The Little Thread Which Grew - the Apollo '73 to Everything But

[lkwdblds]

Re: Morning Joe discusses the political oligarchy

Lakey.....Obama apparently was raised and went to school in Indonesia - not Hawaii from the ages of 6 - 10.....as a Muslim. Those are pretty formative years.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/50lies.asp

If he was schooled there from 6 to 10, your point is well taken. Indonesia is a Muslim country but not an Arab country. I don't have any idea what their education system was like in the late 60's and early 70's which would be when Obama was in elementary school there. This time period was certainly decades before Al Quida existed or before fanatical teachings from radical Muslims were in vogue. I'd have to do a lot more studying before I would be qualified to comment on what you wrote. Perhaps a scholar such as Mark A. Baker or Leon might take a stab at answering you.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: Schoolyard Jokes

Way back when...

Hey! Did you hear that Perry Como went to the hospital last night?

No. What happened?

He caught a falling star and put it in his pocket!

Here's another...

Frank Sinatra fell into a sewer!

Do you know what he said about that?

Lota do-do, lota do-do...


Okay, so we were 7 years old at one time.

It's true!

Jokes from my grammar school days:

#1. You tell a girl to look down her blouse and then ask her to recite the abbreviation for mountain. She then looks down her blouse and says, "m.t.".

I BLEW IT. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE THE GIRL LOOK DOWN HER BLOUSE AND SPELL "ATTIC"

#2. The Candy Bar joke from the 6th grade. "Old Nick took Bit of Honey behind the Powerhouse and stuck his Tootsie Roll up her Milky Way and out came Baby Ruth. All of the above were once candy bars, I think they all still exist except Old Nick.

#3. The Soap joke, 5th and 6th Grade. "Can I hold your Palmolive?" Not on your "Lifebuoy". Oh nuts, that's just my Lux. Again 3 soaps, still on the market.

Puzzle from 6th Grade -circa 1950-51. Three guys go to rent a hotel room, the desk clerk tells them it is $30 or $10 a piece. Each guy chips in $10 and they head to their room.

Suddenly, the desk clerk realizes that there was a discount that day and the room should have been rented for only $25. He sends the bellboy back to the room with a $5 dollar bill to return to the guys. The bell boy was never tipped by the guys and he realizes that the $5 will not divide evenly three ways. He checks his wallet and he has three $1 dollar bills so he decides to keep the $5 and give back only $3, one to each guy. Each of the three guys is delighted that they save a dollar and the bell boy gets a $2 tip. The Management is not cheated. It seems like a win-win situation.

While the bellboy is thinking about it, he realizes that each of the 3 guys now paid in $9 or a total of $27 and that he kept $2 for himself. He adds the $27 they spent and $2 he took and comes up with $29 spent. Then he realizes that they initially spen $30 but after the refund, only $29 can be accounted for. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MISSING DOLLAR?

This is really a tough problem for many people to see through. It isn't obvious where a lie is being introduced. Even when the correct answer is stated, most people would still argue with the guy who gave the correct answer. Not too many of we 6th graders had a clue of how to solve this.
Lakey

 

[FoTi]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

What did happen to the missing dollar?

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

What did happen to the missing dollar?

You have to look at it in this manner. The 3 guys paid in $9 each totalling $27; the hotel ended up receiving $25 and the bellhop received $2 totalling $27. The error lies in ADDING the $2 onto the $27 and comming up with $29. The $2 tip was taken out of the $27 and so has to be subracted from it and not added to it!

I remember that when I was 11, I had trouble understanding this. The fact that you end up only $1 off masks seeing the error. I cooked up a way that made it simple to understand which is as follows:

Make the discount $10 instead of $5. The three guys pay $10 each or $30. The hotel manager realizes he forgot about the $10 discount which was on for that day and sends the bellhop back with a $10 bill to refund to the guys. The bellhop sees that the $10 won't split evenly three ways so he keeps $1 for his tip and gives 9 singles back to the guys. The net result is that each guy pays only $7 or a total of $21. The guys pay out $21 and the bellhop has $1 tip for a total of $22 but there was originally $30 in the system so WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MISSING $8! Well, the $8 error is so large as a percentage of the original $30 that it is easy to see the error. You have to look at it as if the guys paid in $21, the bellhop kept $1 and the hotel kept $20. You can see that adding the bellhop's $1 tip onto the $21 they paid is in error. The tip had to be taken out of the $21 and not added to it.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

500,000 Views Reached

I saw we had 499,563 views about 5 hours ago and now we are not just over 500,000 but already about 500,700. Nobody seems to care any more except for Carmelo and me. Anyway, considering our original goal, set in December 2009. was to reach 31,000 and make the top 10, hitting 1/2 million views on a thread on ESMB is a nice achievement! Thanks to everyone who has contributed!!

