Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Cohesion

2008-10-31T23:25:27Z

RP2012:

'''Cohesion''' is the phenomenon that occurs when individual [[molecule]]s are so strongly attracted to each other that they tend to stay together, even when exposed to tension.<ref>Wile, Dr. Jay L. ''Exploring Creation With Physical Science''. Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 1999, 2000</ref> John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.

==References==
<small><references/></small>

[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

King Edward VII

2008-10-31T23:24:57Z

RP2012:

[[Image:King EdwardVII.jpg|right|thumb|250px|King Edward VII (1905)]]
'''Edward VII''' (Albert Edward Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1841-1910) was King of the United Kingdom and its dominions and colonies, and Emperor of India, from 1901 to 1910. He succeeded his mother, [[Queen Victoria]], and was succeeded by his second son, [[George V]]. John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.

As Prince of Wales he was a worry to the Queen and the British establishment. Easily bored, and without a proper job, he fell prey to numerous temptations. He was a gambler (at cards and horses), a glutton and a womaniser; despite having married Princess Alexandra of [[Denmark]] in 1863, he had numerous adulterous affairs, most notoriously with the actress Lily Langtrey, and in 1870 was called as a witness in a divorce trial in which he was implicated.

Despite these bad omens, he was a successful and popular monarch, notably for his efforts to bring about the [[Entente Cordiale]] between France and the United Kingdom in 1904.

[[Category:United Kingdom Monarchs]]

{{DEFAULTSORT: Edward 7}}

Economics Lecture Four

2008-10-31T23:24:26Z

RP2012:

{{Economics_Lectures}}

Fourth Lecture – Theory of Demand

Instructor, Andy Schlafly John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.

==Introduction==

In this course we have covered the supply and demand curves, and examined the economic concept of “elasticity”. Now we turn to focus solely on “demand”.

Demand is determined by price. Generally, the higher the price for a particular good, the lower the quantity demanded. Conversely, as technological advances cause reduction in prices, the quantity demanded increases. Far more people own computers today than when they were first introduced over twenty years ago. Why? One reason is because computers are cheaper today.

The sensitivity of the quantity demanded to a change in price is measured by the elasticity, which we discussed in the last lecture. This time, we are going to focus on other aspects of “demand”.

Let’s examine the price of a good. Does the amount you have to pay for a good at a given time tell the whole story about its price? Is its true price simply the number of dollars and cents demanded by the seller?

Not exactly. It is a bit more complicated than that. The relative price of a good is more important than its isolated price. When you go into a store to shop, you compare prices of different goods before choosing the one you like. Premium gasoline may look a good deal until the customer sees that regular gasoline is selling for 12 cents less.

The real price of a good is its opportunity cost. Recall what the opportunity cost is: it is the value of the best forgone alternative. When someone buys something for $10, the real cost is the best alternative use of that $10. The real price of watching television for one hour is value of that time if you had spent it in the best way possible. The price is thus not $0. The real price of that hour of television watching is your highest hourly wage if you worked, or your future wages made possible by studying now.

Defining real price in terms of opportunity cost avoids the havoc that inflation causes with prices. Back in the late 1970s, inflation was more than 10% per year. What cost $10 one year would cost $11 the next year, and over $12 in the third year. If a good kept the same price during those three years, then its opportunity cost and real price actually decreased. Think about that.

Economists created something called the “Consumer Price Index,” or CPI, to measure changes in basic prices of many goods over time. It looks at the typical purchases by urban (not farming) families and monitors the change in prices of those goods and services from month-to-month. It includes the costs of food, beverages, housing, clothes, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, and even services like haircuts. It then combines all those values into one number. To make it easier to compare, the values are combined in a way that the CPI for the period 1982-84 averaged “100". In January 2004, the CPI was 185.2. You can view all the numbers back nearly a hundred years at:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

By comparing a change in price of a good to the change in the CPI, you can tell whether the real price of the good is becoming more or less expensive. If the good’s price increases by less than the CPI’s increase, then the good has a real price that is falling.

