsletters are a waste of time or if you think I/we should keep doing them. Thanks! Michael * We are interested in increasing the "SF" available at Project Gutenberg of Australia. To this end we are happy to receive donations of ebooks to add to our collection. SF, in this context can mean: Science, Speculative, Superhero, Swords, Sorcery, Spies, Supernatural and Scary Fiction. Of course, we are only able to accept works that are public domain in Australia. Generally speaking, this means that the author died in 1954 or earlier. Please see our WANTED list at http://gutenberg.net.au/wanted.html for authors and works of interest. If you have suggestions for authors or works to add to the list, please let us know. Do check first that they are not already available at Project Gutenberg Australia or Project Gutenberg, please. Contact details are provided on the WANTED page. http://gutenberg.net.au/wanted.html As always, ebooks by Australian authors and of general Australian interest are always greatly appreciated. Editor's comments appear in [brackets]. Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart@pobox.com or gbnewby@pglaf.org Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart@pobox.com * 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* 20,790 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites 19,020 Project Gutenberg US [+ 50] [NOT Including PG Australia] 1,070 Australian eBooks [+ 46] [NOT Included in above line] 330 Gutenberg Europe [+ 0] [NOT Included in above lines] 370 PG PrePrint Site [+ 1] [NOT Inclucded in above lines] 20,793 Grand Total [+ 97] 20,790 [by hand count] [+ 94] [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. Volunteers 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 edited by the donating parties, as per their requests.] * 17,725 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~264 eBooks per Month for ~67.25 Months 2,645 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites 38 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 8,910 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 ~364 eBooks Per Month This Year!!! [Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints] All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 83 eBooks Per Week In 2006 97 This Week 77 Last Week 174 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 * [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. * ***Introduction [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 Dolphin Producer is a new software package which will convert a text document into a fully synchronized text and audio DTB at the push of a single button. The DTB can then be played back using Dolphin's EaseReader software player - which is included in Dolphin Producer. The DTB can also be played back on any other DAISY DTB software or 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*** pt1a2.806 pt1b2.806 Weekly_August_16.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 16, 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 Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart@pobox.com ***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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That's 32 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 Years!!! 97 New eBooks This Week 77 New eBooks Last Week 174 New eBooks This Month [Jul] 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 2645 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 ==== 17,725 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 65.75 Months! ~267 books per month! 20,793 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks 16,961 eBooks This Week Last Year ==== 3,832 New eBooks In Last 12 Months [Incl. PGAu, PGEu & PrePrints] 1,070 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 370 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 8,649 Books to Project Gutenberg. 42 added this week. For more complete DP statistics, visit: http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php * Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers even before the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalog. eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists. Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto or http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml *** *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 #224 of 2006 This Completes Week #32 and Month #07.25 [364 days this year] 140 Days/22 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 9,282 Books To Go To #30,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 83 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 ~45 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers List [Used to be well over 100] [This listing usually from the previous week] *** Permanent Requests For Assistance: DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES Please visit the site: http://www.pgdp.net for more information about how you can help a lot by simply proofreading just a few pages per day, or more. 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Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) *** Statistical Review In the 30 weeks of this year, we have produced 2271 new eBooks. It took us from 07/71 to 08/00 to produce our FIRST 2271 eBooks!!! That's 30 WEEKS as Compared to ~29 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] May 2001 Du Cote de Chez Swann, Marcel Proust [Proust #1][?swanxxx.xxx] 2650 [Language: French] (Note: Vol. One "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu") (8swanxxh.zip has three files; single HTML available in:)[swannxxh.xxx] May 2001 Captains of the Civil War, by William Wood [cptcwxxx.xxx] 2649 George Cruikshank, by William Makepeace Thackeray 2648 May 2001 V1 Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by Trevelyan[1lllmxxx.xxx] 2647 [Author: George Otto Trevelyan] John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character, William Makepeace Thackeray 2646 The Second Funeral of Napoleon, by William Makepeace Thackeray 2645 [Author AKA: Michael Angelo Titmarch] May 2001 Isaac Bickerstaff, by Richard Steele [iscbkxxx.xxx] 