Paul's Comments

There are some people who "complain" about how the invented language Esperanto never took off despite the supposed advantages that it provides over other existing languages.

I can, to some extent, agree with that point. I am a native (and exclusive) speaker and writer of English, and I know how complicated the language is. There are lots of rules, exceptions, exceptions to the exceptions ("I before e except after c except in Budweiser"), and enough nuances and variations to make someone who's first learning English want to pull their hair out.

But those who are not happy about the lack of take up of Esperanto forget that a language is a living thing, it expands - or contracts - as a result of those involved in its use as they add or subtract words from the language to cover appropriate situations. And probably, most important, is the language's ability to "borrow" words from other languages.

English is not a monolithic system, it is basically a core language that has borrowed a lot from other languages over centuries. When a good word comes up in another language, we're not afraid to borrow steal that word and absorb it into the language, eventually making it a part of the language.

You can tell when a word has been considered absorbed. One of the "rules" of English is if you use a word from another language you're supposed to italicize it. While we would italicize words like chemin de fer (railway), we use Spanish words like taco, burrito; french words like au pair , assurance, and other languages or countries: bushveldt (South Africa), and these are all generally written sans italic ("sans" is a French word). All of these words came from some other language or culture.

I suspect Esperanto doesn't really adequately support absorption from other languages. Also, there's a problem of support, e.g. the "network effect," in that as more people use a language there's more reason for others to use it.

But "network effects" don't answer everything or this blog would be in Chinese. How well the language is carried elsewhere and what are the uses of the language, does it work well for the uses it is given?

Speaking of Chinese, the "fractionalizing" effect is another factor. A fractionalization of a language is known as a "dialect," where the language has different words, terms and in some cases might be so bad as to be unintelligible and might as well be a different language.

English has no more than two or three dialects, most of which are only slightly different from each other (British vs. American and maybe one other) and some minor technical differences (accents and usage) that allow most people anywhere in the world to understand a speaker of English from anywhere else. I routinely listen to the BBC World Service over the Internet and with few exceptions, never have any trouble understanding them or being aware of what they're talking about unless they refer to some local incident in the U.K. papers. In fact, the American influence on English is so strong that in almost every case, even where discussing something priced in British Pounds, the BBC World Service will quote prices in (U.S) Dollars without giving an exchange rate. But if they discuss something priced in Euros or other country's currency, they will routinely give the exchange rate, but not in (U.K.) pounds, but in dollars.

How many dialects does Chinese have? 50, 100? I just did a quick Google search; one guy's blog says that since China has about 8,000 counties, there are probably about that many dialects. Wikipedia lists 7: Gan, Guan (Mandarin), Hakka, Min (Taiwanese), Wu, Xiang, and Cantonese. And from what I understand, there are enough differences between them that they might as well be 7 different languages.

Educational opportunities are also important. I may have said this on this blog before, but it would bear repeating. Because of the number of people in schools in China and its enormous population, there are more people in China who can understand English than there are people living in the United States.

Also, carryover of a language to subsequent generations is critical to its continued success. Unless someone learns a language, then decides to have kids and use that language during the formative years when the child is learning language, their use of the language dies with them.

The "single language" factor is also important. If I am in a particular country and born there, I can learn that country's language (or primary language if it has more than one) and manage adequately to make a living or operate in that society. Since Esperanto has no specific country or place, it's only value is as a separate language in addition to some other language. I doubt anyone could manage to survive if they only thought in and understood Esperanto.

Hundreds - probably thousands - of languages have existed over time, and as those in those societies died out, the language died with them. If a language can't evolve to cover new situations, it will end up being replaced, which is why Latin is not popular except for poetic use, e.g. when I want to refer to someone who is the most important in a peer group, I can refer to the "leader of the group", (or "Leader of the Band" if I want to use the title from a Dan Fogelberg song) or I can refer to them as primus inter pares, my favorite latin term meaning "first among equals".

English has worked so well for commercial transactions because we've invented very precise and technically adequate words to describe most commercial transactions or activities. And because the computer was basically invented by Americans, most computer terms tend to be American English, which increases the network effects of the language.

When you're in diplomatic situations, however, French is the language of choice for this application. Part of the reason is that it is supposedly very civilizing and makes it difficult to be insulting, meaning that the communication tends to be more gracious, which is important, I suppose, when two rival countries are staring each other down with military weapons.

