Month: January 2008
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Oil Money
Oil is currently purchased in dollars. That means that the price is set in dollars, and oil producers accept payments in dollars. There are occasional suggestions that the price should be denominated in some other currency, typically euros. This is generally intended to weaken U.S. hegemony. But does it make any sense? In today’s financial…
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Lord Shakespeare
There are various theories that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by somebody else, such as the Earl of Oxford. I think one of the stronger arguments against this claim is the considerable lack of great literature, or great art in general, produced by members of the aristocracy. I don’t believe that great…
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Free Theater
I’m sure everybody who works with free software has occasionally encountered the question as to why anybody would work on it. Obviously people do work on free software, and there are many different reasons why they do. However, there is a certain type of person who finds it all rather mysterious. I recently thought of…
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SF Book Covers
I’ve always liked the science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, who is best known for short stories like “Allamagoosa” and “And Then There Were None.” I happened across an old novel of his in a used book store, The Mindwarpers. It was OK, not great, but really struck me afterward was the cover. The novel…
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China Money
The flow of money in the U.S. for the last several years has been as follows. Somebody in the U.S. buys something made in China. The dollars are aggregated and sent back to the Chinese manufacturer. The manufacturer converts them to Chinese renminbi at a Chinese bank at the government mandated exchange rate. The Chinese…