Re:dear libertarians and tea baggers:
on
Health Care Reform
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Don't use the term tea bagger. That is a degrading term based on childish antics of kids using video games to emulate vulgar actions. If you really want to be taken seriously, recognize we identify with the patriots who participated in the Boston tea party, so you might try tea party protesters.
When you are building up a company, you start with private financing, either through one rich guy as in the case of many of these private space ventures, or through venture capitalists.
These guys have taken a large risk, and to make that risk worth it, they want to earn many times that when they have the IPO. The highest payout will come when the company has gone from high risk to sure thing. So when the company is able to launch weekly, with a profit every launch, the market will have a good idea of what the market capitalization (# of stock*stock price=cost to buy the company) should be. The company should provide a decent rate of return with a higher than usual risk premium (a series of crashed rockets might cause the stock to tank for a while) will give the investors a good idea of what the company is worth. Then, the initial investors have to decide if the short term gain of selling the company is worth losing control of their creation plus the long term income they could have by holding the company. Venture capitalists almost always go IPO. I have no idea what percentage of billionaire created companies are held privately. In Kansas, I sometimes hear that Koch is the largest privately owned company in our state. It's difficult to compare the size of the company to others because they aren't required to release financial documents for SEC compliance since they aren't publicly traded on the stock market.
How is it selfish if I don't pay taxes, at least not federal income tax? I had 0 in withholding from my taxes last year, and each of the last 4 years actually, and got 2200+ back in tax credits.
I don't think that wealthy people getting to keep most of what they earn is in any way a bad thing. Are they going to live it up? Hell yeah, but every item they spend the money on is an opportunity for somebody else to make a living. And the more we allow the haves to keep and spend, better off we are.
I, as a person that makes a modest income, would rather cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance (my 'safety net' according to the government), or make them optional with the right to buy those as insurance just like any other insurance. If I got to keep all of that income, I would easily be able to provide all of those same services for myself, and so could every other American. If people would recognize their need to build their own safety net, people would be less willing to overspend to get the biggest house they can imagine, waste money on cars they can't afford, get cheaper cell phones, and the government would have no need to provide for people what they can provide for themselves.
Look at it this way, the government gets a dollar for every dollar that passes through your hands, either as income/payroll taxes before it gets to you, or as property, sales or taxes on the profit of the people you pay for goods and services. Almost all of that is essentially waste as far as increasing the lifestyle of our fellow citizens. And the prices we pay for the services the government provides, let me tell you, there is a very low turnover for government jobs, and what that tells me is we give individuals who work for the government salaries that are too high.
As for the drug war and other laws that restrict the rights of Americans, I'm afraid that you are right. I would love to see us legalize many of the things that we outlaw that have resulted in people going to jail. Doing so would free us from having to maintain our current prison system in it's current state, and let us get back to living our lives of freedom.
Maybe instead of retinal scanning (ala Minority Report), advertisers will just have scanners positioned near their billboards that can detect people's cell phones, and computers will be able to triangulate the particular individual, then a camera placed near the billboard will be able to detect that certain individuals have looked in the direction of the billboard, and will calculate which ad matches most of the individuals looking at a certain moment. In the case of road side billboards, the bill board will just have to assume that individuals in a certain range are looking, and calculate based upon it's best information.
For the concert goer, this is the incentive to pay as much as they are willing to pay, and if they don't get it, they shouldn't feel bad because they obviously didn't value the experience as high as the other bidders. Of course, the higher bidders should get better seats so you don't have the richer people who can afford (or are willing) to pay 10x the price will have an incentive to bid that price instead of trying bid just above the minimum, and hoping they get a good seat by lottery. Some teams in the US pro leagues have already started doing this, both on season tickets, and then for single game tickets for high interest games where scalpers are likely to make premium prices.
Some teams in the big sports leagues are moving toward auctioning off the best seats in the house, typically as part of a season ticket package, basically to claim some of the profit the scalpers have been making. If they do it right, the scalpers won't be able to participate because their margins will get too small to make it worth the risk up buying their product up front.
Frankly, I think the scalping should be legal. After all, the scalpers are agreeing to take the risk and guarantee the businessman that his tickets will sell even if nobody eventually shows up to watch the event. If the people hosting the event are upset because somebody else is making a profit that they could have made, then they should figure better ways to maximize the price of every seat in the house.
