Ironic, Pitiful, Randomly Interesting, and Food for Thought
Ironic: So Billy, Katrina, Martin, and I went to Pazzo's for lunch today. Somehow the conversation got around to good girlfriends and Martin had an opinion on who he thought was the best girlfriend, Katrina partly agreed with him. Billy and I however both maintained that Angela was the best girlfriend in the group. Then we both had to ironically admit that for both of us she was the only girl we had broken up with.
Pitiful: So apparently Galaxies is no longer a game. I've personally seen at least five situations where this "game" has caused real world resentment and/or fights. If you're mad about this part I'm not going to argue about it with you, it's just plain sad that a game can influence life that much.
Randomly Interesting: Was just having the two second conversation with Katrina about this so posting it here. The short history of the French language (also Spanish came about in a very similar fashion). Originally France was divided up into a lot of different territories who most spoke different forms of Gaelic (mostly celtic but all descended from indo-european). Then the Romans came in and conquered all this land and introduced latin. At this point most of these people largely embraced latin and it became the written language while a combination of spoken latin and celtic evolved into "la langue romane" which was the spoken language, although still very different from place to place. Eventually this slowly began "ancient French" or "l'ancien français". Even this was divided into two different dialects, in the southern third that was more influenced by italian it was known as "la langue d'oc", in the north as "la langue d'oïl" where it was more influenced by the Gaelic tongues and particularly by the Paris region gaining in importance as it was the first to become a major trading center. They get their names from the way that "yes" was said in the two, in the northern two thirds largely "oïl", in the southern third largely "oc". The language changed into what is truly considered French slowly around 800 a.d. when Charlemagne unified the country and each of his sons ruled a region, the unification of the people and the language was much easier as a "family affair". But even today there are differences from the north to south. In the south "un" is a nasal u sound, close to what is in the "hunh hunh hunh" laugh, in the north it's a nasal i like the vowel sound in "can".
Food for Thought: Most people don't know this but economically income differences across ethnic groups are not explained by discrimination (largely because anyone who's studied the subject tends to find there's no evidence) but by what's called leaks, matches, and traps. I'm gonna try to summarize and then present data. Leaks just refer to how knowledge leaks. When one person makes a conscious investment to gain new knowledge and gets a high return from that the knowledge can then leak to the people around him who will copy the idea and get the same returns (although lowering the private return to each person). But because knowledge is complementary, meaning the more knowledge that a person possesses the greater the return to gaining more knowledge, each of those people now have a strong incentive to gain more knowledge. One example is a computer program. I use Windows 2000. It was easy for me to learn that system because I knew how to use Windows 98. If Windows 2000 was given to a person who had no computer skill beyond what someone would have in the 70s then they would not be able to use it easily, my knowledge of the new system complements my knowledge of the old system. Matches are when people of similar skill levels match with each other. Cities are an example, in the U.S. the average income in metropolitan counties is 32% higher than avg income in rural counties. Assembly lines are another, if one person can screw up a product that you invest time and energy into then if you are highly skilled at your part of assembly you're going to want to match with other workers who are highly skilled at the other parts. If the people around you are highly skilled (even your parents and family) then you have a strong incentive to become skilled. However if the people around you have low skills and there is a very small stock of initial knowledge then we see what's called a trap (or poverty trap). Because the stock of knowledge is so low no one has an incentive to get more knowledge because the returns are below the required rate to make it worth it. If someone living in a region that's in a trap does become skilled then they will usually leave so they can match with other skilled people. This explains the differences in incomes across ethnicities. Many whites in this country come from skilled families and neighborhoods and therefore have incentives to become skilled and the return to gaining more knowledge is very high (and increasing). For many other ethnicities it is the opposite. At the same time even this is geographic (matching). The five defined poverty clusters within the U.S. are: (1) inner-city blacks, (2) rural blacks in the Mississippi delta, (3) native Americans in the west, (4) Hispanics in the southwest, and (5) whites in southeastern Kentucky. 18 of the 20 poorest all white counties in the U.S. are in southeastern KY. The reason that white discrimination against other races is not accepted as an explanation for income differences is become while average black incomes are 41% lower than average white incomes, average asian incomes are 16% higher than avg white incomes. 40% of the 160 richest Americans are Jewish while only 2% of the population is Jewish (and we know this isn't because the Jews have been persecuting and discriminating against everyone). Individuals who's ancestors immigrated from Austria are earn 25% more than individuals who's parents immigrated from Belgium. Iroquois descendants have incomes twice that of Sioux descendants. Even in South Africa racial discrimination fails to explain income differences, avg white incomes are 9.5 times avg black incomes but his ignores the huge difference in black incomes between authorities (villages), in KwaZulu-Natal (a South African state) blacks in the richest authority earn 54 times more than blacks in the poorest authority. Anyway, this is all just food for thought and background for what will lead to a later post on income redistribution.