2644 [Ed.: Henry Morley] May 2001 John Bull, by J. Arbuthnot [jhnblxxx.xxx] 2643 May 2001 Back Home, by Eugene Wood [bckhmxxx.xxx] 2642 May 2001 A Room With A View, by E. M. Forster [Forster #2][rmwvwxxx.xxx] 2641 May 2001 St. Martin's Summer, by Rafael Sabatini [RS #6] [stmsmxxx.xxx] 2640 Villa Rubein et al, by John Galsworthy 2639 * Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet? If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of 6,535,019,575 that would be 20,790 x 65,350,196 = ~1.36 Trillion !!! With 20,718 eBooks online as of August 16, 2006 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.73 from each book. [1% world population x #eBooks] 65,350,196 x 20,790 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 299.5 million this week!] A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.48 Value Per Book To 100 Million With 20,790 eBooks online as of August 16, 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 16,961 eBooks a year ago. Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people. At 20,790 eBooks in 35 Years and 01.25 Months We Averaged 592 Per Year 49 Per Month 1.62 Per Day At 2642 eBooks Done In The 224 Days Of 2006 We Averaged 11.8 Per Day 83 per Week 364 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] EDITORS RESIGN AFTER WEB SITE BUDGET SLASHED Two editors of a Web site associated with Columbia University resigned after Nicholas Lemann, the dean of the university's graduate school, cut the site's budget by almost half. The site, CJRDaily.org, was launched in 2004 to cover the election, but the popularity of its political analysis prompted the university to keep the site up. Although CJRDaily reportedly has nearly 500,000 page views per month, the site is free and currently includes no ads. Lemann said the site would begin to carry ads. After failing to raise enough funds to maintain the site's budget, he decided to redirect money to fund a campaign to increase subscriptions to the print magazine, "The Columbia Journalism Review." The expected increased revenues from the print journal, said Lemann, would be used to support CJRDaily. Steve Lovelady, the site's managing editor, and Bryan Keefer, the assistant managing editor, resigned in protest, reducing the staff to six. Lovelady said he disagrees with Lemann's idea to take money from the online venture and put it toward a print journal. New York Times, 11 August 2006 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/business/media/11mag.html UC SYSTEM SIGNS ON TO GOOGLE BOOK SCANNING The University of California will join Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library in Google's controversial book-scanning project. The UC System comprises more than 100 libraries on 10 campuses, and the new deal will give Google access to many millions of volumes housed at those libraries. As with other texts in Google's program, digital copies will only be accessible through its own search engine. Google still faces legal opposition to its program, which scans copyrighted material as well as public domain texts, though access to protected work is limited. The UC System also participates in the Open Content Alliance (OCA), which takes a different approach to copyrighted works, scanning only those for which copyright owners have provided explicit permission. Although Jennifer Colvin, strategic communications manager at the California Digital Library, rejected the idea that participating in both projects represents a conflict, others disagreed. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, said, "Having a public institution decide to go with Google's restrictions doesn't help the idea of libraries being open in the future." CNET, 8 August 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6103540.html AOL REGRETS DISCLOSING SEARCH RESULTS Officials at AOL have apologized for making search records public, calling it a "screw-up" that would not have happened had it been properly reviewed. Researchers in a number of fields use, or would like to use, search records to understand Web surfing habits and how to make searches more efficient. AOL put randomly selected search histories for 658,000 subscribers online, where researchers and the public could access them. Although the records did not contain names, many said the posting puts those users at risk of being identified through inductive reasoning based on their searches. Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said, "We think it's a major privacy concern, and we're glad to see AOL is taking it seriously." AOL said that despite their intention of assisting the research and academic communities, putting the search records online was wrong and they have since taken them down. Internet researcher Steve Beitzel noted that AltaVista and Excite have previously disclosed similar information and that no harm came from those disclosures. ZDNet, 8 August 2006 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,39020336,39280573,00.htm BOWDOIN BACKS AWAY FROM CITY WI-FI, CITES CALEA A planned rollout of wireless Internet service by Bowdoin College to the residents of in Brunswick, Maine, has been halted, at least temporarily, due to concerns over the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The FCC has said that the law, which mandates law enforcement access to communications systems, should apply to network operators, including colleges and universities. Higher education has opposed that decision, saying it would be extremely costly for them to comply and that there are other ways for institutions to cooperate with law enforcement. Following legal action and lobbying, a court allowed an exception for "private" networks. Bowdoin, which is in Brunswick, had been working to implement a wireless network in the city for students and town residents. Saying that it isn't clear whether allowing town residents to access the network would compromise its being a "private" network, officials from the college have decided that the network will only be available to students. Mitch Davis, CIO at Bowdoin, noted that the plan to open the network to everyone in town is currently suspended, not dead. Inside Higher Ed, 7 August 2006 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/07/wireless You've been reading excerpts from Edupage: To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU and in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName or To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA The amount of water it takes to make ethanol is truly staggering, particularly to the localalities in which ethanol is being created, yet it never appears in the hundreds national news stories about ethanol, only in the local or regional news where the problem hits the ecology the hardest. "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," comes to mind. *STATISTICS OF THE WEEK "No Child Left Behind???" It would appear 1 out of 5 who would qualify for some extra tutoring ARE being left behind. 