How to do it: Have a silent auction for all of the tickets to the event. After everybody has selected their price, the tickets are assigned to the bidders in order of highest bid. This should maximize the price for every ticket and total ticket sales, because people that aren't willing to pay the current $20 price for an otherwise empty 'nosebleed' seat might be willing to pay $5-10 for the privilege of filling a seat nobody else wants for $20.
Search for DVD Recorders with a Hard Drive. I responded to the parent mentioning a Philips unit I'm interested in with upscaling so I'd be able to watch DVDs and recorded materials on a high definition TV in the future. A buddy asked my opinion, and I recommended that or another unit I'd found that was region free with upscaling that I though he might be interested in because his girlfriend is from China. Pioneer or Samsung make such a device.
You can buy non-TIVO devices (like the Philips DVDR3576H (DVD Recorder/DVR) I'm considering buying to replace a similar Toshiba device I already own) that do exactly that. I've heard people rave about TIVO, but I'd rather have a machine like the above that doesn't need to be on the Internet, that can't be changed or controlled by the manufacturer without my consent. They probably will never do it, but I'd just as soon have the peace of mind of knowing that they can't touch my device.
It takes a little bit to switch providers. You need to figure out how you're going to pay for your electric water heater and furnace\space heaters. If people decide the cost of changing doesn't pay for itself through the reduced cost of energy, many will wait until they have no choice but to replace the unit, and switch then.
Some women are like that. If you're familiar with the 5 love languages (words of affirmation, physical affection, gifts, acts of service and quality time), some women like to receive gifts. Others like other things. I suppose that with an extravagant dinner with flowers hits several of the love languages, so you might think that the money spent is the thing. But what she might appreciate is the effort (service) you went through to make it happen, or time you spent together at the restaurant (time), or something nice thing you said to her (affirmation).
My wife is a real woman, and while she likes to eat out, she much prefers to save the money and spend it on other priorities. And since she feels most loved when she feels like I've served her, I don't have to spend any money to make her happy, I just have to do things that she would otherwise do herself, namely clean the kitchen and take care of the laundry as much as I can.
So, some women like that stuff, but most probably consider it stupid. Other women might like the stunt, and others will think that stupid. It's best to get to know the girl before you spend a lot on them or risk your self-esteem or physical well being trying to impress them to much as you might be taking the wrong tack.
Maybe there just weren't enough people using digital books YET. How many traditional King fans were using eReaders at the time? It doesn't seem like it would be a great market.
But for me, I just don't know if that's a model I'd want to pursue as a reader, because the author has all the incentive in the world to write chapters or books that do nothing more that indicating the real story will be in a future release, like many of the Wheel of Time books. Quite frankly, I've tired of the fact that so much fantasy and science fiction is written in episodic form as a series. What happened to the ability to tell a story and then move to something else. Have authors and publishers grown so risk adverse that they much prefer to try to lock in their next payday by locking readers in to buying a series to guarantee the next sell? I mean, I loved Dune, the Lord of the Rings, Asimov's foundation series not to mention a few others. But for the most part, a lot of what is sold today is just filler to turn a 2-300 page story into a 2000 3-6 episode series.
Every study of the social effects of homeschooling v. schooling indicates that overall, homeschool raised children are better socialized than their schooled peers. Sure, we all remember the few encounters we've had with people who haven't done a decent job of getting their children out of the house to meet others. But those are the outliers of homeschoolers, not the norm.
School raised children are much more likely to be clique-y and judgmental, have experienced being bullied, reject interacting with younger children, and significantly less able to hold a conversation with an adult. Don't forget that for much of the time that children are in school, their teachers' want them quiet and not interacting while they are involved in formal lessons, listening, taking tests, reading, filling out worksheets, etc.
On the other hand, homeschooled children are able to have a much wider range of social experiences, because they are able to do something else during the 14,000 hours that schooled children spend in school over the course of 13 years. When you aren't in school, every day becomes a field trip learning day. Many people have their children out of school 2-4 days a week, often interacting with adults the way any of us do when we aren't at work. Some parents even take vacations during the off season (when most people are tied to home while school is in session), and make their trips around the country into history and geography lessons, and teach civics by going to a city or county governance meeting.
One interesting thing I read while researching homeschooling indicates that many studies into homeschooled adults have not been able to find any that are unemployed.