CORRECTION AND APOLOGY TO CARMELO

I watched the Fox News Channel today, a panel show hosted by Chris Wallace. Apparently my claim that Newt Gingrich's research company collected only $1.6 million over an 11 year period with Fannie Maie was not accurate. They did collect the $1.6 million from Fredie Mac.

More importantly, Gingrich's company took in $37 million acting as consultant's having to do with Obama's Health Care Legislation. Of this sum, Gingrich personally made several million dollars. It was stated that Gingrich's company rate was $30,000 an hour for a team of experts to analyze and make recommendation about the Obama Health Care plan.

Still valid, however, is that his consultant company did this work after Gingrich left the US Senate in 1998 and he was acting as a private citizen. His company was brought in as a team of experts, he made millions on it but he was not lobbying or seeking any particular political outcome. They were private analysts only. IMHO, with this limited information, there is not enough evidence here to show he was doing anything wrong.
Lakey

 

[FoTi]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

You have to look at it in this manner. The 3 guys paid in $9 each totalling $27; the hotel ended up receiving $25 and the bellhop received $2 totalling $27. The error lies in ADDING the $2 onto the $27 and comming up with $29. The $2 tip was taken out of the $27 and so has to be subracted from it and not added to it!

I remember that when I was 11, I had trouble understanding this. The fact that you end up only $1 off masks seeing the error. I cooked up a way that made it simple to understand which is as follows:

Make the discount $10 instead of $5. The three guys pay $10 each or $30. The hotel manager realizes he forgot about the $10 discount which was on for that day and sends the bellhop back with a $10 bill to refund to the guys. The bellhop sees that the $10 won't split evenly three ways so he keeps $1 for his tip and gives 9 singles back to the guys. The net result is that each guy pays only $7 or a total of $21. The guys pay out $21 and the bellhop has $1 tip for a total of $22 but there was originally $30 in the system so WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MISSING $8! Well, the $8 error is so large as a percentage of the original $30 that it is easy to see the error. You have to look at it as if the guys paid in $21, the bellhop kept $1 and the hotel kept $20. You can see that adding the bellhop's $1 tip onto the $21 they paid is in error. The tip had to be taken out of the $21 and not added to it.
Lakey

Thanks. This is a hard one to wrap my mind around.

 

[CarmeloOrchards]

Re: 500,000 Views Reached

I saw we had 499,563 views about 5 hours ago and now we are not just over 500,000 but alread about 500,500. Nobody seems to care any more except for Carmelo and me. Anyway, considering our original goal, set in December 2009. was to reach 31,000 and make the top 10, hitting 1/2 million views on a thread on ESMB is a nice achievement! Thanks to everyone who has contributed!!

Watch out Mickey D!

CORRECTION AND APOLOGY TO CARMELO

I watched the Fox News Channel today, a panel show hosted by Chris Wallace. Apparently my claim that Newt Gingrich's research company collected only $1.6 million over an 11 year period with Fannie Maie was not accurate. They did collect the $1.6 million from Fredie Mac.

More importantly, Gingrich's company took in $37 million acting as consultant's having to do with Obama's Health Care Legislation. Of this sum, Gingrich personally made several million dollars. It was stated that Gingrich's company rate was $30,000 an hour for a team of experts to analyze and make recommendation about the Obama Health Care plan.

Still valid, however, is that his consultant company did this work after Gingrich left the US Senate in 1998 and he was acting as a private citizen. His company was brought in a a team of experts, he made millions on it but he was not lobbying or seeking any particular political outcome. They were private analysts only. IMHO, with this limited information, there is not enough evidence here to show he was doing anything wrong.
Lakey

What you are describing is plausible deniability by a member of the ruling political oligarchy. The revolving door between government and CORPORATE SELF INTEREST IS ALIVE AND THRIVING.

