When we were in middle and high school, we owned a very abused 1956 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. When we were assigned reports to write we tried to make sure the topic happened before 1956.

Our typewriter had a broken "G" key so we spent a lot of time using a thesaurus.

:mike:

My entire young life, my family had an incomplete set of the Encyclopædia Britannica that limped along with us through multiple family disruptions and moves.

I took to cutting picture plates from articles in it to paste into school essays and reports.

I remember pasting pictures of butterflies from it for some elementary school report.

In high school I concocted a hypothetical country formed by a revolution among ocean oil derrick workers. I stated that they farmed cotton on the ocean grown over a floating petroproduct surface. (Photo from EB of cotton field). Manufactured trade goods: Photo from EB of televisions.

Strange that I treated those volumes that way.

OT EB, CPE, WBE
 

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;293030]When we were in middle and high school, we owned a very abused 1956 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. When we were assigned reports to write we tried to make sure the topic happened before 1956.

Our typewriter had a broken "G" key so we spent a lot of time using a thesaurus.

:mike:[/QUOTE]:-)

From my mother's family, we inherited a set of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, with quite beautiful detailed drawings among its photos, printed in the late 1920s (Pluto had not yet been discovered. The "G" volume didn't have an article on a Great Depression, but it did have one on the Great War, which wasn't yet "World War 1" in the "W" volume.). I was amused to compare its articles with those about the same subjects in our 1958 (Alaska was not yet a state) World Book Encyclopedia.

I used only the WBE for school reports. One was about Rhode Island; none, about Alaska.

[QUOTE=only_human;292854]I missed your emphasis on *credit* and everything that follows skews off into the weeds but it was too much work to throw away.

<snip>
[/QUOTE]

I think I've read the material on credit before; I guess what I'd say is that with gas and groceries being a relatively small part of my budget, they don't count for inflation! :smile:

Thanks for the story on the Morgan Stanley execs; can I get into a situation where I don't have to pay for much either?

But it's also understandable; I have about $200 in greenbacks in my pocket, and these have lasted months...everywhere I go, I swipe my card, done...and deal with it when I'm in accounting mode at the end of the month. Some places, I don't even swipe a card, and don't necessarily sign. I think with a personage such as that, I'd have pulled out a digital camera, had him state on camera that he owed, and submitted an invoice.

Hopefully, the cabbie has a good lawyer, and the exec ends up in jail...for contempt of court.

Anybody remember when encyclopedia volumes were sold in supermarkets? Yup, my parents built up a Funk and Wagnalls set, 27 volumes plus two volumes of indexes, one volume at a time from the local Safeway. It was fascinating reading, but I don't think I ever used it for actual research.

Now I feel old...

We remember those. They were too expensive at the time.

We remember the traveling encyclopedia salespeople. Those guys were ruthless!

Our beat up old set was bought at a garage sale for almost nothing. We think they just wanted to get rid of them. We even got a matching bookcase with them.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;293159]We remember those. They were too expensive at the time.

We remember the traveling encyclopedia salespeople. Those guys were ruthless!

Our beat up old set was bought at a garage sale for almost nothing. We think they just wanted to get rid of them. We even got a matching bookcase with them.[/QUOTE]Some years ago we were on vacation down on the south coast. While we were there we picked up a 1947 set of EB in a small shop selling second-rate second-hand books and sundry old junk. The books were down on a low shelf and their spines were spattered with emulsion paint. The two women running the shop had no idea what to charge for the set and so offered them to us at £1 per volume --- £24 in total. Needless to say, we leapt at the chance and scuttled off out with the first couple of volumes under our arms to ensure that no-one would outbid us in the meantime. After bringing the car round to the shop we proceeded to tile the boot two layers deep in encyclopedias.

At that time, a pristine 1947 EB was worth several hundred pounds. Ours wasn't pristine but the paint came off with a damp rag and we renovated the gilt with a gold pencil. They now look fine. and they have proved themselves useful over the years.

