Gold Rush Redux

Gold, mesmerizing the world with its current antic flight, has, since its prehistoric discovery, had its ups and downs. This may be its highest and headiest high because of modern communication and because world trade has interwoven nearly  all countries into a single web.

Touch a portion of that web, and the world vibrates.

The Latin name for the element rocking the world is aurum, and it is accorded a place in the official list of earth elements by the abbreviation AU.

The dictionary ascribes to it two meanings: 1. Heavy yellow, metallic, highly malleable chemical element; 2. Money, wealth.

One of the heaviest elements, gold is given the atomic number 79 and has an atomic weight of about 197. It is measured by troy ounces...12 of which make one pound. For an approximate estimate of how much a troy ounce weighs, heft 20 pennies.

A quart of gold weighs 65 lbs.

Gold is mined and  it is collected in stream beds. It ranges in size from dust-like particles to one discovered in Australia that weighed 150 lbs. The monster was appropriately named "Welcome Stranger".

Gold is found in sea water. Its quantity is so small compared with the amount of sea water that exists that no feasible way to separate it has been discovered. However, it has been estimated that if a way were devised, it could yield 10 billion tons. Considerably more than exists today.


No one is sure how much gold has been produced by man but it is believed that since 1492 to the end of 1956 the world produced approximately 1,946,000,000 oz. If you could mass it all together it would make a cube the size of a school gymnasium.


More than half the world's gold (not counting gold used in jewelry,  industry, dentistry, objets d'art - and that consumed by those who buy liqueurs and cakes decorated with gold flakes, and the gold leaf that for years identified the occupants of countless shops and offices), is in the U.S. Treasury.

Russia, along with South Africa, Canada, Australia, Ghana and the United States, is one of the top gold producing nations. Yet she owns very little. West Germany is the second largest gold possessor, then France, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Japan and Britain.

The application of gold leaf is an art with roots in antiquity. Ancient Egyptians could hammer gold into leaves so thin that it took 367,000 to make a pile an inch high.

To flatten gold, it is placed between a goldbeater's skin - a tough membrane prepared from the  intestines of cattle. Gold used for this purpose is 23 carats fine. Up until a few years ago, it was possible to buy a sheet of gift wrapping paper covered with gold and costing about 25 cents. 

Hammered, one ounce of gold can almost cover 100 square feet.


For centuries man has been monkeying around with less glamorous elements in an attempt to turn them into gold. This kind of sorcery, called alchemy, appears to have been achieved. The New York Times reports that:

 "Lead can be turned into gold. In experimental physics, it has been possible to produce minute quantities of gold through particle bombardment in a particle accelerator, or 'atom smasher,' American experts confirm.

"Price is another thing. You're talking about a cost of anywhere between $1,000 and $1 million a gram - there are 30 grams to an ounce)."

Oh, well - give them time. Look how expensive TV sets used to be.

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This piece is recycled. I wrote it 32 years ago. I was reminded of it when I read a story about the current rush to revive gold panning in view of the prediction that gold is now expected by some to reach $6,000 an oz.

Best Knotted Tie on TV is Untied

I suspect Current TV will fail. I'm sorry if that's so, but it doesn't break my heart.

Current appears to have all the "left" kind of people that you would think would be sufficient for a successful result. However, there is more to baking a cake than having good ingredients. They have to be ingredients not only consonant with one another, but selected for their ability to arrive at the product that's promised.


I was disappointed that Keith was not active in the early primaries. But I was also disappointed that Current hired Cenk Uygur and then Jennifer Granholm. I think Uygur is a peripatetic lightweight, and Granholm too much like an airline hostess with the correct politics.

Now the programming department (or whomever) has Bill Press  simulcasting in the morning as well as Stephanie Miller doing the same. These are not TV shows. It requires you have real idiots like Rush Limbaugh doing this kind of stuff in order for people to watch for the same reasons they watch car wrecks and prizefights. You need foulness and filth and outrageous behavior in order to stay longer than five minutes with a show that is a click above watching spit float.

