Florida State Seminoles

[AlabamAlum]

Vidal was the left's WF Buckley....they were so alike that they almost fist-fought on national TV.

Vidal called Buckley a Nazi and Buckley called Vidal a queer and threatened to hit him. Great TV.

[AlabamAlum]

Oh, and Buckley sued Vidal and Esquire twice for libel over an essay by Vidal and Vidal sued Buckley (which was dismissed). Esquire/Vidal settled both of Buckley's suits.

When WF Buckley died, Vidal was asked his thoughts. Said something along the lines of, Hell will be livelier now, because Buckley will be entertaining in death all those he he served while he was alive' - a probable reference to his earlier Hitler comment.

We need more hate like this to spice things up between the left and right.

[eCat]

from what little I heard he was a mix of libertarian and progressive tax supporter.

[hedge]

Vidal was the left's WF Buckley....they were so alike that they almost fist-fought on national TV.

Vidal called Buckley a Nazi and Buckley called Vidal a queer and threatened to hit him. Great TV.

I believe this was broadcast on national TV, perhaps as an adjunct to one of the national conventions...

[youtube]nYymnxoQnf8[/youtube]

[hedge]

More:

http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/debates.html

[hedge]

Interesting, this is a quote from a piece by Vidal on the death of Buckley, references some of the previous conversation about Romney talking about fighting Iran:

"“We gotta fight ‘em over there or we’re gonna have to fight ‘em over here.” This absurdity has been pronounced by every Republican seeking high office."

Mostly, though, it's a slam of the news media and, of course, Buckley himself...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200 ... _the_dead/

[Bklyn]

http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/feat ... ID=1725808

From an Evansville strip mall, Bernard von NotHaus ran the most successful alternative currency in the country. Then the FBI raided his headquarters, arrested him, and seized eight tons of gold and silver backing the notes. But even as he awaits sentencing, the $65 million question remains: Was it really counterfeiting?

Living on Oahu in absolute poverty and happiness, he and his girlfriend, Telle, built a rustic little cabin together. They partied on the beach with the trust-fund crowd, smoked pot with the right people. Telle bore him two sons, Random and Extra. (When asked about the unusual names, NotHaus offers only that “they’re unusual boys.”) And then on Sept. 11, 1974—he has no problem remembering the date—NotHaus had an experience that he says defined the rest of his life. A spiritual visitation. A voice invoking him to spread the word about gold. An “epiphany.”

“It ebbed and flowed over a period of about two weeks,” he remembers at the Malibu house, his eyes welling with tears. “And it was wonderful. I had no background in economics. Come to think of it, I still don’t—it’s dry, boring. Money is cool. Anyway, at the end of it, I knew I had to write this economic research paper.”

NotHaus knows how delirious that sounds. “You can make fun of it if you like,” he says. “But there are religions where God comes to you on a little wafer. They had some good people selling that one. Imagine marketing a crucifixion as a beautiful experience. Give me a naked woman and a joint.”

[eCat]

not surprising to anyone, Ron Paul came out in support of this guy years ago

[hedge]

I suspect that poster Wah (WahTuFool? something like that...) knows everything about this guy. I had some good debates with Wah about the gold standard. I still don't understand how gold "backs" anything. What intrinsic value does gold have? And why? Because there's only a limited amount? But that's not true, look at the gold rushes in California and Alaska. All of a sudden, there's a shitload more gold in the world. Does its value go down because of that? It just seems random to me that anybody would think that gold had an unchanging, stable "value" any more than anything else. People value it, that's the only reason it has value. People value alot of things, but we don't try to make those things the basis of our monetary system...

[hedge]

What if they discovered a shitload of gold under the ocean or in Mongolia or on the moon (or anywhere), billions of tons of it, so that it was more common than copper or lead or granite. What "value" would money have based on gold then? Would we have to scramble around and find some other "rare" metal (or whatever) to base our currency on?

[eCat]

actually I started looking into "why" awhile back because I was asking those same questions

Certainly the rarity of gold puts its value up but also what properties gold has.

Gold doesn't deteriorate - gold that egyptians used thousands of years ago is still as malleable and structurally solid today as it was when they found it. Thousands of years from now that will not change even when all the steel buildings around us have fallen down. Its properties for electricity and coating makes it the most valuable base metal available as well. Gold that sits in the bottom of the sea, encrusted in rocks in a mountain or floating in an asteroid in space will still look and perform exactly as the moment it was created no matter how long.

So gold has a permanence similar to jewels, but has the ability to be easily shaped, weighted or metered, formed and used for currency as well as the standards for industrial uses and adornment. Then after its initial use is no longer desired, it can be reshaped and used again.

So the idea that it is backed by gold is the idea that there is a permanence to the currency because gold has value that will not diminish due to its properties. Of course finding billions of pounds of it certainly would wreak havoc on its $$$ value, but not the intrinsic value that gold has to mankind

[eCat]

that search led me to another interesting discovery.