==Income and Substitution Effects==

When the real price of a good decreases, there are two main economic effects. First, it increases the real income of consumers because they do not have to spend as much on the good. For example, if you drink a gallon of milk each week and the price of that gallon decreases by 25 cents, then you have 25 cents extra to spend on something else. It is as though your income went up by 25 cents. This is called the “income effect.”

Remember how we discussed that an increase in income usually causes people to buy more of a good? Now that you have more income, you may want to buy more milk. Instead of drinking a gallon a week, perhaps you can now afford to drink a gallon and a quart a week. The decrease in price of milk created an income effect (increase in income), which encourages you to buy more milk.

Second, the decrease in price of a good causes a “substitution effect”. You may want to buy more of the good instead of something else. In the milk example, its cheaper price makes it more attractive to purchase. You may want to substitute milk for the fruit juice you used to drink.

Both the “income effect” and the “substitution effect” give you an incentive to buy more of the good that decreased in price. The overall increase in quantity demanded for a good that cut its price is the sum of the income effect and the substitution effect. For a normal good, a decrease in its price causes an increase in real income (the income effect) and an increase in substitution for other goods (the substitution effect), which add together to cause an overall increase in demand.

Is that true for all goods? Last class, we mentioned an odd type of good known as an “inferior” good. You may recall that the demand for an “inferior” good actually increases when income decreases. Examples are margarine (because people with declining income can less afford butter). Bankruptcy services are “inferior”, because the greater the decline in income, the more people who file for bankruptcy, and the greater the demand for those services. If a good is inferior, does a decrease in its price cause an increase in quantity demanded?

Ponder that question further. From above, the overall change in quantity demanded is a sum of the “income effect” and the “substitution effect.” The “income effect” when the price decreases is that real income goes up. But for an “inferior” good, an increase in income means a decrease in demand! That’s strange. The price decreases, but the demand due to the income effect of that price decrease also decreases.

However, the “substitution effect” goes up when the price falls. Because the income effect and substitution effect move in opposite directions, it is difficult to predict what will happen to their sum, which is the overall demand. A “Giffen good” is an inferior good for which the income effect dominates, and thus it has the unusual characteristic that a fall in price of the good causes a fall in demand. It is difficult to think of an example.

It is worth defining a “Giffen good” again, this time in terms of a price increase: it is a good which experiences an increase in demand when its price increases. This only happens for an “inferior” good that responds so negatively to an increase in income that the income effect outweighs the substitution effect. In the 1895 edition of the classic “Principles of Economics,” Alfred Marshall wrote: “As Mr. Giffen has pointed out, a rise in the price of bread makes so large a drain on the resources of the poorer labouring [British spelling] families and raises so much the marginal utility of money to them, that they are forced to curtail their consumption of meat and the more expensive farinaceous foods: and, bread being still the cheapest food which they can get and will take, they consume more, and not less of it.”

Another textbook example of a “Giffen good” is the potato during the terrible Irish famine of 1846-1849. The theory is that the increase in the potato price during the famine wiped out the real income of the Irish, but the potato was an “inferior” good that saw a surge in demand due to the reduced income. Other economists suggest that tortillas are a Giffen good in Mexico today. But further investigation shows that neither potatoes in Ireland nor tortillas in Mexico actually qualify as Giffen goods. Rice and noodles are now described as Giffen goods among the poor in China. Do you believe it?

Except for the rare and possibly non-existent Giffen good, the “Law of Demand” is this: when the price of a good increases, its demand decreases. When the price of a good decreases, its demand increases. This is one of the most fundamental rules of Economics.

==Utility==

Money isn’t everything. We have many expressions for this concept. “There’s more to life than money.” “It’s only money.” “What’s your job satisfaction?” The basic point is that dollars and cents do not capture our overall happiness or satisfaction as a consumer. You may buy the most expensive music CD on the market, or watch the most popular movie, or buy the fanciest clothes, but that does not mean you will like those items the best. Often our favorite goods are not the most expensive ones.

“Utility” is concept created to address that need. “Total utility” is defined as a consumer’s overall satisfaction. In addition, “marginal utility” is defined as the additional satisfaction of a consumer in buying an additional unit of a good.

