electronics is fun

Whatever turns you on. I prefer girls in ski boots or hiking boots, carrying a good attitude.

Include lawyers.

Sure. Only a minority of Spice sims are ultimately useful. But most are educational.

I can't afford that kind of "entertainment" I'm not a hedge-fund manager, those services don't come cheap you know!!

I was solicited one time for electronic design services by a person in the industry (I didn't know that or what the job was precisely ahead-of-time) I don't turn down people who seem like they have money who want to pay it. But I don't do what might be classified as "medical devices."

Otherwise it was just a regular but brief client meeting but in a very nice hotel lounge, when it became clear that I didn't really have anything to offer her (see above) and I wasn't interested in any of her services either she thanked me and was on her way, and covered the tab.

Paying for affection is repulsive.

Not very aerobic, though. You need something else to keep in shape.

Pfft. Young men being sent overseas to war and having their legs and arms blown off, shrapnel embedded in their skulls, never walking again for the rest of their time on Earth, etc. while the people who sent them there dine on caviar and play golf, and rah-rah suburbanites watch the spectacle on CNN and tie a put a yellow ribbon and flag decal on their car in "support" is what's repulsive.

Paying for affection ranks very low in the "grand scheme" of what's repulsive, IMO.

My accountant loves what he does, which is basically to defend people against a rapacious and predatory government.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Fund managers help people make money. That's useful. Banks fund a wide range of business activity & house pruchases. That's useful. Accountants save people money. That's useful.

We can all dream of a world where all these intermediaries aren't needed, but in reality they are.

NT

Were there no jobs because the unemployment rate was 100% or was the unemployment rate 100% because there were no jobs?

And drive the trucks, too!

I've been trying to figure out the class system of JL's universe. so far I got:

1. John Larkin the engineer
2. engineers
3. truck drivers
4. everyone else like customers and coffee/donut servers and peasants n stuff
5. urban liberal parasites

how'd I do

I bet there were chiefs who employed people. Were hunters & foragers unemployed or self employed?

NT

Accountants have surely existed for a very long time; a lot of the earliest writings seem to be accounting "documents." it stands to reason that if that's what's primarily survived the millennia, by Copernican principle-of-mediocrity the bulk of the total of early writing was used for accounting purposes.

The big divide is a) between people who make life better, and b) people who make it worse.

Engineers and truck drivers are usually in group a).

So are people who make donuts.

Many clustered into tribes for mutual protection (or pillaging) and usually had a leader.

The chiefs were the paid employees.

There are good reasons they're called DO NOTs.

NT

Spoken like a true tyrant

Yeah, don'cha just hate people who want to improve life?

"improve life" is too nebulous a term to have actual meaning or be discussed quantitatively; it's like how the phrases "pro-choice" or "pro-life" are stock phrases that only exist to make the opposing side seem anti-choice or anti-life, respectively, they don't convey any real information

Cursitor Doom may not find any satisfaction in chasing numbers, but other people can be different. Evolution does seem to have given all of us the capacity to use language, and most of us seem to have the capacity to use it better than Cursitor Doom does.

The capacity to recognise - and differentiate - between large numbers (more than a dozen if word structure is any guide) is a linguistic skill, and if you can manage that you can do quite a lot of interesting things.

My brother-in-law did that for a while after he retired, but was aware that the little bits of wood that come off as you turn your exotic woods into fruit bowls are dangerous if inhaled.

Wearing a positive pressure helmet that delivered filtered air for him to breath while he shaped his fruit bowls eventually killed his enthusiasm - which is a pity. They sold well, and the ones we got are attractively proportioned.