The Sumatrans are considered to be the first modern civilization. They were the first to not only stop being a nomadic people and become stationary, but took it to the next level by creating a grid of a city designed to support living and trade. They also are credited with being the first civilization to create a system of record keeping and documentation - written on clay tablets. Thousands of these tablets were found many years ago and after being transcribed they essentially are some of the major stories we heard as kids in sunday school

However their version varies slightly according to the man mainly responsible for transcribing the tablets. If you are willing to set aside the "awww...horseshit" factor for a moment, they actually have a very plausible explanation for the beliefs of how Christianity came into being. The stories tell of external beings coming to this planet to harvest it for gold and taking whatever form of upright mammal there was at the time and creating "man" (hence - god formed man in his own image) to be a worker in the mines to bring up the gold. The Sumatrans call the first being Adamula (Adam and Eve). The Hebrew word for slave is Eved. They continued to genetically alter, for lack of better wording , creating men and women - our evolution to become more intelligent. At some point, the assumption is they harvested the gold they needed and left, leaving behind the beginning of intelligent life to inhabit this planet.
min
Anyways, once you hear these stories, assuming the guy who transcribed them just didn't make this shit up like the Mormons, its pretty much lays out the basis for the Old Testament in the bible. Also, there are books to the old and new testament that didn't make it into the bible. I suspect that is also where the factor I mentioned above comes into play.

I can imagine two guys sitting around putting together the King James version of the bible and one guys says "hey, this book says god sent aliens to mine for gold and they made slaves out of the inhabitants here" and the other guys says "awwww....horseshit"...we're not putting that in!

[hedge]

What about aluminum? Copper? Tin? Obviously silver. Or any other elemental metal? As far as industrial uses, that value has only been discovered relatively recently and is an altogether different form and concept of value than the borderline (and maybe not even borderline) quasi-mystical "value" that the Egyptians (etc) assigned to it. It is this latter "value", which some people still hold with, that I find mystifying. Yeah, it's shiny and "rare" (I guess) and women like jewelry made with it, but it that enough to base all human currency on? I can accept that back in the day (or the Egyptians, the Greeks, the middle ages and maybe even up to the old west) that it was prudent to have some kind of solid material that supposedly had intrinsic value on which to mint money, but in a day and age of instant worldwide communication and durable paper money, I don't understand the cryptical obsession with gold...

[hedge]

"I can imagine two guys sitting around putting together the King James version of the bible and one guys says "hey, this book says god sent aliens to mine for gold here and they made slaves out of the inhabitants here" and the other guys says "awwww....horseshit"...we're not putting that in!"

They did put it in, briefly (Genesis 6:4, not only my favorite passage in the bible, but the only one I find remotely interesting):

New Living Translation (©2007)
In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.

English Standard Version (©2001)
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

(More translations here, but basically the same idea: http://bible.cc/genesis/6-4.htm. I'm pretty sure I'm part Nephilim)....

[eCat]

I had forgot about that.

As you can imagine we never covered in my theology classes.

[hedge]

There's some good commentary on that passage at the link, after the various translations...

[aTm]

I still don't understand how gold "backs" anything. What intrinsic value does gold have? And why? Because there's only a limited amount? But that's not true, look at the gold rushes in California and Alaska. All of a sudden, there's a shitload more gold in the world. Does its value go down because of that? It just seems random to me that anybody would think that gold had an unchanging, stable "value" any more than anything else. People value it, that's the only reason it has value. People value alot of things, but we don't try to make those things the basis of our monetary system...

There were extremely compelling reasons for gold (and silver, and copper) usage as currency a long time ago, and e points some of them out. Gold would actually be a hindrance now, because it actually is easily and cheaply counterfeited (see your local department store jewelry department). Of course, the solution was to just have hard to counterfeit money backed by gold, since getting rid of what everyone had confidence in prior to that probably would have shaken things up. then one day you realize that people actually have more confidence in US dollars than fucking gold bars in fort knox that may or may not exist anyway, and you take control of your own monetary destiny. There's no real compelling modern reason for gold backed currency other than "thats how it always worked" back in the dark ages when people didnt have anything else.

[eCat]

its really not that hard to merge the two. Christians readily accept that god is not of this earth, but if you say he is an alien they shit all over themselves.

[aTm]

If money has to be tied to something, perhaps it should be backed by a certain amount of light, sweet crude.

[eCat]

currency in any form is just a placeholder for bartering.

Whether the dollar is backed by gold or not, its all based on the idea that if I have a gold piece in my pocket, someone will see value in that worth some level of what they have (or have access to). Instead of having to negotiate with a person for work or hope that I have something they need that I can use in trade, the monetary note replaces that item as a standard we all agree upon (being a placeholder for some level of worth)

When you talk about hyperinflation is where I start losing connectivity. I guess the idea is that everyone used to have just a few dollars so if I had a loaf of bread, depending on demand, if one guy showed up with 2 dollars while everyone else just had one, then I would sell to the guy with two dollars, and hyperinflation somehow means that more people now have 2 dollars than before so now I'm looking to sell my loaf of bread to the guy with 3 dollars.

With a gold backed dollar, we can't print more gold, so the idea that everyone would suddenly have 2 dollars by the banks flooding the population with dollars isn't possible.

Where I lose connectivity is how do the people get the fiat money in the first place? We all have to do *something* in return for money. I know there is an answer I just can't easily wrap my head around it. It just seems like there is this idea that our government is printing money and then throwing it out into the street.