There is a joke about a short pamphlet listing "Major French Military Victories," and the rest of the pamphlet is short because it's blank. Perhaps it's because the French language doesn't provide good ways to get angry or express offense at others. I don't know, but I've heard that some of the extremely precise insults and swear words that English has - and I've probably used every one of them at one time or another - have no exact correspondence in other languages, or are much weaker in tone and force than they are in English.

So, coming to a conclusion, maybe Esperanto didn't have good enough swear words to be able to make it worth while to use it.

I have been mailing in letters and engaged in conversations with the Maryland Division of Securities, and by pleading my case, trying to get sympathy and basically telling the truth, I won't have to fight the order I mention in the posting below of July 15. It looks like I'm going to get off with a rap on the knuckles: I agree not to violate Maryland securities law again, if I ever offer securities again (in Maryland), I get legal help, a no-action from the Division, make sure any future offering is properly registered or is correctly exempt.

It would have been nice if it hadn't happened, e.g. if I could have found out before the order was filed, but at least it's not horribly bad. And as I have learned in the past, I won't make this sort of mistake again. Plus the order says I can still show potential offerings to banks, insurance companies, underwriters or broker-dealers so I can get their advice if they are interested.

A few years ago I got secured cards from several credit card companies. Now, they already have my money, and have zero risk on the balance. But if you aren't speedy in paying them back, they hit you for fees and fines. And apparently they can't just close the deposit account and use it to pay off the balance, you have to pay it off first, then they give you a refund of the deposit. When I ran out of money a few years ago, Capital One kept piling on the charges then eventually sued me. I screwed up on the paperwork because I was unfamiliar with the process so they basically won a default judgment. They've been chasing their tail ever since trying to collect on it.

So this explains the first time I ever got sued.

Over the last few years I've had the idea for finding a way to build cheaper housing and I've been working on it. I figured out that it's possible to build an apartment building with 106 apartments having 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and enough parking to give everyone 2 spaces (plus additional for handicapped and visitors) for $14 million, and I could sell them for $182,000 each and make a profit. About 5 million or so.

Now, if I could have the building constructed in 9 months, then I could conceivably give away most of the profit by offering to pay people back according to what I understood federal law permitted me to do, which is a "note" - that's financial speak for borrowed money - which is repayable in 9 months and is used for current operations, is not required to be registered as a "security" and thus eliminates several thousand in fees.

My understanding was that this represents what is called "commercial paper," and is thus also exempt under state laws that closely follow the terms of the federal Securities Act of 1933. I even sent copies of my website making the offering to the appropriate securities regulators for Maryland, Virginia, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Well, apparently the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland disagree with my opinion. The Commonwealth sent me a letter which basically said "you can't do that" and if I didn't, they wouldn't come after me.

The State of Maryland so disliked my idea they have mailed me a Cease & Desist order and have filed a three-count Administrative Proceeding against me demanding a lifetime ban on ever selling securities in Maryland, and $15,000 in fines. Despite the fact I hadn't ever sold anything and hadn't even opened the project for investment. (I had to move the date forward 3 weeks because I needed more time to write and distribute press releases.)

Amazing. If we compare this to other legal proceedings, they're asking for the Securities equivalent of the death penalty for a first offense where nothing even happened. Somehow I think I know how O.J. felt (if he was innocent). He's been stupid since his trial, however or he wouldn't have gotten life in prison for what happened in Vegas. Now what happened in Vegas means he stays in Vegas. He should have stuck to killing people, he had better luck staying out of prison.

Actually I don't know if that's true. I've thought about it for quite a while, and based on things that I've seen since, I actually do have doubts as to whether he did kill his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman. I don't know if he did; I've heard some points that indicate that O.J. fits the pattern of the abusive-type spouse but not the killing kind. I've also heard some things that cast doubt on the evidence presented at his (criminal) trial. So I don't know.

I was never "outraged" because, I guess, I presumed that we are innocent until the evidence shows otherwise. So, if O.J. did do it, justice has now been done; if he didn't do it, a stupid man who should have been walking on eggs to stay on the right side of the law and thanking his lucky stars he had the money and the lawyers to keep his ass out of jail, is now in prison because he was too stupid to do what he should have done if he thought someone was ripping him off or otherwise illegal activities against him were going on: called the police and/or filed a lawsuit to freeze things until it was properly settled.

Thinking back on this, maybe O.J. is the wrong example, and the Ramsey family, who were basically destroyed as a result of their daughter being murdered and they being believed were the prime suspects is closer. The wife died a few years ago, but the husband is still alive and evidence finally surfaced to show what they had been saying all along, that someone else did it. Whoever did this to their daughter destroyed a lot more than the life of cute little Jon Benet Ramsey, and it took many years to vindicate the innocent survivors, some of whom didn't live long enough to find out they eventually would be.

