Greetings - Patience you must have

[Stone1]

Phew, it's been a long time. Cold fusion has died and the greed for oil didn't decrease much.
Anyway, I just got a mail about some forum-upgrade and had to setup a new password.

Still not quite overfilled this forum is, Harry.

After I quit that time-eating StumbleUpon social network-shit that became very repetitive in finding interesting new webpages all to soon and never worked smoothly within Opera anyway, I nowadays mainly enjoy the german Scienceblog-pages.
Some weeks ago I discovered your new wordpress blog and read something about a blogicide. I hope you are okay (And am glad that I stopped that virtual social networking before it really started. google, facebook, twitter and co., kiss my ass. Ooops, I'm using MS Windows, so no offense, naseag, 'kay?)

But irony aside, how's life been treating you?

[HarryStottle]

hah! I've only just spotted this post after just sending you a private email!

Yes, Stumble was one of the biggest irritants and disappointments of my online life to date. Although I've happily transferred my blogging activities to Wordpress, which is a vastly superior authoring environment, it still lacks the spontaneity and inspirational qualities for which Stumble was uniquely fitted - until they killed it. I still crave a replacement because, as a research tool it was brilliant. You could tag all the stories you wanted to refer back to, leave little notes to remind yourself Why you were interested, then later find all the relevant tagged articles and comments in one go, making the collation of material for a serious blog entry almost trivial. There is NOTHING like that currently available that works anywhere near as well.

As to the rest of creation, as you can see from my WP blog, I'm still fighting the same fight and achieving the same spectacular results

It may be that, in my offline activities, we might be about to achieve a small breakthrough relevant to my online prattlings but I'll reveal more about that if and when it happens!

[Stone1]

Yeah, right, in-browser bookmarks do the job for me (in Opera, one can make notes there, too) but I guess for authoring and online-publishing purposes the built-in capabilites won't suffice. But you're using Firefox, theres a vast pool of plug-ins, can't imagine that there's nothing useful around. Speaking of plug-ins, I've been using WOT (Web Of Trust) for some months now, any comment of you on that? This here site seems unrated up to now (and I'm just using it passively, I didn't register to rate sites myself).

Ah, which reminds me, what about the certificate warnings that pop up ever so often when using the forum? The whole verisign trusted-certificate system is fucked up anyway (at least as like it's implemented in MS Windows), so I just ignore the warning popups, but it's bugging me.

Also, do you have any idea how trustworthy the ixquick search engine is, compared to google and co.? At least they say they don't save any IP-adresses (although spies can spy in real-time anyway, how's that notorious surveillance tool called again)?

As long as they can't scan out brains, I'm not very upset about the whole Snowden/NSA affair. It's just good that a broader public now becomes aware that the internet is (and never has been), a private playground. It's just that in earlier days, the nerds were among themselves

[HarryStottle]

[Stone1]

[HarryStottle]

[Stone1]

Just because I'm not really tired right now although I should go to bed, and because I'm not interested in registering to any network (wordpress, in this case; wondering whether I should start my own blog there, but who might be interested in my prattlings? I'm no philosopher nor an explicit expert on anything, nor politically or economically influential. I'm just trying to think and live rational. I wonder if you, Harry, felt similar when you started your own online presence? ) -
I'm writing this here and not as a comment to your new blog: interesting self experiment with the manuka-honey. But I tell you from my own experience: just cut down the sugar intake, and the plaque bacteria will starve anyway. I'm drinking my coffee black and just eating sugary-products when my wife has cooked them, and that's scarce, and am having no more tooth decay. You could also chew xylit in heavy doses and it's inexpensive and effective if you want a flavor change. It can be, uhm, a bit laxative if you overdo it, so don't tell me I didn't warn you! But just give up on the sugar, and become more healthy at no cost. There's other delicious stuff to digest (and also to intake, if you get my meaning ).

In the late news I heard about the US justice-minister wanting to change mainly the drug-enforcement laws. As a semi-expert I ask you: how's his chance to succeed? And if he does, will this be the last-minute turn-around for american society that all sane people hopefully are waiting for? Or is it too late already to prevent civil-war-like conflicts in the PSoA?

[HarryStottle]

[Stone1]

After spending the better part of a week on setting up (Ubuntu)-Linux as my new primary OS (getting a stable dual-boot system was not that easy but now works smoothly, 'though I'm missing my HAL9000 desktop-theme including sounds from 2001 - A Space Odyssey, but I'm confident that I'll find a replacement on the net) I'm back online.

On the xylitol issue, I didn't make myself clear: it's not sufficient to use chewing gum, you have to apply it like you did with the manuka-honey (brush your teeth with a paste of it). That's not from my own experience, I just read an article about it. It is said to starve the plaque-bacteria to death. I admit that it could also be pure quackery, considering that I got the article from an esoteric health practitioner who is a friend of mine but quite out of touch with the real world in many ways.

During those days I fantasized about setting up my own wordpress-blog for a german-speaking community. I'd have some talent for writing or so my teachers said after matriculation, and my main interests are science, IT and politics. But on the other hand, there's a lot of blogs on these topics around already and I wouldn't want to attract attention of those guys () or their german speaking counterparts.

I remain neutral for the time being and await your challenge/blog entry.

[HarryStottle]

well if the Manuka starts failing, it's good to know the xylitol might be able to take it's place!

[Stone1]

Yeah, or you invest in a nice set of dentures. I apologize for my giggling. (And for the one-liner, but who did it first should not throw one stone - at stone1.)

[Stone1]

Hallo Harry!

Since we've talked about figures (and Fermi) recently, I immediately had your currently simmering blog article in mind when I read the headline in today's newspaper: Austrian finance officials have worked out seemingly exactly what you need, at least for the fracture of the planet called Austria (the federation at least, I haven't dug into the document very deeply yet, but I suppose that it doesn't encompass the federal states, it'd be very surprising for a learned Austrian, since some of those still use the ancient cameralistic accounting system, for all I know).



For the first time in history, the real estate and the debts of the Republic of Austria have been fully(?) quantified.

If hope this time I've come up with something really helpful and if you need translation assistance, feel free to contact me.

[HarryStottle]

yeah, that does look useful. Would be grateful if you could translate the actual balance sheet and any text that's relevant to the debt/asset analysis.

Problem is, of course, that I can't scale up from Austria to the world, but it would at least be useful to thrust that precedent under noses to be able to demand the same for other economies.

One trivial question: why post this here instead of as a reply to the post which raised it? We'd already steered so far off topic it hardly matters if we continue!

Thanks

Harry

[Stone1]

Well, apart from the bitcoin bit the resurrection discussion has remained quite on topic, hasn't it, so I posted the further digression here, must be my part-time sense for order. Though I admit that chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought, but anyways, you've got mail. The task is not completed yet, but there's a teaser in your inbox.

Of course you can't scale up from Austria, and what our financial government has worked out here seems actually to be new terrain for federal states, nevertheless I would be interested whether the UK has worked out something comparable yet?