Coping: Liberty Dollar Post-Mortem

Got an interesting email overnight from the U.S. Department of Justice related to the Liberty Dollar case.

You main remember Bernard Von NotHaus was convicted by the federal government for offering a solid (non-paper) coin. 

Near as I could figure, in following the case for a while, was that where the Liberty Dollar round got into trouble was the use of the word Dollar. 

As you know, the term Dollar does not show up in the US Patent and Trademark database as a term trademarked by the US Government (which is a corporation nowadays, but that’s a long story that will roll us off into the weeds).  There is a DOLLAR (all caps) which is a driving school or course, or some-such.

Nevertheless, the government got its conviction of Bernard Von NotHaus and he was eventually sentenced to six months of confinement to his home and three years of probation. 

End of story?

Well, not quite.

The DOJ email deals with the final consent order and disposal of the (alleged) counterfeiting equipment.  Which includes, amongst other things:

Superseding Bill of Indictment, the following (with evidence identifications) property:
— A-004 Die – 1oz. Liberty Head 2007
— A-006 Die – 1oz. Libertad, 2007
— A-009 Die — $50 Liberty Torch
— A-017 Die – Liberty Head
— A-048 Die – Peace Liberty Head
— A-060 Die – Liberty Head
— A-086 Die – Liberty Head 2008
and the following property (with evidence identifications) from Exhibits 71, 71A, and
71B:
— A006 Die – 1 oz Libertad, 2007
— A017 Die – Liberty Head, 2007
— A060 Die – Liberty Head, 2008
— A086 Die – Liberty Head 2008
— A142 Two (2) 2008 coins on Sheet w/sample Gold coins, but not 2008 Ron Paul Liberty Dollar, and not 2000 and 2006 coins
— A143 Sample of 2 Peace Silver coins, 2008
— A144 Tray containing 200 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins 2007
— A146 Tray containing 213 $20 Liberty Dollar coins, 2007
— C-024 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-026 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-027 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-030 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-040 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-048 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007

– – C-051 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-054 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-055 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-060 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-062 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-070 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
— C-177 Tray Containing 320 $50 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins
— C-179 Tray Containing 320 $20 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins
— C-180 Tray Containing 320 $20 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins

No idea why the email with all this came out when it did – maybe it’s like the ribbons being tied on the case.

But it does serve to remind us that the government hates competition in the money department.

As for Von NotHaus, I hold him in high regard as a principled man who was trying to do the right thing but “stepped on the tail of the Beast” in the process.

And rather famously (I thought) revealed this great Truth:

“When asked about the government’s motive for accusing him of terrorism, von NotHaus scoffed, “This is the United States government. It’s got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it’s worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!”

This morning, one ounce of melted silver is still worth $16.60.

By contrast, in April of 2014, the Federal Reserve (masquerading as a government entity, which is a three beer discussion with me pointing to the Constitution) reports there was $2.7714 trillion dollars worth of M1 and as of April of this year that number had swollen to $2.9945 trillion.

That’s $223.1 billion dollars just made up on the “Full Faith and Credit” of the government.  (Wonder why China is nervous?)

But just so’s we’re clear on this, the “melt value of paper dollars” is still (more or less exactly) what?

Zero.

But for now, the non sequitor of vaporous money continues to spread.  Just at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger live and breathe book values, Ures truly continues to believe that intrinsic (melt) values matter as well.  Electrodollars/ and cryptocons?  No thanks.  Zero melt value issues.

But you do have to be careful around the tail or there’s a mandatory time out just waiting.

Fringe on the Edge of George

Looking for the signpost up ahead? 

I don’t have a single – large – important breakthrough to report this morning from the experimental World of George Labs (WoGL) .  As confessed, there is a ton of low-level science going on around here that is seldom worthy of a whole column – or even a note – but taken as a whole, there are definitely some things to think about.

Bathroom Wars: Environmental Packaging

Here’s an odd one, but worth noting, since it jumped out at me as the brain was spooling up in the bathroom today.   I happened to notice the roll of toilet paper and my highly calibrated eyes caught something amiss.

