Tuesday, November 29, 2011

If I had a Nickel...

Researchers at HRL Laboratories, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Irvine have created what they say is the lowest-density material, a lattice of hollow tubes of the metal nickel.

Its volume is 99.99 percent air, and its density is 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter--not including the air in or between its tubes. That density is less than one-thousandth that of water...

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," said Tobias Schaedler, the HRL researcher who's lead author of the paper...




After a 50 percent compression, it rebounds to 98 percent its original height...

The lattice is constructed through several steps... beams of ultraviolet light shine through a holes in a mask into a reservoir containing a resin that forms polymer fibers when the light hits it. 

The fibers follow the path the light takes, and using multiple beams creates multiple interconnected fibers.

Next, the rest of the resin is washed away, the polymer fibers are coated with a very thin layer of nickel, and the polymer fibers are then dissolved, leaving only the metal lattice.

Source.

Non Nuclear Time

The principle of operation of an atomic clock is not based on nuclear physics, but rather on atomic physics and using the microwave signal that electrons in atoms emit when they change energy levels...Currently, the most accurate atomic clocks first cool the atoms to near absolute zero temperature by slowing them with lasers and probing them in atomic fountains in a microwave-filled cavity. An example of this is the NIST-F1 atomic clock, the U.S. national primary time and frequency standard.





The accuracy of an atomic clock depends on the temperature of the sample atoms—colder atoms move much more slowly, allowing longer probe times, as well as having reduced collision rates—and on the frequency and intrinsic width of the electronic transition. Higher frequencies and narrow lines increase the precision.




...UTC is derived from TAI, but approximately synchronized, by using leap seconds, to UT1, which is based on actual rotations of the earth with respect to the solar time.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Why Hello!

Do I have a crazy popular inbound link? The traffic spike the last few hours is....cool?



Anyone willing to share what dragged you in the door, please post a comment.


Monday, November 21, 2011

Colloidal Commerce



Patrick MontesDeOca: Mr. Sprott, can you please give us the current situation in terms of price in the silver market? What you might see in the short term as it unfolds in the next six to twelve months, what is your forecast?
Eric Sprott: Sure, I take a longer term view than six to twelve months. I’ve been involved in silver for about probably almost ten years now and of course the price of silver has done wonderful things in that time period even though recently it has come under a lot of pressure. My thesis being that even though the last decade has been the decade of gold, this decade will be the decade of silver. I can only imagine that it will go back to its historical relationship to gold of 16 to one in term of price. And as an example of 16 to one, with gold at $1600 it would suggest that the silver price should be $100. And most of the data that I look at certainly as it pertains to day to day markets, and I don’t mean the Comex, we're not talking about that, we're talking about the physical market for silver, and we have data points that suggest that buying for silver by the public is almost on a ratio of dollars of silver being bought to dollars of gold being bought. We can see that the U.S. Mint’s data that comes out every month, and pretty much every day, so for example, the amount of silver coins being bought through the mint’s service - they sold 50 times the number of silver to gold coins. This month it’s actually running around 70 to one. This really means people are putting as many dollars into silver as they are into gold. But there is nowhere near the amount of silver to invest in as there is gold.

Source.

You can expect to pay anywhere from the value of the silver up to about a 5% premium to buy "junk silver" coins.  There is a lot of silver sold on ebay and you should familiarize yourself with the categories under the US coins category.  Often there are buys there for NO PREMIUM over the spot silver price in my experience. I just bought 7 rolls of dimes ($35 face value) yesterday for $359.  This is a multiple of 10.26 times face which if you divide by 0.715 tells you that I paid $14.35 per ounce of silver which was 14% below the silver value.
Keep an eye out for deals like this on ebay and buy them when you can...
Silver Eagles
American SIlver Eagle one ounce
Another widely used form of silver is the $1 Silver Eagle which is a very beautiful coin that contains exactly 1 Troy ounce of silver.  They typically sell for a premium over the silver price of 10% or so.
I would purchase these if you can find a good price but try to avoid paying a large premium.  Junk silver is a better bet for most survival/barter situations because it comes in smaller denominations.  These silver eagles would end up being more like your $50 or $100 bills that are used for large purchases.

Source.


How beneficial is a fully recognizable money to the economy? This paper answers this
question for the commodity money system. We build a model in which money is made of
precious metal coins, yet its intrinsic quality is imperfectly recognizable by sellers. Based on
historical evidence, we allow buyers to resort to a fixed cost coin certification technology.
known as coin assaying.that fully reveals the quality of coins to sellers. We show that
the two inefficiencies associated with imperfectly recognizable commodity money. lower
quantities traded or lower trading frequencies. are reduced thanks to this technology. We
characterize pure and mixed strategy equilibria in which agents certify their coins, and show
that certification coexists as a pure strategy equilibrium with the low-quantity inefficiency
but does not coexist with the low-frequency inefficiency. The coin inspection technology is
welfare improving when it removes the low-frequency inefficiency, but welfare deteriorating
when it removes the low-quantity inefficiency.