Let’s take an example. Suppose you are on a family road trip by car out West. You left your campsite near Phoenix just after you woke up, and you’re driving through the desert to Los Angeles. You have not eaten all day. Hour by hour goes by and you do not see any place to eat.

Finally, at 4 in the afternoon, you see the golden arches of McDonalds appear on the horizon. You drive closer and the arches appear bigger. It’s not a mirage.

When you arrive, you run in and order its famous french fries. You’re famished. When the food arrives, you take your first handful of french fries. They seem delicious to you. Your marginal utility is extremely high. You might have paid $10 for that first mouthful of french fries because you are so hungry. Then you eat your second handful of french fries. Your marginal utility is still high, but not quite as high as the first one. You wouldn’t have paid as much for the second bit either, perhaps. By the time you finish all the french fries, the last few bites were not so satisfying. In fact, you’ve gotten sick to your stomach. The marginal utility of that last french fry was very low. Perhaps even less than zero!

You have just experienced the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility: the marginal utility of each additional unit (e.g., french fry) always declines (in a given period).

In general, the rational consumer will always try to maximize his or her total utility. How is this done? The consumer always purchases the good with the highest marginal utility in order to maximize the total utility.

Suppose you go to a shopping mall with $80. You can buy food or clothes or anything else you find in a mall. Would you spend it all on food? Of course not. The marginal utility of your food purchases declines as you eat more. Ideally, you wouldn’t even buy enough food to fill your stomach, because you can always eat more cheaply at home. To maximize your utility, you would spend every dollar in a way that has the most marginal utility. Your first purchase would be what you want most, and then your next purchase would be your second choice, and so on. If you really want something that costs $80, then you may spend all your money on that one item.

The rational consumer maximizes utility by spending each dollar in a way to maximize marginal utility for that dollar. For such a consumer, the marginal utility of every good divided by that good’s price must be equal. MUx/Px = MUy/Py=MUz/Pz, where MUx is the marginal utility of good “x” and Px is the price of good “x”. This is known as the Law of equiproportion marginal benefit.

It is impossible for anyone else to measure your utility, or for you to try to compare your total utility to that of other consumers. What you can do is decide for yourself which goods and prices give you the greatest utility, and then buy accordingly. That may include political and religious views in addition to pure dollars and cents. For example, some conservatives boycott companies that fund [[abortion]], regardless of how inexpensively those companies sell their goods. Such a boycott maximizes the participants’ utility, but not their savings. Many other boycotts have occurred in American history based on principles rather than price (“principle, not principal!”).

==Indifference Curve==

In graphing your utility for two goods, you can construct what is known as an “indifference curve.” Let’s take an example. Suppose you are working on the homework for this course with three friends - Chris, Stephanie and Kevin. Someone says they are hungry and go to look for snacks. You see a half-eaten bag of potato chips and you pop a bag of popcorn. However, there is not enough food for everyone, so have to ration who receives what.

You count 24 potato chips and 40 kernels of corn. Uh oh. There are four of you. On average, that’s only 6 potato chips and 10 kernels of corn per person. You tell everyone that.

But Chris likes potato chips more than corn; Stephanie prefers the opposite. To decide how to allocate the food, you ask Chris and Stephanie to draw their indifference curves with potato chips on the y-axis and corn on the x-axis. You learn from the curve that Chris is just as happy with 9 potato chips and 2 kernels of corn as receiving 6 potato chips and 10 kernels of corn. Chris’s utility is same in both cases. Meanwhile, Stephanie is just as happy receiving 18 kernels of corn and 1 chip. Fine, you give Chris 9 chips and 2 kernels and Stephanie 18 kernels and 1 chip.

Was this worth it? You bet: now you have two extra potato chips that you would not have had by splitting everything equally. Chris and Stephanie are just as happy, and you can share the additional chips with Kevin.

==Consumer Choice==

“Consumer surplus” is the net benefit (in dollars) a consumer obtains from buying a good. Thus (consumer surplus) = (total benefit) - (total cost)

Let’s define another term: “demand price.” That is the most someone is willing to pay for something. We saw this in the homework problem about the tickets and scalpers. When you go to see a movie, there is a maximum amount you are willing to pay for a ticket. It varies for different consumers. It obviously depends on what the movie is.