[QUOTE=xilman;293194]At that time, a pristine 1947 EB was worth several hundred pounds. Ours wasn't pristine but the paint came off with a damp rag and we renovated the gilt with a gold pencil. They now look fine. and they have proved themselves useful over the years.[/QUOTE]

"Worth their weight in weight-named currency units..."

The tales about drastically-discounted EB editions remind me of my days collecting old National Geographics. It was cool to have volumes dating back to the early days of the magazine, but the bloody things were so heavy/bulky I had to leave them behind when I moved to the West Coast in '99. I donated them to a local high school library - hopefully they are still serving some semi-useful purpose there.

All these print media served their purpose - and it seems there may have been greater value in the fact that their resale value was inevitably so low as to make second-hand versions widely available to most anyone - but the time they are-a-changing.

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[b]Friday Humo(u)r:[/b]

Humorous riposte to the "mea maxima culpa" (actually, it was more of a snivelly, disingenuous "your-a maxima culpa") [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/03/14/a-goldman-sachs-executives-midlife-crisis/]published this week by a former Goldman Sachs trader[/url], who apparently only recently 'discovered' that GS and its ilk were not the altruistic societal blessings they were when he made all his money in altruistic, main-street-economy-helping fashion there:

[url=www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5007&Itemid=81]Why I am leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader[/url]: [i]TODAY is my last day at the Empire.Image'I no longer have the pride, or the belief'After almost 12 years, first as a summer intern, then in the Death Star and now in London, I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its massive, genocidal space machines. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.[/i]

If you were wondering at what our esteemed legislators have been up to now that they've made it clear that addressing actual 'hard problems' like soaring federal deficits, a government-abetted financial-fraud/credit-bubble crisis which has merely been "pretended away" by government-sanctioned accounting fraud and Fed money-thrown-at-the-fraudsters, a debt-ridden, earnings-eviscerated "middle class", a hyper-interventionist foreign policy leading to an almost monstrously bloated defense budgets and a continual state of war (whether declared or not) by the "global policeman" U.S. somewhere in the world, an utter lack of coherent energy policy which is actually fact-based, out-of-control medical and social-entitlements spending rising at 10% per year, irrespective of cost-effectiveness considerations or how the broader economy is doing, well, here you go - This is an op-ed in te HuffPo co-written by former Savings & Loan regulator and white-collar criminologist William K. Black, someone who actually *did* help send a large number of fraudsters to prison on hiw watch in the late 80s, a state of affairs utterly different than we currently see with regard to the much, much larger housing-bubble fraud:

[url=www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/jobs-act_b_1366565.html?ref=business]The JOBS Act Is So Criminogenic That It Guarantees Full-Time Jobs for Criminologists[/url]
[quote]As white-collar criminologists (and a former financial regulator and enforcement head) and experts in ferreting out sophisticated financial frauds, our careers and research focus on financial fraud by the world's most elite private sector criminals and their political cronies. Therefore, we write to thank Congress and the President for preparing to adopt a JOBS Act that will provide us with job security for life. We will be the personal beneficiaries of Congress' decision to adopt the law without the pesky hearings that would allow critics to launch devastating attacks on the proposed bill based on a brutally unfair tactic - the presentation of facts. Unfortunately, in our professional capacities, we must oppose the bill. This bill is an atrocity.

The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups" Act, the comically forced effort to create a catchy acronym, is the most cynical bill to emerge from a cynical Congress and Administration. It is an exemplar of why congressional approval ratings are well below those of used car dealers. The JOBS Act is something only a financial scavenger could love. It will create a fraud-friendly and fraud-enhancing environment. It will add to the unprecedented level of financial fraud by our most elite CEOs that has devastated the U.S. and European economies and cost over 20 million people their jobs. Financial fraud is a prime jobs killer.