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Thanks. This is a hard one to wrap my mind around.

I guess that since you said "thanks", you eventually understood the problem.

I am going to post another problem which is a paradox and a much harder problem to grasp. It is called the Monty Hall problem, originating with Monty Hall's old TV game show called, "Let's Make a Deal."

In truth a smart Jr.High student who has studied a little probability theory has enough math tools to solve the problem but despite that, many professional mathematicians with PHD's will not accept the correct answer to this problem, even when it is painstakingly explained.

The answer to this problem really runs extremely counter to a person's intuition. It appeared in 1990 in Marilyn Vos Savant's, "Ask Marilyn" column which is in the Parade Magazine in Sunday newspapers every week.

Here is a write up of the problem from Wikipedia:

In search of a new car, the player picks a door, say 1. The game host then opens one of the other doors, say 3, to reveal a goat and offers to let the player pick door 2 instead of door 1.The Monty Hall problem is a probability puzzle loosely based on the American television game show Let's Make a Deal and named after the show's original host, Monty Hall. The problem, also called the Monty Hall paradox, is a veridical paradox because the result appears odd but is demonstrably true. The Monty Hall problem, in its usual interpretation, is mathematically equivalent to the earlier Three Prisoners problem, and both bear some similarity to the much older Bertrand's box paradox.

The problem was originally posed in a letter by Steve Selvin to the American Statistician in 1975. (Selvin 1975a) (Selvin 1975b) A well-known statement of the problem was published in Marilyn vos Savant's "Ask Marilyn" column in Parade magazine in 1990 (vos Savant 1990):

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Vos Savant's response was that the contestant should always switch to the other door. If the car is initially equally likely to be behind each door, a player who picks Door 1 and doesn't switch has a 1 in 3 chance of winning the car while a player who picks Door 1 and does switch has a 2 in 3 chance. The host has removed an incorrect option from the unchosen doors, so contestants who switch double their chances of winning the car.

Many readers refused to believe that switching is beneficial. After the Monty Hall problem appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine claiming that vos Savant was wrong. (Tierney 1991) Even when given explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still do not accept that switching is the best strategy.

The Monty Hall problem has attracted academic interest because the result is surprising and the problem is interesting to formulate. Furthermore, variations of the Monty Hall problem are made by changing the implied assumptions, and the variations can have drastically different consequences. For example, if Monty only offered the contestant a chance to switch when the contestant had initially chosen the car, then the contestant should never switch. Variations of the Monty Hall problem are given below.

Here's the deal. Everyone agrees that when the contestant chooses a box, he has a 1 in 3 or 33.3% chance of wining the car and after Monty opened one of the incorrect boxes and eliminated it from consideration, most people believe the contestant's chances have increased to 1 in 2 or 50%. (This assumption is in error as explained below.)

Next, Monty offers the contestant a chance to shift from box 1 which he initially chose to the other unrevealed box or to just stay with box 1. Intuition says that whether the contestant switches or not is immaterial; his chances are now 1 in 2, or 50%, whether he switches or doesn't switch so switching makes no difference.

Marilyn's answer was as follows: The person's odds of wining without switching are still 1 in 3. If the person does switch, they will double their chances of wining up to 2 in 3 or 66.66% Thousand's of letters poured in from high places stating that Marilyn's answer was wrong and that she was guilty of teaching children incorrect probability theory. Paul Erdos, then considered the worlds' greatest living mathematician had trouble seeing the problem Marilyn's way although he eventually grudgingly came around.

THE TRICK IN SEEING THAT MARILYN IS CORRECT:
There is one sentence which most people gloss over which is the key to solving the problem, i.e., "Monty always knows what is in each box and will always open a box with a goat in it, never the box with the car." Understand that sentence fully and the problem solves effortlessly, otherwise you will never agree with the answer.

Here's the deal. If Monte did not know the contents of all three boxes, sometimes he would open the box containing the car and the game would immediately end with the contestant losing. Since Monty will never reveal the car but will always reveal a goat, the game never ends there and only ends when Monty opens the 3rd door.

