TI-Burr-Brown parts shartage?

Me too - human agencies are always fallible - but at least they are designed and conceived to be fallible.

But how do you get to know that they need help? If your communication mostly works pastor to pastor, your targets are basically limited to their congregations and their acquaintances. Even if you do help non- church-goers - quite a few Christian charities are less generous - you have to know that they need help i order to offer it.

Human agencies are always fallible.

Sure. But you do need some kind of social contact to know that they need help. And you don't really know what Jesus did - the gospels weren't constructed as precise historical records.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

This is strictly your own (ill-founded) theory - you simply don't know what I do or don't do to help other people. Quite apart from the biblical advice not to boast about one's own charitable acts, anything I did claim here would probably be distorted by Jim Thompson or one of the other resident psychopaths into something that they could report to the CIS or some such other lunatic fringe organisation.

That's not why I not going to order your book from Amazon. I'm not a Republican or a Christian. What is my interest in reading a book clearly designed to flatter members of these two groups? Why should I pay good money to buy such a book? You haven't told me anything about it that suggests that it is going to tell me anything that will change my view of the world ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

GMT, Joerg

Perhaps you meant to type "we're from the government and we're here to help you".

That means that the government bureaucrats can do the job full-time, which probably isn't true of the volunteers running Joerg's church's food shelf.

The theory that all goverment agencies are inefficient and incompetent is promoted by people who really don't like paying taxes - such as the Republican Party. Less ideologically blinkered folk have long since recognised that some jobs are best tackled by government agencies - notably those that can be characterised as "natural monopolies", which is an insight that goes back to the 19th century. It's odd that a thoroughly reactionary crew like the Republican Party don't know enough history to avoid repeating the errors of the past.

If you want to see how private enterprise fails in these sorts of jobs, look at Microsoft and Enron. Where you can have real competition, the free market works remarkably well, but the ideologically driven "privatisations" that started in the 1980's have produced a considerable number of disasters.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Jim is too much influenced by the incompetence and inefficiency of the Republican administration that he seems to have voted for. People who don't have an ideological investment in minimal government tend to be less blinkered.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmeen

Some - if we agree that something deserves support, and work out how much we want to give, I'll organise the electronic funds transfer out of our joint account.

We also have personal bank accounts which we use to support stuff that we individually believe in - for instance my wife likes the Dutch Greenpeace organisation, while I detest it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It was written by a statistician and is heavily referenced as regards sources, including the ever-popular "peer reviewed" papers. It was not, as the author says, intended to show the results he found, but he (unlike you) is willing to face up to reality.

You criticized Republicans for reading only what appeals to their prejudices. How is this situation any different?

What people do is a lot more telling than what they say.

Obviously, nothing ever will.

John

Jim's Alzheimer's seems to be progressing depressingly rapidly. In fact he doesn't know anything about what I might give to charity, which hasn't stopped him from inventing a story that seems to appeal to him.Give him a couple more days and he will probably be reporting me to CIS for funding some Muslim extremist organisation, if his relatives don't get around to committing him to an institution for the terminally gaga before he does some real damage.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Well, good. If you read the book I mentioned, you'll find that it flatters you, too.

John

Slowman, You DO help people... in fact the world at large.

It's pretty clear that you have no off-spring ;-)

...Jim Thompson

In the genetic sense, none, though I do have eight nieces and nephews, so my genes will go on. I have influenced a bunch of junior engineers, and the world is probably better for that (not that Jim would ever accept this) and a couple of my scientific papers have been cited.

Of course, I've been influenced by Jim - I used a few of his integrated circuits, when I was much younger, and there was nothing better available. I was very happy when the 7046 appeared and I could toss his MC4044's in the junk box, and even happier when Analog Devices came out with Barry Gilbert's multiplier chips, and I could toss his MC1495 and MC1496 for the rubbish that they were. His political philosophy has the same superannuated feel.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So was "The Bell Curve", which didn't stop it from being total rubbish. Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" is an interesting excercise in documenting how good scientists deceive themselves - not that I've any reason to believe that your book was written by a good scientist.