Source.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Measured Commerce


This one is made of Mahogany with a hand rubbed matte finish. These large pieces can be made to run for up to 72  hours or more perhaps even 1 week. Different woods can be use but may affect cost. Over all size with base is 41” tall and 42” wide with a depth of 6.5”. Can be set on a wall mounted shelf or on the floor. A fire place mantle would be an ideal place to set it as well.   Please call for pricing and further details on shipping on these very large glasses.  


--

...the time has come to consider the clock's antithesis, the hourglass. First, how old do you suppose the hourglass is: two thousand years? Four thousand years? Engineer/historian Robert Balmer goes looking for the answer. He finds no evidence of the hourglass until the early 1300s. Oddly enough, it came into use at almost exactly the same time as the first mechanical clocks. The hourglass is only about seven hundred years old.
Of course the hourglass is kin to the water clock. Both depend on a medium flowing out through a hole. But the hourglass has its own technological personality. On the positive side, it's far simpler and cheaper than the mechanical clock or the earlier water clock. Resetting it after it runs down couldn't be simpler. It doesn't vanish the way a graduated candle does. Its accuracy isn't bad once you solve some problems. You can't load just any old sand into it. You have to find a free-flowing material that doesn't absorb water on a humid day and clog up.
On the downside, an hourglass is a short-term timepiece. The very name says it's hard to make one that runs more than an hour. The other big drawback is that it can't be calibrated. Sand moves downward in jerks. The edge of the sand is uneven. If you mark five-minute intervals on the glass, the sand will hit those marks differently each time you turn it. An hourglass shows only when an hour is up.
Hourglasses found their place in setting off blocks of time. The time between canonical hours in a monastery, or between watches on shipboard. They ran neither long enough nor accurately enough to be of much use in marine navigation. They were a poor person's timepiece -- a kind of clock for everyman.
Both the mechanical clock and the hourglass found powerful symbolic roles during the Renaissance. The complex mechanical clock with its rotary gears became a metaphor for the heavenly spheres or for the wheel of fortune. But the hourglass, whose sands run out, was a thing of this base earth. It became a metaphor for the running-out-of-sands we all inevitably face. It became, and it remains, a universal symbol of death.


Emphasis mine.


Source.


Friday, November 11, 2011

Aurum Paradoxium

The principal source of tellurium is from anode sludges produced during the electrolytic refining of blister copper. It is a component of dusts from blast furnace refining of lead. Treatment of 500 tons of copper ore typically yields one pound (0.45 kg) of tellurium.



Tellurium is used in cadmium telluride solar panels...lab tests using this material achieved some of the highest efficiencies for solar cell electric power generation. Massive commercial production of CdTe solar panels by First Solar in recent years has significantly increased tellurium demand...If some of the cadmium in CdTe is replaced by zinc then (Cd,Zn)Te is formed which is used in solid-state X-ray detectors.

Source.

Tellurium was discovered in a certain gold ore from Transsylvania. This ore, known as "Faczebajer weißes blättriges Golderz" (white leafy gold ore from Faczebaja) or "antimonalischer Goldkies" (antimonic gold pyrite), was according to professor Anton von Rupprecht "Spießglaskönig" (argent molybdique), containing native Antimony (note). The same ore was analyzed by by Franz Joseph Müller Freiherr von Reichenstein (1742-1825) (note), chief inspector of mines in Transsylvania, he concluded in 1782 that the ore did not contain Antimony, but that it was Bismuth sulphide (note).



A year later he reported that this was erroneous and that the ore contained mainly gold and an unknown metal very similar to Antimony (note). However, Müller was not able to identify this metal. He gave it the name aurum paradoxium or metallum problematicum because it did not show the properties predicted for the Antimony he was expecting.

Source.

The yearend price for tellurium in 2000 was $14 per pound.

Source.

Tellurium has the same abundance as platinum and is $400 a kilo.



Friday, November 4, 2011

All that is under Heaven





The famous alchemists Michael Sendivogius, Botticher, and Paykull all spent part of their lives in prison, and many men suffered death for no other crime than the study of alchemy. If a great number of these seekers were impelled by ambition or if there were among them charlatans and impostors, it does not diminish the fact that a great many of them cherished a genuine ideal of moral development. In any event, their work in the domain of physics and chemistry formed a solid basis for the few wretched fragmentary scraps of knowledge that are called modern science and are cause for great pride to a large number of ignorant men.

Source.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

And now a word from our sponsor...

The bottom produces everything and the top prints money to buy it wholesale and then marks it up and sells it to the bottom retail...and it's up to the bottom to pay the difference between the wholesale cost and the retail price to supply the top with the yield they demand.

And if you all can't.

Then you are going to have to be fired and replaced with more productive workers.




You were fired over the past few decades and Chinese workers were hired...but now they can't even support the top supports the bottom delusion you all depend upon.

I have no idea when the real yucky mindblowing soul destroying stuff is going to begin having an impact...but as long as you have a few years of existence left...you will see the day.

As far as I can tell we are a long ways from the actual bottom where the milking operation reaches its maximum potential and the shorting method of extraction of yield from the dying USA and world system is still an effective way to make money.

