So I was on the way home with Mouse and bumped into Andrew Colbert playing outside the Bagel Shop. Since I had my Zoom on me, I flipped it on. Check it out. Continue reading “Bagelshop Blues”
Truth is not a four-letter word
A man claiming to be Truth arrives at the temple, and wishes to meet the Dalai Lama.
Announced, Truth enters, sits, and the two sit long, in silence, examining each other.
Truth eventually breaks the silence, and says: “I am here.”
The Dalai Lama asks: “What took you so long?”
Truth responds: “I did not know what I was, nor where I was to be found.”
Dalai Lama: “Do you know now?”
Truth: “I cannot know.”
Dalai Lama: “Welcome, Truth” Continue reading “Truth is not a four-letter word”
Order, or dark matter?
In a previous post I mention emergent order in freely operating complex systems. In this one I want to make a scientific prediction. I believe that it will be discovered that “dark matter” and “dark energy” do not exist. John Moffat’s arguments in “Reinventing Gravity” are strong. Continue reading “Order, or dark matter?”
Gold standards that work
In previous posts I talked about how we discovered money, and about the failed Bretton Woods gold standard. One must ask: is it possible to have gold as our money, yet still use paper or digital currency? The answer is yes.
Bacq 2 Bretton Woods
I hope if you are reading this, you understand that we didn’t invent money, we discovered it, and that gold is money, or more correctly, currency. We should really reserve “money” to describe the idea alone, and “currency” for what we use to trade.
We have all lived in a time when things other than gold are used as money, i.e. our fiat currencies. When I was born and through my childhood, gold was still very much in use, and that “gold is money” was common knowledge. Continue reading “Bacq 2 Bretton Woods”
The new Brazilia: It’s in Mongolia!
There is a “consensus opinion” – if that term still has any validity post-ClimateGate – that the booming Chinese economy is going to pull the world out of the second dip in our current global economic maelstrom. One scoop or two? Just one, please, sheh-sheh.
But for China to boom, they must be doing sensible things, economically speaking. Are they? Take a look at the images Time magazine shows us of Ordos. I had a Brazilian once joke to me about his own country: “Brazil. The country of the future. And it always will be!”
Ordos, the Chinese city of the future. Caveat emptor.
The full story can be found here. The full image gallery can be found here.
The Will of Kublai Kahn
“In Xanadu did Kublai Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree…” Coleridge
Our western view of oriental history really sucks, pardon the phrase. Western teachings are so self-centred. Canadian kids are forced to memorize a whole bunch of names and dates, as though that mattered, or would elucidate anything. Continue reading “The Will of Kublai Kahn”
The Middle Ages
They were a long time ago.