Notes from the front page.  Some of this may remain useful or interesting or both.

9/2/2008
1. MOST UNUSUAL BULLION SITUATION: after the almost 40% drop in silver in 2 weeks a bullion "shortage" developed as the whole world, so it seemed, wanted in on the bargain, but all the holders wouldn't sell.  Why just yesterday I got 3 calls for bullion.  They all told me no one had any.  That wasn't true of course.  So I played coy.  Spot was $13.50, would they pay $20 per ounce?  Yes.  Would I sell?  Call me back tomorrow, I have to do this list.  (-:
    This situation is stupid.- "Everyone" is sure prices will rise, but of course no one knows.  Could actually drop more.  Anyway, in a week the mood will be different.  The disposable cash people think what they have could be all gone next week.  Or another week of holding and the holders will start thinking about cash flow again.  3 weeks ago people were telling me they didn't have the money to buy the gas to come sell me $10 of silver to buy more gas.  The situation is not significantly different this week.  We breathe the sigh of relief, gas is $3.60 rather than $4.00.  Bullion "gradually" rising again.  We might be able to fit 2 boom-bust cycles into a single year?
     The cycles are very fast.  That's instability.  The correct image is the unicyclist ("the economy") on the inclined high wire juggling plates, beginning to lose balance.  Fortunately there is a safety net.  Unfortunately the safety net is us.
     Perhaps we should study Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Moldova, etc. to get some idea what to do in a stripped economy, how to grow food without artificial fertilizer, what to do about water.

8/5/2008
1. JUST CURIOUS - how y'all doing in "these uncertain times"?  Some of you in some kind of tight spot?  Well placed and doing OK?  Going to tough it out?  Looking for something to do with some money?
     I have business.  So far so good.
2. NOW THAT inflation is here and everything is more expensive I guess I can stop talking about it?  But now comes deflation as everyone runs out of money and can't afford to buy things, prices come down.  But they won't come down a lot, at least not for the necessities.  I mean, aren't we happy that gas has gone down a dime after it went up a dollar?
     The bright side is that if this goes on long enough substantial pools of derivative money will evaporate and we'll have a clearer idea of what things are really worth.
3. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is the wrong metaphor.  It objectifies and alienates the products of the mind, binds them to a crystallized version.  Crystals are pretty and can be potent, but they are an end point in the creative process and then you have to start again.  The correct metaphor is the older usage: intellectual field.  Open in every direction.  These guys and their lawsuits are trying to keep thoughts in a bottle like they were carbonated beverage.  Doesn't work.  Give up guys.  Produce tangible product.  The new ideas grow out of the product.  They are not the product.  You sell the cow you don't own the calf.
4. OH, SHOULD that apply to spiritual practice as well?  Are the fruits by which thou shalt know them actually beside the point?  Hmm.
3. I WAS CONCERNED lest Obama be assassinated while out of country.  Sigh of relief.  Worried Willy me.  I figure if the kids vote for him he'll win, if they don't probably not.  My 17 year old is only peripherally interested.  Probably vote like his parents.  If he votes at all.  To him Obama is old.  He's off to college in 3 weeks, a little less.

7/1/2008
1. IT SEEMS TO ME that the ideal human behavior is that which is conducted without ulterior motive.  How does it seem to you?
2. I FIND IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT myself to operate without ulterior motive.  There are all these different angles.
3. ONE OF THE REASONS things don't get done is because there's too much to do, do the easy stuff, sacrifice to some ulterior motive just a bit (because you deserve it), deal with the big stuff later.  That's with the best will in the world.  And people get distracted, they get wielded out when they make a mistake, personal stuff gets in the way, maybe even big parts of the plan are wrong.  No wonder politicians turn into creepshows.  Even the best of them.  They deal in wholesale people.  They can't help turning into what they are.
     Hmm, I guess that applies to upper management and major shareholders too?
     I mean, I kind of know every customer I have, at least to some extent.  But I put them into categories and generate stats.  I don't do that with my family.  Wholesaling.  How much more so when they have a million employees and a million shareholders and 100 million customers.  The people become like a school of fish to the observer/manipulator.  Strange things happen to the "soul" when contemplating one's family that way.

6/2/2008
1. POSTAL RATES have turned out not so bad for letters and light stuff but significantly higher for packages.  If you order weight there is less range before priority kicks in at a bit less than $5.00 per pound for delivery in USA.  For out of country it is pretty expensive in dollars, more so-what-like in euros.  So I will hold at the $3.00 minimum shipping charge for shipments in USA but will predict a somewhat higher level of add-on for larger orders.
2. MORE ON PRICING: an economic "moment" seems to last a few months these days.  That pseudo-benchmark commodity gold seems "stable" in the $800-1000 range.  The US dollar seems momentarily "arranged" with the other major currencies.  The food staple situation is evidently subject to speculative hoarding, the kind of thing that enlightened despots in olden days would impose public execution after torture to punish, is plainly bubbling, the bubble will burst, hopefully with only "minor" deaths from famine and the blighting of millions rather than tens of millions from malnutrition.  This year, I mean.  Oil also seems bubbly.  The problem is not the price, it is the scenario that Joseph laid out for Pharaoh.  The people at the choke points continue to manipulate and skim profits.  This is what Einstein was referring to in his "ways of thinking" comment.
     In China they study Chinese history.  There were several incidents in Chinese history in which avenging armies of liberation ate their oppressors.
     Prices for numismata are being set outside the USA and are higher for what they want.  As I write this the markets "out there" remain strong.  I continue to be surprised.  Put some price on something I think is insanely high, it sells.  What it is for budget collectors is a great time to sell.  At this "moment."
3. MY CURRENT INITIATIVE BUGBEARS are net metering and recycled municipal water.

5/1/2008
1. POSTAL RATES GOING UP THIS MONTH.  Don't worry about it.  I'll see how much it costs and adjust as necessary.
2. I AM FEVERISHLY RAISING PRICES but will inevitably overshoot, the bubble will burst, it will become possible to make successful bids again.  But not yet.  Stupidly high prices are the way it is for now.  Could change any day.
3. I WROTE THIS ABOUT 4 weeks ago: I think what we're seeing with the global food shortage (breathtaking concept, no, not "breathtaking," more on that lsome other time) is mostly a series of dislocations I think mostly caused by speculation.  I don't think there's actually so much more ethanol being produced.  If there was a serious shortage meat production would decline (and again, that doesn't count fish), its not, so where's all that alcohol?  Its not there, ergo there's a lot of hoarding going on out in the world.  Meanwhile it has taken less than a year for "everyone" to figure out that corn ethanol is a bad idea.  This has been one of the stupider and more shortsighted of bubbles.  Farmers figured that out halfway through last year I think, thus the reduced corn planting.  I think, barring bad luck or even stupider decisions on the part of people who can make things happen, that farming will get back in balance in a few years, maybe only one.  Widespread famine unlikely in 08 I think, at least on that score.
    Now I am kind of thinking that maybe I was overly optimistic.  It appears that the food thing is being seriously mishandled and is too big to wiggle out of.  Spotty famines later this year seem more likely than not.  Keep fingers crossed we'll avoid widespread regional famines.  And, you know, breakdown of order.
4. GLOBAL WARMING will tend to make Siberia very attractive to China for cropland.  Perhaps we would see some interesting agricultural contract operations in central Asia if we looked for them.  Anyone know anything?
6. FOR THE DEMS it is to dump the boomers or not.  Bill or Michelle?  For the Reps it is how serious is Mr. Straittalk about being a kindergentler Bushiot.  One has to assume he is being disingenuous.  Doesn't one?  The mendacity of hope.
5. IF YOU LIKE CHINESE COINS - I bought a tasty collection.  Get in touch to get the announcements.

4/2/08 - Let's talk economy.  It is obvious that thieves are all over the place and the only thing anyone can do is to read the fine print.  That's all there is to it.  Like if you live where I live, and you can't recognize poison ivy and black widow spiders, you have a problem.  Read the fine print.  Keep records.
    Anyway, prices continue to be fluid in my business.  One day I'm paying $14 for a silver dollar, next week $11.  Prices will continue to be subject to change without notice.

4/3/2008
So look, 5 days later the bullion is getting to 20% off the high.  The guy I helped, I hope he had his prices locked in (hard to imagine on a weekend) otherwise he made nothing or maybe lost some.  It rained all week, the barrels are full (but it didn't rain 82 days last season).
3/28/2008
1. POSTAL RATES GOING UP NEXT MONTH.
2. AS I WRITE THIS the anticipated crash has not occurred in the coins/metals market .  My sales seem to be slightly growing despite the fact that I am raising my prices all over the place as fast as I can get to them.  There's probably some creation of future scarce dates going on now as stuff gets melted, but good material is getting pretty tough and high.  Just the way it is.
3. THAT MALIKI!  What a card!  Doesn't he realize he's a puppet?  They must be slapping their heads in DC.  Johnson was reported to have rolled his eyes about SVN strawman Nguyen Cao Ky, who would go off and do things without permission, daddy America would have to come in and clean up.  Can't hire good help.  He could have at least asked.  But no, he has to do it himself.  Look Daddy!  I can conduct my own operations!
4. MOST USEFUL BOOKS: PROPAGANDA, by Jacques Ellul (explains how it works), THE PETER PRINCIPLE, by Peter (explains why things don't work), SHIKASTA, by Doris Lessing (very accurate prediction level).
5. WE PUT IN SOME WATER BARRELS, now we wait for rain.  The barrels fill up we get about a week of water for the garden.  So maybe it won't rain for 80+ days like last summer.  Winning strategy.
6. IT WILL BE GETTING INCREASINGLY EASY FOR US ordinary people to fly off the handle as the pressure of life increases (consider, though, the alternative).  Very useful to be able to step back and consider calmly as the flames creep closer.
7. WILD SALMON fishing soon to be banned in USA Pacific waters.  Should have bought some wild salmon futures last year, eh?
8. HELPED a local colleague buy bullion this morning.  $100k of business last week.  Americans are not buying gold.  Americans are selling gold.  Chinese and Indians are buying.

3/3/2008
1. ME THROWING MY HANDS IN THE AIR about pricng last month got 2 interesting responses. Both were to the effect that my (modern) banknote prices were high. They have a point. But the older paper is getting just ridiculous prices. No one complained about the coins. Most of the silver I sold in February now spots higher than my price.  When I wrote this list silver was $18.  As I take it to the printer its $19, a lot of the prices are already obsolete and I'm going to raise them.
   This is like 1980, but the underlying causes are different. Massive quantities of gold and silver are being put in the ground all over the world. There is certainly some bubbliness to this situation, but when it pops there will be a lot of bullion out of circulation, so I figure the busted price levels, whenever they arrive, to be considerably higher than we used to be used to, Meanwhile it feels funny buying silver quarters, currently worth more than $3, etc.
   But the low dollar and the increase in money elsewhere has moved the other sectors too and that makes for queasy situations when a coin or note is offered for triple or quadruple of what it says in the catalog and it SELLS.
   The sum of behaviors we seem to be observing is a sort of consensus that what we're collectively doing really is unsustainable, that it has to stop soon, but no one is going to stop until there's no choice any more. Hence the bullion hoarding.
   Several countries have placed export restrictions on wheat. A prediction of local food shortages in "developed" areas may be appropriate. A bit of famine perhaps in outlying zones.
   Then there's the matter of the oceans, but let's not talk about that now, OK?  Everything related to everything else.
2. NOBODY KNOWS what to do, except what obviously cannot be done, which is everybody calm down and be nice.  Thus we drift, like polar bears on ice flows, hoping to jump to well water before the city system fails, put some gold in the ground, put a year of canned food by.  Countries trying to do it too: take over the energy supply, poach someone else's fish.  Oh, didn't want to talk about the oceans.  Farm raised sweet water, only way to go.  I have seen the future and it is tilapia.
3. BUT ANYWAY, until further notice, which may arrive at any moment, this is a great time to sell.  Prices may seem painful if you were alive in other eras, but there are people out there to whom these numbers are normal.  If you were thinking about it go for it.  If you weren't thinking about it, think about thinking about it.

