at9

1 hour ago, Shyheels said:

I agree that new tech can be a great thing. And to the list of companies that didn’t see big changes coming, and react, one can also add Kodak.

But companies such as Apple - great innovators - have also had their turkeys. And generally when they were trying to creat so,unions in search of problems, and to my mind, at present anyway, Bitcoin and blockchain seem to be just that.

That's the nature of innovation. Some win, the majority lose. Who wanted Edison and Swan's crude electric light bulbs when we had perfectly good gas lighting? c1900 it wasn't obvious that the internal combustion engine would dominate for over 100 years as both steam and electric vehicles were successful back then. Amazon shook up the retail world and succeeded. Plenty of others failed in the dotcom boom/bust. Sometimes even titans lose. Let's add Nokia to Kodak. Who knows if Apple will be a "has been" company in 2037.

When we look back from 2037 I have no idea whether Bitcoin and its ilk will survive. The blockchain concept will probably endure but perhaps in ways we can barely envisage now. When Vint Cerf invented TCP/IP could he, in his wildest dreams, have predicted the WWW and its huge growth? The roots of hyperlinking are many and varied. Including Vannevar Bush's ideas in the 1940s. Took the genius of one man to invent the WWW, originally to solve a problem of sharing information at CERN. In 1993 I doubt if even Sir Tim Berners-Lee could have envisaged what his invention would do in less than 10 years.

Innovation is a crazy business. Some ideas make it big time, most fail. Some get resurrected, electric cars for example. Most are forgotten except by specialist historians.

From what I've heard about wearing latex socks (never done it so this is secondhand) is that they fill up with sweat and can get very unpleasant. They also wear through very quickly.

While latex clothing is now worn in public by loads of celebs it still has a strong aura of fetish about it.

I don't see the point of ultra  short latex socks. If you really want them why not just get some longer ones and cut them down. HHP isn't meant to be a fetish forum so this might be better asked in the relevant part of Fetlife. I won't link from here as it wouldn't be appropiate but from looking at your posts I think it's likely you're a FL member already.

I'm not claiming this is a lovely shoe but Sanita are a major maker of clogs both for the workplace and leisure. This has a strap: http://www.sanita.com/Sanita-Stride/

I wear Sanita clogs much of the time, usually these: http://www.sanita.com/mens-karl-pu-black/

Can even just about claim they have a heel as it's about 2" from the back of my foot to the ground.

7 hours ago, meganiwish said:

All currency is a token of a share in wealth.  Have no wealth, you have a share in nothing.  The numbers mean nothing.  A share of nothing, no matter how big a share, is nothing.  Money can't be a commodity because it has no physical existence.  A large part of the World's problems comes from supposed economic experts not understanding the implications of Third Grade arithmetic.

Megan, I think you've rather limited the functions of money here. Yes, it can be a token of wealth but another function is a means of exchange and keeping track of transactions. Every time we buy something we're using money (as cash, card, tally stick, bitcoin etc) as a means of exchange and effecting a transaction. It's more convenient than bartering my good for yours. You can see this in a simplified form in local currencies (LETS).

When I referred to commodity money I was using the generally accepted definition of using something of instrinsic worth to represent money. Such as gold, silver etc. Anything that is widely accepted as being of instrinsic worth can be used as commodity money. Whether it be gold, conch shells or whatever. Treating money as a commodity is a whole different question. It has a physical existence of some kind, whether it be gold, dollar bills, a mark on a tally stick or some electrons in a particular place on a silicon chip. Or more generally it can also exist as information (the distinction between bits and atoms) which can be transmitted and received.

Problems arise when money becomes the object of the exercise rather than it being a means to an end. The love of money may not be the root of ALL evil but it accounts for a fair amount. The problems get even bigger when people start trading in debts, derivatives and more complex financial instruments. Many of these things have legitimate uses (I no longer wish to lend money to Mr X to buy his house so I sell the debt to Mrs Y, possibly at a discount, and can then go out and buy an expensive holiday) but taken too far it ends up as the 2008 crash.

