One year ago today: February 11, 2015, why-would-I-do-that?
Five years ago today: February 11, 2011, bulldozing the beach.
Nine years ago today: February 11, 2007, did I say “akimbo”?
Random years ago today: February 11, 2013, it’s a Chinese copy.
MORNING, NOON, & NIGHT
I don’t recall the significance, but this is a photo of the last flour delivery at the old bakery. The new people have tons of product for sale, yet still don’t seem to have a grip on what they are doing. Confusion reigns supreme. And the same troops of con artists are making the rounds. The AT&T “associates”, the freelancing inspectors, and even the old Jewish guy who wants to know if the business has a rabbi. That’s the one who says all others exist on this world only to serve Jews. That guy.
It was a modest day trip to Lakeland last Tuesday and I still have jet lag. Yet I did not cross a time zone. So today is another recuperation stay-at-home and drink tea day. Maybe watch the news on-line. I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep since Tuesday, so don’t expect any breakthroughs or revelations. I did check the postings from my old “university” dating club. Yep, same people. I did like a few of them, but overall, far too picky for what they offer in return.
Nor had any of the ads been updated since years ago, including the ages. Written to formula, especially the “outdoors” women who have blatantly learned to write what they believe “real men” want to hear. What? Oh, I’m not a real man over there, you see. I don’t own a canoe, or backpack much, or loiter around campsites. Nor am I interested in “investigating everything life has to offer” and in fact have some very sensible restrictions on that. I just know, for instance, that
One gal (Canadian) said she was “sapiosexual”, so I took the quiz. I scored in the high “average” range. Might I ad that whereas intelligence in a woman is not all that important to me, I have a morbid revulsion of all stupid people. There is no excuse to be uneducated in the United States of America. Like most men, I only put up with certain stupid women for certain reasons at certain times.
I utilized this frosty morning to go over what happened last Tuesday. Plainly the guy was a shifty operator, but we suspected as much. The revelation was something more serious, that he had lied to us on a scale unknown to the regular house-buyer. He knew what he was doing and he got away with it because it was not worth our while to go over there and kick his ass. Since we know we can’t stop crooks from lying, we’ve decided to change the way we ask questions so that each lie must be repeated several times. I figure that’s the limit most of them will go before realizing what is going on.
Be reminded that we are meeting these shifty operators because we are bottom-feeding ourselves. We want a place that we can crash cheap while we scout the area for better deals. So many people who try to upsell us don’t grasp that simple concept. A fishing shack is fine for now, but it has to have water and power. We’re city slickers, not mountain men revenants. But not just any place will do. JZ and I are the type that naturally take to fixing things and of course we’d like something that can be flipped. Yeah, we want a flip, not a flop.
eHow is really gone full retard. I looked up how to repair a heater element. If you want nonsense replies, search that criteria. But once more, eHow gets the boobie prize. Their instructions say it is a four-step program. Open the heater, take out the broken element, replace it with a matching new element, and close back up. Duh, does anyone know where one can buy these “matching new” elements? I mean, eHow, how exactly does one obtain a matching new element without buying another identical toaster. Double-duh.
The feature that follows, the Wiki photo of the day, may have a limited run (in this blog). Initially there appears to be a huge supply of photos. Until you begin to realize the photographer is an Australian entomologist into the smelliest of mushrooms and English beach towns.
Granny Smith
Got my cup of tea, let’s talk about silver. I don’t follow any formulas except buy it and hold it until the price goes up. If you had done that a few years ago, you’d still be holding it. I do think about what’s going on and that is my topic today. One part that amuses me is the people who say the dropping price for silver has been due to declining industrial demand. But I’m of the opinion that industrialists don’t leave their raw material sources up to the whim of the daily markets. I’m saying it would take far longer than a few years for that part of the spectrum to make any big difference.
On the other hand, the artificially low prices may indeed have caused significant problems in silver production, but not as much as you’d think. You see, most silver is a byproduct, so it gets mined at around the same rate no matter what the price. Hence silver production cannot real go up or down too much over a five or ten year period. That’s silver production, not prices. So, why is silver inching upwards the past few days? If it breaks $16, it will break $20.
I say it is due to electronic purchasing. Almost nobody believes the big companies have any real silver, they are trading paper certificates. Like Fort Knox, the vault has been empty for most of our lives. But, with currencies wavering, there has to be a rush for the real metal. If the banks don’t have it and suddenly their customers want it, the price will bolt. When the big banks have to start buying on the open market, that’s where you get the pundits saying $500 per ounce. The increased demand, I say, won’t come from industry, but from banks forced to settle their accounts.
That is, the next run on silver will not be based on industrial demand, but from institutions that say they have silver but really don't.
One positive of cold weather is clear skies. I did not go to the beach to take readings, but I did the calculations on Venus (using the angulator, not the sextant). Which got me to thinking about GMT or Greenwich Mean Time. What is mean about it? Does anyone know? I do! I do! It’s got to do with time zones. The Earth is divided into 25 time zones, but obviously the sun does not stop for an hour directly over each segment. The possible exception could be the one Mr. Trump is visiting.
The point is, the hour is averaged to the same time over the entire zone. And everyone knows that “mean” is the mathematic term for this type of measurement. Well, at least everyone who has any business reading a blog like this, Ken.
Note that the time lags the meridian passage (eastern demarcation) of each zone. That is, once the sum passes Greenwich, for the next hour it could be anywhere west of Greenwich. Further note that the day in Greenwich begins at noon of the solar day. True dawn is around the world on the International Date Line.
ADDENDUM
Colleges and universities should be prevented from accepting credit cards payments from students. I can already hear the squeals of protest on that one. Tell you what, hear me out. I lived through the transition with credit usage and saw the changes. Oddly, most of my peers did not see what was happened, or in the alternative, blindly accepted change with progress. When I first saw credit cards in proliferation, it was on campus. And I appeared to be the only one who did not have a card.
Before credit cards, generally most people took out a bank loan. The cost of borrowing was such that they had to carefully use the proceeds to purchase some kind of asset to help pay back the loan. That’s an important concept. As for the banks, they know the student loan led to a car loan, then a mortgage and finally life insurance and investment products. All you had to do was catch them young and train them.
But when the interest rates are artificially low, people are not wise with what they buy. Why bother? Live for the moment, you ain’t getting any younger. And soon you have an economy based on credit rather than cash. I’ve seen people play for a package of chewing gum with a credit card. And don’t argue we still use cash. If credit was stopped, the economy would collapse instantly. The banksters know exactly what they are doing. Don’t look at me. I’ve never owned a credit card.
Last Laugh
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