1 out of 5 "No Student Left Behind" potential tutoring students are being "left behind" as millions of these qualified students have sub-standard tutoring projects or are receiving no tutors, whatsoever from the "No Child Left Behind Program." In some of these cases the schools simply have not gotten with the program and in others it appears that the raft of paperwork required to enter the program has been designed in such a way that parents, even those who would have signed up, either do not recognize it as not being junk mail, or can't fill out the paperwork to some level of satisfaction that would get the child in the program. It is hard to blame the schools when they are confronted with a years long "unfunded mandate" in which the least funded schools are the ones who need the program the most. It will be hard to put the blame on the program, as it is backed by policking, not the educational system. Perhaps the forms should be labeled in a clear manner to avoid them being throw out with the 100 pound level of junk mail the average family receives per year, or, it might be nice if the schools handed out the paperwork to insure the right hand could fill the papers the left hand received. Source: WILL_AM radio, 8/15, around 8:30AM Congress Tackles Internet Gambling An estimated 8 million Americans spend 6 billion dollars/year, according to Frank deFord, who strongly stated this morning on NPR's Morning Edition that their legistlation was akin to that single finger in the dike. *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Economists are reporting record growth for Europe, based on a 0.9% improvement from the first quarter, yielding a 2.4% annual growth rate, very close to the US rate of 2.5%. They say this is the fastest growth in six year, but neglect to mention the inflation rate, either for the US or for Europe. Figures from the European Central Bank indicated that European inflation is over 2%, and revision is expected to reveal an inflation rate roughly equal to the 2.4% growth rate, as the previous published rate of 2.1% may be falling behind. US inflation was reported at 1.55% for the same quarter, for an annual rate of ~3.75%, higher than either of the reported growth rates. What happens when inflation outpaces growth figures? It means that the economy is really shrinking, using the yardstick of constant dollars, real spending power, etc. Multiple sources MORE DOUBLESPEAK If you keep track of such inflation figures for years, and then decades, you will also see that the yearly preliminary figures are replaced the next year by even higher figures. For reasons unknown to me, the figure often seems to be low by about .83%, added in the following year. I can only surmise that this is some kind of attempt to keep the consumers buying, as the consumers seem to have a short memory for an assortment of tricks such as this, as tricks such as these seem to also be common in some famous reports on college testing that say a large improvment has been recorded, when the truth is that it was just the figures having been juggled via some recalibration scheme. Multiple sources *QUOTES OF THE WEEK [Who is it we are at war with right now? Is it Oceania or Eurasia? Be sure to be up to date with the latest edition of an instant classic, The 13th Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary, Ed. Winston Smith." Google "Winston Smith" and "Newspeak".] "As we have said many times, we are a nation at war." US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [Concerning the almost literal midnight change in the flight regulations that now prohibit liquids. What a person with a medical condition is supposed to do was not in the announcements I heard.] 08/10/06 *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK The war will continue, just as the Viet Nam war did, until something unprecented happens, such as ousting the US President who is running the war, as happened with President Nixon. *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK [I think the inflation/growth statistics in the news were plenty odd enough. However, I should add that manufacturing costs rose sharply around the world, up 1.1% in the UK in July alone, though those have not yet reached the consumer markets.] * 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 is obviously no longer 6% of the world. In fact, rounding to the nearest percent, the US will soon fall from 5% to 4%.] "If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education 1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater] 1 would be 79 years old or more. 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. * Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists, including the Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters: and the other Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists: The weekly is sent on Wednesdays, and the monthly is sent on the first Wednesday of the month. To subscribe to any (or to unsubscribe or adjust your subscription preferences), visit the Project Gutenberg mailing list server: http://lists.pglaf.org If you are having trouble with your subscription, please email the list's human administrators at: help@pglaf.org
pgweekly_2006_08_16_part_1.txt
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