Now, we have silicon-based artificial quasi-intelligent mechanisms (the internet, robots, computers, phones, machines, etc, etc) — BrianW

I am troubled by the phrase "quasi-intelligent." What does it mean? When an elevator "remembers" to stop at the floor you selected via pushbutton, do you believe that the elevator has an inner life?

What exactly does quasi-intelligent mean?

Cool. How do you show that? Do you take a moment of silence? Do you contribute to Doctors w/o borders? Do you write songs about it or paint? Do you talk to friends about it? Or what? — frank

I'm right here making my points about the deep state. And being called a loose cannon because of it. Not much of a constituency for peace in the US anymore. If there ever was.

I don't remember you being this loose-cannonish. If he worked for Russia, it just means he had a bias. — frank

What? X "works for Y means X has a bias? Come on, that's not even sensible. Works for means works for. You can't change the terms just because you have no evidence for what you claimed. [If you're the one who claimed Assange works for Russia. Didn't go back and look that up].

The info about the war crime didn't shock anyone. It didn't change anything. No one but a few bleeding heart philosophical types even care. — frank

I care. And a lot of Americans care. That's how we got Trump. Hillary stood for the centrist consensus that's turned us into a warmongering torture regime. Trump ran against that, and that's a big factor in why he won. It's sad and frustrating that he's now surrendered to the neocons. But Trump's victory shows that at the time, many Americans did and still do care about the endless immoral war machine. You may remember that during the primaries he called out Jeb! on W's war and that resonated like crazy with a lot of people, even Republicans.

If I am overzealous (loose cannon, whatever) it's because I'm a lifelong Democrat and social liberal who's appalled at what's become of the left and the Democratic party. I'm old enough to remember when Dems were against the wars and against torture and in favor of civil liberties. And instinctively suspicious of the bullshit put out by the intelligence agencies. Those days are gone, leaving me and millions like me without a political party. That's exactly how we got Trump. Hillary's vote for the Iraq war (and her impassioned 30-minute speech on the floor of the US Senate in favor of the war) is why she lost the Dem primary in 2008 and it's one of the reasons she lost to Trump in 2016. You're wrong that Americans don't care about our messed up foreign policy. Enough do to have made Trump president.

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justic, we would so state."

One could argue (I have seen it so argued) that Mueller erred in making this statement. The judge in the OJ case didn't say, "Well we still think the mofo did it no matter what the jury said." If you don't make a case then you don't smear the accused. It's exactly the same error Comey made when he gave his famous press conference "exonerating" Hillary and then enumerated all her crimes. When a prosecutor can't bring a charge yet chooses to smear the accused, those smears can not be cross-examined and adjudicated in a court of law. Therefore it was inappropriate for Comey to open his yap and likewise for Mueller to do the same. If you can't bring a case, then that's all you say. Anything more is prosecutorial misconduct or at least bad judgment.

the office of the Presidency is occupied by a person unfit to hold that office. — Wayfarer

Yes but the people saying that are the same people who have been saying that since before the 2016 election. The fact that Mueller found no collusion (I'll leave obstruction alone) has no effect on people who already didn't like Trump and still don't like Trump. Is that your ultimate argument? That you don't like Trump? That's the argument you're making. You don't like Trump therefore you hold a particular legal opinion. That's not rational. That's partisan.

You haven't cited any facts in support of your view, — Wayfarer

I have stated that I hear arguments on both sides; don't actually know; and don't care to find out. I agree that's not an appropriate stance for someone who is participating in this thread, which is why I'm trying to gracefully get out. I am pretty sure most Americans agree with my stance. Like I say, we'll find out on election day. It's a political process, not a matter of true or false factual issues.

The Muller report is not a court though, it was meant as a probe to find and discover evidence. It found evidence of obstruction, but it did not find evidence of collusion — VagabondSpectre

May I quit now while I'm behind? Nothing I could say could change your mind; but more to the point, I really have nothing else to say. It's all a political process and there's an election coming up. We'll all find out in due time. Meanwhile, the question is whether the left and the Dems should keep up the Mueller drumbeat, or should maybe talk about the endless interminable wars, and immigration, and government spending, and inequality, and health care, and all those other issues of actual importance. If the Dems keep up the Mueller thing I predict the American people will hold it against them. That's my opinion.