So now I'm having to spend time writing a response to the toilet paper the office of the Maryland Securities Commissioner have dumped on me, which I'm supposed to do within 15 days of being served with the notice. Yeah, right. It would be hard enough for an experienced securities litigator to answer this in 15 days; I realized with my resources and my disability, it would be all but impossible to do anything but a cursory attempt. I've asked for more time to respond because of my disability, I am hoping I'll get it. Otherwise I'll have to go to court to demand more time.

I say it's "toilet paper" because I have to figure the extreme speed by which they threw this missive at me is retaliation over my suing the State to strike down the law making it a misdemeanor to openly carry a handgun in public as violating the 2nd Amendment. The fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia sent me a letter first, gives me reason to believe that to be the case. To put it bluntly, the State of Maryland didn't like the crap I threw at their unconstitutional anti-handgun law, so they decided to throw some crap at me.

Not only that, but this proceeding is so ridiculous that I, as a non-lawyer, discovered (according to my understanding of the law) at least four fatal errors in the proceeding that I have to see the proceeding as a piece of crap, too. Only problem is, when I have to sit in my chair and take a crap, I clean up the mess, wrap it in newspaper, and throw it in the trash (I cannot get to a toilet because of my disability). This piece of crap proceeding has to sit on my desk so I can refer back to it to understand how to reply to it, e.g. for me to throw anti-crap or reply crap at it, I have to keep looking at it while it stinks up my life. Oh man, these puns are getting far too odoriferous for me to continue. Reminds me of Bette Midler complaining once because "I've been reduced to telling fart jokes!"

Or another way to put it is, to this attempt to crucify me, I'm having to try to find adequate crowbars to pull out the nails and magnets to deflect them before they nail me to the cross that for the moment I must bear.

On the other hand, since my reading of the law has been apparently incorrect on a number of occasions, this may indicate my opinions are wrong. Actually, I don't see it that way; this issue represents a disagreement over what the law is and I might even be able to argue that it fits the law as it reads. In one other case, I was correct except the law I thought applied did not apply to my circumstance. I find it interesting that I have otherwise won every time I've handled an administrative proceeding and more than 1/2 of all times I've gone to court. I've lost when I've either been unprepared or where I really had no grounds to defend myself. So I have high confidence I am correct on what I think the law is and in the end I will emerge victorious.

In the mean time I'm having to take more time out to work on this proceeding as best I can. Oh well, I guess this sort of thing is the cost of doing business. But I now understand better why nobody is building less-expensive housing: the government does whatever it can to discourage it.

I have spent a few hours doing some fascinating reading of the 200 page Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's 2009 budget and I have found out some interesting things. Basically, in the case of bus service, the number is almost exact, based on number of trips, revenue, and cost of service, each bus customer is paying $1.52 for their trip, which costs WMATA $5.00 to provide! I'm averaging the numbers for simplicity as regular rides are, at most, $1.35. (They go into some technical details which say something similar, that with transfers from Smarttrip passes, each user trip produces about 85c in revenue and requires $3.50 in subsidies.) They receive about $152 million in farebox and other revenues and run roughly 100 million bus trips, but it costs about $500.1 million to operate bus service.

As is the usual factor, bus service is able to return about 30% of its cost through farebox revenues. The cost surprised me; regional buses cost $150 an hour to run, local routes cost $102 an hour. So for the F14 bus that runs near where I live, it operates 20,197 hours a year, which means it costs Metro $2.06 million a year. For one bus!

Rail service does better, for each dollar that it costs to run the trains, farebox and other revenues return about 83c. So it "only" costs them about $3.49 to provide service that the customer pays $2.33. These are straight off their own document, the average subsidy per trip is about 74c.

What got to me, however, was my own interest, Metro Access. Now, I had read the contract between WMATA and MV Transit, the company that runs Metro Access, and basically Metro pays them in the neighborhood of $62 million a year to operate the service.

What got me though was the trip numbers. Metro Access provides something around 1.1 million trips a year. Do the math: it comes out that every time Metro Access runs a trip for someone, they pay $2.50 but it is costing them $60 to provide the trip! (Numbers from the budget: Revenues from Metro Access: $3.1 million; expenses: $65 million so it averages out to something around $59 and change per trip.)

