From extropians-request@extropy.org Sat Jun 25 03:01:45 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id DAA16671 for ; Sat, 25 Jun 1994 03:01:43 -0700 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA29339; Sat, 25 Jun 94 03:01:37 PDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA27885 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Sat, 25 Jun 1994 06:01:22 -0400 Date: Sat, 25 Jun 1994 06:01:22 -0400 Message-Id: <199406251001.AA27885@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-6-131 - #94-6-140 X-Extropian-Date: June 25, 374 P.N.O. [06:00:50 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Sat, 25 Jun 94 Volume 94 : Issue 175 Today's Topics: (Fwd) Junk.humor.essay [1 msgs] [#94-6-88] digital cash and free banking [1 msgs] digital cash [2 msgs] digital cash and privacy [1 msgs] Request for Comments: U.S. Tech Corps [1 msgs] SAT Scores and the average student [1 msgs] U.S. Tech Corps & State Schooling [1 msgs] U.S. Tech Corps: No thanks [1 msgs] unscribe [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 29241 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: tfv0@Lehigh.EDU (Theodore F Vaida ][) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 15:02:49 EDT Subject: [#94-6-131] Request for Comments: U.S. Tech Corps Note, the US Grubbymint is not specifically empowerd to operate a school system, ONLY STATE GOVERNMENTS CAN INSTITUTE A PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. You will note that schools are paid for by real-estate taxes, so your first problem is not dealing with Clinton, Gore or any other national politician. As a note, all the bruhaha over vouchers for private school from the grubbymint, would never have ammounted to anything, that money is legally untouchable by anyone but the state/county officials. If you are looking to fight the school 'system' it would have to be on a county by county basis, but I would certainly think that best, the grubbymint CANT officially interfere (tho they could pull one of those 'do what we want or you get no federal aid' things like the frederal highway aid and the national 55 limit). ---------============= tfv0@lehigh.edu aka: PCap ====================--------- SigLite, [same great wits, less bits!][same great parties, less sausage!] IN HOC SIGNO VINCES He's a one bit brain with a parity error! ---------============================================================--------- ------------------------------ From: tburns@mason1.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 15:35:28 +0200 Subject: [#94-6-132] digital cash SIPROJ wrote: >Suggested reference >in proceeding in an anti-monetarist fashion means getting the >"Time Dollar" book from Essential Research, an offshoot of >Ralph Naders group. Somehow I'm not overwhelmed with confidence that something associated with Nader and called a time dollar will be a serious contender. Could you give some rough description of what it's about in case I might actually want to spend some time looking for it? > >Barter systems get thwarted by entropian/statist notions by >virtue of convertibility to centrally controlled denominating >systems. To avoid that trap, avoid convertibility or exchange >with monetarists, i.e. prohibit it in absolute terms, a firewall >that prevents DigiFinance from going down in flames with the >monetary system... Somehow I think the IRS is going to want to breach this firewall. At least, they want you reporting your income, and using $s as unit of account. If you don't want to give them a conversion factor, they'll be happy to come up with their own. >Anyone know where to get source code to facilitating software >for this? PGP 2.3 v1.1 for all platforms, including GUI >based systems overseas ftp locations? PGP doesn't do the blinding trick you need. There was talk of releasing various crypto toolbenches (that would at least help) on the cypherpunks list back when I was subscribing. I suggest you ask over there. (cypherpunks-request@toad.com) Or try Chaum's company - info@digicash.nl (I think). Dave ------------------------------ From: Mark Grant Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 21:00:25 BST Subject: [#94-6-133] digital cash and privacy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- With regard to the question of what this thread has to do with digital cash, it would seem obvious to me that if you are attempting to create a payment system that protects the privacy of those who use it, then discussion of methods of getting round your digicash anonymity would be fairly important. Otherwise, you might just as well use a credit card. marym@finesse.com (Mary Morris) said : > I agree that you could just withdraw and deposit money to mess up their > figures. Knowing dollar amounts, dates that the money was transacted > on, address and employer, someone can usually sit down and identify ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ Well, there's the first issue. Digicash ought to make it easier for employers (assuming you have one and aren't self-employed) to pay you in Digicash and prevent the bank from knowing who your employer is. In fact, if your employer is paying you in Digicash anyway, there's no need for the bank to know your address either. Technically speaking (rather than legally, as I don't know what the restrictions on opening US bank accounts are), as long as you don't want credit, all they would need to open an account would be a public key to encrypt outgoing cash with and to verify signatures on withdrawal requests. Taken to extremes, you don't even need to know where the *bank* is, as long as you're willing to trust their reputation. > rent, utilities, phone, and the general