I won't dispute your historical account, but I will dispute this:
Eqypt had no intention of closing off the suez canal. They wanted it for revenue and closing it off wouldn't have been constructive.
With all due respect, that sounds more like your hindsight bias talking. I can imagine how critical world powers at the time didn't have the same confidence you have in Egypt's willingness to adhere to those terms. The fact that:
Later (much after this incident) Egypt did try to close the canal to Israeli traffic.
Well, I'm not a British legal expert living 40 years ago, but based on some assumptions that seemed to hold up on a Wikipedia review, Egypt did *not* have the right to close off the Suez canal simply by buying out shareholders. Under the Convention of Constantinople of 1888, ships were guaranteed right of passage through the canal. Even if it were a "misunderstanding" of some sort, the decades of adherence of Egypt and all other countries to that standard created a sort of "easement" to use of the canal. Britain was specifically given the right to protect the canal in the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which Egypt unilaterally rejected in 1951.
Britain did nationalize a lot of things of at the time, of course (cue joke about Churchill commenting in the men's room that "Every time you see something big you want to nationalize it"), but none for which they had international obligations to guarantee access.
So, yes, Egypt was bound by treaty to allow passage of ships through the Suez canal. Just as you or I can't close off our driveways to sidewalks that pass over it, Egypt was bound to respect that particular easement.
Yeah, good point. But WE are smarter than them. So... hm, what to do. OH!!!! I know! If there's ever a terrorist attack, all of the news networks should just ignore it entirely! That way people will be in complete ignorance that it's happened. (I mean, except maybe for eyewitnesses calling friends and relatives, but that can easily be banned.)
I mean, informing people about terrorist attacks is just playing into their hands.
Most "news" is heavily slanted to doom and gloom. Why? Probably because doom and gloom sells. People have a voyeuristic tendancy to be drawn to shootings, car crashes etc. In reality, 99.99% of were not in a car crash, got raped or any such mishap.
Hm, that's a good point. The media report too much doom and gloom. That would justify this change:
at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be 'positive.'
Next up: justifying these changes:
--opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air
I did. I did, damn you! How dare you resist my attempts to pigeonhole you!
Seriously, I wasn't aware of this vindicating study, but based on the general significance of the stuff Sailer brought up, it looked like any attempt to salvage the thesis would just look like desperation. But I will admit I should read that stuff before commenting further.
When you look at the highest-crime-prone years of the post-Roe cohort, you'll see that the drop in crime doesn't match up with where it should be. Plus, Levitt tried to rule out race by explaining it through three other variables that had an extremely high correlation with race, but not as high as race, a violation of Occam's Razor if there ever was one.
Maybe there is something wrong with my fine motor skills but, my signature is different every single time.
I don't doubt that, but my point is, upon study, these "different" signatures still have a thread of similiarity that is distinctly "you". You'll find that when you try to sign your name in way that doesn't look like you. That's why it was historically used as authentication: it's so easy to do yours and so hard not to.
You're correct, but you make it sound a little too pessimistic. The dollar's market value is based on people's believe it's worth something, but it's not totally a collective delusion. Remember, the US government and the Federal Reserve (or do I repeat myself?) have real assets like gold that they can use to stop too sharp of a decline in value of the dollar (by "soaking up" dollars through sale of its assets for dollars). In practice, of course, it's a little screwy because the Fed actually manages the dollar's value not by trading gold, but buy trading claims to future dollars (aka US government bonds).
And, more importantly, the government has the ability to tax, and the need for people to pay their taxes in US dollars gives the dollar a (corrupt and immoral but effective) basis for its value.
I'd like to join the pile-on. Not only was it far too short, half of the book was his abortion theory, which was shortly after discredited. Still, the part about gangs being run like corporations, with a board of directors and all, totally blew my mind.
All of this pales in comparison, of course, to this revelation that monkeys have discovered money. God help us.
I don't know about this typing pattern technique, but there are a thousand variables that affect how you will do your hand-written signature, and yet they're still able to identify something that's distinctly "yours" well enough. (Try signing with someone else's script sometime -- I first ran into this when trying to forge consent forms.)
So, maybe they can identify a range of methods as yours without spanning much of the "typepatternspace".
Personally I've noted that Magazines and Papers put a good bit of thought into layout, but I've never found them easier to read.
Yeah, I agree, though I think that has more to do with their dumbed-down slang phrasings than the typography.
8-year-old: "6 divided by 3 is 2."
