PG Weekly Newsletter: Part 1 (2006-08-16)

by Michael Cook on August 16, 2006
Newsletters

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

*

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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
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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.

Plus many books not available on line, a good place to search
for books by specific authors who you are interested in.

For information please contact Philip Harper
<webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk>

*

We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections
of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks.

http://www.archive.org

Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date,
but you should get all the files when you pass through
to the original sites.

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of the eBooks you would like to work on.

Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive!

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***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders


  In the first 07.25 months of this year, PG produced 2,647 new eBooks.

It took us from Jul 1971 to May 2001 to produce our first 2,647 eBooks!

            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
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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 #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:

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***


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


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*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.


*

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pgweekly_2006_08_16_part_1.txt

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