Muller explicitly stated in the report that the report does not exonerate the president of obstruction (if he found no obstruction, this would not have been stated). He did clear Trump of collusion, but not obstruction. — VagabondSpectre

He didn't charge collusion and he didn't charge obstruction. Just like the jury did not exonerate OJ, it merely failed to find him guilty. We all understand that aspect of how American courts work. Being found not guilty is not the same as being found innocent.

On the issue of whether Mueller found obstruction but felt he could not act because Trump is a sitting president, I hear many different learned opinions about that. I have not personally read the report nor am I a practicing attorney or professor of Constitutional law. I have noticed that opinions on this question seem to correlate with the speaker's political feelings about Trump. I can't concede that what you state is fact; although I don't deny it either. I don't know and don't have enough interest to find out for myself. It truly seems like more of a subjective litmus test for people who already didn't like Trump to start with.

'Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts' ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan. — Wayfarer

What I see being argued in the news and the blogs and the cable channels are opinions, not facts.

Ah! I get it. The retreat to "every political issue is just campaign babble"-argument. — ssu

No, it's just pointless. Some people are really dug in on this point and it's not productive to argue with them. Impeachment and collusion and obstruction are not the issues on which the election will be decided. If the Dems keep up the Russiagate crusade, we will all find out on the evening of election day whether that was a good strategy. Between now and then I prefer not to discuss it since it's so pointless. Mueller released his report, no collusion, no obstruction. Look, we all think OJ killed his ex-wife but they had a trial and he was found not guilty and most of us have moved on.

ps -- I'll stipulate that some people think Mueller found obstruction. I realize this is the Mueller thread so I shouldn't be here unless I'm prepared to argue all things Mueller. I can see why it was wrong of me to decline to engage in this particular thread. Personally I had enough of Mueller and Russiagate. It's my opinion that I'm not alone in that. But such people should not engage in Mueller conversations. Ok.

He calls himself a journalist but he has no qualifications in that discipline and has never worked for accredited media. — Wayfarer

Neither are factors in who is a journalist. As I mentioned, numerous court decisions have upheld the journalistic rights of average everyday citizens in reporting events of public interest. In the eyes of US law there is no difference between a credentialed reporter for the NY Times and me, out there with my camera reporting on a newsworthy event. That's the actual law.

This is patently not true. — Wayfarer

It's astonishing me how many people are hanging on to this. Let's just say I disagree.

I understand. I think he was working for the Russian government, though. — frank

I haven't seen Russia hysteria like this since the cold war. But Russia has journalists too. What difference does that make? He could be working for Satan and that would not change the fact that he published documents given to him by a third party, which is legal; and that his real crime is embarrassing the US government. All the rest is media spin that people are letting themselves absorb. I mean really, how do you or I know who Assange "works" for? If he worked for Mother Teresa would you feel differently about the case? Rationally you shouldn't. You should judge what he did, not what some rumor monger leaked to a credulous reporter. Don't you think?

Also it should be noted that Assange is not a journalist — Wayfarer

Assange most certainly is a journalist. It is not required of a journalist to be accredited by the State. Numerous US court cases have upheld the rights of citizen journalists -- that is, people with cellphones and cameras and eyeballs and pencils -- to report the news.

↪fishfry He should have set up a secondary leakage outlet without any traceable connection to himself and put anything that has to do with American classified information on the secondary site. He was either stupid or looking for personal glory. — frank

Sorry, I lost track of the referent. He Assange? Or he Manning?

Was the New York Times looking for "personal glory" when they published the Pentagon papers? Or were they simply journalists doing their job: reporting facts that powerful people want concealed?

Whether you feel it will be a fair trial or not does not matter to me. I am confident that my country can bring charges and conduct a fair trial...and that is what I expect. — Frank Apisa

I used to share your optimism and faith. I no longer do. My loss of faith happened when Bush turned the US into a torture regime ... and then Obama institutionalized the practice by not holding anyone accountable.