Time magazine: "Okay, take the number six. You're all familiar with it, yes? It's a half-dozen. Now, imagine it divvied up into little chunklets -- three, specifically -- and each chunklet has the same number that math professor Gregory Beckens at Overinflated Ego University calls a 'quotient'. The so-called 'quotient' in this case? Dos."
My problem with Firefox is that upgrading *itself* is risky. The last two times I upgraded to a new version, it deleted all my bookmarks. So, I'm constantly switching to IE for a lot of sites. Once I bother to find where bookmarks are stored, I'll keep them in a separate place before upgrading. I haven't gotten a new version since some time in (I think) early '05.
This is similar (oh good, here come the vindictive mods) to my experience with Ubuntu, where the design team apparently hadn't considered very critical, easy-to-fix problems. I mean, I can understand "that's problem's fixed in the new version". I cannot, however, understand, "that problem's fixed in the new version, so risk a loss of your bookmarks -- something extremely difficult to avoid in coding -- to upgrade to it."
The only "performance" I get from Blizzard involves pushing those self-same bits around on the server they already exist on.
And the fact that you've arbitrarily trivialized what "performance" means here... does that contradict a claim of mine, or support a claim of yours?
That gnome represents nothing in the real world; it's existence is completely self-contained in its virtual world.
Utterly false. Other, real-world people make interaction decisions regarding you based on the attributes of that gnome. Other people suck real-world resources up, based on properties your gnome holds. They may merely divert labor hours. They may bid real-world goods. They may buy a strategy guide from the real world to beat you based on attributes of the gnome stored on the server. None of that is self-contained.
The share of stock, however, represents something in the real world: Partial ownership of the company that issued the stock,...
No. It represents your belief that you are entitled to those things. It no more guarantees you those things than my bitching entitled me to Ubuntu support. (Remember? The other topic you postured on?) The board may not honor your voting or dividend rights. The government may not act on your lawsuit in response to such an action. The police and court officers responsible for enforcing judicial decision if they are in your favor, may not feel like enforcing it. And so on. The reason you confidently expect those things is because of a network of trust that historically been established -- exactly as on Blizzard's servers, though of course they don't have as much trust.
That is the real world connection that turns bits into something tangible, because it is designed to create tangible effects in the real world.
False -- that would at best make those bits *intangible* data that has tangible effects on the real world, just as WoW was designed to have the "tangible effect" on the real world of diverting real goods to Blizzard's owners.
That's the difference, and it is plain and real. It is that ownership that forms the fundamental value of a stock, and is why investors trade stocks and not gnomes.
In other words, you didn't read a damn thing I wrote because you still feel superior to me.
Now, try again, and this time, give me a real reason or concede your error.
You are the owner of the stock and may sell it. You do not own the gnome and hence may not sell it. Blizzard owns the gnome, and the money you give them allows you to play the gnome but at all times they retain ownership. If you were to attempt to sell the gnome you would be in breach of contract and surely guilty of fraud? (for attempting to sell something you do not own?)
This is all true, but doesn't develop a fundamental distinction. What makes "my gnome" (or anything) valuable is not the ownership per se, but the fact that people widely and predictably respect my usage rights (and transfer of those usage rights) in the gnome. So far, Blizzard has respected users usage/transfer rights in their characters to the point that people treat them as proprety, making the origin of the value of the stock and the gnome are really the same thing. So I can't see what "tangible/intangible" distinction Chris_Burke was trying to draw. Again, it's true that Blizzard can reneg on recognition of those rights... but so can the government or corporations on any of various rights. Why do people think they won't? Why do people think Blizzard won't?
Being able to touch something isn't the only definition:
Yes, I noted that, and noted that none of the others apply, and this reasoning:
A company only has a certain number of shares of stock. Each share of stock has a definite owner. There are people waiting to buy stock at a certain price and people willing to sell stock for another price. When the sale takes place, money changes hands. You pay for the increase in value of the stock from when you bought it to when you sold it, the actual difference in money you paid and money you received.
Does not support a claim that it meets any of the other definitions.
That's not true at all. Blizzard makes it clear in their terms of service that they own any rights to your online characters. They could be deleted tomorrow. They specifically forbid you from attempting to sell your character or gold. If you are on either end of such a transaction you face losing your account with no legal recourse.
Again, none of that contradicts my claim that: "What creates value for the gnome and the shares is the (well-founded) expectation that [expropriation] won't happen."
