J Larsen

He just indicated that he is dropping this (at least for now). Let it die.

Just stop.

I personally favor annual. I have a hard time remembering to make monthly payments.

Thanks. Now I have that song from the Team America soundtrack stuck in my head.

This might be a completely dumb, ineffective idea, and furthermore may not even be implentable, BUT... what if the board is made free to all, but only paid members get access to special features like messaging, live chat, different fonts, etc. Just a random thought.

Thanks to Jim for hosting this place and to everyone else for sharing so much knowledge. I lurked a lot more than I contributed. Unfortunately I had/have virtually nothing to add to the music discussion here but certainly benefited from it a great deal.

You wait. If the board does go, I'm going to drop some big ass confessions at the end of December. Stay tuned.... Just as I always suspected. Catesta = Aric.

I actually like Squires. For $100 you get a guitar that doesn't sound all that much different from any other strat, and I really like the necks. I don't like the beginers' Ibanez guitars as much because they have this thick, modern rock sound to me that I don't care for much. But if that is what your son likes, it may be a better option.

Cosmic rays are so energetic that the magnetic field doesn't do nearly as good of a job deflecting them, but yes there are those too. Come to think of it, it may be that the cosmic rays are so numerous that even though the geomagnetic field is less effective at deflecting them, that you are subjected to a larger increase in the number of cosmic rays when you leave the field than the increase experienced in particles emitted from the sun. I'm honestly not sure.

Okay, I'll bite: Why is living outside the magnectic field worse than living outside the earth's atmosphere? When you put it that way, it isn't worse. But replicating the earth's low-altitude atmosphere is a relatively simple technological problem. The earth's magnetic field enables advanced life by deflecting the hordes of alpha particles, electrons and protons spewed out by the sun as a consequence of fusion reactions. Replicating this is far more difficult. You'd have to encase the spacecraft in so much led that no current rocket could get it off the ground (and it is worth noting that a vehicle this massive would be very difficult to maneuver). You'd have a similar problem designing space suits that provided adequate protection.

So if I understand you, you are only disputing the use of the word "cause". You are not arguing that the economic consequencies would be any different under a different pricing convention, you are merely arguing that the underlying processes that lead to the observed prices would be different. Am I understanding you? BTW, even if I understand, I'm not completely sure I agree.

For the most part, I agree with that, especially with regards to the manned space flight program. Why is it a real issue? Space colonization is a nice pipe dream, but the realities of living outside the protection of the earth's magnetic field for any real length of time and the pratical difficulties in compensating for the lack of that protection are unlikely to be overcome. This has never been adequately explained to the public. The physics community tried to, when Bush was pushing his ridiculous men to mars program pre-9/11, but the media weren't interested in listening to the party poopers. There are rumors of a little hanky panky on the ISS, but nothing on the clock.

Surprised to see this resurface in the news; this is the result of a misinterpreted inside joke from many years ago that Kohler has been trying to cash in on ever since: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/sex/a/astronauts_sex.htm Edit: See also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_12-571-3570 Looking back over the details, it seems this is actually just an outright hoax as opposed to a misinterpreted joke. The way I remembered it the document Kohler points to as his sole evidence was written as a joke by someone at NASA. Apparently it is now alleged that Kohler made everything up.

If the dollar is falling against the euro, and oil exporters price oil such as to maintain their purchasing power in countries using the euro, then the dollar price of oil would be expected to rise regardless of whether oil is priced in euros or dollars.

Why? It seems to me that both of those scenarios will have equal implications for oil producers regardless of the currency used for pricing. The only exception I see is if the worth of the dollar collapsed to zero, in which case it could no longer be used to measure anything. Also, don't we only have to consider cases where the liquidity of the dollar and/or euro decreases seperately if we are assuming that the transactions are actually done in the currency in which oil is priced?

I would certainly expect the coefficient of correlation between the dollar/euro exchange rate to be less than unity in abs value - this is just a reflection of the fact that exchange rates are not the only factor in determining the dollar price of oil. This observation, which I frankly consider to be trivial, does nothing to refute the claim that the fortunes of oil exporting countries is completly indepenant of the currency in which oil is priced. If I wanted to get really nitpicky, I'd go so far as to assert that if anything, a weakned dollar leads to (very slightly) increased efficiency in oil markets, because the measurement unit is more fine.

This may be nitpicking, but if you are worried about the future viability of the format, I'm not sure that comp-store sales (dollar value of sales in stores in a given period in stores that were open last year divided by the dollar value in sales in those same stores last year) is the right figure to look at. I think total units this year divided by total units last year and total dollar value of sales this year divided by total dollar value of sales last year would be more interesting. Weak same-store sales indicates that there is likely to be shake-ups on the retail level, but doesn't have to mean that demand for the product is waning. However, I will admit that in this case it is probably both effects.

But even in a case where the dollar depreciates against the euro and the dollar price of oil does not increase, it is not true that oil exporters would have been better off if they had priced their product in euros. Commodity prices are set entirely through supply and demand; the currency used for pricing is irrelevant. I thought that was the whole point of the argument.

They are my primary source for CDs. I usually opt for two day shipping. Other than my first order, where they sent used CDs that were supposed to be new, I've had no problems.

Again, I was abusing technical language and assuming that I would be understood. I'm not posting under ideal circumstances. Edit: In retrospect, I wish I had said "market value as expressed in any given currency" in place of "intrinsic value". Haste is the enemy of accuracy.

It is "explanatorily vacuous" if the whole point of the argument is to demonstrate that the instrinsic value of oil is independent of the currency in which it is denominated.

I don't see that in his post at all. I took Guy to mean this: hold all currencies other than the dollar fixed wrt to each other. Now take X% off the value of the dollar. All else being equal, this will have an X% impact on oil prices as expressed in dollars. Your last paragraph seems to me to fit under the disclaimer "obviously other factors can exert upward or downward impacts on oil prices".

Not sure about that. The Japanese Yen, Deutsche Mark (sp) and Swiss Franc have generally been more stable. The problem is that those nations have kept interest rates low. The dollar was primarily used because it was the main source of foreign reserves for nations. Why? Well is was somewhat stable, but more importantly, it offered a nice mix of relative stability plus nice return on the treasury notes. OK, I should have phrased that more carefully. During the period in which the decisions were made which led to the dollar being the standard pricing unit for international commodities markets, the dollar had a history of being the least volatile currency in large supply.

I am not sure this is true. I would guess that most who trade oil contracts use such large volumes that the transaction costs are tiny in relative terms. You know, I would have thought that too, but then Buffett said last year that he was no longer trading in foreign currencies because the costs had grown too large, and was instead focusing on acquiring foreign equities (using USD). I have nearly no knowledge of the associated costs, but this did surprise me. My knowledge on this issue is limited to the point where I don't know how it would affect the entities typically engaged in oil trading.