If Monty did not know the contents in advance then Marilyn's detractor's would be correct and Marilyn would be wrong. But this is never the case.

Here is the final summary of the problem. The contestant picks say box 1 and has a 1 in 3 chance of wining. Now, if the car is in box 2, Monty will open box 3 and reveal the goat but if the car is in box 3, Monty will open box 2 and reveal the goat. Monty's opening of a box with a goat thus reveals no new information! The Contestant knows from the beginning that after he chooses a box, Monty will discard one of the boxes with a goat. This will happen 100% of the time so when Monty reveals that goat, no new info is obtained. Things started with the player's box having a 1 in 3 chance and Monty's two boxes having a 2 in 3 chance. Since if the car is in box two Monty will expose box 3 and vice versa, the odds do not change when Monty exposes one of his two boxes.

The contestant still has a 1 in 3 chance on his side and Monty still has a 2 in 3 chance on his side This is the key point. Everyone thinks that there are now only two boxes in play so it is a 50-50 proposition at this point but that is not correct. The contestant still only has a 1 in 3 chance. Now if he switches boxes, the contestant obtains Monty's 2 in 3 chance while Monty is left holding the hand with only a 1 in 3 chance.

Once a person has conceptual understanding of this problem, there are some nice gains in perception and a few new awarenesses and bonuses which go with it.

Lakey

 

[Ted]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

[...]

Once a person has conceptual understanding of this problem, there are some nice gains in perception and a few new awarenesses and bonuses which go with it.

Lakey

Good one, Lakey!

Now apply Monty and his doors to Hubbard and Scientology.

I chose and won the car more than once. But as the game progressed all I received was a goat, and then I became one.

With his smiles, his seemly assistive attitude, his apparent desire to have the contestants win, they assume that Monty is on their side at least to some degree. Why not? He's not paying for the car. He's just administering the game show.

As in Scientology, the participants ~assume~ that Monty is ~with~ them, or perhaps he, like them, does not know what is behind each door.

Shades of L. Ron Hubbard? I think so!

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Good one, Lakey!

Now apply Monty and his doors to Hubbard and Scientology.

I chose and won the car more than once. But as the game progressed all I received was a goat, and then I became one.

With his smiles, his seemly assistive attitude, his apparent desire to have the contestants win, they assume that Monty is on their side at least to some degree. Why not? He's not paying for the car. He's just administering the game show.

As in Scientology, the participants ~assume~ that Monty is ~with~ them, or perhaps he, like them, does not know what is behind each door.

Shades of L. Ron Hubbard? I think so!

Great realization Ted!! Now no one can say that the Monty Hall Problem is off topic on this thread. You have shown how it can be applied to understanding Hubbard and Scn. Ha ha, sort of kidding but also sort of true. Things are not always what they seem!!
Lakey

 

[FoTi]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Great realization Ted!! Now no one can say that the Monty Hall Problem is off topic on this thread. You have shown how it can be applied to understanding Hubbard and Scn. Ha ha, sort of kidding but also sort of true. Things are not always what they seem!!
Lakey

Boy, you can say that again!!! Things and people in life shock/surprise the hell out of me sometimes.

I don't think there is any such thing as an off topic on this thread, is there?

This is the potpourri thread. I think that's partly why it's lasted so long.....it's kind of like a neighborhood gathering of old friends sharing ideas and experiences.

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Boy, you can say that again!!! Things and people in life shock/surprise the hell out of me sometimes.

I don't think there is any such thing as an off topic on this thread, is there?

This is the potpourri thread. I think that's partly why it's lasted so long.....it's kind of like a neighborhood gathering of old friends sharing ideas and experiences.

There once was but for a long time now, just about anything is discussed here.
Lakey

 

[CarmeloOrchards]

Re: Mario

from 15 Nov 2009, post #173:

Janis - I just Googled Mario Feninger and they have a bio but do not give his age. His Mother Teresa de Rogatas who was both a pianist and a composer died in 1979 and was born in the late 1800's so he has to be pushing 100! Mario is actually puting on a live concert in a week on November 21 at someone's private home in the L.A. area. Tickets are for sale and to buy one, you have to contact Tom Solari of Solari and Carr fame, you know, the old comedy team at the Centre. Tom Solari's phone number is given. It all comes up when you Googol Mario's name. You have a thing going with very old people, don't you. I watched the video of that 92 year old woman doing Salsa dancing as if she were 30 and now Mario still giving concerts as he approaches 100. Oh yes, his website has videos of Mario performing.