Thanks. That's more extreme than what I saw and has open toes. What I saw had closed toes, they were impressively high but very much not fetish.

Link to Pierre's shoes: http://extremehighheels.net/en/extreme-high-heels-boots-and-shoes/111-high-heel-chunky-heel-clogs-italia-p.html

Hands up those who bought an Apple Newton? Definitely not me. I was probably in the early majority to get online (1995/6) and late majority for a smartphone (2013) and still use that same 4 year old phone as I've not yet found a good reason to replace it.

As with a fair bit of social science research, Rogers makes a rather big deal of a subject that's intuitively obvious. Though perhaps it wasn't so obvious back in 1962 when he did his original work. Not sure he covers how scarcity and cost can slow down adoption. I can remember when just getting a landline phone installed in the UK could be expensive and often involve waiting for the GPO to pull its finger out.

As for economics, I'm sure there's some value in it but I struggle to find it. Just remember that if you place 1000 economists end to end it's doubtful if they would reach a conclusion. It's not known as "the dismal science" for nothing.

Definitely higher than the Miumiu clogs linked by Charlotte.

I can't see any clogs on the extremehighheels website but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough. Pierre, can you please link to the model you have ordered?

If clogs fit well they can be easy to walk in despite the heel height and lack of strap. Even without a strap your weight keeps you in them and stops them slipping off. Until you walk backwards when it's all too easy to walk out of them. The woman I saw looked entirely at ease in hers.

@Shyheels has got it spot on in his last post. Unless you're an experimenter by nature you need a good reason to use something new. I'm sure some people have very good reasons for using cryptocurrencies but I don't yet. I experiment with various things, both new and old, but don't often bother unless either I'm fascinated or have a practical need.

I was on the Tube (Subway to you guys across the Pond)  the other day and saw a woman wearing exceptionally high heeled clogs. She was probably in her 30s, nicely dressed rather than flamboyant, except for the shoes. The general style was like these:

https://www.thefryecompany.com/emily-clog-d-70415

but with much higher heel, probably 6" with a 1.5" platform. Heel was a little narrower and tapered a little towards the tip. Colour was tan. She walked very nicely in them. I love my Dr Martens "Una" clogs which have a 4" heel (example:  http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dr-Martens-Una-Womens-Leather-High-Heel-Mule-Clog-Brown-/200957433958

but the ones I saw were dramatically higher. Any ideas as to what brand they might have been?

PS: Possibly more like this, but with closed toe: https://15minutegoddess.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/current-obsession-clogs/

All money, except perhaps for commodity money, is a kind of con trick. It works because we're all willing to believe it works. The consequences of that going wrong are horrible - look at the hyperinflation periods in Germany, Hungary, Zimbabwe for example. Commodity money is relatively stable because it's based on something of intrinsic rarity (gold is the usual example) though this can be undermined by the discovery of large new supplies of the commodity.

As has been mentioned earlier in the thread, most current money is what is called fiat money. Fiat, from the latin "let it be". In otherwords it's decreed to be of value by a trusted authority, usually a central government.

Cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin the most famous, seem to belong in a category of their own. Commodity up to a point because of the cost of "mining" which is analagous to mining gold. Certainly not fiat, as there's no central authority decreeing that it shall be legal tender.

This focus on types of money can easily overlook what money is for. A means of exchange - I make phones and Fred makes high heeled shoes. It's a lot more convenient for both of us to transact in $$$ or £££ etc than barter phones for shoes. A store of value - whether as notes and coins, in a bank account etc. A handy way to hang on to our wealth to use in the future.

I'm not a professional economist or historian of money. The more I look, the more complicated it seems to get. I'm not talking about credit cards, online payments etc. It's the underlying psychology of acceptance and what causes that to fail on occasion.