There is absolutely no cohesiveness to Current's programming and I bet that was one of the problems Keith had.

Oh, who knows. He must be difficult to get along with but I think it's because he doesn't suffer fools and his compromise gene doesn't get enough exercise.

Whatever, it's maddening because I want to see and hear him. I don't  suppose he has enough money to buy his own network, but that's probably what he needs.

Mr. Buffett. In addition to making sure Barack Obama has enough cash on hand to fight the Karl Rove machine, could you please buy Keith a radio network? Maybe there will be one going cheap over on channel 205.

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A Passing Thought

"I Just Wish My Husband Would Have an Affair" is the eye-catching headline of a story by Monique Honaman in Huffington Post this morning.

It tickled me because it is, I believe, a sentiment not foreign to many women and, perhaps, to some men.

If you are a Santorum devotee you are horrified. And if you are madly in love, still, you might also be horrified. But whether you are a hypocrite or a lucky, lucky wife or husband, you might agree with me: Monogamy is natural only to swans - and even an occasional one of those has been seen to stray.

The Chinese and the French share (in addition to excellent cuisine) an exquisite pragmatism that solves the dichotomy that exists between the biblical mandate for a sentence to hell, and human nature: concubines and mistresses.

For many, hell is life with one woman (or man).

Conversely, I am sure some of the liberated men and women have found similar hells on earth with multiple partners. Nothing is perfect.

While I hold no brief for those who desert and abandon their responsibilities, or those who cause hurt and pain and deprivation, I am equally incensed by the people who want  to moralize on every subject extant and insist their beliefs be the only beliefs with validity.

If all the sanctimonious busybodies bent on organizing the world to  their own narrow specifications would cool it, and spend their considerable bile in eating away at life's really bad stuff, how much happier we all could be.


I'm not advocating mass exodus from marriage. I am simply suggesting that we adopt a "to each his own" attitude and stop feeling compelled to castigate and humiliate and isolate all those square pegs who don't fit into round holes.

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Basta Pate de Foie Gras

 (A little Italian....a little French. My idea of international flavor.)

I gave up eating goose liver years ago when I was told that those who create it nail the feet of live geese to a board so the birds cannot move; stuff food down their throats with frequency; tie their throat closed so they cannot upchuck it; slaughter them just before their livers burst, and then feed those livers to overfed humans.

It was, as I recall, very rich fare.

Almost as rich as the surfeit of news coming from a gob-smacking variety of political scenes. 

Someone asked me why I haven't posted in several days in view of this richness of news material on offer. I explained my lack of enthusiasm for posting because :

     *  the insanity of Rush Limbaugh (new name: Rush Limpballs, thanks to the creative phraseology of a fellow screamer) who exposed himself (or, at least his perversions) on air;


     *  the materialization of a satisfying list of sponsors who have fled his filth;

     *  the strange saga of  'Sick' Santorum and his Medieval notions of Christianity;

     *  the passage of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's rape decree, perpetrated on women who wish to lawfully terminate a pregnancy;

     *  the untimely passing of Breitbart the Bad whose mind was so warped that he made little sense of his world and his maker probably took pity and returned him for a diagnostic, and maybe even a design change;

     *  the mindlessness of the goppers' candidates as they seek to sack one another with lies, innuendo and impotently devastating verbiage.....

..... have provided too rich a meal for us gluttons who enjoy winkling out mankind's perfidy for the sake of our own amusement and edification - and enthusiastically sharing it..

Oh, there is more, much, much more..... and I am reveling in all of it. I'd empty the cupboard if I could.

But there is very little point in commenting on it since it is much too tasty to require any further seasoning from me.

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Sex-ridden And Proud of It

I believe we are the most prurient nation on earth. Maybe even in history.


Yes, I know about the Kama Sutra, and all the carvings in and on  the temples of many Eastern nations. I know about (but not much) the doings of the Marquis de Sade. I know there have been bawdy houses since time began, and that there are industries devoted to producing all manner of pornographic material that members of all walks of society subscribe to. And I know what is said to be the oldest profession extant.