2/1/2008
I hope to write some blather in next few days - life is so "interesting" these days.  But there is no time at all.  This I wrote a few days ago to fill space on the paper price list I send to the Luddites:

1. I DON'T KNOW THE RIGHT PRICE FOR ANYTHING ANYMORE! Are there more collectors than ever or are we all broke? Y'all let me know if my prices are ridiculous, OK?
2. THIS IS WHAT the edge feels like, you know?  I skipped NYINC this year, my aged parents came to see us this year.  Instead went to a local show where the main business was buying bullion and you could see lots of floor.  I had a good January but it sure was interesting.  Wasn't it?  Hope you did OK too.

1/3/2008
1. PERSONAL: Last time I looked I still seemed to have my feet on the ground.  All things considered, under the circumstances, I'm moderately hopeful that I am in a not too unprepared position, whatever weirdness comes along next year.  And it has to be weird, if only on the superficial ly political level.  Lot of distractions for us potential voters.  Many mice will play as the media updates the odds every hour on the hour.
     Right?
2. BUT THEN there is that realer reality, "somewhere."  I have not received a package from Pakistan since August.  My guy there seems to have temporarily relocated to the provincial capital.  I hear from him fitfully.  He's OK, there is activity of various kinds.
3. WE GOT 2" of rain yesterday at the measuring site, but not on my garden, maybe 1".  It was displayed  by the media as reducing the rain deficit to only 7" for the year.  They did not mention that it added only a couple of days to the 70 or so left in the reservoir.  I probably don't pay attention as much as I used to but I noticed that.
4. INFLATION - It has become apparent to me that we have moved into a serious inflation in like all sectors except used electronic & digital stuff.  In my business (this one) I am finding relacement prices for most numismatic items are the normal retail prices of a year ago.  Anything decent I mean, and the level of decency has descended, not to be too generalizing about it.  Really nice stuff is kind of out of sight. relative to the norms of the last two decades or so.
     They are buying their old coins in Mexico and Netherlands!
     We will have to adjust the number of zeros we are comfortable with.
     And of course there are exceptions to this upward trend.  Mid & low-level USA coins for example.
5. MY SITUATION again, perhaps seems to me to be good-ish.  I seem to have good sales out of country, and perhaps that puts me in a position to sell your stuff at good prices "over there," where they pay more.  Think about it.  Watch the trends.  If you want to, get in touch.  Good time to sell.

12/3/2007
1. WELL, Thanksgiving knocked out any spare time November might have had.  But I really want to write about the disclocation(s) in the business.  For the last 2 months I have been doing more selling out of country than in.  Cheap dollar.  This has caused all of us dealers to raise their prices and the foreigners don't seem to care - American stuff is still a good deal.  So now we can experience stage 2 of inflation.  Not only are imports more expensive, American products are more expensive.  We can't afford, like, anything.  Or maybe tomorrow if not today.
     I've raised my prices too, but, you know, moderately.  Middle way in all things.
     There will be stages.  At a local show couple of weeks ago it was like everyone was positioning their stock 15% ahead of the market.  The net effect was to discourage sales and conserve stock.  They all figured resupply would be a shoe dropping experience.  There were sales though, maybe at the grade B level.  But next year, when all the stock is gone, then where will the customers be. everything is 35% higher, or 50%?
     For me its like, can I afford to have $0.50 coins any more?
     And all of the silver in the world is heading for China, where there is about a 6% premium.
     I figure better to be forced out of business with the inventory all gone than to have it and no one can afford it.  This stuff is only for discretionary funds, after all.
     Crisis.  Opportunity.
     Overall, busier than ever.  This is an excellent time to sell your coins to me me me me me.  And paper money too.  Everything.
2. SOME TIME NEXT YEAR maybe some real estate opportunities?  If you have any money of course.  Just step over the financial corpses on your way to the closing.  But maybe you'll be bidding against foreigners who got paid in non-dollars and who don't have to pay health insurance premiums because their government takes care of it.
     Like, say you pay, oh $13k in taxes and $8k for health insurance, or your employer does.  If there was single payer you'd be paying more in taxes, right?  Would you be paying 60% more?  Do they pay 60% more in Canada?  I can tell you because I know.  They don't.  If you add in health insurance premiums we might be the most heavily "taxed" people in the world.
     Hahahahaha, as they say in Iraq.  Joke's on us.
3. OH, hasn't been in the news at all.  My guy in Pakistan told me that the government there has been bombing the town of Swat for about 2 weeks to try to get this radical mullah who took over the town a few weeks ago.  He told me he could hear the noise from 5 miles away.  Not a peep from the media until few days ago when it was mentioned that the guy was now on a mountain outside of town and the government was going after him there.  If a major action falls in the woods and no one says anything does that mean it didn't happen?

11/1/2007
1. THERE IS EVIDENTLY a critical situation at the State Dept.  Supposedly they are getting ready to interpret literally a request from the Chinese government that we ban import of all Chinese objects made before 1911.  This despite the fact that the Chinese government does not ban export of this stuff and has asked no other country for similar restrictions.  Supposedly State will grant this request as a pre-Olympics good will gesture.  I am advised that the person to approach to attempt to derail this is Congressman Tom Lantos.  If you are in his district you should contact him directly, otherwise you should contact your own Congressperson and request that person talk to Lantos to “find out what’s up” with the Chinese request.
     I can provide background on request.
     This is now.  If you are going to do something do not delay.
     Recently Cyprus requested and was granted somewhat less sweeping restrictions.  Included in the Cyprus list were about 10 extremely rare archaic Greek coins, so what from my point of view, but also the extremely common Ptolemaic tetradrachms of Paphos, most of which are not found in Cyprus and that the customs examiners would have to know Greek to distinguish from other (allowed) mints.  So it’s a problem.
     The camel’s nose is in the tent here.  If China goes Italy will come back with its request, which, recall, encompasses everything made in the Roman Empire at its maximum extent.
     This is now.  I do not relish the possibility of saying once again that I told you so.
     Do not just go with the flow.  When did I ever tell you to do anything?  Well, its time to do something.  Write those letters.  Make those phone calls.  Whatever you think about the rest of my politics this is definitely something we have in common.  Go.  Do.
    On the other hand there is enforcement.  For that, probably, ha.
2. MARKET IS quite roiled at moment for bullion and buyer pressure reasons.  There is also that low dollar thing.  And the excess disposable income in China thing.  And the recession in the housing sector thing.  Millions of people are finding that they have a lot of money and then suddenly maybe they don’t, then they do…  It is very fast.  In my experience when things get this sketchy it usually does not result in a soft landing.
    For instance - I had overall a pretty good month in October, but if all of the various proposals I had received had gone through it would have been twice as good.
    And all of what made this a better month was from China or overseas Chinese.  And all of the stuff that didn’t happen was also Chinese.
     So how are you doing?
3. YOU KNOW I’ve been getting stuff from Pakistan.  It is not quite war there but it is war-ish.  Might not be able to get stuff in future.  Have to wait and see what happens.
4. ON TO INSANITY: I heard an interesting theory on NPR.  Putin’s job as he sees it is to keep oil high.  The way to do that is to keep the pot boiling in the mideast.  He doesn’t have to really do anything, we do it all for him.  He sits back and whispers encouragement to Iran, lets us clobber them, he can then hug them and promise to make it better, meanwhile getting all warm and fuzzy inside because Russia always has contemptuously hated Iran for 500 years now.  How wonderful to get the stupid Americans to do the dirty work for the motherland.  Oil drifts towards Osama’s prophecy of $144/gallon.
     You know what this reminds me of?  Daddy Bush saw an opportunity to stick it to the next president by going into Somalia.  How pleasant to be able to pretend to launch a humanitarian mission while really handing a big mess to the guy who beat him.  Then when it goes sour you can blame the sap for screwing it up.  Which is what they did.  Somalia was not Clinton’s fault, it was Daddy Bush’.
    Can they be stopped?
4. LOW DOLLAR - allow me to remind, is being created for the purpose of paying off government debt with depreciated money.  This is how we pay for the war (and corruption and profiteering) - by sticking the creditors (China, etc.)  It is getting extreme enough to annoy Europe, where the relative strength of their currency is making them fiscally musclebound.
     They smile while we stick it to them.  But you know what they will do when we are tapped out and on the ground.  They’ll put out their cigs on our forehead, laugh and walk away.
5. SPEAKING OF TAPPED - around here they are talking about not having enough water to run the electric plants so maybe they’ll ration electricity as well as water.  Really.  Rationing, as in they turn off the water (and electric?) x hours per day.  And they are talking about, oh, you know, if this goes on, well, uh, regional food shortages because no water to irrigate.
    No plans yet.  Just hints of rumors in the media.  A bit of steak sauce to tenderize the mass mind.
6. MUST BUY COINS & PAPER MONEY.  Please send.

10/2/2007
1. MY FEET TO THE FIRE: I told y'all that everyone who ordered from the last pricelist would get a 10% credit towards their next order.  If I forget to do it please remind me.  I should notice that you ordered, and therefore give you the credit, but many a slip...  And please DO NOT calculate the discount yourself.  Go ahead and pay full amount.  I'll refund as necessary.  Administrative pseudo-efficiency.
2. THOSE PEOPLE OVER THERE who dumped bullion to pay bills last month evidently got over the hump and bullion prices are back up.  Meanwhile the dollar is so cheap, who in Europe could resist?  But fear not, there'll be plenty of gnashed teeth when the outstanding T-notes get cashed in.  And there are going to be a whole new pile of bills in October.
3. DECRYING GAME: been watching too much Stewart, affecting my language.  Today we learned that the sole water source for the town I live in, population 200K or so, is down 54% and we'll run out in January.  I remember writing about this drought a year ago.  Its getting that I hate being right.  What am I thinking ahead about now?  Never mind, you don't want to know.  I mean, its not like I'm worrying or anything, not my style.  Calmly watching the asteroid approach, getting ready to jump.  Only its not an asteroid.  Its a tsunami of stupidity.  You find the last 7 years kind of dumb?  Just wait.  (What else is there to do?)
4. I DID see the guy pulling out of the gas station but I don't know if he (she?) saw me.  I was on my bike, hit the brakes hard to not hit the car.  Me and the bike went airborne.  I broke my wrist.  He (she?) drove off.  Did he (she?) ever see me?  Don't know.  When I looked up he (she?) was gone.  Sep. 21.  Doc told me to not use the arm.  I'm using it.  A little.  6 weeks before the cast comes off.

10/1/2007
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
    Been thinking about it for few decades.  I think the only long term answer is that ALL women should be fully trained in personal and military combat.  All mothers should learn the craft and teach it to their daughters.  The males - well let them do what they want to do. Further, every female who graduates from firearm class should carry a firearm at all times.
    Think that might take care of some of the problem?

9/1/2007
1. CHANGE IN MINIMUM POSTAGE CHARGE - the dust has somewhat settled on the new postal rates and it is not good.  A single coin of any degree of thickness rather than thinness is apt to be classed as a "package" with a charge for 1 ounce at $1.13.  It does not get better for higher weight.  Therefore, effective immediately, the minimum charge is $3.00, and I humbly beg you think of the weight and add extra just in case.  You'll get back overage as refund or credit.
2. BECAUSE OF CURRENT TIGHTNESS IN MONEY we are all feeling a bit poorer, aren't we?  So here's an incentive to make you order more: every order will generate a 10% credit towards your NEXT order.  Deferred gratification - the best kind.
3. I GOT A LOT of responses to my scribble on obsession.  Several stories reminding me that collectors can and do go to the dark side pretty regularly.  Ripoffs of all kinds: show thefts, returning a worse coin in place of the one sent, was reminded of a guy who got mad at one dealer and proceeded to order and not pay for stuff from several more.  So scratch my proposal that numismatists are milder and more moderate than other obsessives.  We are nuts too.
4. DROP IN DEMAND & THEREFORE PRICES of most discretionary things has caused shortage of bullion for sale as everyone holds on to theirs waiting for things to get better again.  If things stay tight people will eventually be forced to dump and then there will be plenty of stuff around.  I will continue to buy until I run out of money.  Could be tomorrow, maybe the next day, whatever day you read this.  Or maybe not.
5. I FIGURE that this is the beginning of the payback for the bonds that financed the Iraq war.  Will be like post-Vietnam - stagflation and wotnot, malaise.  When?  Don't know.  Gotta keep on keeping on.