I would think it would be easier to make a book that does Braille than it was to do eInk. Such a device would not have as good battery life as an eInk device, but should able to take a digital text, and instantly make a Braille text out of it.
I've got an Ooma system. 3000 free local or long distance minutes a month, no monthly charge. The call quality isn't perfect, but I'm saving $300 a year after it pays for itself in 8 months (2 months from now), and I'm not going to complain.
That might well be, but there is over 2 billion addresses located in 126 privately held networks that don't need to be. How many of these organizations are using even 1% of the IP addresses at their disposal? Give them 5 class B's of their choice from their current class A, and reclaim the rest, then this issue will go away for a long time.
My parents live 7 miles outside of Topeka, the state capital of Kansas. AT&T and Cox refuse to service them with anything but POTS. For the last year and a half, we spent a lot of time looking at houses even closer to the city than that, and there were plenty of places that had the same service situation. And many of these are newer upscale houses built in the last 20 years, where people make a lot of money, but AT&T won't setup the hardware and Cox won't run the lines to these potential customers.
Luther intentionally altered the content of the Bible to make it say what he wanted it to say by removing several Old Testament books and altering a phrase of the New Testament so that he could claim Christians could be certain of salvation based on adhering to a particular belief instead of having to act like a Christian from the time of conversion until death. The Church to this day reserves the right to declare that some writings are OK to be read by Catholics, and others are not. However, scholars (formal or informal) who need or wish to be aware of these writings can and do read these. The list is a strong recommendation against untrained people reading materials that have either intentional on unintentional errors that may mislead them by stating things that are clearly not true.
It seems to me that many around here would like to have this or stronger powers over writings by Creationists and I can't say I'd disagree.
Never been in a strip club except to deliver a pizza before hours, but when I was a college student, I did know a girl (daughter of a minister even) that stripped at a club 10 miles away. She did it to put herself through school, and even bought herself a new car within two months of starting. I don't remember seeing her after that first semester, so I have no idea what happened to her. She wasn't particularly attractive, very short, and kind of round in the face. An army ranger from my scholarship house got called to escort her home one evening. Not every girl with a student 'story' is a lie, but you're probably hit the nail on the head for most of them.
Considering the fact that year 0 wasn't set until centuries after the fact (in the 6th century, almost 500 hundred years after the death of the man he was trying to associate the beginning to) it doesn't really matter if there was or wasn't a year zero. It's not like the Romans were walking around talking about year 0 or 1 as the start of the calendar. It's not like we classify things as being in the thirties or forties in reference to things that happened in the first century.
The fact of the matter is, using the term decade in the way we do, and and short hand terms like eighties and nineties is just a short hand form that is easily recognizable way to classify time the way you can classify vehicles as cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, etc. Some are going to prefer more precision, others just want to use the language to convey their message without having to explain in great detail. For instance, you can say the president for the 80s was Regan. While technically not entirely true, he wasn't president for the first 55(ish) weeks of the decade, or the last 49(ish), does it really matter? Carter was a practically a lame duck for his entire failed reelection campaign, and Bush's presidency pre-Kuwait was largely overshadowed by Regan. How many things perfectly line up with the beginning or end of any decade?
Additionally, using a method where the first three digits of the year is intuitive, and is more easily communicated. After all, you can't really refer to the decade from 1981-1990 as the eighties if the last year of the decade doesn't fit. Fashion, entertainment, and politics are largely the things that the news covers, and since it's journalists that write the news, let them set the rules in a way that it's easily for them to frame those topics, and don't worry about it too much, because like lots of things that are classified, the edges are kind of fuzzy, and in the end, since I can't imagine one measurable difference it will make in the world to classify decades by one year earlier or later depending on which camp you're in, so just let it slide. In the grand scheme of all things, does it really matter? We could try to set a calendar based on some other great achievement of man (first written word, first spoken word, invention fire or the wheel), guess the age of the earth, or from the beginning of fusion in the sun, or the big bang itself, and base everything around that, but it's all arbitrary, unless we could calculate the precise age of the universe.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't use the term tea bagger. That is a degrading term based on childish antics of kids using video games to emulate vulgar actions. If you really want to be taken seriously, recognize we identify with the patriots who participated in the Boston tea party, so you might try tea party protesters.
