The couth subjects are restricted to the trinity: bikes, computers, and women.
Like the Dow Index, membership in the trinity has changed over time. Durant
informs us of Schopenhauer's encounter with it in an earlier form:
"He ate his dinners, usually, at the Englischer Hof. At the beginning of each
meal he would put a gold coin upon the table before him; and at the end of
each meal he would put the coin back into his pocket. It was, no doubt, an
indignant waiter who at last asked him the meaning of this invariable
ceremony. Schopenhauer answered that it was his silent wager to drop the coin
into the poor-box on the first day that the English officers dining there
should talk of anything else than [horses, hounds, and women]."
Those with rather more gold coins for the poor-box may wish to consult the
more modern ideas presented by Carnegie in "The Best Fields for
Philanthropy"[1]. Despite his social darwinism, he argues that men should not
leave it to markets to provide public goods. Plutesse Oblige?
-Dave
[1] _North American Review_, v. 141 (December 1889), pp. 682-698.
<http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/MOA/MOA-JOURNALS2/NORA8089.html>