At these kinds of costs, it would have been cheaper for Metro to give people cab rides than what they are doing right now! Someone please tell me how come providing trip service for handicapped people costs about $60 per trip?

I remember how one time I took a trip out to Fairfax and Metro Access was overbooked so they sent me a cab which was wheelchair accessible for the return trip. The back of the van opens up and I just roll in the back. I pay the $2.50, the Cab company collects the difference from Metro Access. When I got home the meter read $27.50, and I give the cab driver the $2.50. And I thought that was steep, not realizing then that despite the fact Metro Access is going to pay - I think it was Yellow Cab - $25.00, they're billing WMATA for an additional $30 above this. Nice work if you can get it.

When I first heard that Metro Access got $62 million a year for the trips they provide, I figured the subsidy level was about equivalent either for the cab ride I took, e.g. that Metro Access provided about 4 million trips a year, or that my case was an exception, and probably the subsidy was around, say, $5 a trip, meaning that Metro Access ran about 8-10 million trips a year. I had no idea the contract was as lucrative as it is.

Don't ever buy an Epson printer. I did, and I regret it. Severely.

I had a nice Brother laser printer, which developed a "spotting" problem where a large grey circle would get printed down the page. This means the drum has gone bad, which is probably reasonable as I've had the printer for maybe 4 years and have printed undoubtedly thousands of pages over the years.

Well, right now I didn't have the money to buy another laser printer (a new laser costs around $149 or so; a new drum costs about $150; you do the math). So I bought an inkjet printer so I could also get spot color.

I first got ripped off because I paid full price for an Epson Workforce 30 color printer at around $69. I could have bought some other printer for less if I had looked around a bit more. Then I got ripped off again when I discovered that the (regular capacity #69) cartridges are $18 for black and $14 for each of the other colors (cyan, magenta and yellow.) The larger capacity Epson #68 cartridges, which supposedly hold twice as much ink, are just a little below twice as expensive. That the standard capacity cartridges for Canon (#6, I think) in black run about $8 and are about the same capacity in terms of pages is something I should have remembered.

But I've found out two things. Because people print in black so much, the Epson holds two black cartridges in addition to the color ones. Only one problem: they might as well be one cartridge, because the Epson, in effect, slaves them together, meaning you can't run with just one black cartridge, you have to have both have ink to use it. When I ran out of black ink, I tried buying one cartridge to get by for the time being. The printer software knows exactly how much ink you have in any cartridge so it knows which one has how much. But it won't allow you to print in black unless both cartridges have ink. So I got ripped off a third time and had to go buy a second black cartridge.

The Epson also uses a "chipped" cartridge, so it knows how much ink is in the cartridge, even if you remove it and put it back, the cartridge itself has a memory, which means you can't refill it unless you can alter the chip. Meaning I've gotten ripped off a fourth time as you can't use a refill kit to reduce cost. That's a new one. Also, the printer I'm using is fairly new, which means there's no aftermarket cartridges, I can't buy a less expensive alternative brand, I have to buy Epson's own cartridges.

But the final straw that has broken the camel's back is the fifth rip off, the insistence by the printer driver software that the document I want to print - which is all black and has no color - cannot be printed unless I replace the cyan cartridge. Notwithstanding that I will not be using cyan on this document, if any cartridge is empty, the printer will not be allowed to print.

This sort of greedy arrogance means that, as soon as I can, I will be replacing this Epson printer with something less demanding in terms of ink. Oh, it does nice printouts - but any inkjet printer is probably similar - but this is unconsionable. As I've only used the printer for a month I'll donate it to some worthy organization, a school or public library, but I'll switch to one that's going to cost less.

Or I'll get a laser printer - and I will check how much resupplies are going to cost - and I'll use it for black and save the Epson for spot color, which normally is not very often.

I should have checked, but when my laser printer went bad I needed something fast. As I'm disabled going into a store and taking one home really isn't much of an option, so I had to use the Internet and mail order. And the Iron Triangle got me. What's the Iron Triangle? "Fast, easy or cheap. Pick any two." I chose fast and easy, so of course, it wasn't cheap.

Next time I'll do a little research, and go with something easy and cheap; print speed is not that critical, but cost of supplies is. It's not just how much it costs to buy it, but how much the "total cost of ownership" is over the time you have it.

Epson is not the most expensive in terms of ink; that honor goes to Lexmark. Their black cartridges are around $24 but you could refill them. But it looks like Epson is going to win second place as second most expensive printer to use. With what they charge for ink their printers should be a lot cheaper.