We could call it StringVision (since on of the more popular constructs of string theory has 11 dimensions).
Maybe we should patent the brain scan for ID since that will be the next idea?
When you are building up a company, you start with private financing, either through one rich guy as in the case of many of these private space ventures, or through venture capitalists.
These guys have taken a large risk, and to make that risk worth it, they want to earn many times that when they have the IPO. The highest payout will come when the company has gone from high risk to sure thing. So when the company is able to launch weekly, with a profit every launch, the market will have a good idea of what the market capitalization (# of stock*stock price=cost to buy the company) should be. The company should provide a decent rate of return with a higher than usual risk premium (a series of crashed rockets might cause the stock to tank for a while) will give the investors a good idea of what the company is worth. Then, the initial investors have to decide if the short term gain of selling the company is worth losing control of their creation plus the long term income they could have by holding the company. Venture capitalists almost always go IPO. I have no idea what percentage of billionaire created companies are held privately. In Kansas, I sometimes hear that Koch is the largest privately owned company in our state. It's difficult to compare the size of the company to others because they aren't required to release financial documents for SEC compliance since they aren't publicly traded on the stock market.
How is it selfish if I don't pay taxes, at least not federal income tax? I had 0 in withholding from my taxes last year, and each of the last 4 years actually, and got 2200+ back in tax credits.
I don't think that wealthy people getting to keep most of what they earn is in any way a bad thing. Are they going to live it up? Hell yeah, but every item they spend the money on is an opportunity for somebody else to make a living. And the more we allow the haves to keep and spend, better off we are.
I, as a person that makes a modest income, would rather cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance (my 'safety net' according to the government), or make them optional with the right to buy those as insurance just like any other insurance. If I got to keep all of that income, I would easily be able to provide all of those same services for myself, and so could every other American. If people would recognize their need to build their own safety net, people would be less willing to overspend to get the biggest house they can imagine, waste money on cars they can't afford, get cheaper cell phones, and the government would have no need to provide for people what they can provide for themselves.
Look at it this way, the government gets a dollar for every dollar that passes through your hands, either as income/payroll taxes before it gets to you, or as property, sales or taxes on the profit of the people you pay for goods and services. Almost all of that is essentially waste as far as increasing the lifestyle of our fellow citizens. And the prices we pay for the services the government provides, let me tell you, there is a very low turnover for government jobs, and what that tells me is we give individuals who work for the government salaries that are too high.
As for the drug war and other laws that restrict the rights of Americans, I'm afraid that you are right. I would love to see us legalize many of the things that we outlaw that have resulted in people going to jail. Doing so would free us from having to maintain our current prison system in it's current state, and let us get back to living our lives of freedom.
No award for you!
Maybe instead of retinal scanning (ala Minority Report), advertisers will just have scanners positioned near their billboards that can detect people's cell phones, and computers will be able to triangulate the particular individual, then a camera placed near the billboard will be able to detect that certain individuals have looked in the direction of the billboard, and will calculate which ad matches most of the individuals looking at a certain moment. In the case of road side billboards, the bill board will just have to assume that individuals in a certain range are looking, and calculate based upon it's best information.
For the concert goer, this is the incentive to pay as much as they are willing to pay, and if they don't get it, they shouldn't feel bad because they obviously didn't value the experience as high as the other bidders. Of course, the higher bidders should get better seats so you don't have the richer people who can afford (or are willing) to pay 10x the price will have an incentive to bid that price instead of trying bid just above the minimum, and hoping they get a good seat by lottery. Some teams in the US pro leagues have already started doing this, both on season tickets, and then for single game tickets for high interest games where scalpers are likely to make premium prices.
Some teams in the big sports leagues are moving toward auctioning off the best seats in the house, typically as part of a season ticket package, basically to claim some of the profit the scalpers have been making. If they do it right, the scalpers won't be able to participate because their margins will get too small to make it worth the risk up buying their product up front.
Frankly, I think the scalping should be legal. After all, the scalpers are agreeing to take the risk and guarantee the businessman that his tickets will sell even if nobody eventually shows up to watch the event. If the people hosting the event are upset because somebody else is making a profit that they could have made, then they should figure better ways to maximize the price of every seat in the house.