basics without knowing the > other end of the transaction. However, if you merely withdraw a few hundred dollars of digicash in one transaction and then split it up to pay the different bills, then this should be less of a problem. One of the advantages of digicash is that you can keep it stored in an encrypted form so that even if it is stolen the thief can't use it. You can keep a backup somewhere (either locally, or more sensibly as an encrypted file spread amongst a number of friends), and if it's stolen you just retreive the backup. As a result, as long as you trust the bank, there's no reason not to keep a few hundred dollars out of your account at any time. If you're willing to trust the bank not to close down its digicash operations, then you could avoid the need to have an account at all, and keep all your money on an encrypted disk, smartcard, whatever. This is the way the 'Magic Money' digicash system works. > Then knowing how much of the remainder > is used by check / ATM and the day of the month (namely weekday > or weekend), combined with lifestyle data can paint a rough image. Well, checks ought to go away in most cases, but ATMs would still be a potential problem (particularly when they have TV cameras). I'd guess that what you'd really want would be an ATM that took digicash off your smartcard and paid it back to you in paper cash. That way you could get your digicash from the bank anonymously (via remailers or whatever), and it wouldn't be able to link later paper cash withdrawals from ATMs to a particular account. Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLgs7T2hZrcRdG1w1AQEaTwP/Za50vImNljSYADXYQix3vnsByyxhTZzm CRmMx5W7jki4oM773jpsyLEb9nFzik8ulTbbPjp/D713atJo9Ng1/8efBzaSqLlz 7UBiqWDEFOqYwsXgrdFRYXumyXIRUr69mRR7E6PRLcrQGbFh5gsbZ3bAi23HVWqu e2j9grDFa5s= =JxKd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ From: Mark Grant Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 21:26:22 BST Subject: [#94-6-134] digital cash -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- tburns@mason1.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) said, in reply to siproj@pwibbs.com : > Somehow I think the IRS is going to want to breach this firewall. At least, > they want you reporting your income, and using $s as unit of account. If > you don't want to give them a conversion factor, they'll be happy to come > up with their own. Depends. From what I've read, tax avoidance is running at something like 15 % in both the US and UK, and if they can't get better than 85 % compliance with 'real' cash, they're going to be in trouble with barter and digicash without some serious police state tactics. Not that I don't expect them to adopt those tactics, but in the meantime there's a while for the memes and technology to spread. > >Anyone know where to get source code to facilitating software > >for this? PGP 2.3 v1.1 for all platforms, including GUI > >based systems overseas ftp locations? > > PGP doesn't do the blinding trick you need. There was talk of releasing > various crypto toolbenches (that would at least help) on the cypherpunks > list back when I was subscribing. I suggest you ask over there. > (cypherpunks-request@toad.com) Try 'Magic Money' by Pr0duct Cypher, which is available from various US ftp sites and a couple in Europe. PGP is available all over the place in the US and Europe (e.g. ftp.demon.co.uk in /pub/pgp). The crypto toolkit is called 'PGP Tools', and comes with 'Magic Money', though the only version I've found in Europe is an early one that you need a few bugfixes for. I think both of them are listed on the 'Where to get PGP - FAQ' posted to alt.security.pgp every once in a while. Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLgtBZ2hZrcRdG1w1AQHkEgQAp9kut8SthspFk550jbT3y3D5cghG9957 dstK/mLEay0CYA2iyndngTfI1GRLhaqw+DzcqamDW8q3iHCJ09psZpLnm2zsKEg0 65luGK25FXbtSCPqqQ7P6v1BIRDKSzIyTmxhffmfkfIWvP1a9oTrqGhljErlW/nQ k1YUrQDbTsE= =tJEK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ From: sullivan@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (Gregory Sullivan) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 16:27:06 EDT Subject: [#94-6-135] SAT Scores and the average student I recommend reading the article cited below if you are interested in the state of American education or trends in test scores. What's Really behind the SAT Score Decline by Charles Murray and R. J. Herrnstein The Public Interest Winter 1992 Most of what you may have read on this issue in the mass media is oversimplified and distorted. The readers of this forum must be aware of this disappointing general principle by now. Attempting to assess the knowledge and/or capabilities of the ``average'' high school student by examining SAT score trends is quite difficult. Below are just some of the problems: 1) The SAT pool is not representative of the general population of high school students. 2) The pool taking the SAT has changed. 3) US demographics have changed. 