You complain about people not reading Greenwald but Mueller had described several instances of what could be considered obstruction and yet this is your take away. Have you read it? It's because a sitting president cannot be indicted that Mueller doesn't reach conclusions with respect to obstruction. Here's a nice visual that shows at least 4 instances described by Mueller are basically hard evidence of obstruction: — Benkei

I've decided to stop arguing with this point. I think you should keep it up all the way to November 2020. Reporters on the ground in Iowa and other early primary states report that nobody cares about Russiagate. All the Dems can do is get Trump reelected. Now I'm no fan of Mr. Trump. But compared to what the Dems are offering these days? Not much of a choice, but ... like I say ... keep it up till election day. See how it works out for you.

Oh I've listened to Mr Greenwald. — ssu

Several more paragraphs of Greenwald bashing hardly bear on the topic at hand.

I'm not sure why anybody even knows who Assange is. Why didn't he hide his own identity? Do you know? — frank

Assange is the publisher of WikiLeaks. Manning is the soldier whoturned over to Assange evidence of horrific US war crimes.

Assange unsuccessfully attempted to assist Manning in obscuring Manning's identity. Was that the question?

That's because Manning was accessing the files in order to turn them over to Assange. What Manning did was a crime. What Assange did was journalism. Classic Pentagon papers precedent. That's exactly why the US cooked up this bogus "hacking" charge. They knew they'd lose on the issue of the right of publishers to publish material that was turned over to them by someone who stole it. [Manning's access was legal but of course that did not confer the right to turn the material over to a publisher].

There hasn't been a trial. — frank

There has been persecution. Last week's arrest was such. The IMF gave Ecuador $4 billion the week earlier. Just a coincidence I'm sure.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-imf/ecuador-inks-4-2-billion-financing-deal-with-imf-moreno-idUSKCN1QA05Z

We haven't asked him any questions yet. How has anything sailed? — frank

Yeah, curious that Mueller didn't try to ask Assange about that.

What's sailed is the Russia hysteria. It's over. And what do you think about the Nation article I linked?

I was with you up to this point. There hasn't been a trial. Why are you raving about something that hasn't happened? — frank

I'm not raving. I object to that characterization. It's @Frank Apisa who said that his standard for judging this affair is that Assange will (in theory) get a fair trial. As I countered that thesis, I noted at least twice that we are a very long way from Assange being tried in the US. Surely you can see that I clearly acknowledged that point. It's right there in my post, twice.

Anyway, we need to question him about his work for Russia regarding the 2016 election. — frank

Man that ship has sailed. There was an election and Hillary lost. There was no collusion. Assange has stated that Russia was not the source for the DNC leaks. And why didn't the DNC allow the FBI to inspect their computers? Might they have shown that the hack was strictly local, as has already been technically demonstrated?

The DNC hack was an inside job and there is forensic evidence to that effect.

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/

There's another election coming up. Next time run a better candidate. I myself would be glad to vote for him or her.

We do not know for certain what he is being charged with...but it appears he is being charged with aiding Chelsea Manning (when she was Bradley Manning) to hack government computers in order to obtain unauthorized access to government classified documents. — Frank Apisa

I'll state Greenwald's observations in my own words so that if you are so inclined, you can discuss them here.

Assange is charged with helping Manning "hack," or penetrate, a government computer; meaning to access files that Manning was not entitled to see.

On the contrary, what Assange actually did was to (unsuccessfully) assist Manning in attempting to cover her tracks when she was accessing files that she already had legal access to. In doing so, Assange was conforming to standard journalistic practice when dealing with whistleblowers and other sources who dare not have their identity disclosed. For Assange to have done anything other than assist Manning in disguising her identity, would have been journalistic malpractice.

Secondly, I do of course take your point that Assange might (or might not; time will tell) have the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law. I assert to the contrary that any such prosecution (and there's a long long way to go before any such proceeding happens) is essentially illegitimate. The US prosecution (and persecution) of Assange is more like a show trial in a banana republic. You may recall that nothing that happened in Nazi Germany was illegal. That's because the law and the judiciary themselves became corrupted.

Assange is a political prisoner. That should color your analysis regarding this idea of a fair trial. The very idea that he's on trial in the first place is indecent.