Just because they *could* do these things, doesn't mean they will. The U.S. government *could* default on treasuries; it its widely expected not to for the forseeable future. My point was that the value comes from the *expectation*, not any legal rights Blizzard has, and so far, they have been respectful *enough* of virtual property rights, for them to be valuable, just like the U.S. government has been responsible *enough* honoring treasuries for their promise to have market value.
It's nothing like stocks. The board of directors deciding not to pay dividends might make your shares of stock worth less, but you still own exactly the same number of shares. This would be the same as the company deleting your shares of stock because you bought them from someone.
See sig. I wasn't referring to a board not paying dividends; I was referring to a board paying dividends, *but only to the shares they hold and not yours*. They certainly could attempt to do this; the value of the shares comes from your expectation that they won't do this, and that someone else (the government) will rectify it if you do.
The underlying point is that the value of these relationships, whether they be ownership of a gnome or a government bond or a business venture, depends on the trust people have that the relationships will be honored. Legal recourse is one way to establish trust, but it is not the *only* way, and legal remedies are themselves dependent on trust of the government to do what it said it will. Simple tradition by Blizzard of honoring these transactions can create substantial expectation that they will be honored, as that is exactly why US treasuries have value.
I don't follow. You repeatedly refer to stock as being tangible. It's not. Tangible means you can touch it. (None of the other definitions fits what you mean here either.) You can't touch stock. You can touch stock *certificates*, but the "stock" itself is "ownership of a company". When you buy stock, you're buying a certain kind of (intangible) relationship with others about control of a commercial venture. That is tangled up with all sorts of expectations about whether the board must listen to you, whether courts will smack them up if they don't, etc.
You then describe cash as tangible. Well, cash has different meanings. Financial planners refer to money market mutual fund shares and bank account money, even when it's electronically stored, as "cash". That again is just bits, which through certain relationships, entitles you to conversion to the *tangible*, paper money.
Your gnome is bits on a server, and that's it. Those bits don't even represent anything in the real world; the bits are the entirety of the thing's existence. The server owners could delete those bits at no cost except your annoyance, or they could duplicate those bits so everyone on the server has three dozen exact copies of everything you own. If you can get someone to buy those bits from you, they are still buying nothing but bits. There is no connection to anything outside the world of bits, and hence the gnome is truly intangible.
I'd have to disagree. Like the stock (that you classify as tangible), your gnome is a claim to a certain kind of performance (from Blizzard). Yes, Blizzard could "inflate" your gnome into worthlessness, or delete it, for the heck of it. Just like the board of directors could tell you they're not sharing dividends with shareholders anymore. What creates value for the gnome and the shares is the (well-founded) expectation that that won't happen.
Now, I ultimately agree with your suggestion: for a number of reasons, it's best to just say, "when real-world currencies change hands, *then* count it as income, but not until". But I don't understand the distinction you tried to make between a gnome and stock.
Hey, look on the bright side, at least you can sue WoW for paying you below minimum wage. Oh, and look at the state of your home: ~*~OSHA violation~*~! Ca-ching!
When my son graduated high school, I thought I'd give him something special. I gave him a car. But more importantly, I wanted him to follow in the ways of Our Lord and Savior. So I first gave him a Bible, which had the keys to the car inside of it. When I presented it to him on graduation, he was appalled. "Thanks for nothing, dad!" He told me. Ungrateful jerk. He left us and I never heard from him for ten years. Then I'd found he'd been arrested for mugging.
I visited him and told him I probably could have done more for him and, would he like the stuff in his old room back? He said sure, why not.
He was surprised to find the old Bible I tried give him and which he rejected. Amazed, he thumbed through it. Then an envelope fell out. He opened it and saw the keys. Then it dawned on him: "Dad... when you gave me the Bible... you were really giving me a new car?" I said no, I was giving you a Bible, a car, and, hopefully, some humility. "Why didn't you TELL ME ALL THESE YEARS?" he asked. "Well," I responded, "why didn't you trust my judgment that the Bible was what you really wanted?"
Then I realized that none of that actually happened and I'm just repeating a tired old made-up story.
Slashdot Mirror
I won't dispute your historical account, but I will dispute this:
Eqypt had no intention of closing off the suez canal. They wanted it for revenue and closing it off wouldn't have been constructive.