4) The SAT scale actually has drifted by several points 5) See the article for more problems. To examine the ``average'' student the article uses data from national norm studies conducted by ETS and``well-validated'' stable tests such as the Iowa Test of Educational Development (ITED). Below is an excerpt from the article: Two parts of the conventional wisdom surrounding the SATs are accurate: SAT scores really did nosedive in the late 1960s, continuing to decline well into the 1970s, and the change in ethnic composition of the SAT pool really has been large. Nearly everything else in the SAT story as it is translated in the annual newspaper stories about the latest scores is out of alignment with the available facts - and even the two accurately understood parts of the story do not have the causal relationship that is widely assumed. Pulling the pieces together: For the nation's students as a whole, the recovery from the bottom of the trough in the 1970s seems to be complete: they are probably doing about as well as they were in the supposedly halcyon days of the 1950s and early 1960s. This does not mean that they are well educated by absolute standards, nor that they are well educated enough to meet the challenges from the ever-stronger competitors overseas, only that things are no worse in the United States than they used to be. End of excerpt. I believe attempting to access intelligence and/or achievement using limited and simplistic tests such as the SAT or ACT is problematic. However, if you wish to try then the paper above provides some insights. Gregory Sullivan ------------------------------ From: whitaker@dpair.csd.sgi.com (Russell Whitaker) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 14:27:20 -0700 Subject: [#94-6-136] (Fwd) Junk.humor.essay How's this for dynamic optimism...... --- Forwarded mail from obana@uhura (Andrea Obana) To: cse-info@uhura, mtvtac-info@uhura Levity time.... andrea (forwards deleted...) ----- Begin Included Message ----- > > Humor > ----- > This is an actual essay that a guy used to get himself accepted at NYU 2 or > 3 years ago. The author of this essay, Hugh Gallagher, now attends NYU > > 3A. ESSAY > IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE > APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE > ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE > REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON? > > I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have > been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more > efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban > refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. > Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. > > I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot > bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute > Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, > and an outlaw in Peru. > > Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended > a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I > play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous > documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. > I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical > appliances free of charge. > > I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics > worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't > perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been > caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New > Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My > deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. > Children trust me. > > I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I > once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and > still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the > exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed > several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, > I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated > with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of > physics do not apply to me. > > I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On > weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago > I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made > extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I > breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving > competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played > Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. > > But I have not yet gone to college. > ----- End Included Message ----- --- End of forwarded mail from obana@uhura (Andrea Obana) -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@csd.sgi.com Silicon Graphics Inc. Technical Assistance Center / Centre D'Assistance Technique / Tekunikaru Ashisutansu Sentaa Mountain View CA (415) 390-2250 ================================================================ #include ------------------------------ From: hnash@mason1.gmu.edu Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 17:40:01 -0400 Subject: [#94-6-137] U.S. Tech Corps: No thanks levy@lenny.haskins.yale.edu writes: > A Connection Machine at every desk isn't going to help > anyone who can't do basic arithmetic... I disagree. It takes a lot of imagination for a child to figure out how calculas or literature is useful or relevent to him. Most public school teachers don't know what calculas is good for, and so they can't help much. It's simply rational for kids not to learn subjects for which no relevence has been demonstrated. It takes less imagination to see how a videogame or a CAD program is relevent. Suddenly calculas is relevent, because you can use it to make videogames. With a Connection Machine at every desk, teachers couldn't prevent kids from exploring all sorts of fascinating stuff. The result would be a lot more fascinated kids. ==== Yours Truly, Hadon Nash ======= "in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident." -- Henry David Thoreau ------------------------------ From: Robert Rounthwaite Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 17:35:22 PDT Subject: [#94-6-138] [#94-6-88] digital cash and free banking ) Mary Morris writes: ) .... ) If you really want your digicash to be anonymous, you will probably ) end up paying an additional fee equal to what the institution would ) get for selling that info on the