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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Anders Sandberg<br><br></span><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>Demand for a limited resource does not always grow with the economy and population. Consider the collapse of the stamp market as the hobby fell out of fashion. -- <span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>Dr Anders Sandberg<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><pre><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I hadn’t really thought about it, but stamp collecting has certainly lost most of its popularity, and by extension I would speculate that the same goes for coin collecting. Currently in the USA, we are seriously debating the existence of a US post office. It isn’t at all clear we still need one, or if so, perhaps it could be a specialized system for limited purposes, with most of the load (paper advertisement and merchandise) being carried by private companies.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>A new replacement hobby has become wildly popular, and may even eventually be more useful from a scientific perspective than is stamp and coin collecting: genealogy. With all the new tools that have become available, we are finding we can fix the long-standing errors in the family trees, then use the resulting data to track diseases and such. Just yesterday, I made a first connection with a knowledgeable member of the family, who had death certificates. That branch was plagued with a certain disease that is seen in currently living family members. It has turned out to be useful information to find DNA relatives. We once collected bits of metal; now we collect bits of DNA.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Punchline: unlike stamp and coin collecting, DNA-based genealogy becomes a hobby with an actual purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre></div></body></html>