8/1/2007
1. ON THE NATURE OF OBSESSION - the trick, I keep telling my children, is to keep it moderate.  We all have these "things" that tickle some deep parts of "us," that's theoretically OK as a process, some go so deep that there is the possibility of damage.  The damage can range from a stupid annoyance to an inability not to commit the worst possible felonies.
   It can be anything: objects, habits, food, drink, emotional state, ritual activity both secular and sacred, collecting, watching things (sports e.g.), drugs, sex, violence, exercise, pets, work, prudery, dominance... you know - things.  In general, but specific for the obsessee.
   If you find you have one, I tell them (who doesn't?), you must arrange your relationship with your particular thing so that you can stay alive, avoid harm (to anyone), stay out of trouble, etc.
   Also, I tell them, there are a few things that the potential for damage is too great, and you should not do them at all.  And there are a smaller few that must never be engaged under any circumstances.  You'll have to find something else to do, otherwise you might as well just turn yourself in.
   Lucky me, they are not intrigued by that last category.  But they have set up a trampoline right near the cliff, so to speak, and they are bouncing up and down.
   I don't think I've ever met an out of control collector in my business, though I have met plenty who made unfortunate decisions about exactly what to collect.  A quasi-contemplative activity like that has only one way to get you into trouble - spending money that should have gone somewhere else.  But coins, at least at the level that you and I work at, involves so much study that we're pretty much forced to be smarter than we used to be.  We don't go nuts very often, do we, except maybe at an auction?
2. TOLD YOU SO - about the economy, I mean.  The holes in the bucket have become rather large and the decline in money level has become widely noticeable.  It should get worse as the various bonds become due.  Well, maybe a giant rabbit will hop out of the hat.  Meanwhile, you're still buying, and so am I.

7/1/2007
BUSINESS:
A. I need someone to analyze, attribute, and price cut stone and natural crystal specimens for me.  Maybe sell them too.  The task can be seen by you as a job or as a business opportunity.  As a job it could be short term or "permanent."  From my point of view the outsourcing will be either educational or a delegation of responsibility.  Last year my cuts & crystals made about $6000 of profit for me.  I think there is room for expansion.  If interested please get in touch.
B. I am looking for partners/collaborators who want to discuss the possibilities of mutual cooperation in the development of distributive systems and resource allocation.  I think that there are vast unutilized opportunities.  The model is standard small business: work hard and make small profits over and over again.  For me time is the bottleneck.  Prerequisit is to know or to imagine you know what I'm talking about.  If interested please get in touch.
C. I want to discuss possible applications of swarm theory to data handling.  Also want to discuss the concept of "active data" that metaphorically stands up and waves its hand when you look for it.  And I want to discuss the possibilities of using a neural transmission paradigm of wave propagation in an analog to the electrochemical solution of neurology.  I'm looking for degrees of correctness, you know?  And the leakage of heat from the transistors as the current passes through them carries information too, yes?  Is that an analog perhaps to the electrochemical wave stimulating the nearby neurons that are NOT in the direct circuit?  Sure, nerves function in binary too at the bottom, its either calcium or potassium, but in space and time there is a gradient and that is how we do what we do with our lump of jello.  You know what I mean?  Moore's law is not going to pull our chesnuts out of the fire forever.  There is a billion dollar idea there.  Let's talk about it.

OPINIONS
1. WHAT IS ON MY MIND AT THE MOMENT is what appears to be an early onset of summer doldrums in the coin business.  Or maybe its more complicated and long term than that.  The people I talk with are all on my level, I have not much contact with the "big guys."  All of us are living on serendipity.  There is no flow.  Supply is not merely tightening, it is tight.  Local show last weekend - traffic light, plenty of gold lying around, distinct dearth of interesting new stuff.  Paper money is very tight, almost to the point of stasis - almost nothing happening.
     In short, droughtlike.  Makes one wonder about things like longterm sustainability - the kind of thing they must be thinking about all the time in Tucson.  They are wondering where they're going to get the water.  I'm wondering where I'm going to get the $5-50 coins, the interesting banknotes at any price.
     Maybe the hollow shell that is the housing market is reaching the coin business?  Last night I heard on the radio that super-rich around the world are stepping away from hedge funds, which apparently are feeding on a tax gimmick that may soon be illegal if it is not already, and are buying... real estate.
      When real estate is "cornered" you get landed gentry.  Perhaps we are seeing the reemergence of feudalism?  No, actually, I think not.  More like the Roman Empire.  Maybe.
     People frequently ask me if they should hold gold.  I remind them that it is expensive to hold value - you have to buy the security.  Lack of security is why we continue to dig up hoards.  The former owners could not get back to the hole they had dug.  Rich guy bought the land maybe, or maybe the Mongols came.
2. ENOUGH GLOOM AND DOOM for the moment.  Younger son is at a state-sponsored smart-kid summer program.  He reports that so far they are mostly wasting his time.  Better, I figure, that someone new wastes his time for him.  He's pretty good at wasting time already, but maybe he'll get some tips from these people.
3. AN ATTEMPT this spring to deal with a spraying cat using a slingshot brought this revelation about weapons: if you don't carry them around all the time they are useless.

6/1/2007
1. NEW POSTAGE RATES: this time they have done a major overhaul.  I'm not sure how everything has changed, will find out over the next few weeks.  Most things are more expensive of course.  The main thing for most people in USA is that large envelopes or lumpy packages will in many cases be about $1.00 more, or more.  For international, there are various exclusions, etc. that were not there before, and registration is now $9.50.  We'll figure it all out eventually.  Meanwhile you might go ask for a raise, cause you know postage is going to be the least of your worries.
     My minimum postage charge is still $2.50 and will suffice for 2 ounces insured in USA.  The rate of increase is steeper though, not for weight but rather for size.  If they decide its a "package" rather than a "letter" it goes from $0.41 to $4.50! So lumps are going to cost.  And there's a big bump in insurance: $200 is $2.45, $250 is $4.60.
     I'm going to pass all of this along. You don't have to think about it especially, except that when you get a "balance due" for inadequate postage you can remember that you read this, if you did.
2. MY BUSINESS is quite significantly shifting overseas as the weak US dollar and the increasing affluence of a substantial sector "there" allows the 2% or so of collectors to do more of what they like to do.  Overseas receipts are still "only" about 20% of orders in terms of numbers, but they tend to be richer in content, approaching 40% of income.
     More and more countries are developing a collector base for their own numismata, so that there is a drain of "good stuff" from here back home.  The latest countries I've noticed are Belgium and Netherlands!
3. THE PRICE of gasoline is about 30% higher today than it was a year ago.  But the US dollar is about 30% down against the rest of the major currencies, so really we're paying about the same.  Ha ha.  From a macroeconomic view, I mean.  We're also getting paid 30% less than last year.  Chuckle.  No ticket no ride.
4. What the Democrats should say: "OK, we admit, we can't stop him, we knew we couldn't.  We're going to let him continue to waste your money and your children's lives and when he has to go home we'll clean up his mess for you, raise your taxes to pay for it all, straighten out the budget, all that good stuff."
5. I did some back-of-envelope calculations, made some miniscule changes of habit involving duration and volume of showers taken, method of washing dishes, etc., and cut my personal water use almost in half.  Mental equivalent of remembering to put my glasses someplace in particular so I can find them in the morning.
6. http://ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com/ - Iraqi kid living in Jordan, blogging in English.  Reminds me of my kids.  Great humor, but you know, he's a kid.  NOTHING is sacred.  Good for him.  I found him googling "iraqi jokes."  There are about a million of them, one for every 17 Iraqis.5/1/2007 International Day of Labor Solidarity AND major European pagan festival day.  Let the music play.  Let the May be poled.
    I will write again in my normal bilious manner when I get a chance.

4/1/2007
1. A FEW DAYS AGO a news article on Blackwater Corp. the "military services" company.  They have many thousands of guys running around in Iraq & other places including at one time (and still?) in New Orleans.  The report mentioned various ripoff tactics that the company engaged in, among which that they billed the taxpayers 3x what they paid their troops, I mean employees.  If you're in business you know that 3x is the magic rule of thumb.  We business owners pretend that if we can't bring in 3x what we pay them we're going to lose money.  Maybe that's actually true, more or less.  So that's not the problem.  Rather, it is why were Blackwater goons in New Orleans (or anywhere else) in the first place & why did the govt. deny it had hired them?  Then there is the whole non-delivery of services syndrome that has put them and Brown-Root in the news over and over these last boondoggle years.  More important even than their hands in our pockets is the building of this private army, strategic location of large private military bases in several parts of the country, & extension of contacts with officials in and out of the military.  Think "militia" in the Iraqi rather than the constitutional sense.  Um, if you don't have a problem with this situation, uh, why don't you?
2. THEN I HAD A CONVERSATION with one of those people who ask a question for 4 minutes and then interrupt the response about 10 words in to give their own opinion about the question just asked.  Subject was "usury."  The thought there was that Islam prohibits "usury" and that is somehow better than what we have.  Actually, Islam technically prohibits interest of any kind, which is a problem for them because it requires accumulation of cash through saving, thus over hundreds of years they fell behind the Europeans with their turbocharged banking system fed by interest.  I think that the problem is not interest, which is essentially an economic widget, but rather limited liability, which is a matter of fairness.  Limited liability allows the top dog in a venture to put more of the risk on the bottom, to be able to walk away from the train wreck and still have scratch, leaving the grunts to clean up the mess.  Fundamentally unfair.  And once unfairness is allowed it tends to grow without limit and top dogs tend toward enslavement and cannibalism as livestyles.  The religions of the world have tried to reign in this tendency but they have only partially and occasionally succeeded.  That means that they fail regularly, and having failed they concoct explanations of how what they are not doing is OK.  But its not.  Fairness is the issue - what you do to the least of these.
3. DRUG LEGALIZATION SCHEME - Legalize everything.  Users of incapacitating drugs can give up their kids and their assets and live in a "gated community" (jail) where they can have all the drugs they want, ruin their bodies, die, etc.  They're addicts, they won't care.  If they want to clean up they can, when they're clean they can leave.  Users of pot & alcohol can give up their drivers licenses.  Something like that.  What we do now is ridiculous.  This plan is ridiculous too.  Shoot em all has been tried and does not work.  Something should be tried that has some relation to the facts.
4. THE STANDARD CATALOGS (of World Coins, etc.) problem relates to their ongoing attempt to digitize their operation.  We have seen several years of declining quality in their products.  I don't know if they are going to be able to fix the problem.  There are time and personnel constraints, and it may be that they got off on the wrong foot with the computer stuff 10 years ago and now they are digging a hole to nowhere with their efforts.  I also don't know if they are ready, in a corporate sense, to admit this.  Would be a shame if the whole thing fell apart.  Then what would we do?  Don't know, but assume it involves the web.  A number of us are working on the problem, like mice running around between the feet of the dinosaur.  I, for one, seek venture capital.  Low 6 figures a year for about 3 years ought to do the trick I reckon.
5. IT IS APPARENTLY ILLEGAL to buy & sell USA military medals again, or even to put them in the mail.
4/16/2007:  NO, that's not so.  The real story here: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com:80/forums/index.php?showtopic=3345
6. ALSO ILLEGAL to export more than $50 of US coins.  Is this true?

