Cat Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Tue Nov 27 01:36:38 PST 2001


>Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the
>Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
>a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
>so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
>would've taken my whole cow!

More likely the "fare" was 1.10, but whatever :-)

There's a nice changemaking application for the Palm Pilot
that lets you input the amount of money you want to pay somebody
and the size of payment you can make, e.g. $1.10 and $5.
It splits a circle into appropriately sized pie slices,
you spin the dial, and either pay or don't pay.

Of course, getting a bus company to trust your Palm Pilot
not to be running a rigged version may be tougher
than getting your mathematically inclined friends to accept it :-)





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