I was thinking about keeping my thread going and I have enough for one or two more stories and then I am going to have to leave CCLA and your Mom behind and change the material to something else. Still, my story seems to have a fairly large following. I went from 2200 hits before I started my prequel up to 7200 in one month. 5000 hits in one month is pretty hot for a guy who was just a Director of Disbursements some 36 years ago. There are an awful lot of people who really like to hear about the old days and about CCLA and Celebrities. I'm trying to think how I can keep the thread going after I run out of material on the main topic which is about to happen. I can start a new thread or form some sort of transition and move this thread to some related topic. If you or any one else have any suggestions, let me know. Thanks,
Lakey

I'm assuming somebody is still reading this thread. 5000 hits in a month - now that is readership!

there is usually close to 100 people reading our immortal words at any time of the day or night.

I wonder what they're thinking.

It is 2 AM Pacific Time. There are 103 people reading this thread right now. Would any of you please just send me a line and tell me what is holding your interest?

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: So much has changed in only 2 years!

from 15 Nov 2009, post #173:




I'm assuming somebody is still reading this thread. 5000 hits in a month - now that is readership!

there is usually close to 100 people reading our immortal words at any time of the day or night.

I wonder what they're thinking.

It is 2 AM Pacific Time. There are 103 people reading this thread right now. Would any of you please just send me a line and tell me what is holding your interest?

Amazing, so much has changed in just 2 years! Talk about a learning curve. One's 70's are supposed to be retirement years - playing golf, taking trips around the world, enjoying one's grandchildren, etc. Often, but not always, education is not associated with being older because one is "supposed to" already be reasonably wise and mature.

For me, and I am pretty sure for many others as well, being on ESMB has accellerated our educational curves greatlly. Oddly enough, the knowledge we sought which caused us to enter Scientology was not actually found there (for the most part) while we were in. Very surprisingly, this ommission has more than been made up for, by finding vast knowledge as an ex-Scientologist!! Vistas beyond my wildest dreams have been opened up by participating in panel discussions on ESMB.

Do others share this experience with me? I strongly suspect so. It would be nice to get some feedback on this.
Lakey

 

[CarmeloOrchards]

revisiting the SO 1 line

Steve Jobs replied to people who wrote him.

Unlike someone else, who bragged that he replied, Steve did. Not to everyone, but he did.

As I've said before, during my stay in Scientology, I always used the "Macy's guideline" "What would Macy's do?" in a situation. Macy's was a store I liked (still do) and bought diverse things from including luggage, kitchen stuff, bed linens, clothing, etc. I figured Macy's had been in business for a hundred years - therefore they knew something about survival and customer treatment. I threw out the Macy's test when Macy's bought Marshall Field & Co. and renamed it. That was an unpardonable sin in my book.

Had Apple been around when I was in Scientology, I would have used Apple as a measurement of customer service, employee treatment, and so on.

Dear Steve Jobs: Apple Founder's Greatest Email Hits Collected in Ebook
By Samantha Murphy | Mashable

A new ebook released on Tuesday takes an inside look at the email correspondence of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

[More from Mashable: Apple on Track to Be the World’s No. 1 PC Vendor Next Year [STUDY]]

“Letters to Steve: Inside the Email Inbox of Apple’s Steve Jobs” ($2.99), by CNN technology writer Mark Milian, explores how the tech innovator fielded emails from fans -- and how he handled the missing Apple iPhone 4 prototype dilemma with Gizmodo editors.

Jobs often responded to customer emails directly, which is highly unorthodox for someone in his position. Many ended up online.

[More from Mashable: Former Apple Stores Chief: ‘No One Came to Genius Bars’ in Early Years]

Milian spent months scouring the Internet, looking at blog postings and message boards for email correspondences, and spoke to many of those who were lucky enough to get a response. The book, available for the Kindle, is a compilation of what he found.

