Crowd sourced reviews not always helpful

Russian Redneck

This guy rivals those south of mason dixon, I wish I had access to this type of ordnance to play with. His pig recipe may need some improvement though.

Method Actors....

Baking has given me similar trouble, I think that it is the whole "beers until completion ratio" is way too high especially waiting for bread to rise, ergo microwave popcorn: safe.

Comex Silver Follow Up

As I previously mentioned the silver inventory in the worlds largest silver futures market, the comex, is dwindling:

So another 3 million ounces is snatched up in the last 45 days. At this rate there won't be much left by the end of the year, if current trends continue. When the sharks start circling, realizing if they all pile in they might corner the market, things could get ugly. A reverse minksy moment could happen, where investors realize they won't get delivery and prices will spike.

Atomic boy scouts, you're about to be on the radar...

Seen this copter above your neighborhood? (picture from an article in today's Seattle Times)

According to a post at the department of public health, you may. The article indicates that a helicopter will be working a grid at an altitude of 300ft to map background radiation levels around Seattle and certain outlying areas. Interesting approach to this issue, wouldn't it be more meaningful to merely map the background radiation at the existing monitoring sites? I'm highly doubtful that in the event of another fukushima-like incident that the health department has the bandwidth or equipment to deploy to specific neighborhoods to give real-time data reports of how the city is fairing during the event. This smells of witch hunt and unnecessarily burned (at the tune of somewhere around $5/gal and 30++gal per hour) avgas to me.

Ollie Klublershturf vs. The Nazis

That Ollie's got moxie.

The demise of Cash and return of gold?

A few pieces I came across in the new lately:

From the Mises blog:

The New York Times reports ,
The number of dollar bills rolling off the great government presses here and in Fort Worth fell to a modern low last year. Production of $5 bills also dropped to the lowest level in 30 years. And for the first time in that period, the Treasury Departmentdid not print any $10 bills. 

Come to think of it, I’ve noticed that $10s seem scarce. 

Most airlines will not take cash for drinks onboard, online purchases require plastic, and even New York cabbies are taking debit and credit cards more than a third of the time, according to the Times piece. 

But part of the reason that less new cash needs to be printed is that the government’s cash is now sturdier than before according to the Times’s Benyamin Applebaum.”Thanks to technological advances, the average dollar bill now circulates for 40 months, up from 18 months two decades ago, according to Federal Reserve estimates.” 

Pictures of Benjamin Franklin are an important export good for America.  Applebaum makes the point that producing $100s for a dime is big business as 2/3rds of the Benjamins are hoarded overseas.  The Fed paid $20 billion in seigniorage to the Treasury last year. 

“Last year Treasury printed more $100 bills than dollar bills for the first time,” writes Applebaum. “There are now more than seven billion pictures of Benjamin Franklin in circulation…”

Cash may not be as convenient  as electronic transactions but the demise of cash means more money for the financial sector.  Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover all charge merchants to accept credit cards, to the tune of 1.5%-4% plus a flat fee per transaction.  Debit cards have a fee as well.

It must be nice to make money on just accepting money, it's all a cost of doing business and is ultimately paid by the consumer.

Then you have the banks that if you are not charged a monthly fee for checking you get exorbitant fees all for the service of holding and having access to your money, this series of fees for things like using the wrong ATM is what is called "free checking".

Killing cash gives big finance a small piece of every transaction done electronically.  It is a multi-billion dollar business that we have become so accustom to that we don't even notice or think about the charges levied upon us.

I don't see cash coming back but with strong advocates like Dave Ramsey out there, many people trying to keep a handle on their finances are turning back to cash when they can.  If your wallet is empty of cash maybe you should stop buying, it's simple and helps budgeting.


Meanwhile in Switzerland:

Swiss Parliament to discuss gold franc

Right-wing party seeks way back to gold standard

  By Agnese Smith

Reuters

ZURICH (MarketWatch) — The Swiss Parliament is expected later this year to discuss the creation of a gold franc — a parallel currency to the official Swiss franc, with the fringe initiative likely triggering a broader debate about the role of the precious metal in the Alpine nation.

The initiative is part of “Healthy Currency,” a campaign sponsored by politicians from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) — the country’s biggest — that is seeking to capitalize on popular fears about global financial turmoil and inflation to reverse the government’s current policy on gold.

“I can imagine that this will spark some sort of debate about gold and there may be some pressure to accept the parallel currency,” said Dr. Gebhard Kirchgaessner, an economics professor at St. Gallen University. “But it won’t have any real effect on the economy. It seems incredible to imagine that there are people out there willing to buy millions of these things.”

Switzerland, which in 2000 became one of the last countries to decouple its currency from gold, is not the only place to contemplate a change in the precious metal’s role amid controversy over government involvement in the economy. In March, Utah became the first state in the U.S. to legalize gold and silver coins as currency, while similar legislation was considered in Montana, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho and Indiana.