3/18/2007
WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE
    A projection of what will happen if the Iraq oil law goes through (google it):
    The USA will eventually pull out of Iraq in a more or less disorderly manner leaving a government that will fall.  A horrendous situation will ensue.  From the ruins will emerge a nationalist or imposed government that will be rough and tough.  As soon as it can it will repudiate the oil law.  It will then immediately make a deal with Russia &/ or China &/ or India.  So the instigators of this foolishness will not get the oil anyway.
    Meanwhile, ethanol is set for failure in this country because it is tied to corn and cannot be profitable in the long run and hydrogen is a will-o-the-wisp.  So the whole plan is in vain.  They (the planners) are pig headed but they are not stupid, therefore they know all this.  So why?  Because they can't live with the shame, emotional weaklings that they are.  And because they are essentially criminal sociopaths who only want what they want and no one else matters (i.e. normal governing types).
    Nothing to do now but to stand around with the shovels waiting for it to all be over.2/15/07
    I think I like the Murtha plan.  Comments?

LATER THAT SAME DAY
    State Farm pulling out of Mississippi illustrates perfectly the basic flaw of the capitalist system, which is designed primarily to boost private benefit.  The private corporations feel that their pursuit of private gain trumps considerations of public citizenship, honor, duty, etc.  This is normal in business.  Only the great visionary business owners and leaders pursue goodness and mercy as their primary motives.  Like immature juvenile delinquents they need to be constrained and trained.
2/1/07
    On the "important" issues of the day I find that my views are being thoroughly verbalized by the usual suspects, so that I may be quietish and catch my breath.  There is snow on the ground here.  No clear advantage.  Spring will come and attempts will be made.

1/26/07 more or less
I think that one of the major issues we humans have in dealing with war is the juxtaposition of heroism with stupidity.  The heroism is on the ground, the water, in the air, may one day be in space.  The stupidity is frequently active at the top - the strategic level or above.  In our human history it has been the case more often than not that the troops do the above-and-beyond in the furtherance of motives base, criminal, or merely stupid.  From the start it has been the propensity of jerks to grab power and to twist the capacity of (young) people to the service of their disgusting or asinine ends.  The youth go bravely to Hell, some don't come back, the returnees deal with various damages.  Often the jerks continue their jerkiness to their natural conclusion.

We owe a great debt to the damaged youth.  Whether that debt is a debt of gratitude or contrition depends on the circumstances, and cannot always be determined.  For every World War II or Rwanda, in which one side is clearly being demonic, there are about 1000 conflicts in which both sides have some claim to just cause.  But the debt is complete.  We allowed them to take a job that might wreck or kill them.  The contract ought to be lifetime and it ought to be top ranking.  Damaged veterans and their dependents should get lifelong care and support, survivors should get lifelong care and support.  Jerks, being jerks, will always try to screw them.

I will take this thought all the way to the end, and update it to modernity by not referring to World War II.  Grunts who served during the dirty wars in Argentina, Chile, Salvador, who have no choice in North Korea and Sudan, are entitled to be proud of their service, no matter that their leaders were/are disgusting creeps and/or nincompoops.
.
1/2/2007
1. THE UNSEEMLY HASTE of the execution of Saddam seems to me to hint at a hidden hand.  The guy was a motherlode of intelligence.  Who wanted to hide what?
    I find that I am practically forced to blow my horn about me me me regarding Iraq.  Read my old stuff - I was 99.9% correct all the way through.  Way back at the start of this I wrote something about Iraq being the oldest country in the world, political-social-religious things hiding there deep underground, survivals of the 8000 years of written history.  Up in the north there are "Assyrians," remnants of the empire of Sennacherib, a mere 2700 years ago.  There are so many layers and nuggets of power that we cannot possibly know who is in control, and indeed that is what we have there.  Every face we see is a puppet.  Anyone we can recognize is not worth dealing with.
2. IT DOES NOT HELP that our number 1 ally there, the estate of Sa'ud, is and always has been working at cross purposes with "us."  Given, however, the close and murky personal relationship between the Sa'uds and the Bushes there would appear to be more to the apparent contradiction of Sa'udi funding of the Sunni insurgency.  Makes one (me) wonder if Iraq is perhaps a proxy war between the visible Sa'uds and some untouchable internal opponent, another side of the family I suppose.  If that funding source was not untouchable the visible Sa'uds would have simply eliminated them by now - they are an absolute monarchy, no one would have stopped them.  Thus we are simultaneously "protecting" them in Iraq by yanking the tiger's tail and aiding their enemies by spraying oil on the fire.  (If you can't abide mixed metaphors you have no business messing around in the Middle East.)
    Now, Bush having been hung out to dry, we can expect, I suspect, some kind of build to a climax of bloody absurdity in the next 6 months, followed by some kind of shift of phase.  I would go on, but I want to see what his plan (or, more likely, "plan") is before I point out its foolishly tragic inadequacies.
3. EVENTS IN SOMALIA throw light on Sa'udi Arabia from another direction.  There is anarchy on two sides of Saudi Arabia, an enemy (Iran) across a small body of water.  It is inconceivable to me that Christian Ethiopia has not been bankrolled to some extent by the "visible" Sa'uds at war with their invisible "Islamist" enemies.  I don't think it is possible for Ethiopia to stabilize Somalia.  If they leave it will immediately revert.  If they stay they will become the USA in Iraq.  They (or the Sa'udis, or us) have bought themselves an untenable situation.  They must know, or certainly will soon, that they are someone's cat's paw.  I used that phrase to characterize Israel in its recent Lebanese pratfall.
    When searching for hidden hands it never hurts to start with Iran, a country where all of the interesting stuff is always invisible, but there is more to it, as there always is in Iran.  If you shine the light on Iran at just the right angle you can see a shadow, shaped just a bit like a bear, picked out on the rubble.
4. SHALL I set up a forum or penpal club so y'all (the "community" of people who can stand to deal with me) can meet and discuss, um, things?

11/15/2006
    What is happening with the Iraq (and Afghanistan) discussion in DC seems to show that stupidity is not the sole property of the Republicans.  None of the "ideas" being floated by the Dems will avert disaster.  If any of them get implemented in any way the inevitable failure will be put on the Dems.  They really ought to keep their mouths shut and let that fool continue to fool around.  If they keep yapping they will get pinned.  "We cudda done it but the libbals dint lettuce."
    Slow motion stumble before they even get to the gate.  Some choice.  Party of wrong ideas or party of no ideas.  Impressive.

Suggestions for rank-and-file Republicans
    Forget the party labels and the fairy tails, be they Disney versions or Grimm.  Look for people who don't lie.  Who might that be?  Hard to tell.  Have to pay attention over significant periods of time.

Suggestions for the Democratic Party "leadership"
    Hillary has too much baggage and "we" are not interested in presidential dynasties for obvious reasons.  Edwards may have his heart in the right place but he knows squat about international stuff and very little about national stuff, besides, he's never actually done anything as a politician.  Obama is too new.  Get a general for 08, one of those guys that got pushed out by Rummy.

Suggestions for Democratic congresspeople
    He is still a skunk.  Watch out.  He'll double cross you.  Set you up and knock you down.  May I suggest: clean up the mess and work on the budget.  Oh, and pay some attention to Afghanistan.  Let HIM fix Iraq.  In fact, let him go there and work on it.

And for Cheney
    Don't you think its time to give the old ticker a rest?  How about resigning?  "For health reasons."

11/2/2006 There is apparently a degree of explosivity in the following screed.  More comments than usual, enough that I have decided to keep a running tab, which might (or, as usual, might not) be of interest:
TOTAL AGREEMENT: 4 (I find it scary when people tell me they agree with me completely.)
GENERAL AGREEMENT: 5
DON'T AGREE BUT YOU'RE FREE TO SAY WHAT YOU PLEASE: 2
YOU'RE NUTS BUT YOU'RE CUTE: 1
ORDERS MADE WITHOUT REFERENCE TO THE EDITORIAL SINCE POSTED: 34 in first 20 hours
TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST: 1 (I asked for clarification exactly what bugged him - no response, but here's one from a soldier stationed overseas, 26 years service:
"Good comments on the main page.  Our biggest problem [giving a stereotype to Americans...] is that we can't laugh at ourselves, we're too concerned with someone else's opinion, and our leaders and want-to-be leaders are wondering about what the "exit strategy" should be before we've fully engaged. Until we can have a good belly laugh at our screw-ups, and a bigger laugh directed towards our opponents, and not worry about how offended they are, we're screwed."

11/1/2006
1. DON'T FREAK OUT PLEASE, YOU REPUBLICANS: I'm going to compare and contrast GWB and Hitler.  Don't worry, GW does not compare, and as we all know, Hitler FAILED, whereas GW, um, well, ...
   Anyway, Hitler accurately saw that his period was the high point in power terms of the so-called "white race," and that if it was going to nail down its supremacy it was going to be then or never, so he built up a gigantic army and the wildest national hysteria the world has ever seen and he launched a war to conquer the world.  He threw his entire country into the effort.  It was, as we recall, pretty severe.
   Why did he lose?  I say it was because he narrowly focused his racism, explicitly excluding a rather large majority of the other "white" people, so that instead of making allies of, say, the Russians and the Americans, both nations at that time (never mind the current situation) prone to racist formulations, he ended up having to fight them.  The European side of World War II was thus a sort of civil war amongst the "white" people.  I leave out of this discussion for the moment the racialist aspects of the Asian side of the war.
   My point is that Hitler correctly reasoned that nothing less than a total effort would have the slightest chance of winning, so the war he launched was total on every level.  The repression in the occupied zones was ferocious, well, everything was ferocious.   But as we see, it was not enough.  He had a bad hand & a dumb idea, played it as well as he could (at least at first), came up short, broken on the jagged shores of bad luck, self-delusion, and the United States of America .
   The only chance for the "white race" in the post-war period was to go for broke for goodness and mercy, otherwise population pressure was, as Hitler correctly forsaw, going to pass them by.  In other words, "we" would have had to "wage peace" as aggressively as Hitler waged war, to produce the forgiveness and mercy in the outlook of the future top dogs, those we see emerging today.
   (This emergence is what the Japanese forsaw, and, stupidly, tried to prevent rather than to co-opt.)
   "We" didn't do that.  What we have produced, over there on the other side of the world, is a nation of selfish people emulating our selfishness, who collectively can't think of any better outcome than "me first."  They cannot be prevented from becoming top dogs.  One could conceive of them collectively doing something stupid and failing to top out, but that kind of deus ex machina is pretty slim pickings in the hope department.  This is the bed of nails we've made for ourselves, now we can try to convince ourselves that this is what we wanted all along.
   Now, about GWB.  No, a digression.  Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, when all that looting was going on, I wrote a plea to Rummy to clamp down and issue a shoot-all-looters order in the good old Nazi style.  I did not back the war in Iraq (I backed Afghanistan, though I predicted they'd screw it up), but having done it, the fools, they should have done it right.  That would have involved 2-3 times as many troops for the occupation as fought the war, and a Nazi or Soviet style repression.  I, Mr. Whycan'twebefriends, advocated shoot-on-sight.  Well, never mind.  When that didn't happen I predicted that we would lose, and that eventually we would leave.  Whatever administration does the leaving will call it peace-with-honor or some such twaddle, the opposition will call it cut-and-run.  The opposition will be correct, but there is no other option.  A WWII veteran remonstrated to me in 2003.  We can't give up, he told me.  I replied that we were not being serious, and I may have told him that we couldn't possibly be serious the way we were going about it.  I told him that I was not ADVOCATING cutandrun, I was PREDICTING it.  I think I may have lost him as a client.
   The only thing that will save, no, finish Iraq will be total war.  We can fight it or they can do it themselves, but that is the only way the issue can be settled.  It is too late for anything else.  We will not fight that war.  We will choose the path of dishonor.  We have to, because the war was dishonorable to begin with.  If we had wanted to fight an honorable war we could have finished up Afghanistan then gone on to Sudan.  But instead they did what they did and we let them.  They picked Iraq for the same reason I picked Kerry - they thought they might have a chance of winning.  Well.
   NOW about GWB.  He cannot even complete a sentence.  He is a bad actor, they give him his lines, he goes out on stage, delivers them, we note that he doesn't do any better than we could, that's supposed to be reassuring.  Meanwhile, in 6 years, nothing came out right.  He's no Hitler.
   The game now, as always, is to minimize the damage.  I would write more, but that might approach advocacy.