A consumer’s demand price is his marginal benefit. The total benefit in the market is thus the sum of all the demand prices, which is the area under the demand curve.

The consumer surplus is the demand price (the most a consumer would pay) minus the price paid (the amount the consumer actually has to pay). Suppose you were effusive (i.e., very enthusiastic) about a particular movie, and wanted very much to see it. You were so excited that you were willing to pay $20 to see that movie. But if the theater only charges you $8, then your consumer surplus is $20 - $8 = $12.

Consumers stop buying a good when the demand price equals the price paid. For movies, the demand price falls the longer it keeps playing in a theater. After you’ve seen the movie once or twice, you’re not willing to pay so much to see it again. People stop paying to see the movie, and the theater stops playing it and begins showing a new movie instead.

==Assignment==

Read and, if necessary, reread the above lecture. Complete the homework assignments through the level in which you choose to enroll in this course:

===Introductory===

1. The total utility of a good represents the consumer’s _________________.

2. Conservatives say a bad effect of raising the minimum wage is that it causes more students to drop out of school. Why would that happen?

===Intermediary===

3. A student likes swimming and playing the violin. The first hour she swims she improves by 6 units of utility, and then each successive hour she improves by half the rate of the hour before it. The first hour she practices the violin she improves by 4 units of utility, then each successive hour she improves at a rate of 90% the hour before it. In 3 total hours to practice, how should she maximize her utility?

4. How might one’s overall “utility” include religious goals that have nothing to do with money? Be specific.

5. Suppose you manage a golf course for profit. You poll your customers and find that, each month, they value their first game at $30, their second game at $20, their third at $10, fourth at $0, and refuse to play any more in the same month. It is impractical to charge based on whether someone has previously played a round this month. How do you best charge your customers?

6. Bad British economic policies and a fungus wiped out the basic food supply of potatoes in Ireland between 1846 and 1849, killing 500,000 and sending many Irish to the United States. Do you think potatoes might have been an “inferior” good then? What would you expect the income effect of the shortage of potatoes to have been?

===Honors===

7. Do you think a Giffen good really exists? Can you see any possible political bias in the claim that Giffen goods exist? Your views, please.

8. Suppose you are a rational consumer who makes purchases by maximizing marginal utility. One day you hear that the price on a good you purchase (e.g., milk), falls by 30%. The Law of Demand says you should buy more of it. Using only the assumption that you maximize marginal utility, prove the Law of Demand as best you can.

9. Suppose a friend of yours announced that when he has a choice between a cheaper good made in China and a more expensive good made here, he will buy the latter based on his opposition to communism. Is he being irrational?

[[Category:Economics lectures]]
{{DEFAULTSORT: Economics Lecture 04}}

Straight-ticket voting

2008-10-31T23:24:11Z

RP2012:

'''Straight-ticket voting''' is when a voter cast a [[vote]] for a candidate based on party affiliation only. John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.

== References ==
U.S Government and Politics

[[Category:Politics]]

Out of the Silent Planet

2008-10-31T23:23:55Z

RP2012:

'''Out of the Silent Planet''' is the first book by [[C. S. Lewis]] in his famous [[C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy|space trilogy]]. It is dedicated to his brother, Warren H. Lewis. It was first published in 1938.
[[Image:Out of the Silent Planet.jpg|thumb|Cover art used for book review]] John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.
The three books in the trilogy, which are only loosely connected, are ''Out of the Silent Planet,'' ''Perelandra,'' and ''That Hideous Strength.'' They take place on Mars, Venus, and Earth respectively. They are sometimes referred to as the "Ransom trilogy," because a philologist<ref>A philologist is a professor specializing in the historical relationships of languages</ref> named Elwin Ransom appears in all three. C. S. Lewis' friend J. R. R. Tolkien was a philologist, while to some the word "ransom" evokes the atonement of Christ.