How to do it: Have a silent auction for all of the tickets to the event. After everybody has selected their price, the tickets are assigned to the bidders in order of highest bid. This should maximize the price for every ticket and total ticket sales, because people that aren't willing to pay the current $20 price for an otherwise empty 'nosebleed' seat might be willing to pay $5-10 for the privilege of filling a seat nobody else wants for $20.
Search for DVD Recorders with a Hard Drive. I responded to the parent mentioning a Philips unit I'm interested in with upscaling so I'd be able to watch DVDs and recorded materials on a high definition TV in the future. A buddy asked my opinion, and I recommended that or another unit I'd found that was region free with upscaling that I though he might be interested in because his girlfriend is from China. Pioneer or Samsung make such a device.
You can buy non-TIVO devices (like the Philips DVDR3576H (DVD Recorder/DVR) I'm considering buying to replace a similar Toshiba device I already own) that do exactly that. I've heard people rave about TIVO, but I'd rather have a machine like the above that doesn't need to be on the Internet, that can't be changed or controlled by the manufacturer without my consent. They probably will never do it, but I'd just as soon have the peace of mind of knowing that they can't touch my device.
It takes a little bit to switch providers. You need to figure out how you're going to pay for your electric water heater and furnace\space heaters. If people decide the cost of changing doesn't pay for itself through the reduced cost of energy, many will wait until they have no choice but to replace the unit, and switch then.
Some women are like that. If you're familiar with the 5 love languages (words of affirmation, physical affection, gifts, acts of service and quality time), some women like to receive gifts. Others like other things. I suppose that with an extravagant dinner with flowers hits several of the love languages, so you might think that the money spent is the thing. But what she might appreciate is the effort (service) you went through to make it happen, or time you spent together at the restaurant (time), or something nice thing you said to her (affirmation).
My wife is a real woman, and while she likes to eat out, she much prefers to save the money and spend it on other priorities. And since she feels most loved when she feels like I've served her, I don't have to spend any money to make her happy, I just have to do things that she would otherwise do herself, namely clean the kitchen and take care of the laundry as much as I can.
So, some women like that stuff, but most probably consider it stupid. Other women might like the stunt, and others will think that stupid. It's best to get to know the girl before you spend a lot on them or risk your self-esteem or physical well being trying to impress them to much as you might be taking the wrong tack.
Maybe there just weren't enough people using digital books YET. How many traditional King fans were using eReaders at the time? It doesn't seem like it would be a great market.
But for me, I just don't know if that's a model I'd want to pursue as a reader, because the author has all the incentive in the world to write chapters or books that do nothing more that indicating the real story will be in a future release, like many of the Wheel of Time books. Quite frankly, I've tired of the fact that so much fantasy and science fiction is written in episodic form as a series. What happened to the ability to tell a story and then move to something else. Have authors and publishers grown so risk adverse that they much prefer to try to lock in their next payday by locking readers in to buying a series to guarantee the next sell? I mean, I loved Dune, the Lord of the Rings, Asimov's foundation series not to mention a few others. But for the most part, a lot of what is sold today is just filler to turn a 2-300 page story into a 2000 3-6 episode series.
Every study of the social effects of homeschooling v. schooling indicates that overall, homeschool raised children are better socialized than their schooled peers. Sure, we all remember the few encounters we've had with people who haven't done a decent job of getting their children out of the house to meet others. But those are the outliers of homeschoolers, not the norm.
School raised children are much more likely to be clique-y and judgmental, have experienced being bullied, reject interacting with younger children, and significantly less able to hold a conversation with an adult. Don't forget that for much of the time that children are in school, their teachers' want them quiet and not interacting while they are involved in formal lessons, listening, taking tests, reading, filling out worksheets, etc.
On the other hand, homeschooled children are able to have a much wider range of social experiences, because they are able to do something else during the 14,000 hours that schooled children spend in school over the course of 13 years. When you aren't in school, every day becomes a field trip learning day. Many people have their children out of school 2-4 days a week, often interacting with adults the way any of us do when we aren't at work. Some parents even take vacations during the off season (when most people are tied to home while school is in session), and make their trips around the country into history and geography lessons, and teach civics by going to a city or county governance meeting.
One interesting thing I read while researching homeschooling indicates that many studies into homeschooled adults have not been able to find any that are unemployed.