I won't be using Bitcoin just yet. Not because I'm scared of it, more because I don't have a real use for it. Yet. When there is a compelling reason to use it I will probably do so. My partner held out against having a credit card for some years. But she does a fair bit of business travel and ran into problems when booking into hotels overseas. In many cases you need a credit card as a guarantee when checking in. A debit card isn't always accepted. So she had to get a credit card. She's set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month. By contrast I got a credit card in the 1970s not long after I was legally able to do so. I found it a convenient way to manage expenditure and cashflow. And always pay in full every month.

Finally a little story about the futility of economics. Two guys are shipwrecked on an island. They make each other fabulously rich by taking in each other's laundry:-)

A report published recently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40777046

You will note that this rather cute gerund is not wearing high heels:

About a year after the Nicola Thorp case: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-36264229

comes this report on the pros and cons of wearing HH: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-40779617

Some of the comments are amusing such as: "But my wife makes me wear them "

Some years ago (10 or more?)  there were a couple of high heel meet ups in London. I even met Tech at one of them.

I can only speak for the UK (the EU has similar provision) but not for the US or elsewhere. In the UK the company selling it would definitely be responsible for return post.

Very good guide to UK consumer rights: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange

A few months ago I was speaking to a young US based engineer. She was working on instrumentation for steam turbines. I asked about units and yes, they still work with degrees Fahrenheit, pounds of steam etc. Because that's how their customers expect to see the kit described. For science and engineering I just can't see any reason to use non SI units. In the UK we're largely metric apart from a few customary uses, such as pints of beer and miles per hour. Being a little older, I can work fluently in both imperial and metric units.

Steve, if you've got a problem with your metric hammer, just go down to the stores for a long weight. That'll fix it:-)

As for shoes I really don't care whether it's a 4" or 10cm heel. There's only 1.6mm or about a sixteenth of an inch between the 2. Well within ordinary error margins for the intended use.

This is actually a UK based forum with a lot of UK members.

Going back to the original post, while I can fit into some UK9 women's shoes it's not universally true. For those unfamiliar with UK sizing, men's and women's sizes are MEANT to be the same. I normally wear UK9 men's shoes so UK9 women's ought to be OK. But women's shoes often seem a bit smaller. Sometimes, like Aldo, a lot smaller. At the other extreme I have some UK9 women's boots from Next which are a bit big on me, easily solved with insoles.

All of which goes to show that sizes can be rather approximate.

Thanks. I'm sure I've heard the Phantasy Quintet but am not familiar with it. I'll have to look it up.

What was the work by RVW? His Tallis Fantasia is one of my all time favourite pieces and I love a lot of his other works.

This topic has been discussed on several occasions here at HHP. Shyheels correctly summarises the situation. I can remember a time when the rule of "no guys in the girls forum" didn't apply. Guys used to post often inappropriate comments in the girls forum; we have precious few female members at HHP and they deserve to be well treated. There was never a problem with girls posting in the guys forum so no rule was needed.

I suspect that there is little day to day moderation of HHP at present as Tech (the forum owner) has many other commitments and there are no other moderators at the moment.

Having been to a number of Bar Mitzvahs, including my own, I don't recall seeing any footwear of special note. Neither on men nor women.  Perhaps I mix in the wrong circles. 

http://www.dsquared2.com/gb/boot_cod11075673pj.html

Looks like very limited availability.

Short length of chain run under the sole and round the ankle. Plus a small padlock. Cheap, simple, effective.

Well done. It's unlikely that anyone will even notice that you're wearing those heels. Loads of women wear heels like that with jeans and you'd not notice them doing so unless you were really looking.

There's no need to push on to higher or more noticeable heels unless you really want to. There are some HHP members such as CAT and TBG who happily wear much more obvious heels out and about. Kudos to them, but you're not in competition with them or anyone else.

Best of all you have the support of your wife so you're not trying to hide anything from anyone.