I assume Assange, Glenn's old buddy, thinks the same. — ssu

Isn't that what you high-toned philosophers call an ad hominem? If you chose to, you could read what Greenwald wrote and challenge his substantive points. But why bother? Mueller found no collusion and no obstruction, and for some bizarre reason all the TDS True Believers are doubling down on their delusion. It's something to behold.

Are you also saying he is charged with committing journalism? — Frank Apisa

Yes. I say that. Please read what Glenn Greenwald has to say. He breaks it down in detail. The "computer hacking" charge is a blatant lie.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indictment-of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedoms/

The other key fact being widely misreported is that the indictment accuses Assange of trying to help Manning obtain access to document databases to which she had no valid access: i.e., hacking rather than journalism. But the indictment alleges no such thing. Rather, it simply accuses Assange of trying to help Manning log into the Defense Department’s computers using a different username so that she could maintain her anonymity while downloading documents in the public interest and then furnish them to WikiLeaks to publish.

In other words, the indictment seeks to criminalize what journalists are not only permitted but ethically required to do: take steps to help their sources maintain their anonymity. As longtime Assange lawyer Barry Pollack put it: “The factual allegations … boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.”

There's much more in the article. Please read it.

So if time is discrete, the unit of time / physical length of 'now' is truly microscopically small - the length of a biological 'now' would be enormous in comparison. — Devans99

It's a question science can't answer. Current science, anyway. The Planck scale means there's a length and a time interval below which we can't sensibly measure or talk about. So we have no way of knowing if time is made up of point-like instants, or just tiny but nonzero intervals.

It's the ancient mystery of the continuum.

This is America. The way we arrive at a decision on matters of this sort...is by a trial.

That is what I want to see. — Frank Apisa

A trial on the charge of committing journalism.

Glenn Greenwald: Mueller "obliterated" Russia conspiracy theory.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/robert-mueller-did-not-merely-reject-the-trumprussia-conspiracy-theories-he-obliterated-them/

...and I would love to see him be extradited to the US; stand a fair trial; and either be released or punished depending on the verdict of a jury and the rule of law. — Frank Apisa

The idea of a fair trial and the rule of law do not apply here. Assange revealed horrible US war crimes. For that he must be punished. As we speak, he and Chelsea Manning are in prison for revealing to the world the true nature of US foreign policy. That cannot be forgiven. There is no fair trial here. If fairness applied, the people who committed the war crimes exposed by Manning and Assange would be brought to justice.

If the universe is infinite, that would mean there is an infinite number of 'me' out there. Therefore, I am immortal and I shall never die in one sense, as there will always be another 'me' born again, and so the cycle repeats itself an infinite number of times. Therefore, what is consciousness? — JohnLocke

Oh I see. Once you get past the bit about the infinite number of you's, the question is really about the transporter problem A Star Trek-like transporter analyzes your body and transmits the information to the receiving unit, which reconstitutes you molecule-by-molecule. Or atom by atom, quark by quark. If we are physicalists then there's some level of organization at which a perfect duplicate of a conscious being would be conscious. The question is, whose consciousness.

I'm of the opinion that it's "one soul per clone." So if there's a person X and they are cloned to X', then at that moment there are two distinct and independent minds. At the moment of cloning they have the exact same experience so they feel like the same person. Then their experience begins to diverge and they live two different life experiences. But there are two minds, two souls, two people.

My mental picture of this is the way process-based computer operating systems work, like Unix or any of its variants. An executing program is called a process. A process can "fork" itself, which means that the process makes a perfect copy of itself. But from that point forward, the two processes are independent of one another. From the point of view of the operating system they're just two processes, even if their code is the same and their data was the same up to the moment of forking.

Now computer processes don't have minds. But I think of human cloning the exact same way. Say Scotty had a non-destructive sending unit. So you get beamed down to the planet AND you are still alive on the Enterprise. At that instant there is a new mind created, and the two of "you" are independent people from now on. As to which is "you," well they would both remember being you and they'd both think they're you. It's a bit confusing but I don't think there's another sensible way to think about it. When you die you're dead, but your memories and experiences live in your clone. Whether you consider that the same person or not is up to you I suppose. But in the instance of non-destructive cloning, there's no alternative to accepting that there are now two separate people.