I would think it would be easier to make a book that does Braille than it was to do eInk. Such a device would not have as good battery life as an eInk device, but should able to take a digital text, and instantly make a Braille text out of it.
I've got an Ooma system. 3000 free local or long distance minutes a month, no monthly charge. The call quality isn't perfect, but I'm saving $300 a year after it pays for itself in 8 months (2 months from now), and I'm not going to complain.
That might well be, but there is over 2 billion addresses located in 126 privately held networks that don't need to be. How many of these organizations are using even 1% of the IP addresses at their disposal? Give them 5 class B's of their choice from their current class A, and reclaim the rest, then this issue will go away for a long time.
There is a list under the civilian research heading. I lived several guys who ran the Kansas State reactor freshman or sophomore year.
Here it is. Unfortunately, I think there is plenty of non compatible hardware out there that will be running 32-bit Linux for a while.
My parents live 7 miles outside of Topeka, the state capital of Kansas. AT&T and Cox refuse to service them with anything but POTS. For the last year and a half, we spent a lot of time looking at houses even closer to the city than that, and there were plenty of places that had the same service situation. And many of these are newer upscale houses built in the last 20 years, where people make a lot of money, but AT&T won't setup the hardware and Cox won't run the lines to these potential customers.
Luther intentionally altered the content of the Bible to make it say what he wanted it to say by removing several Old Testament books and altering a phrase of the New Testament so that he could claim Christians could be certain of salvation based on adhering to a particular belief instead of having to act like a Christian from the time of conversion until death. The Church to this day reserves the right to declare that some writings are OK to be read by Catholics, and others are not. However, scholars (formal or informal) who need or wish to be aware of these writings can and do read these. The list is a strong recommendation against untrained people reading materials that have either intentional on unintentional errors that may mislead them by stating things that are clearly not true.
It seems to me that many around here would like to have this or stronger powers over writings by Creationists and I can't say I'd disagree.
As the father of 2, I was going to guess it was for Bambi II. ;)
What British born international celebrity of 20 years doesn't eventually get knighted?
Never been in a strip club except to deliver a pizza before hours, but when I was a college student, I did know a girl (daughter of a minister even) that stripped at a club 10 miles away. She did it to put herself through school, and even bought herself a new car within two months of starting. I don't remember seeing her after that first semester, so I have no idea what happened to her. She wasn't particularly attractive, very short, and kind of round in the face. An army ranger from my scholarship house got called to escort her home one evening. Not every girl with a student 'story' is a lie, but you're probably hit the nail on the head for most of them.
Considering the fact that year 0 wasn't set until centuries after the fact (in the 6th century, almost 500 hundred years after the death of the man he was trying to associate the beginning to) it doesn't really matter if there was or wasn't a year zero. It's not like the Romans were walking around talking about year 0 or 1 as the start of the calendar. It's not like we classify things as being in the thirties or forties in reference to things that happened in the first century.
The fact of the matter is, using the term decade in the way we do, and and short hand terms like eighties and nineties is just a short hand form that is easily recognizable way to classify time the way you can classify vehicles as cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, etc. Some are going to prefer more precision, others just want to use the language to convey their message without having to explain in great detail. For instance, you can say the president for the 80s was Regan. While technically not entirely true, he wasn't president for the first 55(ish) weeks of the decade, or the last 49(ish), does it really matter? Carter was a practically a lame duck for his entire failed reelection campaign, and Bush's presidency pre-Kuwait was largely overshadowed by Regan. How many things perfectly line up with the beginning or end of any decade?
Additionally, using a method where the first three digits of the year is intuitive, and is more easily communicated. After all, you can't really refer to the decade from 1981-1990 as the eighties if the last year of the decade doesn't fit. Fashion, entertainment, and politics are largely the things that the news covers, and since it's journalists that write the news, let them set the rules in a way that it's easily for them to frame those topics, and don't worry about it too much, because like lots of things that are classified, the edges are kind of fuzzy, and in the end, since I can't imagine one measurable difference it will make in the world to classify decades by one year earlier or later depending on which camp you're in, so just let it slide. In the grand scheme of all things, does it really matter? We could try to set a calendar based on some other great achievement of man (first written word, first spoken word, invention fire or the wheel), guess the age of the earth, or from the beginning of fusion in the sun, or the big bang itself, and base everything around that, but it's all arbitrary, unless we could calculate the precise age of the universe.