10/21/2006
TWO WAYS OF CHANGING YOUR MIND
1. AMAZING GRACE
    Full acknowledgement of the change, scales fall from eyes, once was lost, now am found, apologies and restitution if necessary.
2. SAVING "FACE"
    Quickly or slowly one changes one's position.  One can disappear for a while and reappear as a blond or 40 pounds lighter, or one can stick around and let it happen in the open.  One can deny that anything is happening or one can acknowledge that "something" is happening.  When the change is complete one can then openly acknowledge that one used to be something other than what one is now or one can deny that one ever had the previous position.

    Confucius supposedly made a quip to the effect that some people have it easy and others have it hard, but if it gets done its all the same in the end.

3. I HAD A THOUGHT about the doctrine of the rapture and its implications for intestinal bacteria, and mitochondria for that matter...

"He who is offended when offence is not intended, is a fool; he who is offended when offence is intended, is a greater fool.” -Brigham Young
(My Mormon assistant brought this to me.  Someone else claims to have found it attributed to Confucius, who thus possibly shows up twice this month.)

10/14/2006

    In two places in the local newspaper today two valid responses to terror were presented.
    The first was a batch of letters on the response of the Amish to the terror visited upon them.  The letters particularly noted the request of one of the murdered girls that she be killed first.  That girl had gone all the way to perfection in her faith at the age of 13.  One has to assume that the culture she was raised in must be approaching the pure expression of God's love that we all seek.  The murderer asked her to pray for him, as if she were a saint of the Catholic tradition, revealing thereby that he was seeking that love as well.  Though he had voluntarily placed
himself in Hell instead, he was still expressing his ultimate desire, which was for divine forgiveness.
    The Amish are showing us an unimpeachable way to live.
    In the same paper was an article about a school in Texas in which the principal had invited a British company to come in and train everyone in the methods of resistance to violence.  Kids and teachers are all advised how to rush an armed assailant, how to be heedless of danger, in short, how to DO SOMETHING rather than just to sit there and let it happen.
    This is the lesson of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania.  Why should we give them what they want?  If we're going to die we can die fighting.  Give them a hard time, make them pay.  That's how the terrorists think, they don't care if they live or die.  From our side, the non-terrorist one, when they point the gun at you you might as well assume you're going to die, are you going to just sit there and let it happen?
    NO is a valid response.  Even a kid would rather do something than wait.  Kids hate waiting.  I remember, I was one.  Kids love to be heros, the British program gives them permission.  Yes, they might die, but they might have died anyway.
    Two valid responses: total acceptance and total resistance.
    We do our kids an ultimate disservice by hiding their future death from them.  They know anyway, and if they didn't they are surrounded by dissonant fake death on TV all day every day, giving them the wrong idea of how it really is.  They could benefit from training in death.  We are fighting all the time about sex ed in school to little effect.  That river still flows.  How about death ed?  Some people don't engage in sex, but everyone dies.  We don't talk about it at all.
    We should.

10/1/2006
A GENERAL APOLOGY & A PLEASE
    The apology is to everyone on my email list, including casual inquirists and cold callers, all of whom received recently the email requesting a picture of a coin of ancient Ebora.  I neglected to start that message off with a notice that it was a bulk email, so many people thought inappropriate thoughts upon receipt.  Noteworthy thoughts included the idea that I was addressing only the recipient personally, triggering in more than one case some investment of time on my behalf, and the idea of a virus bearing spam.  I got over 60 responses, including 3 that pointed me to the same picture, permission to use subsequently obtained from the owner of the website.  Now possible suspicion has arisen regarding the ability of that person to actually give that permission, but let it go, perhaps I will have to apologize further at some point.  But here and now please accept my regret that I did not make clear the broadcast nature of my request, please also forgive.
    On a matter related by the fact that it involved one of the recipients of the abovementioned email who expressed annoyance at time "wasted," I was pushed to an annoyance of my own.  That person had been in negotiation with me earlier this year for the purchase of an expensive artifact.  The discussion had reached the point at which the intent to purchase had been confirmed, details of my bank had been conveyed in advance of an expected wire transfer, then - silence.  Several requests by email and finally by physical letter for clarification went unanswered.  Months went by.  Finally a response to the picture request, which I responded to immediately, asking, by the way, what about that artifact?  The response came back that "specialists" had advised that it was a modern fake.
    Well, thought I, thanks a lot.  And for what reason did you fail to so inform me, so that I could make use of the information?  Did pleasure perhaps arise from the continued observation of that (from your current point of view) misrepresented fraudulent item on my website, bringing, if you are correct, my entire operation into disrepute?
    I have emailed back, asking if perhaps I might be permitted to consult directly with those "specialists."  I await response. (10/14/2006 - no response.  I am peeved.  I consider his actions to be incorrect and unhelpful.)
    Now then my plea: I don't know everything of course, and I have found myself the unwitting purchaser of fakes from time to time.  I have also misattributed things, sometimes greatly overestimating thereby their value.  There is in the current offering a coin that I am asking a high price for, authenticity backed only by my lifetime return policy.  When one of you believes that I am misrepresenting something PLEASE LET ME KNOW, with as much detail and supporting evidence as possible.  Accuracy for me is an attribute of holiness.  You can even cast aspersions and call me idiot, liar, etc.  I won't mind.  Truth before comfort.
10/1/2006
TODAY'S SERMON, I THINK, WILL BE ON THE SUBJECT OF SELF-DELUSION
    We all do it, I think.  My wife, long ago, expressed a thought that she was the only "person" in existence and everything and everyone else was her imagination.  At that time I think I asked her how she would know, maybe she was someone else's figment, other possibilities.  It was decades ago.  Then, years later, we had children and that was the end of solipsism for her.
    One of the things we humans do is to justify our desires.  We want something, we make up reasons why its a good idea.  There is a little bit of idolatry in that process.  We can't just do something, we have to have a reason, so we polish our desire, arrange the lights and the music, come up with a story line, invoke nature and diety.  Maybe we get a little obsessive, all that covering.  Spend more time and energy on the thing than if we just did it and went on.
    What gives us pause are the certain knowledges that at the exact moment when we are having the most fun there is someone right around the corner dying in pain and other such other sides of the coin.  It doesn't matter when, it is always.  And then a lot of the fun things we do are relatively harmless but some of them have direct negative impact ranging from short term pain to long term damage on other contingent beings.  A few of those things are activities that we engage in all day every day.  We have to hold our noses and go on, otherwise we would have no fun at all.
    Is this too abstract for you?
    Aside from the raw sensory feel-good stuff: the hot water and air conditioning, the tasty food, the various physical pleasures, the prosperity and comfort of ourselves and the people near us, there is also the ideational structure we build around ourselves.  That is where we really get in trouble.  We decide we think or "believe" in something, we try to stick to it through thick and thin, when all is lost we stick with our concept.  If we do that we allow ourselves to think that we are brave.  Maybe so, or maybe we are just stupid.
    One can pick many examples of practitioners of extreme fidelity from human history.  Some of them are generally acknowledged to be good, others are (almost) universally execrated.  You put these various people together, those faithful until the end, it is a strange group, mass murderers sharing tea with sons and daughters of man.
    So, have you examined your core beliefs today?
    On to local (USA) politics.  He/they have shown themselves to be singularly, peculiarly incompetent.  That would be bad enough, but he/they have shown themselves incapable of accepting responsibility for messes they have made.  Behind the surface bravado is desperation.  I can see it, can you not?  They are a bunch of one-track minds, unwilling to change were they capable.  In their last two years they will likely move to desperate measures, as unbalanced politicians have so often in the past.  They will have to be restrained.  May I suggest that you consider voting so as to attempt to tie their hands.
    I am not tax-exempt so I can say what I please.

NOW THAT EUROPE has decided that it will not let Turkey in for now the Turks no longer have any incentive to play nice.  The Kurds are at this very moment trying to nicey nice Turkey but I suspect its too late and perhaps the Turks will move soon to wreck the Kurds, perhaps shortly after the USA elections.  That would pull the only planted tent peg in Iraq and the whole country could then fly off into oblivion.  We could then expect some further taking care of business by Russia, in the Caucasus of course.  In my crystal ball I see lots of fires burning.

9/1/2006
Topics I was thinking about recently:
1. RELIGION: a word meaning "coming together again."  I spend parts of most days in collaboration with a devout Mormon.  No problems of course.  My favorite carpenter is a fundamentalist Protestant.  When he was doing work on our house last year we used to engage in exploratory conversations on the nature and purposes of reality, us being basically in agreement on the matter of what Buddhists call "right action."  He has all along been extremely careful to restrain his conditioned urge to proselytize me, not that it would do any good.  And when I mentioned my Mormon "connection" in our last conversation I'm pretty sure I saw him take a conceptual step back, the recounting of which to my Mormon associate elicited a fit of laughter.
    Anyway, he came over from working next door because he missed our philosophical discussions and I proceeded to oblige his discursory thirst.  He asked me at one point what it would take for me to pick one religion over another, my position being that they are all "fundamentally" the same, as I have written elsewhere.  One is brown, one is white, they all are ducks, so to speak.  That's what I think.  And I was beginning to formulate a formalistic response that I knew would not satisfy him when he threw in what from my point of view was a red herring/
    "If you came to me and told me you had cancer and if I prayed for you and you were healed would that be enough?"  Of course not, I replied.  If I live or die is God's will, unmediated by your prayer.  If you claim that your faith gives you supernatural power, or puts you in contact with same, you may or may not be correct.  You could just as well be interfering with God's will by your intercessionary prayer.  My healing could just as well be the work of the Devil.  We don't know.  That's why (IMO) Jesus said that bit in the Sermon on the Mount about not asking for anything in prayer (Matthew 6:6-8).
    He said he'd think about it.
2. INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL: "we" have discovered in the last 2 years that there is a "fundamental" problem with data collection.  It is that it is necessary, in order to access the data, that it be tagged in various ways, the tags are ordered, when you want the data you call the tag, but you have to know the tag.  So you get to where you have a zillion tags, then you have to tag the tags, and this tagging process goes on until the datum is wholly obscured by the tags and is the size of a galaxy.  So we have invented computers to look through all the tags very quickly but the computers do not address the basic problem, which is that we know what we want but we have to know what to call it before we can do anything with it.
    That tagging is a problem becomes obvious to us when we search for a telephone number that we don't quite know, or when the social security number is off by a digit, or we spell the name wrong.
    I have described the problem in spiritual terms thusly: the thing knows what it is, God knows what it is, but we mid-level beings are distracted by the names we call things.  The things are not their names, but we usually do not know anything other than the name, sometimes we don't know that, sometimes we only know what we want, sometimes we only know that we want something, not sure what.
    That is why databases take up so much storage space.  That is why large data management departments are created; whole teams of people working full time to maintain and utilize the data.
    I've discussed this with IT people and they acknowledge that it is a problem and that it is not being dealt with.  No one has a clue.  It is a trillion dollar problem.
    I find myself thinking that if the question is asked in the proper manner an answer might be eventually obtained.  I take heart from the recent acknowledgement that Poincare's conjecture has been proved.
    Anyone have any thoughts on this?
3. NO POLITICAL OBSERVATIONS this time.  It is all too stupid.  Nothing works, they stand there and deny that they were doing anything anyway.  Idiots.  Morons.  Clods.  Bums.  Fools.

8/22/2006
    Became annoyed at another comment from the fox at his "news" conference yesterday.  He referred to the killing of Zarqawi again and deliberately as "brought to justice."  I repeat what I said before: he was not "brought to justice," he was killed in war.  The fox thus revealed a deliberate plan to change the meaning of the word "justice."  This is a 1984 type exercise along the lines of "How many fingers am I waving in the air?"  The correct answer is "Whatever you say."  He also referred to "the Democrat Party," which is not its name.
    Changing the meaning of words is an exercise that people engage in when they want to distract the listener so they can do something else.  I would recommend, were you to ask me, that you watch where the money goes.

8/1/2006
1. A PERSONAL COMMENT: Busier than ever.  There is all of this stuff sitting on the floor, not enough time to get to it.  I would mention it: the iron war axes from Pakistan for instance, but I probably couldn't get to it any sooner if you asked.  I seem to be in the website development business now as well, with a real and non-numismatic client.  ...  Oh, go ahead and ask - whatever you're looking for, just give me a call and ask me.  So much stuff is coming in lately, might not have it today, might be here tomorrow.
    Not that I'm complaining.  It's definitely better than not working.  But it is work.  Trust me - that's what it is.
2. CHESS - About the current unpleasantness in the middle east, I had been thinking along the lines of Israel being used as a cat's paw by Iran in that the situation was set up as a political trap in which Israel couldn't win no matter what it did and it has pretty much played out that way so far.  Then I got to thinking earlier today about chess.  The better you are in that game the further ahead you can plan your moves.  If you're good enough you can see the end of the game, if the opponent is dumb enough, after just a few moves.
    Chess was invented in Iran.  What is the essential fact of Iran?  Iran's main enemy is not the USA and of course it is not Israel.  It is Arabs, especially Sunni Arabs.  And Turks of course, should they care to get involved which they apparently don't, having, they suppose, bigger and European fish to fry.  There has been bad blood between the Persians and the Arabs since, like, forever.  That nuke they want to build is not to throw at Israel.  It is to balance the Sunni bombs in Pakistan.  Israel is just the bloody puppet they wave in the face of the faithful, and Hizbullah is the club they wield, not against Israel, though that is what we see at the moment.  Hizbullah's real enemy is our real enemy.  Remember who that enemy is?
    No, not us.  We may end up being our own worst enemy, and certainly we have dumb and dumber pulling the strings on
our side at the moment (never mind that the "moment" seems to have been continuing through my entire life).  But imagine this: Hasan Nasrullah's Shi'i portrait hanging in all those Sunni windows.  Who do you imagine will be most upset by that turn of events?
    No, I don't think the Israeli government exactly knows what its doing.  Obviously we don't, all this waiting and seeing.  None of this is going to do anyone any good in the end, but it will rebalance things over there, and it appears that Iran will come out the better for the moment.
    I repeat: despite appearances, Iran is actually Israel's friend, being the natural enemy of Sunni Arabs, and therefore, believe it or not, the friend of the United States, an incredibly well armed giant that happens to be blind, deaf, and stupid.  Remember who the enemy is?
    One step back from this bloody farce is who?  Russia stands behind Iran.  We might like to pretend that we are the only
superpower, but they have 15,000 nukes, all pointed at us.  Who else is there to point them at?  It is us, them, and China in the power game.  So, Russia behind Iran, Iran against the Arabs, Pakistan holds the Sunni bomb.  Who stands behind Pakistan?  Us?  I don't think so.  China.  One more reason for India and China to not get along, as if they didn't have enough on their plate already, those millennia of "we did it first."  And if China is with Pakistan then India is with...
    Right.  Hence our recent nuclear bribe.
    This is all local Asian stuff with its own dynamics.  We are only in that game as long as we have money.  Which, as you know, we do not have any of.  We only have debt, which is almost as good, but, when the chips are down, so to speak, not good enough.  We are actually only on the bus, except for the nukes, and the reason we're still in the game is because the other players are on the bus too.
    We can learn from this crap.  Israel could learn something too.  But we elect people who are incapable of learning.  Not a good situation, but that's what we have to work with.
    Notice I did not mention Syria or Lebanon.  Why should I?  Who cares about them?  Obviously nobody.  Syria is a rook.  There is power but limited mobility (no money).  Lebanon is the game board.  Lebanese are the pawns on both sides.
    Established governments have always tried to defeat insurgencies.  If there is any popular component to their movement the
establishment will eventually try to "drain the swamp."  That usually does not work lately.  Even the Nazis and the Japanese could not pull it off.  Franz Josef did it in Hungary in the 1840s.  His suppression of that rebellion was called "the peace of the grave."  That's what they tried in Rwanda, but those guys ended up believing in their invincibility and lost their footing.
    Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I suspect, there will be, all of a sudden and out of the blue, a break, at which point
we can try to figure out who got what they wanted and what exactly the situation is.  Then, down the road, we will find out if Hasan Nasrullah is his own guy or someone else's.  Israel better get itself a more stable government.  It can't keep facing the situation of a stable, manipulative government in Tehran with a bunch of newbies every couple of years.  If it does it will end up with Intelligence running the country, which would not be good, but is also obviously not happening now.
    I ran this scenario past some Lebanese friends at their gyro joint.  It made sense to them.  One of them was evacuated from Beirut by the Marines.  They were not angry at Israel (!).  They just wanted it to stop.
3. ALL OF THIS IS FIDDLESTICKS in the face of the environmental situation.  All of this jockeying for position is, what's a good metaphor?  Flatulence in a hurricane?  We are, I guess, past the point of people denying that something is happening, but no one knows what's the right thing to do or the right place to be.  Easy enough to see what we should not be doing, but we are like drunken dreamers - we can't stop.

7/1/2006
1. ANYTHING ANYWHERE COMMUNITY NEWS: Um, last month's "thoughts" apparently caused some concern amongst some of my clients/friends, who interpreted my conceptual and prophetic uncertainty as possibly distressful to me if not to them.  I got some responses like: "I hope you feel better soon" and "Don't worry."  I want to reassure everyone that I am fine, that uncertainty is my usual mode of being, it doesn't bother me.  I live very happily in a shades of gray world in which even the vice-president of the United States occasionally perpetrates something that is not utterly mendacious and brilliantly incompetent.
    (I can't actually think of an instance at the moment, but I remember thinking recently that something his ventriloquist's dummy
said recently was "OK.")
    I think we can now safely say that Mr. Bush Sr. did not do his son any favors by bailing him out of those oil deals and otherwise covering his sorry, um, knee back in the oil and baseball days.  Result is that he never figured out how to pick up the pieces and now there are pieces all over the place.  The response is to change the subject.  It doesn't work.  Which brings me to my next topic.
2. THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER: The choice will be between a party that has no ideas and is locked into its inane slogans and a party that has no ideas and no slogans either.  Which is better: a wrong answer or "I don't know"?  The simile of a hole is one I've used before and I believe it is still apt.  If you've dug yourself into a hole and you have a shovel in your hand how do you get out of the hole?  The normal response of a normal politician is to keep digging.
    It is an inconvenient truth that we cannot establish anything in Iraq by ourselves.  We will have to go whining to the international community and BEG them to help us clean up the mess.  It will be humiliating but nothing else will work.  We can pour our entire GNP into Iraq and it will just sink into the sand and disappear.  I think the Cheney-Rumsfeld regime will actually pull troops out in time for the 08 election, declaring some kind of bogus pseudo-"victory," and it will be ever so much worse,
nothing accomplished, lots of money wasted on no-bid cost-plus contracts.  In other words, after they defeat the Dems as
cutandrunners they will cut and run.  Something like that has to occur, because they are incapable of making a true apology.
    If you want a good nonpartisan tool to judge candidates, just look for 2 things: 1. how much do they actually lie? and 2: do they change the subject?
    Voting is more or less the most important group activity we can do.  Most of our candidates are worthless but it is good to get to know them.  Some of them are less worthless than others.
3. THE DISQUIET THAT I DISPLAYED last month was due to my contemplation of the environmental situation.  It was a verbal expression of that feeling you get at the top of the hill on the roller coaster when the roller car is just starting down.  It seems that we are in it now, nobody knows exactly what "it" is, but its here and everything else is going to be pushed aside in the face of this "thing" that we are living in.  Might as well enjoy it, eh?  No matter how ugly it gets, eh?
4. BACK TO POLITICS: we have a long way to go to get back to a McCarthy type situation, let alone a Palmer raids or an alien & sedition act scenario, never mind the hard dictatorship of the Fascists of which the American version was the Jim Crow / KKK period of c. 1900-1970 or so.  "The people" are against it.  It won't fly today.  The danger is from the combination of competent avarice and political & economic incompetence.  It is said that the Republicans are masters of the political field these days but that is not so.  They are good at substituting stupid reductionist rhetoric for political debate and they are good at winning elections for the moment but they are clueless where it counts, and their "visions of the future" are practically postcards, nicey nice but contentless (and better keep your eyes on that picture, whatever you do don't look out the window!)  There is no plan.  There is only theft.
    Not that the dems have anything better to offer, at least on the surface.  But in a party disunited there is at least the possibility
that something of value and use may come up.

6/9/2006
    More linguistic dissing here.  This time I'm annoyed at "brought to justice."  That is a bunch of crap.  Zarqawi (Al-Harri!) was NOT brought to justice.  He was killed.  "Brought to justice" means catch the guy, put him on trial, convict and sentence him, then carry out the sentence.  That's "justice."  What happened is not justice.  It is war.
    The president and his cabal have consistently throughout their careers stood for the position that words mean what they say they mean.  They are masters of the hidden motive.  It may be a great thing that Zarqawi is dead.  The president, however, is trying his darndest to get us to be stupid.  To me, that's stupid.  Mix stupid and death and what do you get?  Evil.  Fight evil with evil what do you get?

6/2/2006
    On the BBC I just heard some poor deluded fool say "the army's job is to kill people and break things."
    The first time I heard that phrase was out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh, the pied piper of stupid for those who will do anything they can not to think.  Perhaps Limbaugh got it from elsewhere or maybe he made it up hisself.
    It is facile and sounds catchy but of course it is completely wrong.  The job of military personnel is outlined in their oath, which has to do with defending the Constitution and the nation.  The means they are charged to employ are not restricted to breaking and killing.  In fact, their job is to follow lawful orders given by their superiors in the chain of command.  If they are told to kill or break they are supposed to do that.  If they are told to serve soup that is their job.  If they are told to dress up in pink aprons and dance a jig that is what they have sworn an oath to do.  If the order is lawful they are supposed to do it.
    Even if most of what they do is kill people and break things that would not be their job description.  In fact, most of what they do is not killing and breaking.  Most of what they do is waiting and moving stuff around and practicing.
    Get beyond slogans, my brothers and sisters.  Look for what's real.  Think.
    We should not have gone into Iraq.  We should have done Afghanistan right.  But now we cannot leave.  If we do it will bite us hard.  Unfortunately our leader is worthless and is incapable of doing anything right (except of course stealing money for his class and destroying infrastructure).  The people of Iraq and Afghanistan will have to wait another 2 years for relief.  And then I'd say there's a good chance that a lowest common denominator American legislature and a polls driven president will refuse to do what needs to be done and will cut and run.
    So, just like his baseball team and his oil ventures, everything will be worse afterward, and no daddy's friends to bail him out.  We get to clean up the mess.  Someday there will be statues for that guy.  Ik.
6/1/2006
1. It has been a while since I wrote about the American president, hasn't it?  I guess I haven't felt the need.  He speaks for himself doesn't he?  I think it possible his regime will be remarked in retrospect for excellence in theft of public funds and destruction of infrastructure, for malfeasance, obstruction of justice, dropping the ball.
2. On the other hand, pope Benedict at Auschwitz - that was a class act.  I think it possible that the Catholic church has got themselves a good one.
3. It has become more evident to me than it was before that the people who cooked up the Afghanistan and Iraq ventures did not bother to read the history of those two countries, neither the recent history in which the British got their collective nose bloodied nor the grand sweep in which Iraq proved over and over that it is a place, not a country, and Afghanistan ate up every conqueror.  I prophesied in 2003 I think that we would eventually declare victory and leave both places.  I think it is rather looking like that will shortly be obvious to all as the only option open.  "Victory" in these situations is undefinable.  It would have taken a troop level and a degree of ruthlessness that could not be mobilized for a war of choice.  These wars have been for show (politics) and loot (fossil fuels) and the architects have proven incompetent on both counts.  Even in the theft category they have only been able to scam a windfall.
    The troops have once again been let down by their leaders.  Even Haditha and Abu Ghraib, I'm telling you, is not their fault.  The rot is in the root.  That president is a clunker.
4. I was going to rant about so-called education in the USA but I think I don't have time this time.  Problem will still be here next month.
5. And I will also put aside for the moment the ground of our material existence - the "environment" - an objectifying term we employ to pretend that we are "in it" rather than part of it.  That will still be here next month too.
6. And here is what I printed a few days ago in my printed list for my snail mail customers:

1. WHAT A DIFFERENCE a month makes, eh?  Gold down today $90 from last week.  The "media" is blaming the decline in the US stock markets on some comment the Fed chairman made but that doesn't account for what's been going on in the rest of the world.   Obviously (I think) many millions of people suddenly had bills to pay or otherwise found a lack of disposable income.
    The nice thing about the time we live in is that we can see these waves occurring.  Who knows, perhaps we can learn to do something with this accumulating information.
    Does anyone know: is there a "normal" payday in China and India?  Here in USA there is a tendency for people to get paid on Friday.  What about there?
    The system is in the process of turning into something else.  It seems that no one has a clear picture of what it is turning into.
I don't.  The governments that I can see (USA for example) appear to be floundering around (as I am with this writing this morning).  Perhaps the important business is being done elsewhere, in the various sore spots of the world, where resource allocation is the acute issue rather than the disposition of temporarily excess funds.
2. IN PAKISTAN, I am told, the prices for ancient coins and antiquities are higher than the retail level here.  Sales of that stuff, as you are possibly aware, are not in full flood.  This is another unstable situation, and will probably lead to a collapse in prices and a flood of stuff later this year or next as people there give up.  After that, if they're smart, they will stop "producing" the stuff and the glut will thin and then disappear, leading to an equilibrium a couple of years from now.
    I am dreaming of course.  There will be disorder.  There always is.  There is desperation there.  If they can't sell it for $1000 they will sell it for $10.  At least some of them will.  There will continue to be too much of it around.
    I don't know what to do either.
3. I'VE PASSED most of the last decade, maybe 2, being a knowitall and predicting the near-term future of human events.  Mostly I was right, and that was superficially gratifying.  It was not hard.  You study history like us numismatists do, you see similar things happening over and over again in the course of human events.  The American founding fathers studied the popular modes of government of the ancient world as they cobbled together their attempt at a better way.  Your average leader, as ignorant of history as any high school dropout, is going to make classic mistakes that someone like me can easily see is the exact same error made by some Polish king in the 17th century for example.  I can then tell y'all that it didn't work then and it won't work now, for the same reason.  Feather in my cap.  Why don't I teach history?
    But now I'm confused.  At least I know why.  Human history is in the process of being more heavily impacted by planetary
processes than at any time since the invention of writing.  There is nothing to compare with except the fossil record.  So I don't know what exactly is happening or exactly what to do.  We know that North Africa used to be a jungle, now its a desert.  Nebraska grows wheat.  Maybe in a couple of years it'll grow sand.
    We of course are part of that planetary process, so in a sense everything we do is "natural."  Gurdjieff at times put out that
planets are "alive" in the way that we are "alive" and that they want to become stars.  Organic "life," he propounded, is the earth's way of building the mass necessary to become a star.  This is not likely, we humans have figured out, but perhaps we are doing our human thing, with the birthrate and the fossil fuel burning, because that is what the earth wants us to do.  Kind of like the bacteria in the compost pile that do their thing, heat up the pile, make it hot enough to kill themselves, pretty soon, presto: compost.  Do you suppose that maybe with all this civilization and war and philosophy and religion that's what we're "really" doing?

5/15/2006
    Today I am musing on the process I have observed in which many people cannot differentiate between fact and opinion.  The event that prompted this writing was a call from a member of the public about a 1/10 krugerrand.  We went through the process of identifying it and pricing it, and we wrestled with his improperly stated desire to get more than it was worth.  (He kept asking "What's its maximum retail value?" as if he might hope to get that in a sale.)  Then he asked me "That's not a lot of gold, is it?"  I, of course, responded that it was a matter of opinion, thinking in my mind of Ft. Knox, of the misting of gold on chip terminals, etc.  He asked me again.  And again.  I began to form the opinion that he had an opinion and wanted me to validate it.  That I refused to do.  Why should I?  Its an opinion.  Who cares?  There is a fact there: 1/10 oz of gold.  Who needs an opinion when there is a fact?
    Opinion: people are funny.

5/1/2006
    The slowdown I was whining about in recent months seems to be abating if not ending.  I don't think I have an interpretation yet about why it happened or if it is actually becoming something else.  I do notice that there are a lot of "little" emergencies all over the world, so many that they crowd the news pipes and we don't hear about them for long.  I notice too that prices of groceries are mostly up, which could conceivably be due to increased fuel prices.
    Several people in my business have decided to clean house or otherwise lighten their load, mostly for personal reasons, and I have been inundated with coins.  There are increased wholesale possibilities therefore, inquire if potentially interested.
    I have also noticed an increase in calls from non-collectors thinking that this is a good time to buy bullion.  I don't know if that is a good idea or not, except to note that if you're in on the rise you're probably buying a ticket to the fall and to watch the market carefully so that you can at least get in on a weekly good rate.  The question we all want to know is whether the bullion situation is a run or a fundamental change and I can't tell you that right now.  Except that I still think palladium is undervalued.
    The attention today in my country is on the immigrant issue.  Whatever we see on the streets today is in response to various more or less stupid bills in Congress.  Building fences won't work.  Serious employer sanctions will not happen.  As long as there is such a vast differential in earning capacity between working here and working there no attempt at doing anything can be real.  There was a song from before I was born that went "How're you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree?"  The only answer is to make farming pay, or if not farming then something back where they used to live.  Most people want to keep doing whatever they're doing in preference to moving somewhere else, learning a new language, doing something different.  In the world today nothing is being done to keep people happy where they are, quite the contrary.  The base of all of the turmoil is the persistent tendency to make separations: us against them, people against nature, etc.
    Making those distinctions is what allows us to "get stuff done," which class of activities is what makes humans different from the other animals.  Being unable to shift gears into unity is what is getting us in trouble.  We are all citizens of this planet.  Immigration is people moving from one room to another.  It is a false distinction.  "They" also get up in the morning, get dressed, look for something to eat.  The only ways we in USA could stop them from coming here would be to allow their homelands to change to something less infernal (alluding to a song by los Tigres del Norte) or to make this country worse than theirs.  I see no sign that we are developing a national will toward either of those options, so the situation will not change.
    THEREFORE: I think that immigration has a chance of being taken off the table as an election year issue as a result of today's events and others perhaps to come.  That, for me, would be good.  Plenty of real issues about which something could be done.  Let's talk about those instead, shall we?

3/9/2006
    I sometimes like to set the background color of this page to compliment the tone or subject matter of this editorial section: green for life, yellow for celebration, dark red for war, etc.
    So what is the color of stupidity?
    My comment on the Dubai thing before moving on to more important stuff.
    I have no problem with the deal.  Neither does an Israeli shipping company that released a statement that it had been doing business for years, not only with the Dubai company, but with Dubai itself.  And the company responded that it was indeed true, but they didn't want to talk about it too loudly lest it be accused of breaking its solemn obligation to maintain the so-called "Arab boycott of Israel," which is exactly what it has been doing.  This is comedy: Who's not on first.
    Incidentally, one of my son's ex-roommates told me a story of an Israeli rock band that did a successful tour of several Arab countries.  And just last night I heard a radio segment about Jewish hipsters going to east Jerusalem cafes to hang with their hipster Muslim buddies because it was SAFER in east Jerusalem, and cheaper, and armed guards are not all over the place.  Drugs and sex cross all barriers.
    Anyway, Mr. Bush, or rather his handlers, was correct in allowing the deal to go, but as we can clearly see he, or rather they, have lost control of the political setup in Washington and have royally, or shall I say imperiously screwed up the deal by neglecting to get even one legislative ally beforehand.  Talk about tunnel vision!  Now he is in a situation in which the only veto of his regime could be on behalf of an Arab company, and the votes are there to override, so there will be no veto.  That game is up.
    It is totally stupid in many ways.
    Dubai is as friendly a friend as you can get in the Arab world.  They are all about money, nothing else matters to them.  They are also a free port.  Everyone hangs there, including our professional ears.  We make them grumpy they can shut us down, where's the benefit?  It is not a forward looking strategy to keep them out.  They are going up, hooked as they are to China, India, Singapore.  Where are we going?
    Most legislators of both parties are playing the xenophobe card for election year advantage.  You listen to the things they say and it is the crudest form of know-nothing yahooism, Dems and Reps both.  It is obviously true that the Dubai company has nothing to do with port security, it is equally true that port security is a total joke, the yattering about the Dubai thing is a distraction, nothing will be done about the security problem.  Joke, joke, joke.  That, I suppose, will be the theme of this year's political campaigns: "My opponent is a scoundrel, I am stupid.  Which do you prefer?  Scoundrel or stupid?  Vote for someone just like you!"
    Ha, ha.  Ha.
    Take a deep breath, I am about to write something cute.
    My current president has been feckless since his high school days.  I want my next president to be feck.  Who out there is feck?  I don't see anyone.  McCain presents as feck, but is he really?  I'm not sure.
    Next thing.  In another couple of weeks winter will start to wane in Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan, where the earthquake was.  Everyone who died of exposure, etc. will already be dead, the survivors will need to get ready to plant, if that's what they're going to do.  Now is the time to make donations to your favorite international aid organization, earmarked for agricultural aid for NWFP.  Buy seeds, tools, etc.
    Big dislocations in many places.  Lot of individual awarenesses going down the drain.  Trying to help is the right thing to do, even though everyone dies in the end.
    Big drought year coming to North America this year.
    One of these days I have to write about Mexico, land of misery and political promise, and about Russia, a possible model for the future of America.  But not today?
    What's the bright side?  Geese.  Deer. Coyotes.  Forsythia blooming at the edge of my front yard.

3/1/2006
    Is it just me or has a lot of money suddenly disappeared?
1. OK then, I don't care what you are reading & hearing from the talking heads, including in the coin business, I am experiencing a slowdown.  Everyone I'm talking to is experiencing a slowdown too.  Customers are absent or buying less.  Payments are slower.  There is stickiness in the system.  There is even stickiness in the bullion sector.
    One never knows how long these things will last or how bad they'll get.  There are plenty of ominous signs this time, but I
will not predict.
2. ON BEHALF OF SOME CLIENTS I am buying palladium at 104% of spot until further notice.
3. CATCHING IT: remonstrances from a Pakistani guy - please don't tell people not to send money - they are still in a bad way there.  But, I responded, all the stuff is sitting in warehouses in Karachi getting pilfered.  The stuff won't even get there now.  I told him I would send more in the spring.
    We're hearing that things aren't happening in any big hurry down in the Gulf either.
4. CATCHING 2: from a learned Muslim colleague remonstrating as a Muslim that I was mischaracterizing certain aspects of Islamic governing practice.  Specifically that I was buying into Hindu extremist propaganda, that nobody's hands are clean, that the overall Muslim history is considerably better than, say, the Christian record.  I wrote back that he's probably more correct than I am, everyone has lumps in their rug.  So what are we going to do about the nut cases who keep trying to run things?  I have some in my own family.  Can't talk to them about anything.
5. CATCHING 3: from months ago when I was banging on hypocritical "Christians."  My interlocutor sent me a book by a Chinese convert I promised to read.  Haven't yet.  After taxes, I hope.  If not then at the family get together at the beach.  Narrow is the way.  Our culture specializes in things that look like ducks and quack, but aren't ducks.  Not so easy to remember which way is up.

2/21/2006
THE STORY THAT WILL NOT DIE - It's those stupid cartoons.  Greenland is melting and people are writing to me about the cartoons.  Things I wrote about Islam might be taken the wrong way.  Which brings me to what, to me, is another chapter of the same book, the title of which is YOU CAN'T SAY THAT.
    I refer to the Austrian law that forbids denial of certain of the disgusting crimes committed by the Nazis in the last century against everyone who was not them, but especially against the Jews.  I remind you that they killed every black person and every Gypsie they could find too, and though they didn't organize a factory operation to kill Russians they left tens of thousands at a time outside in the cold so they could freeze to death.
    Anyway, the law was used against some barfbag contents who gave a speech that broke that Austrian law and he was sentenced to some years in jail where he will have nothing to do but feel sorry for himself.
    I live in a country in which such laws are illegal.  We can we can say whatever stupid, nasty, disgusting, lying, hateful, ignorant thing we want to.  With certain limitations relating to immediate public safety and product representation.  We can't DO anything we want.  But we can THINK anything we want.  And we can say what we think.  That is the glory of the United States of America.  Some toxic waste can get out in front of a crowd and roar out any lie about anything.  I can yell right back and tell him that he is the living proof that God does indeed play dice with the universe.  Then we can go to work (or wreck as the case may be) on Monday.
    I want my Nazis out there in the open where I can see them.  I don't want them hidden behind gag laws where they can plot and scheme to take over the world, disguising themselves to look like ordinary people, manipulating things in the background and changing the meaning of words to better spread their lies.
    OK, enough of that.  Gotta get back to work, or is it wreck?

2/6/2006
TEMPEST IN TEAHOUSE - Gurdjieff had poetically described human history as a recurrent interference by the moon, which he claimed was alive in a manner of speaking.  He taught that the moon eats human potential, what we are pleased to call "souls," and that when it gets periodically hungry people go nuts and then they go to war.  How else explain this insanity over those Danish cartoons?  Is it not the most ridiculous thing you ever heard?  Kind of like the "uprising" in Los Angeles after the cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted.
    But, wait a minute.  You can get your annotated copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion at any Arabic bookstore, right?  And people believe that crap.  Um, and then of course we have the 700 Club, don't we?
2/7/2006
    And today the farce continues with some demonstrators dead in Afghanistan.  And a newspaper in Iran announced a "best Holocaust cartoon contest."  But hey, guys, your president said it didn't happen.  Oh, never mind.  Its like a smelly fart contest.  "You think that was good?  Smell this!"  Plus, its off the point.  Instead of tit for tat and a nasty Christian cartoon they'll go for the innocent bystander, because, of course, that particular bystander is, by their lights (darks?) always guilty.
    This is entertaining in a Roman kind of way.  A few laughs, a little blood and guts.  Nuts.  Lunatic.  Blame it on the moon.
2/8/2006
    I found the cartoons in question at Wikipedia.org.  Tame and lame.  If you want to see some Arabic anti-Jewish cartoons, considerably nastier than the Danish stuff, google "antisemitic arabic cartoons."  They publish those things in the official government newspapers.  The hypocrisy  is breathtaking.  I find myself remembering that when Muslims speak of Islam as a "tolerant" religion they are using the word "tolerant" as a translation for a technical theological term.  It does not mean what we think of as "tolerant" any more than the old Communist usage of the word "democratic,"  which sounded familiar but meant something completely different.
    Always easier to face the truth about someone else than the truth about ourselves.  The urge to blame someone else for the way we feel seems to be genetically coded.  Dogs and cats do it. So do humans.
    Meanwhile, an article in the latest Scientific American - the oceans have become more acidic than at any time in the last 55 million years.  They get too acidic the shell animals will not be able to make shells.  There have been 2 episodes of 95% ocean species dieoff in planetary history.  How much carbon dioxide did you produce today?
2/16/2006
    Last word on the cartoons is at www.boomka.org.  No need now to take it any further.  (-:
2/1/2006
1. CHARITY: Latest word on Pakistan is that there is enough stuff , now its just a logistical and corrupt-business-as-usual problem.  Not to be cavalier about it, but if you were to ask my advice I would tell you not to send any more money there now.
2. ON BEHALF OF SOME CLIENTS I am buying palladium at 104% of spot until further notice.
3. REPORT FROM NEW YORK - I spent a bit more than half a day at the NY International Coin Convention.  Met many friends, missed others who were there.  The main room was medium sized, more dealers tucked into smaller rooms.  It was entirely possible to miss something.  There was brisk business, except for a few dealers who appeared to be uninterested in doing anything.  Really.  Guys who would not look up from their newspapers, who when I asked about things replied "not for sale."  So why were they there?   Maybe just to go to the auctions.  The European dealers were rather lightly represented.  The Asian dealers were completely absent.  It was not crowded when I was there.  I don't go often, but there were years when it was 3 deep at the popular tables.  Not this time.  There was too much Indo-Greek, not enough Spanish colonial.  I like to see new batches, but not much there.  Instead there were several secondary batches of previously marketed hoards: things like Alex the Great gold staters, Istrus 2-face didrachms, etc.  Gold darics all over the place - I think the price might drop.  Everyone I talked to was happy and did OK.  I did too.  So why do I have this sort of hollow feeling about it all?
4. HIGH TEMPERATURES in northern American midwest.  Low snow pack.  Will be inadequate water levels in spring.  Drought probable in summer.
5. HERE IS HOW I SEE RIGHT WING POLITICS - culture war issues, no matter how heartfelt or even (sometimes) reasonable, are distractions about which nothing significant can be done.  You either sweep the stuff under the rug or you legalize and regulate it.  Do you really think they can't get alcohol and pornography in Saudi Arabia?  Of course not.  It just costs more.  Go to Europe for the abortion.  Culture war flags are waved to hide the real right wing business, which is the perpetuation of economic advantages for those that already have them.
6. AND HERE'S HOW I SEE LEFT WING POLITICS - there isn't any, at least not here in USA.  You have to have solidarity across all cultural barriers to do left wing.  It is totally "what do we all have in common?"  Who's doing that?  Since the Spartakiad and before the left has always played the right's us-against-them game, and always from the downhill position.  If it wins it becomes the right to maintain its power.  Attempts to bridge the gap (Buddha, Jesus, etc.) are coopted by bureaucrats when the charismatic leader is out of the picture.  This may be a genetic situation.  We may need a mutation to get beyond it.
7. I HAVE A FEELING that there is a significant squeeze coming this year.  China is expecting to slow down, energy bills are killer, a shakiness in the air.  I don't see how there can not be inflation this year, though I can see how attempts might be made to hide it.  Good time to stay alert.

1/1/2006
1. PREDICTION: I think this coming year will see a shift in the bell curve of opinion on climate change.  I hope that the shift is not precipitated by something serious.
2. OBSERVATION: in Korea, in my hotel room, I spent a couple of hours watching the Chinese export version MTV.  The way things are set up in China everything is "official," even while its pretending to be cool, so the music selection can be assumed to have passed ideological review.  The mix was international: Chinese, Japanese, Taiwan (!), Singapore, Europe, Latin America, USA.  Conspicuously absent: India, Arab, Africa.  Some themes seemed to emerge.  Europe was represented by punks with weird hair, metal in face, tatoos.  Japan was bubble gum, childish, cartoony pop.  Latin America was sexy.  USA, a small percentage of the mix, was represented by stereotypical slutty black female hip hop, specifically whatever pseudo-porno thing Beyonce was doing at that moment.  In other words, everything non-Chinese was a little bit weird.  But the Chinese stuff was soulful, tuneful, aware, responsible, chaste, brave, true, beautiful, etc.  All in all it was quite obnoxiously racist and nationalist, mitigated for me only by the fact that I noticed it.  But I think probably most people wouldn't have, and I think that more about your average Chinese youth watching the PC (from the Chinese CP standpoint) swill.  My only hope is that the "average" Chinese youth is as alienated as the average American youth, and doesn't believe whatever it is they're told to believe.  But I suspect they're more conformist there than here.  If I am correct it is a problem for humans everywhere.
3. IRAN RETREAD: I've been through these points before.  1. In Shi'i practice it is considered OK to lie in defense of the faith.  2. Russia and Iran have an iceberg style relationship.  Most of it is hidden from view.  It is very strong.  Because of this we can't "do" anything about Iran unless we first do something about Russia.  As can be obviously seen, we have very little leverage with Russia.  If you see Russia, for its own reasons, ditch Iran in public that will probably be a prelude to some kind of move against Iran.  If not, all that will happen will be yelling and screaming.  3. I don't think they are interested in tangling with Israel with the nukes that they will probably get.  In fact, I think they have something very back channel going with Israel.  Their big enemy is the extremist Sunni Arabs.  The Shi'i bomb is to balance Pakistan.  They are actually on our side in the "war on terror."  4. They are far better poker players than our gang.

10/1/2005
TIPPING POINTS
    Those of you who have been in the habit of reading the opinionation presented (for entertainment purposes only (-:) in this spot will have noted, if I may be permitted a prideful self-characterization, something of a lack of classifiable orthodoxy, eh?  Equal opportunity disdainer.  If there is an appearance of statistical bias in targeting it is because certain categories of thinkers are more damagingly active at one time or another than others.  I, being only slightly more interested than my fellow sentient beings in things other than what is exactly in front of my knows (or what I have chosen to put there as a manufactored substitute for reality that I might be pleased to label "the Truth")...
    Lost my train of thought...
    30 odd years ago (I seem today to be tripping over double entendres with every other metaphorical step) I wrote a song that started "What else have we forgotten now?"  That phrase seems to have become one of the operational foundations of the way I do things.  That's what people go to engineering school for, right?  But in order to get anything at all done we have to draw a line around the project and tell ourselves that it is this, not that.  If we didn't we wouldn't be able to "get anything done."  This packetization of effort is evidently built into the structure of the physical universe, and it is certainly operative at the most basic biological level.  Our nutritional needs are satisfied episodically rather than continuously, and so is everything else.  Our "awareness," if I may employ such a prideful term to describe what we bipedal vertebrates do internally as we interact with our environment, is an exclusionary and dialectical process.  We do or consider "this" to the exclusion and instead of "that."  Our quixotic longing for and, in some cases, active search for "continuity" and "consistency" is permanently thwarted by the requirements of reality, which requires us to comprehensively ignore everything else so we can do what we're doing.
    Where was I going with this?
    Well, obviously, then, if our awareness can be drawn by "evildoers" or others with some point to prove, the machinery of purpose can be directed to ends other than those dictated by our autonomous needs, desires, or "decisions."  That may be, and very often is, something that any of us may have forgotten now.
    Of more interest to "me" though, is the concept of tipping point.  At a certain stage of a process the thing reaches a peak of some sort.  After that peak its all down hill, so to speak.  The tipping point is obvious in the case of fresh food.  It is less obvious in the case of political activity.  It is, evidently, pretty hard to see in geophysical processes or in sociological contexts.
    The general principle in politics is the phenomenon of "running out of steam."  The motivating slogans of yesterday, still in use, no longer make sense, and efforts expended as before yield diminishing returns and begin to seem silly.  They don't stop happening for some time, but eventually people move on, one way or another.
    In archeology one finds numerous examples of cities utterly abandoned.  In some cases another city developed nearby.  Pushkalavati was abandoned and now we have Peshawar about 50 kilometers away, serving the same entrepotial purpose.  Other areas were completely abandoned - Ur, Teotihuacan.  People just couldn't make it there anymore and they left.
    So what else have we forgotten?  I find myself increasingly concerned with the extreme fragility of the technological house of cards we have