Sure enough, after dragging out one of the measuring tapes from Elaine’s tool drawers, the toilet paper roll turned out to have a 1 3/4ths in cardboard tube in the middle.  This contrasts with a 1  1/4th inch tube on a different brand. 

What’s more, E somehow brought home a 12-pack of some other wiping gear that had no cardboard tube at all.

Well, you know what happens next, right?

Ures truly gets out Excel and spends the next hour pondering the Business School implications of this:  Did the removal of the cardboard tube from one brand save them much money?  Or, was there some capital expenditure to make a machine that would roll without a roll, so to speak?  And, for the bigger tube user, how much delivered product does that save and what is the payoff time on any equipment changes to handle something different than the old-fashioned style roll?

These are the kinds of research that go on in the back of my mind, sometimes, and may account for getting so little done with “front of mind” lately.

Cans as Inefficient Packaging

Related is the matter of inefficiency of canned goods. 

The area of a circle is Pi  times r (the radius) squared.

Now take a can that’s 3-inches across and it’s area (*for food storage) is about 7.07 inches.

But, since the can eats us 3-inches square (nearly) of footprint, we could look at the can as using 9 square inches of space.  So round containers waste a lot of space (20%) compared to square containers.  Less if you stagger the cans, but there’s still wasted space compared with squares.

Few people have a firm grasp on can sized, which you can remedy over here. For some reason this morning, this was bothering me.

Blood Brothers Explained?

Madison Avenue Mike sent along this marvelous headline that he stumbled across Wednesday: “

Blood to feeling: McMaster scientists turn blood into neural cells:”

This is another topic at the “George of Fringe” that is incredibly interesting since a cousin of mine  years ago (more than 50 to be more precise) told me how he and a close friend of his had cut their palms and had become “blood brothers.”

Never made much sense to me – at least until this article came along – since it seemed a stupid thing to do.  He was reading lots of early Phantom comics and wore a skull ring, too, come to think of it. 

But now, this begins to make some sense…maybe this “blood brother” thing that can be traced to first peoples does have some basis in fact?  We may not know for sure, but if it is, it would account for why sometimes you hear about people who’ve had blood transfusions (or body organ transfers) inexplicably getting some “memories” of donors in the process.

Per der Wikipedia:

Blood brother can refer to one of two things: a male related by birth, or two or more men not related by birth who have sworn loyalty to each other. This is in modern times usually done in a ceremony, known as a blood oath, where having each person make a small cut, usually on a finger, hand or the forearm, and then the two cuts are pressed together and bound, the idea being that each person’s blood now flows in the other participant’s veins. In modern times, some gangs have also been rumored to make blood pacts. The process usually provides a participant with a heightened symbolic sense of attachment with another participant.

With this new research, it may be that there is a little more than merely symbolism at play here.  And perhaps an interchange of even slight amounts of blood can be used as a way of “knowing” another person on a more than superficial way.

Personal Psychokinesis  (PK) Experiments

This warms me to one of my favorite topics, although I have never written about it before.  I have done a number of experiments with extended sensory and PK because it has always fascinated me how “consciousness” seems to be able to “move around” within the body.

Think about it this way:  When you hurt yourself, the scientific explanation is that nerve endings fire and send an electrical message to the remote brain, which then reacts.

But after you’ve hit your thumb enough times with a hammer, or fallen off a bike and gotten a bad case of  concrete rash, you come to figure that the brain isn’t so remote after all.  In fact, it’s powerfully felt that your consciousness goes to the pain site.

With practice, you can make boring conferences a lot more interesting by moving you consciousness to different parts of your body and maintaining that “brain perspective” for a while.  It does seem to encourage different kinds of thinking.

I’ll skip the grown-up adult  and over 21 (I.D. please) discussion which moves over to the tantric, but you get the idea.

Over time you come to appreciate how humans are bound (in the sense of knowing) by the limitations of where hard perception or brain location can occur.  The concept of “trapped in a body, pushed down a road….” is an intensely limiting construction and perhaps explains the human drive to invent sensory amplifiers.  This huge core drive of humans – to augment their five (or six_) senses and it’s what drives a lot of mysticism because people really do want to expand out of the bag of skin and bones.