If the universe is infinite, then you've never existed in any of an infinite number of realities while simultaneously existing in all of them. — whollyrolling

Are you confusing the idea of the multiverse with the idea of a spatially and/or temporally infinite universe?

In any event there's only one reality, whether it's finite or infinite or whether it's a multiverse. What is is what is. That's reality.

If the universe is infinite, that would mean there is an infinite number of 'me' out there. — JohnLocke

But that's not true. The sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... is infinite, but 3 only occurs once and never again.

A more sophisticated version of the argument, that a bounded region of space can only accommodate finitely many states, still fails. The states could be 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, ... in which case SOME state recurs, but not necessarily the one representing you.

In short, this "in an infinite universe everything must happen infinitely many times" is simply an Internet meme that does not stand up to scientific analysis.

One argument against the right to die is that it will inevitably become a duty to die. Old and sick? Your "loving" heirs will say, Hey Dad, how about those Youth in Asia! Every old person will become subject to social pressure to hurry up and die. It's expensive to keep geezers alive you know. So one can make a slippery slope argument against the right to die. We can easily imagine a future in which the right to die turns into mandatory suicide past a certain age. The movie Soylent Green illustrated the process beautifully.

It doesn't have to be that explicit. You can simply ration health care. What do you think "Medicare for all" will become? Resources are finite. Look at the National Health Service in England. When Mick Jagger needed heart surgery recently he didn't get on the NHS waiting list. He had the surgery performed in New York City. People of lesser means don't always have that choice.

As Marx put it, "The government is but a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie." — Bitter Crank

I don't get it. Doesn't that rather support my point? That we should keep a sharp eye on government and not entrust it with too much power?

Perhaps even the staunchest libertarian can recognize that we live in a complex, interdependent society in which there is much inequality of opportunity and much scamitude and corruption going around.

So a libertarian is not dogmatic, saying there should be no protection for the weak and that dog-eat-dog and the hell with everybody. That's a parody of a libertarian. It's a strawman used by people who don't understand libertarianism.

Libertarianism just says that there's a continuum, and perhaps we should sometimes try to see if LESS government intrusion might solve a particular problem better than more. And to keep a sharp eye on all the way the government causes problems then says that more power for the government is the solution. We should all be aware of that common pattern.

Libertarianism is a tendency toward liberty. Not an absolute my-way-or-the-highway.

Not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying I'm doing what you describe above? If so, I don't see how. — T Clark

No actually you haven't done that. I just happened to run across the juxtaposition of those two articles in the NYT and I wanted to make the general point that there's a double standard on this issue. I was talking to you but making a more general point, not referring to anything specifically. Sorry for the confusion.

This all seems like the ancient question of nature versus nurture. We notice that statistically men have a wider bell curve (I assume we agree on the objective fact of this matter). The question is whether it's nature or nurture. I am simply raising the question. I think it's a combination of nature and nurture. There's something in the testosterone. You on the other hand seem to think it's 100% nature, all the fault of the beastly patriarchy. Do I characterize your view fairly?

Well, here's how you "substantiated" it previously: — T Clark

I just happened to run across the exact kind of double-bind thinking that certain people exhibit on the subject of gender characteristics. I was perusing the Opinion section of today's NY Times ... the call it opinion to distinguish it from the rest of the paper, which they want you to believe is "fact." Well nevermind that. There was a list of articles with titles and short blurbs.

One said:

It’s Dangerous to Be a Boy

They smoke more, fight more and are far more likely to die young than girls. But their tendency to violence isn’t innate.

So ok! Once the SJWs have reformed society, there will be equal numbers of men and women in jail and among the science Nobel laureates. Because boys are nasty and bad, but with proper feminized child rearing, we can fix that.

And two article down we find:

What Happens When Women Stop Leading Like Men

Jacinda Ardern, Nancy Pelosi and the power of female grace.


Ah, so women have inherent qualities such as "grace," which is presumably unavailable to men.

So which is it? Are we all the same except for thousands of years of social conditioning, which the social justice crowd will soon fix? Or are there certain qualities that are more natural to one gender than the other? [Assuming for the moment that there are two major genders, much like the two major political parties; although there are many others that we could choose to join].