Mashable spoke with Milian about what it was like to receive an email from the former Apple chief executive -- and what kind of questions generally triggered him to respond.

Mashable: What trends did you notice about Jobs’ email responses while doing your research?

Milian: Steve Jobs is often described as a perfectionist, and he was known to be obsessive about typography. But he occasionally made typos. He was also inconsistent about whether he'd sign his name or include "Best" in his sign-off signature. Some of the sources I interviewed for the book believed he had assistants help him with his mail, but I didn't find any evidence to support that.

Mashable: What type of emails grabbed his attention?

Milian: Flattery certainly helped people get a response. However, some would sent combative emails and still get replies, even if they were unpleasant. It’s obvious that Jobs cared very deeply about many of the topics he took the time to address. He cared about customers having exceptional experiences with their products and Apple's repair system. But he also cared about things you'd never guess he had a passion for. For example, he'd write long missives about Flash or the H.264 video codec or the Objective-C programming language. If someone happened to touch on a topic he was engrossed in at a certain point, it got his attention.

Mashable: Is it unusual for someone with such executive power to field customer service inquiries?

Milian: There's a chapter in the book about how Jobs directly handled customer-service inquiries by e-mail and occasionally by phone. Sure, you’ll find some CEOs on Twitter and Google+, but you won't see them personally helping a customer get their laptop repaired. It fits with Apple's mission statement to make sure customers have a great experience. If someone's iPod is broken, that person is not having a good experience. Jobs at times felt like it was his duty to handle those types of emails.

Mashable: Which email exchange sticks out most in your mind?

Milian: Steve Jobs loved to end emails with a zing. An email I got exclusively for the ebook came from a man that runs a company. The man wrote to a bunch of people at Apple including Jobs about a flaw in the App Store's ranking system. Jobs replied and explained some changes coming to the App Store, and then ended his email with a great jab: "I notice that your app has not received great reviews."
He also played every angle in an attempt to get that [prototype iPhone 4] back, and it showed his brilliant negotiating tactics. However, Gizmodo was not about to give that phone up without a fight.

Mashable: What is it that most shocked you about the emails?

Milian: I was a bit surprised that so many people would so readily publish private correspondences without Jobs' permission. I can see why, of course. He's an icon, and people were excited when they received a message from him. But I found it unusual that many didn't think twice about forwarding these e-mails to reporters or posting them to their own blogs.
This story originally published on Mashable here:

http://mashable.com/2011/11/22/emails-to-steve-jobs/

 

[lkwdblds]

Another Paradox

Okay FoTi (and everyone else)- I am going to give you another paradox to wrap your minds around. This one is called the "UNEXPECTED HANGING".

DESCRIPTION OF THE "UNEXPECTED HANGING" PARADOX

A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday during the following week but that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. He will not know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on his cell door at noon that day. The judge is truthful and the prisoner is informed that if the judge does not keep his word, the prisoner will be set free.

That seems simple enough, right? Wrong!! The way the sentence is phrased creates a major problem, actually a Paradox.

Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging. His reasoning is in several parts.

He begins by concluding that the "surprise hanging" can't be on Friday, as if he hasn't been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left - and so it won't be a surprise if he's hanged on Friday. Since the judge's sentence stipulated that the hanging would be a surprise to him, he concludes it cannot occur on Friday.

He then reasons that the surprise hanging cannot be on Thursday either, because now Friday has been ruled out and if he hasn't been hanged by Wednesday night, the hanging must occur on Thursday, making a Thursday hanging not a surprise either. By similar reasoning he concludes that the hanging can also not occur on Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday. Joyfully he retires to his cell confident that the hanging will not occur at all.

The next week, the executioner knocks on the prisoner's door at noon on Wednesday — which, despite all the above, was an utter surprise to him. Everything the judge said came true.

As it turns out, if noon on Thursday passes uneventfully, then the prisoner can demand to be released since he knows for certain that the hanging must be scheduled for Friday and, knowing this, when the hangman shows up at noon, the prisoner will not be surprised.