But the temple carvings in Cambodia, and elsewhere in the East, are not hidden behind a plain brown wrapper. And visitors to those sites don't giggle and make off-color remarks (unless they happen to be American). Those who created them and those who admire them are not ashamed and don't consider their lack of shame shameful.

However, Americans are and do.

At least those Americans of the Santorum/McDonnell ilk,  And, dear heaven, there appear to be such an antic, frantic lot of them judging by the Jimmy Swaggarts, Jim Bakkers and Ted Haggards of Evangelicalism. And we cannot forget all  those Catholic priests - and deviant Protestant pastors - that the churches' head honchos hide and protect.

They are ALL pissant hypocrites.

I don't think the most sex-involved among us - the ones who have an active and avid interest in all things sexual - should be pronounced nearly as disgusting as the prudish prigs who claim to approve of only married sex in the missionary position and/or total abstinence. These are the ones that never seem able to get their minds and tongues off the subject of other people's sexual activities for even a minute.  

I am convinced that some of the biggest skunks at the garden party are those who insist that we censor the videos of those adorable bare bottomed babies  who are often featured on programs like America's Funniest Videos. Why is it necessary to blur the unclothed cheeks of a two-year-old unless we are a country so sex-crazed that we believe such a view would send the population into a frenzy of rape and molestation.

Yes, America, we are, indeed, exceptional.

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How Now, You Cow?

Could it be there is a chastity belt in your future?

Could Rick Santorum and Virginia's Bob McDonnell be any more out of touch with this epoch?

Actually, I'm not exactly sure how long an epoch is, but nothing either of them says carries any association with anything I believe or have experienced, and I lived most of my life in both halves of the last century.

Unfortunately, those who are being born in this century are going to have a lot to deal with if the religious nuts who are, in the main, white, middle-aged males buttressed with Viagra, and who are swanning about on the political stage advising women they are just so much meat.

Are you a woman who dares to entertain the idea of ending an unwanted pregnancy? It's legal but, damn it, before you can take advantage of this right, you must submit to the governor of Virginia. Lie down, spread your legs and let some guy probe you with a wand that isn't his own.

Unbelievable!

We are being told contraception is bad. It leads to - heaven forefend! -  inappropriate activity like sex for fun and pleasure.  We can't have that! Any woman who dares to want to get laid just for the hell of it might,  in a few years, find herself in the public square with her hands and feet locked in the stocks while upstanding male churchgoers chuck rotten eggs at her. 


Or, remember the ducking stool?

What kind of a society of guilt-ridden masochists and sadists are these bulwarks of religion trying to turn the population of this one-time democratic-loving, freedom-pursuing - and, Christ, yes, religious-free country into? 

This is a resurrection of the Inquisition.

Ladies...get out your pitchforks and get into the fight. 

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How To Take a Sponge Bath

     1.  Wash down as far as possible.

     2.  Wash up as far as possible.

     3.  Then wash "possible".

The GOP goose chase is down to three candidates and worried Conservative activists who know their asses from their elbows are praying that Santorum is not "possible."

However, we liberals recognize that Santorum is indeed possessed of all the necessary functioning features of "possible" and we will be overjoyed to see them laid bare.

I know, I know....after Bush v. Gore it is dangerous to assume the country won't stand for the election of still another fellow from the land of the misbegotten, but we can still hope that lunacy won't strike twice.


Watching Torquemada Rick having to truly defend his 15th century positions to a more homogenous audience  could be the best entertainment of the 21st century. Of course Obama could tear him a new "possible", but I think the true dismantling of the bigot will come from an incensed intelligentsia, if such indeed exist in this country.


Therefore, I have abandoned all hope of having that lump of lard and his moon base (I don't mean Callista)  providing me with a few months of popcorn-munching entertainment and am putting all my body English in favor of Santorum.