good night v4

Tue Feb 1 10:59:00 UTC 2011

I believe I still have a daguerreotype of the steam-powered brass-and-ivory
countdown clock that used to live in the Smithsonian.

You remember: the one that counted down the days until "United States Real
Estate Exhaustion Day" in 1898.  The day when all the free land grants
ended, and nobody would be able to get space to build a house on any more,
or graze their cattle.    No more land grants?   What will we do?!   How
will the United States sustain its insane economic growth curve in the 20th
century when all the land has been given away?

Of course, just in time, President McKinley launched his ambitious program
to tear down American society street by street and rebuild it on the Moon,
where there's no shortage of free land and colonists willing to stake a
claim.  And then .. oh, never mind.

--jim

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 5:20 AM, Scott Weeks <surfer at mauigateway.com> wrote:

>
>
> I know there're a gazillion counters out there, but one many have watched
> for a long time is potaroo's (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4).  I was
> having fun watching it run out tonight.  Here's a snapshot with only 1090
> routes left: http://mauigateway.com/~surfer/goodnight-v4.png
>
> It turns out to be a timer counting down to midnight on the selected day,
> so everyone saw it goto zero at different times.  However, since Hawaii is
> the last major population in "the world's day" (last one before the
> International date line) and the counter here hit zero does that mean I will
> wake up tomorrow to a shiny new internet?
>
> scott
> apologies, it's late and I just couldn't help it...   >:-) -- evil grin
>
>