open market. ) You will probably end paying an additional fee equal to far more than the fraction of revenue your information represents on the free market to the institution. Information of this sort is most useful in large database form, and isn't usually sold in individual packets (purchasers will buy, for example, lists of all those with incomes greater than $XX, living in a certain area, rather than information on the income of a certain person) The usefulness of such a list declines disproportionally when a certain fraction of people are not represented. e.g. - if half of the people at the bank elect to pay to not be include in the info list, the value of that list declines by more than half. Robert ------------------------------ From: William_Lasley@lamg.com (William Lasley) Date: 24 Jun 1994 23:49:38 -0000 Subject: [#94-6-139] unscribe unscribe L-Tech EXport IMport Commerce fax 310 451-2992 ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 1994 01:26:32 -0700 Subject: [#94-6-140] U.S. Tech Corps & State Schooling >From: onomoto@netcom.com (Young and Loud) >Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1994 23:58:24 -0700 (PDT) >Subject: [#94-6-113] U.S. Tech Corps: No thanks > >Ray writes: >> >> The proof is already out there. SAT scores are lower than ever. The >> SAT was recently "re-calibrated" so that today's average scores >> are competitive with what they were fourty years ago. > > Um.. not to excuse the state of public schools or anything but, >from what I read in the NYT when the "re-calibration" was reported, >there's a fairly substantive change in the demographics of the kids >taking the SAT now than with those 40 years ago. In particular 40 >years ago most high school students weren't college bound. "It is sometimes claimed by the education establishment that test scores have fallen because more students are taking college admissions tests these days. But the absolute number of students with outstanding scores has fallen dramatically as well; between 1972 and 1988 the number of high school seniors scoring above 600 (out of a possible 800) on the SAT's verbal section fell by about 30 percent. In 1988 only 986 seniors in the entire country scored above 750 - fewer than half as many as in 1981 and probably the lowest number ever." - David Boaz, "The Public School Monopoly: America's Berlin Wall," _Liberating_Schools_, p. 2 >> Our schools have lost something essential, and it has nothing to >> do with teacher salaries. >> > > I agree with this. On the other hand, I find the argument that >teachers are expected to do a whole lot more than in previous >generations to be fairly persuasive. I think that the necessity >of the two-income family has a lot to do with this, as a lot of kids >seem have received less parenting than before. On the contrary, teachers are expected do no more or less than before; they are expected to do different things than in the past. In the past, they were expected to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Today, they are expected to teach social status, dependency, and complacency. All the available evidence indicates that they are succeeding splendidly. > School overcrowding is pretty serious also. Yes, it is a serious canard the teacher's unions use to try to get less work for more pay. Classrooms of 50 students were common in the 1950s, when test scores were much higher - according to the SATs, the average score was 75 points higher then, 500 out of 800. The recent change was to renormalize today's average of about 425 back up to 500. Joseph Lancaster used peer tutoring to teach as many as a thousand students in his school, with himself as the only adult in the building. Anglican missionaries did similar things in India, and Lancaster's results were replicated all over the world, from London to New York City and Caracas, Venezuela, where he personally set up one of his schools at the express invitation of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. The NYC school had 500 students at its peak, and observing it in operation led then-Governor of NY DeWitt Clinton to call Lancaster "the benefactor of the human race." Lancaster was put out of business by the Anglicans because he was a Quaker and refused to teach Anglican doctrine in his schools. Who do you think Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is named after? Today, students are expected to enter college who would be unable to pass an average high school graduation exam before WWI. Nor are they much more likely to be able to pass it after they graduate from college! In the Middle Ages, students were expected to have mastered not only reading, writing, and counting, but also grammar, logic, and rhetoric - the trivium, or first three, of the liberal arts. Upon entering college at the age of 16, they then studied the quadruvium: history, literature, philosophy, and mathematics. For their texts, they took what some now call the Great Books of Western thought in each subject, such as Herodotus, Homer, Aristotle, and Euclid. Many students now leave college without having encountered any of these, or their equivalents from non-Western cultures. State schooling is dead, because it is inherently incapable of imparting to students the high skills which are earning the fastest-growing rewards of the job market of the Information Revolution. It is structured to produce a standing army of low-skilled laborers to be easily managed by those with higher skills - not high-skilled, self-managing producers. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - timstarr@netcom.com ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #175 *********************************