Particularly when the "reality" lets him flatter a rich audience.

I don't see that this book is going to tell me anything interesting or useful - you haven't made that case, and you don't seem to understand how you'd go about making such a case. There are a very large number of books out there waiting to be read, and one is obliged to be selective.

You and Jim Thompson invent your "facts" and go on to argue from the "evidence" you have imagined - this is pretty revealing.

It may be obvious to you, but since you share Jim Thompson's enthusiasm for inventing the "facts" on which you base your - fallacious - arguments, your opinion entirely worthless.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So are volunteer organizations. They can fail as well and they also can be designed to provide recovery when that happens. The main difference IME is that volunteer groups have a heart while agencies often don't. But they do tend to care about not working one minute longer than their required hours, get a nice fat pension, plus cradle-to-grave health benefits courtesy of the taxpayer. A good volunteer expects nothing in return.

Word spreads around rather quickly, especially among those that have fallen through the cracks or whom agencies refuse to help. Go around our village and ask low-income people whether they know the food closet. You'd see that most of them do.

But I'd have at least expected them to check in with her. There wasn't even as much as a call back. Not one.

I believe what the bible says ;-)

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 14:13:15 -0700, Joerg wrote in Msg.

The bible is a collection of stories written by humans. "It wasn't faxed from Heaven," as I've heard some theologist say. Also it is a moving target, depending on edition and translation. It should be read and enjoyed, bot not without a grain of salt.

robert

Translation is indeed a challenge. That is why our Lutheran pastors are required to be able to go back to, for example, old Greek and figure out the exact wording of a certain passage. Even our young vicar said that there is hardly a sermon where he doesn't have to do that during many hours of preparation. Designing an RF amp is a cake walk compared to that.

People who treat the Gospels as historical documents rather than revealed texts - Spinoza was an early example - dig rather deeper.

Search on "proto-Luke".

I'd agree that individuals, or small groups, when the job is "small enough", are definitely the best way to go. The problem is that there are enough of us that it doesn't always work out.

Two counter-examples:

- A recent investigation of "humanitarian" organizations has found (once again) that there are some that only manage to get less than 10% of contributions to their intended beneficiaries (firefighter, police, ...). These were comparatively small organizations that managed to keep their upper management well paid.

- There are a number of large government organizations - Social Security in the USA, and the Canadian medical system - that (as a percentage of benefits) take far less than sizable private/commercial insurance firms. It has been calculated that private health insurance firms skim so much money that we could _give away_ health coverage to all those lacking such coverage if we could make them as efficient as the government programs. PLEASE NOTE: I am not saying that the government programs are perfect. When they make a mistake, it can be a doozy. But on a strictly dollar basis, they are demonstrably far more efficient than the commercial approach.

-f

I'll bet that Bill has NEVER found himself in the position of giving away his last $5 to someone who hasn't eaten in days, when he had no job prospects and less than a day's food in the house, or crawled out of bed in the middle of February to repair a neighbors house while so sick with the flu that he couldn't see straight. I didn't have to discuss it with anyone. I saw a need, and filled it, plain and simple. In fact, one case of helping others cost me my home, but that hasn't stopped me from helping others.

I didn't know that he had any bones. In fact, I thought that he was raised at the infamous, "Gary Larson's Far Side Boneless Chicken Ranch".

No - I've not lived in countries where people don't eat in days (unless they've been drinking their calories, and it isn't a good idea to gve alcoholics money).

For most of my career I had very little trouble finding work, which meant that I could keep the pantry and the fridge adequately stocked. At the moment I'm still getting Dutch unemployment benefit at 70% of my last salarywhich makes it easier to put up with ageist Dutch employment agencies.

while so sick with

The last time I repaired a neighbours house I was perfectly healthy when I started, but stuck an 25mm wide chisel into the base of my thumb when I was about 75% through the job, and ended up being driven to hospital to get that fixed. Some other neighbour finished the job.

and simple.

Most people seem to work that way.

me from

I've been luckier.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen