penny for your wroughts

a penny for your wroughts.*

gold just went through 1100. mmm.

according to some, a penny is the smallest unit of currency in circulation. it’s a working definition. it also provokes some thought on the subject of money.

what is money ? the text book answer is a medium of exchange. I don’t agree with this as anything can be and is used as a medium of exchange. even a hot potato..

I like to think of money as a store of value. or energy .. frozen prana/chi. but its an idea that should be taken with a grain of well.. not just salt. (a grain of something more yellowish.)

take the Australian case for example.. it is the sixth most traded currency. stable economy. integrated with growing economies.. commodities in abundance. but… look more closely.

the aussi dollar was actually created out of the Australian pound which was a satellite of the british pound sterling. in 1966 the aussi was worth 980 milligrams of gold.

so what was a pound sterling? it’s a story but get a fix on it and you will never look at an aussi or any other dollar again in the same way..

a pound sterling.. pound refers to troy pound. troy is from troyes* a city about 150 kms south of paris …. is 373 odd grams. 12 troy ounces in a pound. (31 odd grams in a troy ounce.) (the norman kings who ruled england from 1066 were French remember?)

sterling is a standard of silver alloy .. 92.5% silver no less. (the rest is usually copper) alloying metals toughens them .. pure silver .. or silver 999 (ie 99.9%) is almost as soft as gold. everyone knows it takes a good shine.. is malleable and durable.. it is a noble metal.

the troy pound is obsolete now but the ounce isn’t though it looks to be on the way out and metric in.

the troy or genuine once of silver was distinct from the avoirdupois weight of the coin which included the weight of the alloy. (I think is the distinction) I think the pois is poids French for weight.)

so a pound sterling is 373 grams of 92.5% pure silver. (925). that isn’t so hard. you can get that much ag. on the market for around 250 bucks. (though I think you get kilo bars these days if you get anything. silver coins are called junk silver—just don’t tell M.me Maria Theresa.. hehehe.)

now what comes as a shock (and this is the point of the blog today) is that there are 240 pennies in a pound. making a penny 1.555 grams of sliver.(pennyweight) .. now as I look at the screen a gram of silver is 0.61 australian dollars… 61 cents. -> 1.555 is 94.855 cents.. say 95 cents.. allright lets say 100.. but wait! math tells me that an aussi dollar is worth a penny.. right.. .

the aussi is worth a penny.

so.. work it out for yourself if you don’t believe me.

its what they call inflation. which is theft by any other name.

lets not mince words. (ie repeat lies)

lets put it another way.. in 1966 when the aussi was created out of the pound, it was worth more than a greenback, and bought almost a gram of gold.. 980 milligrams.

at the time this blog was written , (nov 9 2009) the aussi buys 0.026 of a gram of the yellow metal.

speaks for itself rather .. don’t you agree?

one draws what conclusions one is capable of. but if this comes as a surprise then I figure that you haint seen nuffen hyet.

when you think of the rhetoric of all the lying, faceless politicians who over the years (im talking centuries) have debased the currency to where it is today it makes me realize why the world is the place it is. when people legitimize thieves by electing them to office.. willingly. with such enthusiasm.. or all the dictators propped up by their thugs who demand the submission of simple people ---usually hard working, good people.. in the form of tax and the laws they make..... in addition to what they theive. with inflation.

well.. I wonder if the saints and sages don’t collectively roll in their graves, throw up their hands, and groan for the time they wasted on humanity.

000

*wrought is an archaic past participle of "to work" the verb. in australian slang a rort or wrought is a scam .. usually a political scam.

** people say it is not related to the city of troy made famous by homer.. but I wonder.. the pound is a roman measure of weight .. and if you know your vergil, you will recall that rome looked to troy as its origen.. the source of its legitimacy. I suspect that is why troyes was chosen as eponymous. it is an otherwise unimportant French town.

the portrait on the coin is william the conquerer from 1071.

right. .thats enough.. any more will be hard work.

fu.

...

ayn rand zen and tao.

atlas shrugged ...then and now..

i read some ayn rand the past couple of weeks... atlas shrugged.

i didn’t know she was from a Russian family… ended up in the usa in 1926 at 21 years. started writing for hollywood. cecil b.demille. (great director)

she started writing atlas shrugged at about the time of the end of the war.. ’46 and it came out in the late 50s.. it’s a bit dated in some ways.. everyone .. even the hero smokes cigarettes.. (yuck)

the dollar sign is said to come from the initials of the united states.. but that is really questionable.. ( it was in use before the formation of the usa. .. see wiki where it is suggested that it is an abbreviation of ‘peso’)

in other ways.. (almost all) it isn't dated at all.. au contraire.

atlas shrugged is a good read. long. huge. its about the crumbling of the usa. under the weight of an undefined emotianalism/hysteria that took hold and strangled the thinking people who went on strike rather than submit to it... and refused to use their minds for the society that was destroying them. with the result that society collapsed. the lights went out in new york.. the book was originally called ‘the strike’.

i think it is about what is happening now. or over the past 30 odd years. is it just a nasty little suspicion that informs me that it has been censored for being subversive..? it would come alive on screen though no movie/mini-series has been made despite the best attempts…..

if what she has written is to be described in any way as prophetic then it wont be long till new york is in darkness. though it is not prophetic (it has plenty to say about the other kind of profit....)--- in fact it basically discredits prophecy …( it is somewhere around here that the line between reason and prophecy lies…) it’s by a very talented lady who loved America and wished to warn her fellows of the real nature of certain people who abandon reason in the name of some social ideal or other… as she had seen happen in Russia in the early 20’s …..

though as it turns out…the real betrayers of the usa were / are the bankers on wall st in cahoots with the white house rather than the entrepreneurs in collaboration with the bureau (dagny up till the final moment) as depicted in atlas shrugged.

as I understand it… a country/society runs on 1. its entrepreneurs.. 2.. its bankers (capital) and 3.. its workers. (all three equally important.) ayn rand stresses the importance of its entrepeneurs.. its heroic figures such as atlas the titan who held up the sky.

i’d say the book is more about Prometheus than atlas. the spark of mind. but heavens above.... she wrote it.. she names it what she wants… hehehe.

atlas shrugged is about morality.. it is about virtue.. money.. happiness. ---- enlightened self- interest is what it is termed today (though I didn’t find the expression in atlas shrugged.)

it defines what is meant by these things….

she calls the philosophy objectivism.. it is an Aristotelian view applied to modernity. but .. these things are fluid..

morality if it is true has the purpose of leading to happiness

happiness is a measure of a man’s self esteem.

there is nothing higher than reason..

it is really good stuff. it is real philosophy.. this is why aristotle is great. its neo- aristotelianism.

well.. I happen to think it’s a great book. ( at the risk of being branded as a neo-liberal or worse which I certainly am not..!) and despite it being 50 years old is well worth the time.. it was the first time I had read it.. though I read the fountainhead (an earlier work by rand) as a teenager and can recall being very impressed though subsequently disillusioned by the ideas that didn’t seem to work. so I quit Aristotelian thought and went to the academy. then I quit that and began to learn.

this is what I learned :-

according to the perennial philosophy, there are spheres higher than the mind though they in no way contradict pure reason. (if there is an apparent contradiction.. check your premises…… J ) the sphere of buddhi (or the sphere of nirvana for that matter.)…. for example are spheres more subtle than reason. it is of course beyond mind and can only be approached by the mental apparatus. not engaged.

reason (and the mind) is not an obstacle to buddhi but the way there.*

of course abandoning reason for any less cause is a regression into emotionalism and will meet with pain sooner or later like the unregenerates in atlas shrugged taking everyone down with them.. transcending reason is another matter.

reason.. the word in English is from (anglo)French raison from latin rationum. from ratus.. the past participle of reri.. to reckon.. think.. (nothing to do with rats)

age of reason was the title of tom pains book of 1794.

it’s a latin word.. the greek would be logos. but it is not an exact translation. not at all .

atlas shrugged is the unhappy story of what can develop when idealism that is not informed by buddhi takes hold of reason.... ..its warning was basically heeded in terms of communism though in the final analysis the warning of a false morality/idealism has been totally ignored.

john galt rocks..

*religious people ( & bhakti yogis.) say that through faith one can achieve the leap from feeling to buddhic consciousness. it is an acknowledged path to enlightenment though not the way for me.

fu.