It can be assumed that prison officials will not want the prisoner to be able to avoid the hanging so they could just rule out Friday as a possible day. However, a clever prisoner will figure this out and so when Thursday morning rolls around, he claims certainty in knowing that the hangman must be coming that day and demands to be released when the hangman shows up because he already deduced the correct day and is not surprised.

From there, the prisoner reason that all the other days of the week can be eliminated in the same manner and so there is not any day of the week on which he can be hung under the terms of the sentence!

Where is the fallacy in this seemingly iron clad logic?
Lakey

 

[CarmeloOrchards]

Re: So much has changed in only 2 years!

Amazing, so much has changed in just 2 years! Talk about a learning curve. One's 70's are supposed to be retirement years - playing golf, taking trips around the world, enjoying one's grandchildren, etc. Often, but not always, education is not associated with being older because one is "supposed to" already be reasonably wise and mature.

For me, and I am pretty sure for many others as well, being on ESMB has accellerated our educational curves greatlly. Oddly enough, the knowledge we sought which caused us to enter Scientology was not actually found there (for the most par) while we were in. Very surprisingly, this ommission has more than been made up for, by finding vast knowledge as an ex-Scientologist!! Vistas beyond my wildest dreams have been opened up by participating in panel discussions on ESMB.
Do others share this experience with me? I strongly suspect so. It would be nice to get some feedback on this.
Lakey
Lakey

I went to bed last night around 2 AM. There were 506,000 total hits on this thread. This morning it is close to 508,000!

I would love to know if we are entertaining, informative, safe, technically astute, all of the above, none of the above. It truly blows my mind the readership thing that is happening from hundreds of unregistered readers across this planet.

 

[Ted]

Re: So much has changed in only 2 years!

Amazing, so much has changed in just 2 years! Talk about a learning curve. One's 70's are supposed to be retirement years - playing golf, taking trips around the world, enjoying one's grandchildren, etc. Often, but not always, education is not associated with being older because one is "supposed to" already be reasonably wise and mature.

For me, and I am pretty sure for many others as well, being on ESMB has accellerated our educational curves greatlly. Oddly enough, the knowledge we sought which caused us to enter Scientology was not actually found there (for the most par) while we were in. Very surprisingly, this ommission has more than been made up for, by finding vast knowledge as an ex-Scientologist!! Vistas beyond my wildest dreams have been opened up by participating in panel discussions on ESMB.
Do others share this experience with me? I strongly suspect so. It would be nice to get some feedback on this.
Lakey
Lakey

It's the internet, Lakey!

Like-minded people finding each other, talking, exchanging ideas, debating, hashing things out. This opportunity has never existed before on the planet. Much is coming to light, not only in Scientology but in many areas that have depended on ignorance of the people to garner its power.

Watch for missed withhold phenomena in governments and their agencies. I predict that the internet will come under heavy attack, anything to cut free speech and enlightenment. Those in power will not give it up easily.

 

[RogerB]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Here's something to cheer up all you loving and lovable types

This from my reading today:

Have you heard about the Harvard study in which researchers followed 268 men for more than 70 years to determine what made them happy? Their conclusion in a nutshell: "The way to be happy is to love" -- great reminder for us all this Thanksgiving season.

Sort of amazes me that they had to do a 70 years study to figure that one out . . . but then again, I suppose it was on government grant money, and it would have kept the boyz and girlz running the study in beer and skittles for the period

So, bottom line: . . . nah, you can figure it out

R

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: So much has changed in only 2 years!

I went to bed last night around 2 AM. There were 506,000 total hits on this thread. This morning it is close to 508,000!

I would love to know if we are entertaining, informative, safe, technically astute, all of the above, none of the above. It truly blows my mind the readership thing that is happening from hundreds of unregistered readers across this planet.

Carmelo, in line with what you wrote, I've noticed that suddenly our viewership has taken a huge jump. We passed 500k on Nov 21, here only 3 days later, on Nov 24 (both are Australian dates) we are already at 508,400. That is 8,400 in just 3 days or 2,800 a day. That works out to 19,600 per week which is about 4 times more than we have been averaging our first 2 years!

Perhaps once a thread exceeds 500,000 hits it gets distributed more than other locally originated threads. Does anyone have a clue why readership would quadruple once 500k was reached?
Lakey