It seems to me that certain people like to argue both sides of this issue depending on which gives them rhetorical advantage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/opinion/sunday/boys-men-violence.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/opinion/women-leadership-jacinda-ardern.html

unsubstantiated claptrap — T Clark

The wider distribution of "lots of awful, lots of great" among men than among women is unsubstantiated claptrap? It's obvious to anyone who looks, and it's been verified in study after study.

Here in the US prison populations are predominantly represented by a huge bias or tendency to be male-oriented.

Therefore, for the sake of talking about society or culturally, does that fact that prison populations are predominantly male mean or imply that females are socially superior to males? — Wallows

I haven't read this thread, just want to express an opinion which is factually true, yet politically in some disrepute.

From the fact that both the prison population and the Nobel prize winner population skew strongly male; we can conclude is that men have a much wider distribution of achievement. When I was in grade school I noticed that the "good girls" just did what they were told, and "did well" in school on that basis. Women cluster to the middle ... not too many serial killers, and not too many Nobels.

Now yes I should mention for the record that I am well versed in my sexual politics. I lived in the SF Bay area most of my life. So of course I'm perfectly well aware that the latter fact is very much due to the awful sexism of science. As a math person I know that when Hilbert was trying to argue the faculty into allowing Emmy Noether to become a privatdozenten at the University of Göttingen, at that time the finest center of advanced math in the world -- after all Hilbert was there -- Hilbert said, before the faculty senate: "After all we are a university, not a bathhouse!" Hilbert lost, they wouldn't let her in.

So I get all this. But still. Isn't is possible that there is some innateness in the fact that women's achievement level tends to cluster in the middle; and men's is all spread out ... a lot of criminals and a lot of geniuses. Personally I believe it's the testosterone. Drives you to the extremes.

Is it really considered bad form to mention this? I gather it is. So be it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

The workers will be in charge of the means of production — Bitter Crank

distribute it to The People. — Bitter Crank

Are you an authentic old-time Marxist? Karl, I mean, not Groucho.

A technical issue: If you want to put a participant in blue, you have to do it this way: " bitter Crank " (but with no spaces around the @ or the ") — Bitter Crank

Ah, thank you.

When we talk about the "wealth" of the USA or any country, we are taking about assets, not income. — Bitter Crank

Surely nothing I said could have given the impression I'm unclear on that distinction. After all I did give the example of confiscating the entire net worth of Bezos, Gates, and Buffet, which I gave as $250B. Bezos has about $140B but he's going to lose half of it to his soon-to-be ex-wife. Gates and Buffet are around $60B or so each. So I'm in the ballpark.

So it's clear that I know the difference between net worth and income; and that my examples are all relative to net worth. A million from each millionaire, a billion from each billionaire. Everything they own from Bezos, Buffet, and Gates. By the way my earlier estimate was wrong. $250B is 1/4 trillion, hence only 1/16 of the $4T it takes to run the government for a year. We could strip those three guys down to their shorts and run the government for three and a half weeks. Not that it wouldn't be fun anyway.

One of the reasons we have a deficit is that a few years ago (and 3 decades ago) we lowered the tax on the wealthiest Americans. — Bitter Crank

Yeah yeah. I'll perfectly well stipulate to everything you say. But you are not answering my question. Tomorrow morning you are declared Grand Commissar of the New American People's Republic. You have to make a decree. We will take X dollars from each person with Y net worth. I want to know your numbers. I showed that a million from each millionaire runs the government for less than three years. A billion from each billionaire, about six and a half weeks.

Show me your numbers. I claim that if you say explicitly which people you're going to take money from, and exactly how much, you will find that within a few years you'll be completely out of money to run the government without digging deeply into the pockets of the working class. That is my claim. Go ahead and prove me wrong with hard numbers. How much are you taking, and from whom?

What I have been trying to get through Fishfry's highly resistant and pre-cast concrete skull — Bitter Crank

I'm perfectly civil to everyone I interact with on this site. I request the same from you. Nor would your remark be warranted even if put politely. I know the numbers AND the narrative. You could recite the World Almanac and you would still be avoiding my simple and direct question. How much, and from whom?