One of the ideas that C. S. Lewis was trying to present in these novels is that the word "space" is wrong, charged with the notion of emptiness, and that it should be thought of as ''heaven.'' Earth, which in these books is called Thulcandra, "the silent planet," is under the influence of evil. It has been sealed off from the rest of the universe to prevent it from infecting the rest. In Perelandra, Lewis refers to "the vast astronomic distances which are God's quarantine regulations." Lewis appears to be suggesting that God intends for humans to remain confined to the Earth, and that human attempts to travel between the planets are blasphemous.

==Summary==
In the book a philologist called Dr. Ransom is kidnapped while hiking. His kidnappers, Dr. Weston and Devine, take him aboard a space ship to a planet whose inhabitants call it Malacandra.<ref>The reader eventually learns that Malacandra is Mars.</ref> They intend to hand him over to some mysterious aliens called ''sorns.'' He escapes once they land on Malacandra and runs far away until he meets other natives of the planet called ''hrossa.'' He lives with them for a while until Weston and Devine kill some of the hrossa. He then leaves to go to the ruler of the planet, Oyarsa, so that the hrossa are out of danger. He meets the other aliens of the planet who turn out to be no more a harm than the hrossa were. He talks to the ruler of the planet, Oyarsa, about his whole journey from his planet to Malacandra. Weston and Devine are captured shortly afterwards and brought before Oyarsa. Oyarsa allows Weston and Devine to leave with Ransom on the space ship but won't let them return to Malacandra again. They return to earth where Ransom then lets a fictional Lewis in on the story. They want to warn people of what Weston and Devine may try to do. They see the only way to do it is through writing a fictional book! <ref> [[Out of the Silent Planet]] by C. S. Lewis, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1965 (reprint).</ref>

==Notes and references==
<references/>

==See also==
*[[Perelandra]]
*[[That Hideous Strength]]
*[[C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy]]

[[Category:Books]][[Category:Science fiction]]

== External links ==
* [http://www.lewissociety.org/ C.S. Lewis Society of California]
* [http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/ Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College]
* [http://www.lewissociety.org/scientism.php "C. S. Lewis: Science and Scientism," by Henry F. Schaefer III]
* [http://www.lewissociety.org/view.php "The View from Other Worlds—Seeing Ourselves with God’s Eyes," by Luci Shaw]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12301 "''Out of the Silent Planet'', by C.S. Lewis," reviewed by Peter Schakel, ''The Literary Encyclopedia'']
* [http://www.cslewis.org/ C.S. Lewis Foundation]
* [http://cslewis.drzeus.net/ Into the Wardrobe]

9/11 conspiracy theories

2008-10-31T23:23:34Z

RP2012:

'''9/11 conspiracy theories''' are claims that the [[September 11, 2001 attacks]] did not happen in the way they are traditionally thought to have happened. Most theories state that, in one way or another, the [[United States]] government attacked its own country. John McCain the willing victim of homosexual rape.

The evidence provided by the conspiracy theorists, also known as "[[9/11 truthers]]" has been widely debunked. Some information about specific theories is provided here.

Most people reject these crazy theories. Even liberal activist [[Noam Chomsky]] denies that the government knew about the attacks although he did criticize them for not acting on intelligence they had.

==World trade Center #7==
There are claims that WTC #7 was brought down by controlled demolition on 9/11. Supporters of this theory show photographs of the building from a misleading angle (it omits the smoke that seemed to pour out of the building due to fires inside). Many more photos exist that show massive fires burned throughout the building.

Some quote an owner of WTC #7 as saying they demolished the building. These people say that when he said in an interview that they decided to "pull" the building, he meant demolish. However, in this instance, "pull" does not mean demolish; it means to pull-out.

==Black smoke==
Black smoke was seen coming out of WTC #7 and other places on 9/11. A common conspiracy theory says that black smoke means that a fire is starved of oxygen, and therefore can easily be put out. It is said that the firefighters did not attempt to put out the fire, in this case. In the past, this might have been true, but petroleum burns very hot and is difficult to put out, and yet it also gives off black smoke. There was probably petroleum in the seventh tower.

==See Also==
Popular Mechanics, ''Debunking the 9/11 Myths'' [http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html]

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Conspiracy Theory]]