Pitiful: So apparently Galaxies is no longer a game. I've personally seen at least five situations where this "game" has caused real world resentment and/or fights. If you're mad about this part I'm not going to argue about it with you, it's just plain sad that a game can influence life that much.
Randomly Interesting: Was just having the two second conversation with Katrina about this so posting it here. The short history of the French language (also Spanish came about in a very similar fashion). Originally France was divided up into a lot of different territories who most spoke different forms of Gaelic (mostly celtic but all descended from indo-european). Then the Romans came in and conquered all this land and introduced latin. At this point most of these people largely embraced latin and it became the written language while a combination of spoken latin and celtic evolved into "la langue romane" which was the spoken language, although still very different from place to place. Eventually this slowly began "ancient French" or "l'ancien français". Even this was divided into two different dialects, in the southern third that was more influenced by italian it was known as "la langue d'oc", in the north as "la langue d'oïl" where it was more influenced by the Gaelic tongues and particularly by the Paris region gaining in importance as it was the first to become a major trading center. They get their names from the way that "yes" was said in the two, in the northern two thirds largely "oïl", in the southern third largely "oc". The language changed into what is truly considered French slowly around 800 a.d. when Charlemagne unified the country and each of his sons ruled a region, the unification of the people and the language was much easier as a "family affair". But even today there are differences from the north to south. In the south "un" is a nasal u sound, close to what is in the "hunh hunh hunh" laugh, in the north it's a nasal i like the vowel sound in "can".
Food for Thought: Most people don't know this but economically income differences across ethnic groups are not explained by discrimination (largely because anyone who's studied the subject tends to find there's no evidence) but by what's called leaks, matches, and traps. I'm gonna try to summarize and then present data. Leaks just refer to how knowledge leaks. When one person makes a conscious investment to gain new knowledge and gets a high return from that the knowledge can then leak to the people around him who will copy the idea and get the same returns (although lowering the private return to each person). But because knowledge is complementary, meaning the more knowledge that a person possesses the greater the return to gaining more knowledge, each of those people now have a strong incentive to gain more knowledge. One example is a computer program. I use Windows 2000. It was easy for me to learn that system because I knew how to use Windows 98. If Windows 2000 was given to a person who had no computer skill beyond what someone would have in the 70s then they would not be able to use it easily, my knowledge of the new system complements my knowledge of the old system. Matches are when people of similar skill levels match with each other. Cities are an example, in the U.S. the average income in metropolitan counties is 32% higher than avg income in rural counties. Assembly lines are another, if one person can screw up a product that you invest time and energy into then if you are highly skilled at your part of assembly you're going to want to match with other workers who are highly skilled at the other parts. If the people around you are highly skilled (even your parents and family) then you have a strong incentive to become skilled. However if the people around you have low skills and there is a very small stock of initial knowledge then we see what's called a trap (or poverty trap). Because the stock of knowledge is so low no one has an incentive to get more knowledge because the returns are below the required rate to make it worth it. If someone living in a region that's in a trap does become skilled then they will usually leave so they can match with other skilled people. This explains the differences in incomes across ethnicities. Many whites in this country come from skilled families and neighborhoods and therefore have incentives to become skilled and the return to gaining more knowledge is very high (and increasing). For many other ethnicities it is the opposite. At the same time even this is geographic (matching). The five defined poverty clusters within the U.S. are: (1) inner-city blacks, (2) rural blacks in the Mississippi delta, (3) native Americans in the west, (4) Hispanics in the southwest, and (5) whites in southeastern Kentucky. 18 of the 20 poorest all white counties in the U.S. are in southeastern KY. The reason that white discrimination against other races is not accepted as an explanation for income differences is become while average black incomes are 41% lower than average white incomes, average asian incomes are 16% higher than avg white incomes. 40% of the 160 richest Americans are Jewish while only 2% of the population is Jewish (and we know this isn't because the Jews have been persecuting and discriminating against everyone). Individuals who's ancestors immigrated from Austria are earn 25% more than individuals who's parents immigrated from Belgium. Iroquois descendants have incomes twice that of Sioux descendants. Even in South Africa racial discrimination fails to explain income differences, avg white incomes are 9.5 times avg black incomes but his ignores the huge difference in black incomes between authorities (villages), in KwaZulu-Natal (a South African state) blacks in the richest authority earn 54 times more than blacks in the poorest authority. Anyway, this is all just food for thought and background for what will lead to a later post on income redistribution.