Powerful regulatory regimes -- strong accounting rules, strict corporate governance, tough securities laws, and vigorous civil and criminal enforcement of the regulations and laws is the greatest infrastructure for strong economic growth that a nation can provide. For decades, the U.S. had an enormous competitive advantage over other nations in raising funds through securities because investors placed great trust in issuers that were subject to effective regulation. U.S. equities traded at a substantial premium compared to securities issued in other nations (which means that companies could raise capital much more effectively and inexpensively). Regulators serve as the "cops on the beat" that prevent a Gresham's Dynamic in which "bad ethics drives good ethics out of the markets."

Our system worked brilliantly. America prospered. American businesses and investors prospered. Unfortunately, economists decided to destroy what worked and to replace it with a fraud-friendly, deregulated world. Alan Greenspan was only the most prominent high priest of the following dogma: "a rule against fraud is not an essential or ... an important ingredient of securities markets" (Easterbrook & Fischel 1991). [u]This faith-based economics had no basis in reality, but it led to aggressive anti-regulatory leaders whose policies were so criminogenic that they led to recurrent and ever-larger serious financial crises[/u].
...
Among the many fraud-friendly policies that led to the deregulation that prompts our recurrent, intensifying financial crises, the undisputed most destructive aspect is the recurrent, intensifying embrace of the "regulatory race to the bottom." The "logic" of the argument in the securities law context is that (1) dishonest issuers like bad regulation because it allows them to defraud with impunity, (2) our "competitor" nations (typically described as the City of London) offer weaker regulation to induce the fraudulent issuers to locate abroad, and (3) we must not allow this to happen; we must make sure that fraudulent issuers are based in America. Of course, they never phrase honestly their "logic" about dishonesty. Four national commissions investigated the causes of financial crises -- the S&L debacle, the ongoing U.S. crisis, the Irish crisis, and the Icelandic crisis. Each of the commissions has decried the idiocy of the "race to the bottom" dynamic and warned that it must end. The arguments advanced by industry in support of the JOBS Act reflect and worship at the altar of "the race to the bottom."

It is self-defeating for us to say this because as criminologists and anti-fraud specialists we would have job security for life if this bill was adopted. It is literally composed of the wish list in regard to fraud-friendly provisions that those intent on cheating have been dreaming about and salivating to achieve for decades. This bill will kill millions of jobs because financial frauds are weapons of mass financial destruction. It will start an international fraud-friendly deregulation race to the bottom and will become the basis for further criminogenic U.S. Congressional actions.[/quote]
BTW, when translated into the vernacular of bank-owned politicians, one simply replaces the word "fraud" with "jobs" or "business", e.g. "fraud-friendly" translates to "jobs-friendly" (if lying to a bunch of blue-collar workers) or "business-friendly" if speaking at a multi-thousand-dollar-per-plate political fundraiser in front of a bunch of corporate bigwigs, that is, white-collar criminals.

Of course, [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-ascendence-sociopaths-us-governance]if your business is[/url] aiding, abetting or committing fraud, this replacement of course makes perfect sense.

Friday's humor this week is BATS exchange flash crashing their own stock resulting in a cancellation of their IPO. In 900 milliseconds, 176 trades, their stock dropped from $16 to 4 cents.

[URL="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/24/chart-of-the-day-flash-crash-edition/"]Chart of the day, flash-crash edition[/URL][QUOTE]BATS was meant — if everything had gone according to plan — to be the first stock listed on the BATS exchange. They’re not going to try that stunt again in a hurry; as finance professor James Angel told Bloomberg, this was “like seeing an airplane crash on takeoff”. On the maiden flight of a new airline. You can imagine how much appetite anybody would have to fly that airline thereafter.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]...The parabolic trajectory of the share price is downright elegant; indeed, if you’re going to crash from $16 to 4 cents within 900 milliseconds, you could hardly do so in a lower-volatility manner[/QUOTE]
[I][B]Parabolic[/B][/I]? If it were parabolic, the BATS would go to infinity after the touchdown. This is an exponential decay, Felix!