With all due respect, that sounds more like your hindsight bias talking. I can imagine how critical world powers at the time didn't have the same confidence you have in Egypt's willingness to adhere to those terms. The fact that:
Later (much after this incident) Egypt did try to close the canal to Israeli traffic.
shows that these fears were not without basis.
Well, I'm not a British legal expert living 40 years ago, but based on some assumptions that seemed to hold up on a Wikipedia review, Egypt did *not* have the right to close off the Suez canal simply by buying out shareholders. Under the Convention of Constantinople of 1888, ships were guaranteed right of passage through the canal. Even if it were a "misunderstanding" of some sort, the decades of adherence of Egypt and all other countries to that standard created a sort of "easement" to use of the canal. Britain was specifically given the right to protect the canal in the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which Egypt unilaterally rejected in 1951.
Britain did nationalize a lot of things of at the time, of course (cue joke about Churchill commenting in the men's room that "Every time you see something big you want to nationalize it"), but none for which they had international obligations to guarantee access.
So, yes, Egypt was bound by treaty to allow passage of ships through the Suez canal. Just as you or I can't close off our driveways to sidewalks that pass over it, Egypt was bound to respect that particular easement.
Yeah, good point. But WE are smarter than them. So ... hm, what to do. OH!!!! I know! If there's ever a terrorist attack, all of the news networks should just ignore it entirely! That way people will be in complete ignorance that it's happened. (I mean, except maybe for eyewitnesses calling friends and relatives, but that can easily be banned.)
I mean, informing people about terrorist attacks is just playing into their hands.
Most "news" is heavily slanted to doom and gloom. Why? Probably because doom and gloom sells. People have a voyeuristic tendancy to be drawn to shootings, car crashes etc. In reality, 99.99% of were not in a car crash, got raped or any such mishap.
Hm, that's a good point. The media report too much doom and gloom. That would justify this change:
at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be 'positive.'
Next up: justifying these changes:
--opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air
--United States was to be portrayed as an enemy,
Are you Even Steven, by any chance?
I did. I did , damn you! How dare you resist my attempts to pigeonhole you!
Seriously, I wasn't aware of this vindicating study, but based on the general significance of the stuff Sailer brought up, it looked like any attempt to salvage the thesis would just look like desperation. But I will admit I should read that stuff before commenting further.
*sigh* Forget it, it looks like Levitt is a Malcom Gladwell -- no point arguing with his supporters.
See the dialogue with the author here.
When you look at the highest-crime-prone years of the post-Roe cohort, you'll see that the drop in crime doesn't match up with where it should be. Plus, Levitt tried to rule out race by explaining it through three other variables that had an extremely high correlation with race, but not as high as race, a violation of Occam's Razor if there ever was one.
Maybe there is something wrong with my fine motor skills but, my signature is different every single time.
I don't doubt that, but my point is, upon study, these "different" signatures still have a thread of similiarity that is distinctly "you". You'll find that when you try to sign your name in way that doesn't look like you. That's why it was historically used as authentication: it's so easy to do yours and so hard not to.
You're correct, but you make it sound a little too pessimistic. The dollar's market value is based on people's believe it's worth something, but it's not totally a collective delusion. Remember, the US government and the Federal Reserve (or do I repeat myself?) have real assets like gold that they can use to stop too sharp of a decline in value of the dollar (by "soaking up" dollars through sale of its assets for dollars). In practice, of course, it's a little screwy because the Fed actually manages the dollar's value not by trading gold, but buy trading claims to future dollars (aka US government bonds).
And, more importantly, the government has the ability to tax, and the need for people to pay their taxes in US dollars gives the dollar a (corrupt and immoral but effective) basis for its value.
I'd like to join the pile-on. Not only was it far too short, half of the book was his abortion theory, which was shortly after discredited. Still, the part about gangs being run like corporations, with a board of directors and all, totally blew my mind.
All of this pales in comparison, of course, to this revelation that monkeys have discovered money. God help us.
I don't know about this typing pattern technique, but there are a thousand variables that affect how you will do your hand-written signature, and yet they're still able to identify something that's distinctly "yours" well enough. (Try signing with someone else's script sometime -- I first ran into this when trying to forge consent forms.)
So, maybe they can identify a range of methods as yours without spanning much of the "typepatternspace".
Personally I've noted that Magazines and Papers put a good bit of thought into layout, but I've never found them easier to read.
Yeah, I agree, though I think that has more to do with their dumbed-down slang phrasings than the typography.
8-year-old: "6 divided by 3 is 2."