“I want Swiss people to have the freedom to choose a completely different currency,” said Thomas Jacob, the man behind the gold franc concept. ”Today’s monetary system is all backed by debt — all backed by nothing — and I want people to realize this.”

Not that I think that the Swiss need to do this with already one of the strongest currencies in the world.  But when you already own all that gold you might as well do something with it other than let it gather dust in some vault buried in the Alps.

Saturday Morning Entertainment; the War Years.

Apparently this Bugs Bunny cartoon was banned and never shown in theaters. I hope it was for reasons other than not wanting to offend Nazis.


This surprisingly in-depth look at Nazi indoctrination by Walt Disney reads like a page out of Goebbels playbook.

Struck by Lighting; Twice.

With all the vehicles around I'm surprised this guy is what lighting finds the most "attractive". Maybe he doubled up on his electrolytes like powerade and it turned him into a lightning rod.

Yogi, Sasquatch or.....?

This three legged bear adapted to walk short distances upright. It would be downright scary to see this walking up on you in the woods. It might be easy to think it was a bigfoot at a distance.

Beer it does a body good.

Normally I like to knock back a cold one in the shower after an afternoon run, but it seems that science says its not such a bad idea. From the Telegraph:

A beer after playing a game of football, a long run, or a strenuous round of golf can be good for the body, scientists say.
In a rare piece of good news for those who like a pint, Spanish researchers say beer can help someone who is dehydrated retain liquid better than water.

Prof Manuel Garzon, of Granada University, also claimed the bubbles in beer help to quench the thirst and that its carbohydrate content can help to replace lost calories.

Prof Garzon asked a group of students to do strenuous exercise in temperatures of around 40ºC (104ºF). Half were given a pint of beer, while the others received the same volume of water.
Prof Garzon, who announced the results at a press conference in Granada beneath a banner declaring "Beer, Sport, Health", said the hydration effect in those who drank beer was "slightly better".
Juan Antonio Corbalan, a cardiologist who worked formerly with Real Madrid football players and Spain's national basketball team, said beer had the perfect profile for re-hydration after sport.
He added that he had long recommended barley drinks to professional sportsmen after exercise.
Previous studies have shown most alcoholic drinks have a diuretic effect – meaning they increase the amount of liquid lost by the body through urination.
Dr James Betts, an expert on nutrition and metabolism at Bath University, said a moderate amount of beer might be just as good as water at helping the body retain liquid, but that he doubted it could be any better.
Dr Betts said: "If you are dehydrated to start with following exercise, a beer, as opposed to a spirit, probably does not have a high enough concentration of alcohol to induce a diuretic effect."

Technological singularity; the rise of the machines. Science fiction?

The notion of "self-aware" computers has been around focused on by academics since the 1950's.  Computers and programming was still in its infancy then but the new possibilities led their minds to ponder where does it end?
In today's world it still seems a stretch to go from my crash prone computer to a self aware HAL or Skynet.  But follow Moore's Law over time and computing speed continues to increase while cost continues to drop.

As the trend-line goes, in another few decades computers will catch up with the computing ability of the human mind.  If computing capacity is not just relegated to novelties like playing chess or Jeopardy, and given more latitude to solve problems we see the jump analogous to a few amino acids making the jump to self replicating life, but in an exponentially growing time span not geologic.

The chart just graphs a single device making calculations, not a linked internet.  Global computing capacity continues to grow exponentially, becoming more and more interconnected.  Web-bots are being used for basically data mining now, but what happens when the data starts to be put together.  A botnet can be used to access millions of computers, the information and capacity is out there or will be out there as time goes on.

An artificial intelligence program could go rogue and it probably only takes one time.  Scientists are already working on this and what to do in possible contingencies.  Building an off switch, but how do you do that with out it knowing.  How do you do anything without it knowing or just having built in redundancies for survival.  It becomes that the technological singularity is more evolutionary biology than it is computer science.

NPR did a piece on this topic a while back, showing how some of the brightest minds in silicon valley are working on dealing with issues that may arise with the rise of the machines.






As a post script:

If not looked as something to fear, but as the next step in evolution.  Thinking in geologic time frames, since the formation of the earth man has walked it very little.  The earth has not been habitable  to man through most of its existence.  The universe is far more friendly to silicon based "lifeforms" than carbon based lifeforms.  To think that humans may become the intelligent designers of future distant  civilizations may not be far off.  Mankind has dealt with die offs in mass proportion in the past and will sure do so in the future.  We haven't mastered pandemic flu, meteoric impact, or even climate change let alone the possibility of anthropogenic climate change.  We may be out lasted by what we have helped create.