If that is what turns your crank.

The bottom supplies the top.

Stocks will storm back if the bottom can support the ability for the top to cover. The bottom is the leverage the top use to increase the value of their assets.

Master what is my purpose? Your purpose is to slave till the day you die making me rich...

The top lives off the yield from the speculators.

There's two kinds...aggressive...Those that are personally involved...they are a minority...then there are the passive...they supply the agressive speculators.

The top does all the buying and selling...the bottom follows along and speculates.

The top is following a plan...the bottom is trying to figure it out.

The top must keep the bottom in the dark.

The top can see the bottom's demand.

The bottom supply the top with everything wholesale...the top then mark everything up and supply it to the bottom retail.

Eliminate the ability for banks to inflate the money supply to make up the difference between the wholesale cost and retail price...and the economy can't grow.

It's why the world basically went nowhere for centuries...it's why the primary method of travel was riding around on the back of an animal or pulled around in cart by an animal for 1000's and 1000's of years until the 20th century.

Consumers use their current income which is composed of previously created money which is debt or an asset inflated in price by previously created money which is debt as collateral backing their request for a commercial bank to create new money which is debt.

Operating expenses are composed of previously created money which is debt and profit or yield is composed of newly created debt.

Within a constantly growing or yielding system...Once the bottom reaches their maximum potential to sustain the expansion...contraction follows. The roaring 6 decades was the greatest boom in the history of the 600 year old credit system...The past 6 decades was a massive blow off.

So in order to sustain this...the bottom has to supply the power that is required to sustain perpetual blow off.

Due to the construction of the system...that is impossible.

The top is the rider and the bottom is the horse...for the past six decades the top has been whipping the bottom...demanding more yield a year...faster...faster...faster...

Until the horse became exhausted slowed and finally stopped. Now the top is basically whipping it to death.

That's Greece

Eventually it will be those higher in the hierarchy.

Eventually there will be nowhere to put what you perceive to be money to acquire a positive yield.

Unless you short sell your countrymen and country to oblivion...like those higher in the hierarchy in Greece did.

You think Obama gives a rat's ass about any of you?

They are all using insider information to short sell you all to oblivion.

They are the first class ticket holders on the Titanic...

Obama was hired to tell the clowns trapped below decks that everything is a ok and that there's plenty of lifeboats.

Obama was installed to supply hope...To buy more time...A qualitative easing.

So those higher in the hierarchy can suck the last succulent drops of power you have left.

What do you think the real purpose of the video game industry was all this time? Most teens think you just re-spawn when you die and that mowing down people with mini-guns is cool...be ...all that you can be...cannon fodder in the army.

The top has not been trying to cure the problem...just treat the symptoms...

The top is the cause and the bottom is the effect...

The top is instigating all the revolutions and war outbreaks globally...

In the end there is going to be a maelstrom of chaos...a blizzard of effects to promote as the cause of the effects so that the culprits can escape.

While the top did lead...you all gleefully followed...paid to follow...

At the end the Germans said...we were just following orders...according to the judges...that is not an excuse. So I'm sorry to say...you all are going to suffer the consequences the top or your employers hired you all to suffer.

But I'm a civilian...too bad so sad...

Rich people cause wars that they employ poor people to suffer the consequences of.

The battle against deflation is a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

The top is not the most productive. The bottom is...

until they are sucked dry.

Well the top becomes the top and maintain their position by always taking more than they give...always...it's the divine right of kings. Oh you think you gained independence from kings? nope...never did...you all just think you did...and if you think therefore you are...poof...it's magic...Hyper my teacher said I did and all the history books said I did...so I must have...

The sucked dry wreckage at the bottom cause problems...the bottom cries to the top about the effects.

The top is not going to pay the cost of dealing with the consequences at the bottom...that's what the top employs all of you to do....the top doesn't pay its credit cards...the bottom does...

The employer doesn't pay for anything...the employees do...it's what your purpose within the enterprise is. It's your purpose on Earth within the system you all are in...That's not what they tell me at church...

The bottom is already being supplied the minimum in order for the top to obtain the maximum...it's the middle that ultimately has to do with less in order for the top to obtain the power required to deal with the effects at the bottom that are causing the bottom to bawl like babies.

It's like your brains which are supposed to be capable of thinking according to rumor...have been programmed to be unable to.

Rich people are the biggest welfare cases of society...The entire bottom...billions of people globally have to slave till the day they die supporting the welfare cases at the top and the bottom...

At the extreme bottom of the global hierarchy far away from your sight...10's of 1000's are being sucked dry and dying to support your asses...

If the farmers stopped producing 1000's of times more food than they need to sustain their existence and decided to just produce enough to sustain themselves...all the welfare cases being sustained by the welfare system would die off in massive numbers.

Double digit growth rates for 30 years...hint hint.

Ten percent is a doubling every 7 years...to sustain that...it will take double the inputs the next 7 years...then 4 times...then 8 times....then 16 times...or China will implode to oblivion.

Source.