Time magazine: "Okay, take the number six. You're all familiar with it, yes? It's a half-dozen. Now, imagine it divvied up into little chunklets -- three, specifically -- and each chunklet has the same number that math professor Gregory Beckens at Overinflated Ego University calls a 'quotient'. The so-called 'quotient' in this case? Dos."
In fairness, the *full* statement is, "Don't be evil, unless necessary to advance the broader interests of the human race."
I could bare to rear
Don't most people have to "bare" in order to "rear" anyways?
That's largely because you're not jinxed.
My problem with Firefox is that upgrading *itself* is risky. The last two times I upgraded to a new version, it deleted all my bookmarks. So, I'm constantly switching to IE for a lot of sites. Once I bother to find where bookmarks are stored, I'll keep them in a separate place before upgrading. I haven't gotten a new version since some time in (I think) early '05.
This is similar (oh good, here come the vindictive mods) to my experience with Ubuntu, where the design team apparently hadn't considered very critical, easy-to-fix problems. I mean, I can understand "that's problem's fixed in the new version". I cannot, however, understand, "that problem's fixed in the new version, so risk a loss of your bookmarks -- something extremely difficult to avoid in coding -- to upgrade to it."
The only "performance" I get from Blizzard involves pushing those self-same bits around on the server they already exist on.
...
And the fact that you've arbitrarily trivialized what "performance" means here... does that contradict a claim of mine, or support a claim of yours?
That gnome represents nothing in the real world; it's existence is completely self-contained in its virtual world.
Utterly false. Other, real-world people make interaction decisions regarding you based on the attributes of that gnome. Other people suck real-world resources up, based on properties your gnome holds. They may merely divert labor hours. They may bid real-world goods. They may buy a strategy guide from the real world to beat you based on attributes of the gnome stored on the server. None of that is self-contained.
The share of stock, however, represents something in the real world: Partial ownership of the company that issued the stock,
No. It represents your belief that you are entitled to those things. It no more guarantees you those things than my bitching entitled me to Ubuntu support. (Remember? The other topic you postured on?) The board may not honor your voting or dividend rights. The government may not act on your lawsuit in response to such an action. The police and court officers responsible for enforcing judicial decision if they are in your favor, may not feel like enforcing it. And so on. The reason you confidently expect those things is because of a network of trust that historically been established -- exactly as on Blizzard's servers, though of course they don't have as much trust.
That is the real world connection that turns bits into something tangible, because it is designed to create tangible effects in the real world.
False -- that would at best make those bits *intangible* data that has tangible effects on the real world, just as WoW was designed to have the "tangible effect" on the real world of diverting real goods to Blizzard's owners.
That's the difference, and it is plain and real. It is that ownership that forms the fundamental value of a stock, and is why investors trade stocks and not gnomes.
In other words, you didn't read a damn thing I wrote because you still feel superior to me.
Now, try again, and this time, give me a real reason or concede your error.
You are the owner of the stock and may sell it. You do not own the gnome and hence may not sell it. Blizzard owns the gnome, and the money you give them allows you to play the gnome but at all times they retain ownership. If you were to attempt to sell the gnome you would be in breach of contract and surely guilty of fraud? (for attempting to sell something you do not own?)
... but so can the government or corporations on any of various rights. Why do people think they won't? Why do people think Blizzard won't?
This is all true, but doesn't develop a fundamental distinction. What makes "my gnome" (or anything) valuable is not the ownership per se, but the fact that people widely and predictably respect my usage rights (and transfer of those usage rights) in the gnome. So far, Blizzard has respected users usage/transfer rights in their characters to the point that people treat them as proprety, making the origin of the value of the stock and the gnome are really the same thing. So I can't see what "tangible/intangible" distinction Chris_Burke was trying to draw. Again, it's true that Blizzard can reneg on recognition of those rights
Being able to touch something isn't the only definition:
Yes, I noted that, and noted that none of the others apply, and this reasoning:
A company only has a certain number of shares of stock. Each share of stock has a definite owner. There are people waiting to buy stock at a certain price and people willing to sell stock for another price. When the sale takes place, money changes hands. You pay for the increase in value of the stock from when you bought it to when you sold it, the actual difference in money you paid and money you received.
Does not support a claim that it meets any of the other definitions.
That's not true at all. Blizzard makes it clear in their terms of service that they own any rights to your online characters. They could be deleted tomorrow. They specifically forbid you from attempting to sell your character or gold. If you are on either end of such a transaction you face losing your account with no legal recourse.