Another way of doing work in this area – although I’ve only done it once – is to work on PK – which is the art of moving things around with your mind.

The only time I did this was in 1972, or so, and it involved sitting in a very still room for a couple of hours and working with a steel needle that I had carefully floated on the surface tension of a glass of water.

After an hour, or so, of staring and trying to “be one” with the needle, I was able to move it the tiniest fraction of an inch (no more than half) in any direction I felt like.

Of course, about here, rational brain starts to kick in and explain it all always, so you go to a slightly different place in mind and work some more, until eventually you get to a place where you can seriously identify as “one” with the needle, water, and who setting and then you can moved things a bit.

But just as you get in touch with this, there’s a huge (mental) “drawing away” for lack of a better term for it.   The feeling is very similar to early adventures in out of body experiences (OBEs) where people report an almost SNAP!  back into their core.  It’s a sense of – for lack of better words to string here – not wanting or not supposed to go there.

Worth mentioning, however, should you ever want to go down that path.

A Real Battle of Note

There is one other fringe note to mention in passing, since it’s a very cool one:  It’s the battle between the 440- and 432-A tuning of musical instruments.

If you haven’t taken it yet, here’s a good video that will put your ears to a good workout.  After you take the “test” you can reach whatever conclusions you want..

(If you can’t load it, or don’t have Java turned on, the YouTube page is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVoVr9UwOQM )

This is tangentially related to the study of the 528 Hz Solfeggio Frequencies and the whole discourse on whether DNA can be repaired by healing “sounds.”  Here’s a long 528 Hz embedded relaxation clip.  No, it doesn’t cure hangovers, but thanks for asking.

As I mentioned, there’s solid evidence in emergent technologies that frequencies of the right sort can stimulate healing for things like macular degeneration, but the process of getting these new technologies is still a year or three out.

Nevertheless, the whole “personal vibration” field is a fascinating one, particularly if you have experienced lucid dream states where personal flying is accompanied by a humming frequency deep in your chest or center of mass…

There…I did warn you this would be some fringy stuff this morning, did I not?

The Twilight Zone Template

To wind up, a marvelous YT video of the Twilight Zone Episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street is worth a view.  Coincident discussion of the ham radio in the basement is really just that.  It’s been in my office for years now.

But seriously, the chilling end of this Twilight Zone episode explains why living in the Outback with our own power, water, and stored goods is so important:  It defines the essence of what’s likely to happen on a massive scale should EMP weapons ever be used on a large scale:

“Voice 1:  Understand the procedure now?

Stop of a few of their machines, radios, and telephones and lawnmowers…throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern….

“Voice 2: And this pattern is always the same?:”

“Voice 1: With few variations:  They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it’s themselves….”

It’s a fine metaphor for the gangs of bullies that wander the shadowlands of semi-conscious people, gather them up into mobs, applying gentle pressures to ride the wave of controlled public opinion.  But toward what end?

Jade Helm and Rain?

One of our well-tuned, exceptionally bright and inquiring readers has an  interesting observation to make about some seemingly coincidental  timing:

Hi George:

A quick observation:  notice how “conveniently” these abnormal “historic” rains have inundated Texas after the loud public response by the Texas governor to oversee the Jade Helm military exercises.  Is it possible that HAARP and its’ weather control activities have been activated to punish Texas?  ~~ Too coincidental for my taste.  But just observing! Lol 

PS: Care to guess what it’s doing again in Texas this morning?

Hmmm… well, if we get cool summer temps and no rain during the “window” of the actual ops, then yeah, that would be interesting, would it not?  Or, if it keeps on raining so much that the FedGov takes it upon itself to move additional forces into the “uprising” areas…well, that too would not play nicely.

Write when you break-even and ya’ll come back tomorrow…bailing buckets and bumbershoots, brothers and sisters, bailing and bumbers.

George   george@ure.net