Again, none of that contradicts my claim that: "What creates value for the gnome and the shares is the (well-founded) expectation that [expropriation] won't happen."
Just because they *could* do these things, doesn't mean they will. The U.S. government *could* default on treasuries; it its widely expected not to for the forseeable future. My point was that the value comes from the *expectation*, not any legal rights Blizzard has, and so far, they have been respectful *enough* of virtual property rights, for them to be valuable, just like the U.S. government has been responsible *enough* honoring treasuries for their promise to have market value.
It's nothing like stocks. The board of directors deciding not to pay dividends might make your shares of stock worth less, but you still own exactly the same number of shares. This would be the same as the company deleting your shares of stock because you bought them from someone.
See sig. I wasn't referring to a board not paying dividends; I was referring to a board paying dividends, *but only to the shares they hold and not yours*. They certainly could attempt to do this; the value of the shares comes from your expectation that they won't do this, and that someone else (the government) will rectify it if you do.
The underlying point is that the value of these relationships, whether they be ownership of a gnome or a government bond or a business venture, depends on the trust people have that the relationships will be honored. Legal recourse is one way to establish trust, but it is not the *only* way, and legal remedies are themselves dependent on trust of the government to do what it said it will. Simple tradition by Blizzard of honoring these transactions can create substantial expectation that they will be honored, as that is exactly why US treasuries have value.
I don't follow. You repeatedly refer to stock as being tangible. It's not. Tangible means you can touch it. (None of the other definitions fits what you mean here either.) You can't touch stock. You can touch stock *certificates*, but the "stock" itself is "ownership of a company". When you buy stock, you're buying a certain kind of (intangible) relationship with others about control of a commercial venture. That is tangled up with all sorts of expectations about whether the board must listen to you, whether courts will smack them up if they don't, etc.
You then describe cash as tangible. Well, cash has different meanings. Financial planners refer to money market mutual fund shares and bank account money, even when it's electronically stored, as "cash". That again is just bits, which through certain relationships, entitles you to conversion to the *tangible*, paper money.
Your gnome is bits on a server, and that's it. Those bits don't even represent anything in the real world; the bits are the entirety of the thing's existence. The server owners could delete those bits at no cost except your annoyance, or they could duplicate those bits so everyone on the server has three dozen exact copies of everything you own. If you can get someone to buy those bits from you, they are still buying nothing but bits. There is no connection to anything outside the world of bits, and hence the gnome is truly intangible.
I'd have to disagree. Like the stock (that you classify as tangible), your gnome is a claim to a certain kind of performance (from Blizzard). Yes, Blizzard could "inflate" your gnome into worthlessness, or delete it, for the heck of it. Just like the board of directors could tell you they're not sharing dividends with shareholders anymore. What creates value for the gnome and the shares is the (well-founded) expectation that that won't happen.
Now, I ultimately agree with your suggestion: for a number of reasons, it's best to just say, "when real-world currencies change hands, *then* count it as income, but not until". But I don't understand the distinction you tried to make between a gnome and stock.
Hey, look on the bright side, at least you can sue WoW for paying you below minimum wage. Oh, and look at the state of your home: ~*~OSHA violation~*~! Ca-ching!
They'll allow the IRS avatars be like Everquest's umpteenth-level in-game guards.
Hey, some study hall teacher from '89 called. She says she's missing a student.
When my son graduated high school, I thought I'd give him something special. I gave him a car. But more importantly, I wanted him to follow in the ways of Our Lord and Savior. So I first gave him a Bible, which had the keys to the car inside of it. When I presented it to him on graduation, he was appalled. "Thanks for nothing, dad!" He told me. Ungrateful jerk. He left us and I never heard from him for ten years. Then I'd found he'd been arrested for mugging.
... when you gave me the Bible ... you were really giving me a new car?" I said no, I was giving you a Bible, a car, and, hopefully, some humility. "Why didn't you TELL ME ALL THESE YEARS?" he asked. "Well," I responded, "why didn't you trust my judgment that the Bible was what you really wanted?"
I visited him and told him I probably could have done more for him and, would he like the stuff in his old room back? He said sure, why not.
He was surprised to find the old Bible I tried give him and which he rejected. Amazed, he thumbed through it. Then an envelope fell out. He opened it and saw the keys. Then it dawned on him: "Dad
Then I realized that none of that actually happened and I'm just repeating a tired old made-up story.